‘In Ascension’ wins 2024 Arthur C Clarke Award

In the UK, Scottish writer Martin MacInnes has won this year’s Arthur C Clarke award for In Ascension (Atlantic), reports the Guardian.

MacInnes’s third novel, In Ascension follows marine biologist Leigh, who has grown up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father, and as an adult joins a team exploring a trench discovered in the Atlantic Ocean.

‘As always, the judging session was filled with emotion and intelligence and it took a while for In Ascension to emerge as the frontrunner,’ said chair of the judges Andrew M Butler. ‘It shows us, in the words of one judge, “vistas between the cellular and the cosmic”. It’s an intense trip and for once it’s a winner that is in the tradition of Clarke’s own novels.’

The Arthur C Clarke Award, worth £2024 (A$3964) in 2024, is for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. In Ascension was shortlisted for the 2024 prize alongside Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Vintage), The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Solaris), The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Orbit) and Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner (Penguin).

The winner of last year’s award was Ned Beauman for Venomous Lumpsucker (Sceptre).

Category: International awards International news