John W. Campbell Memorial Award Finalists

The Finalists for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award have been announced:

Nina Allan, The Race
James L. Cambias, A Darkling Sea
William Gibson, The Peripheral
Daryl Gregory, Afterparty
Dave Hutchinson, Europe In Autumn
Simon Ings, Wolves
Cixin Liu (Ken Liu, translator), The Three-Body Problem
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Will McIntosh, Defenders
Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Laline Paull, The Bees
Adam Roberts, Bête
John Scalzi, Lock In: A Novel of the Near Future
Andy Weir, The Martian
Jeff VanderMeer, Area X (The Southern Reach Trilogy: Annihilation; Authority; Acceptance)
Peter Watts, Echopraxia

The Campbell Memorial can be confusing since it has basically the same name as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (given at the same time as the Hugos). The two awards should fight a duel to see who keeps the name.

The Campbell Memorial is a juried SF only award, thus giving it a very different feel from the Hugo or Nebula. If you peruse their history page, they’ve moved in and out of alignment with the Hugos and Nebulas, often slanting more in a literary direction, such as last year winner Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux.

It’s a very interesting list this year. They hit the major American SF novels (Gibson, Watts, etc.) but also managed to bring in the novels that were buzzed about in Europe (Ings, Allan, Hutchinson). It’s nice to see Andy Weir finally get a nomination, publication date for The Martian be damned. Given the literary slant of this award, is this Station Eleven‘s to lose?

As a side note, Emily St. John Mandel won the Arthur C. Clarke award last week for Station Eleven.