2002 Clarke Award Nominees

Location: United Kingdom.

Comments: Gwyneth Jones shares a common characteristic with Stephen Baxter: They have both been nominated for the Clarke Award seven times. Jones has one accomplishment that Baxter does not have; She has won a Clarke Award. Baxter has a distinction that Jones does not; I have read two of Baxter's books, and none of Jones'. I don't know why I haven't read any of Gwyneth Jones' books, but this is clearly an oversight that I need to rectify as soon as practicable.

Winner
Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones

Shortlist
Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton
Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson
Pashazade: The First Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Passage by Connie Willis
The Secret of Life by Paul J. McAuley

What Are the Arthur C. Clarke Awards?

Go to previous year's nominees: 2001
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2003

Book Award Reviews     Home

2002 Campbell Award Nominees

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

Comments: After years of wildly fluctuating formats for reporting the results of the Campbell Awards, the judges finally decided to catch up to the point that every other major award had been by the 1970s and provide a list of the winner along with all of the shortlisted finalists for the award. The Campbell Awards, unlike other major genre awards, has continued the practice of listing the second and third place finishers (although in a bout of sanity, they listed only the two books tied for first place and the third place finisher as having "placed"), but from this point forward they would also list the nominated novels that didn't place first, second, or third in the voting. And it only took the Campbell Awards until 2002 to do this, arriving at the same point that the Hugos got to in the 1950s.

Best Novel

Winner:

(tie) The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

(tie) Terraforming Earth by Jack Williamson

Third Place:

Probability Sun by Nancy Kress

Finalists:

Dark Light by Ken MacLeod

Deepsix by Jack McDevitt
Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton
Hammerfall by C.J. Cherryh
The House of Dust by Paul Johnston
The Meek by Scott Mackay
Nekropolis by Maureen F. McHugh
Pashazade: The First Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Passage by Connie Willis

Go to previous year's nominees: 2001
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2003

Book Award Reviews     Home

2002 Prometheus Award Nominees

Location: Unknown.

Comments: There are some choices made by the Libertarian Futurist Society that simply mystify me. I can understand why they would want to honor The Prisoner. The themes reflected in A Clockwork Orange and It Can't Happen Here are certainly ones that would be of interest to someone of a libertarian bent. And the Libertarian Futurist Society seems to have never met a Heinlein work that they didn't want to honor. But the presence of The Lord of the Rings on the list of Hall of Fame nominees simply mystifies me. I cannot see how Tolkien's work related in any way to libertarianism. I suppose one might consider it "libertarian" that the heroic characters in the trilogy seek to resist Sauron's efforts to enslave the "free peoples of Middle-Earth", but that seems like an awfully tenuous connection even if one regards it in its most favorable light.

Best Novel

Winner:

Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald M. Kingsbury

Other Nominees:

The American Zone by L. Neil Smith

Enemy Glory by Karen Michalson
Falling Stars by Michael F. Flynn
Hosts by F. Paul Wilson

Hall of Fame

Winner:

The Prisoner written and produced by Patrick McGoohan

Other Nominees:
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Requiem by Robert A. Heinlein

Go to previous year's nominees: 2001
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2003

Book Award Reviews     Home