Beauman wins 2023 Arthur C Clarke Award for ‘Venomous Lumpsucker’

Ned Beauman’s Venomous Lumpsucker (Sceptre) has won the 2023 Arthur C Clarke Award for science fiction, reports the Guardian.

Described by the publisher as a ‘zoological thriller for the age of Extinction Rebellion,’ Venomous Lumpsucker follows the search for the titular hyper-intelligent fish, which might be extinct, leading to an unlikely collaboration between a mining executive and a biologist, as they journey through strange scenes in near-future Europe.

Judging chair Andrew M Butler described the novel as a ‘biting satire, twisted, dark and radical, but remarkably accessible, endlessly inventive and hilarious’, while award director Tom Hunter said that the novel ‘takes science fiction’s knack for future extrapolation and aggressively applies it to humanity’s short-sighted self-interest and consumptive urges in the face of planetary eco-crisis’.

Judges selected the novel from a shortlist that also included The Red Scholar’s Wake (Aliette de Bodard, Gollancz), Plutoshine (Lucy Kissick, Gollancz), The Anomaly (Hervé Le Tellier, trans by Adriana Hunter, Michael Joseph), The Coral Bones (E J Swift, Unsung Stories) and Metronome (Tom Watson, Bloomsbury).

Prize money for the award has increased gradually since 2001; this year, Beauman receives £2,023 (A$4025).

The Arthur C Clarke Award is presented annually for the best science fiction novel published in the UK in the previous calendar year. Last year’s winner was Harry Josephine Giles for Deep Wheel Orcadia (Picador).

Category: International news