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China Mieville has won this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award for his novel The City and The City. The annual award is presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year. A prize of £2010 will be awarded to the winner along with a commemorative engraved bookend.
Contacted by Amazon for his reaction, Mieville said, "One of the many reasons this means so much to me is that I tried to draw on different literary inspirations than I had previously done, to write in a different voice, to channel a different kind of 'weird'. Trying to do something different was a huge pleasure and excitement, but of course there's no guarantee that you'll do a good job. To have the effort received like this means an incredible amount."
Clarke Award Administrator Tom Hunter told Amazon, "I have to say that the positive reaction to the whole of this year's shortlist has been fantastic, and I've been very encouraged by both the passion and the generosity of this year's debate. What's pleased me most has been the fact that every book shortlisted this year has had it's camp of enthusiastic advocates, and I don't think there's been a list that's been a tougher call than this for many a year."
The judging panel for the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award consisted of Chris Hill and Jon Courtenay Grimwood for the British Science Fiction Association, Francis Spufford and Rhiannon Lassiter for the Science Fiction Foundation and Paul Skevington for the science fiction news website SF Crowsnest.com. Paul Billinger represents the Arthur C. Clarke Award as the Chair of Judges. The winner was announced this evening at an award ceremony held on the opening night of the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival.
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