As pointed out to me by an internet puppy
Mar. 28th, 2012 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperance5000 miles? Is not too far away to boggle, apparently.
Christopher Priest takes issue with the Clarke shortlist. At length.
We have a dreadful shortlist put together by a set of judges who were not fit for purpose. They were incompetent. Their incompetence was made more problematical because the overall quality of the fiction in the year in question was poor. They did not know how to resolve this. They played what they saw as safe.
They failed themselves, they failed the Clarke Award, and they failed anyone who takes a serious interest in speculative fiction.
*blinks*
(This is UK SF, and it's a small world: we all have dogs in this fight. There are books I would far rather have seen on the shortlist, and writers I would far rather have seen nowhere near it. 'Twas ever thus, with any award drawn from a busy genre. Nevertheless. Two of the judges are personal friends of mine, and I know how smart they are and how hard they worked; to call them incompetent is ... let's say absurd, and stay polite here. Also, yes: Chris Priest's own novel was submitted for the award.)
Christopher Priest takes issue with the Clarke shortlist. At length.
We have a dreadful shortlist put together by a set of judges who were not fit for purpose. They were incompetent. Their incompetence was made more problematical because the overall quality of the fiction in the year in question was poor. They did not know how to resolve this. They played what they saw as safe.
They failed themselves, they failed the Clarke Award, and they failed anyone who takes a serious interest in speculative fiction.
*blinks*
(This is UK SF, and it's a small world: we all have dogs in this fight. There are books I would far rather have seen on the shortlist, and writers I would far rather have seen nowhere near it. 'Twas ever thus, with any award drawn from a busy genre. Nevertheless. Two of the judges are personal friends of mine, and I know how smart they are and how hard they worked; to call them incompetent is ... let's say absurd, and stay polite here. Also, yes: Chris Priest's own novel was submitted for the award.)