Saturday, July 10, 1982

1982 Campbell Award Nominees

Location: Campbell Conference Awards Banquet at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

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

Winner:
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban

Go to previous year's nominees: 1981
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 1983

Book Award Reviews     Home