Comments: Once again, the Campbell Awards did something strange. Not the fact that Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker won the award, even though it is a very quirky book. No, the strangeness for 1982 was that, breaking with previous practice, neither the second or third place novels, or any of the other non-winning books were identified in the results. I suppose at this point it should not really be a surprise that the Campbell Awards made a seemingly inexplicable change.
However, there is almost no way to quibble with the winning novel Riddley Walker, which is simply a brilliant piece of post-apocalyptic fiction. It is a difficult novel to read, because of the very odd language used by the author, but without the altered language - a kind of debased pidgin English - then the novel simply would not work as well.
Best Novel
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
Go to previous year's nominees: 1981
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1983
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