A record year for Arthur C. Clarke Award submissions
2026 will mark the 40th presentation of the Arthur C. Clarke Award science fiction book of the year, so it is perhaps only fitting that this year’s submissions total has reached near monolithic proportions.
The full list is published below.
This year our panel of judges received 132 submissions from 52 UK eligible publishing imprints and independent authors.
This tops out our previous high mark from the year 2019 of 124 books received from 46 UK eligible publishing imprints and independent authors.
A caveat on this list as always:
This is a simple list of eligible books received, not a ‘long-list’ or other form of juried selection, but simply those books submitted to our judges for their to consideration as a potential future Arthur C. Clarke Award science fiction book of the year winner.
The Arthur C. Clarke Award is given for the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom during the previous year. The award encourages submissions from across the range of science fiction publishing.
Thank you to our judges Tiffani Angus, John Coxon, Eliza Claudia Filimon,Antony Jones, and Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and our supporting organisations who nominate them: The Science Fiction Foundation, the British Science Fiction Association, and the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival.
This year’s Clarke Award shortlist will be announced as part of the Digital Futures Institute Festival of Storytelling at King’s College London on June 4th 2026.
Can you guess which six books will be on our anniversary shortlist? There’s only 6,547,258,432 possible combinations…
Tom Hunter, Award Director
THE COMPLETE SUBMISSIONS LIST FOR THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD SCIENCE FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2026
A Rebel’s History of Mars — Nadia Afifi (Flame Tree Press)
A Granite Silence — Nina Allan (riverrun)
The Fourth Consort — Edward Ashton (Solaris)
On the Calculation of Volume I — Balle Solvej, translated by Barbara J. Haveland (Faber & Faber)
On the Calculation of Volume II — Balle Solvej, translated by Barbara J. Haveland (Faber & Faber)
On the Calculation of Volume III — Balle Solvej, translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (Faber & Faber)
Old Soul — Susan Barker (Penguin)
Cold Eternity — S. A. Barnes (Bantam)
Occam’s Dream — Lauren Jane Barnett (Roundfire Books)
Hearth Space — Stephen Baxter (Gollancz)
The Folded Sky — Elizabeth Bear (Gollancz)
Beautyland — Marie-Helene Bertino (Vintage)
Extremity — Nicholas Binge (Tor)
Dissolution — Nicholas Binge (HarperVoyager)
Landfall — James Bradley (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Society of Unknowable Objects — Gareth Brown (Bantam)
Whalesong — Miles Cameron (Gollancz)
The Doomed Earth: Destiny’s Way — Jack Campbell (Titan Books)
Outlaw Planet — M. R. Carey (Orbit)
Every Version of You — Grace Chan (VERVE Books)
Rakesfall — Vajra Chandrasekera (Solaris)
The Book of Guilt — Catherine Chidgey (John Murray)
Red Sword — Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Honford Star)
Metal from Heaven — August Clarke (Solaris)
Tales From the Red Planet: Part One — Chris Cleveland (Oblate Spheroid Books)
The Decadence — Leon Craig (Sceptre)
Death and Other Occupational Hazards — Veronika Dapunt (Bantam)
944 Hidalgo — Jack Davies (Roundfire Books)
The Mune — Sue Dawes (GoldSf)
Dungeon Crawler Carl — Matt Dinniman (Michael Joseph)
Ice — Jacek Dukaj, translated by Ursula Phillips (AdAstra)
A Line You Have Traced — Roisin Dunnett (Magpie)
Forged in Battle — Marc Alan Edelheit (Second Sky)
Awakened — Laura Elliott (Angry Robot)
The Chladni Progression — T/R Ellison (Roundfire Books)
The Ganymedan — R. T. Ester (Solaris)
Local Heavens — K. M. Fajardo (Zaffre)
To Cage a Wild Bird — Brooke Fast (Wayward T & F)
Migraine — Samuel Fisher (Corsair)
The Third Rule of Time Travel — Philip Fracassi (Orbit)
Silver Elite — Dani Francis (Del Rey)
Lightbreakers — Aja Gabel (Fleet)
Reality Drift — Fred Gambino (NewCon Press)
The Book of Lost Hours — Hayley Gelfusa (Atlantic Books)
The Immeasurable Heaven — Caspar Geon (Solaris)
The End — Mark Golding (Roundfire Books)
The Definitions — Matt Greene (Dead Ink)
Tor — Terry Grimwood (Elsewhen Press)
Helm — Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)
The Way Up is Death — Dan Hanks (Angry Robot)
Sleeper Beach — Nick Harkaway (Corsair)
Life Number Nine — Joe Heap (The Borough Press)
Scales — Christopher Hinz (Angry Robot)
Body and Soul — Andrew Hook (Elsewhen Press)
Project Hanuman — Stewart Hotston (Angry Robot)
An Unbreakable World — Ren Hutchings (Solaris)
The Essence — Dave Hutchinson (NewCon Press)
Homeworld: Worlds Apart 3 — Terry Jackman (Elsewhen Press)
Moonflow — Bitter Karella (Run For It)
Under the Eye of the Big Bird — Hiromi Kawakami translated by Asa Yoneda (Granta Books)
Saltcrop — Yume Kitasei (HarperVoyager)
Here and Beyond — Hal LaCroix (Bloomsbury)
The Dream Hotel — Laila Lalami (Bloomsbury Circus)
City of All Seasons — Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley (Titan Books)
Some Body Like Me — Lucy Lapinska (Gollancz)
All That We See Or See — Ken Liu (AdAstra)
The Quiet — Barnaby Martin (Macmillan)
Rose/House — Arcady Martine (Tor)
Opposite World — Elizabeth Anne Martins (Flame Tree Press)
What We Can Know — Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape)
The Price of Everything — Jon McGoran (Solaris)
The City by the Sea — Alistair McNaught (Awen Publications)
The House on Utopia Way — Stefan Mohamed (Void Editions)
For Emma — Ewan Morrison (Leamington Books)
A Blood as Bright as the Moon — Andrea Morstabilini (Titan Books)
Vanishing World — Sayaka Murata translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Granta Books)
Jaw Filler — Max and Charlie Markbreiter Murray (Montez Press)
Symbiote — Michael Nayak (Angry Robot)
Where the Axe Is Buried — Ray Nayler (W&N)
Slow Gods — Claire North (Orbit)
The Two Lies of Faven Sythe — Megan E. O’Keefe (Orbit)
Death of the Author — Nnedi Okorafor (Gollancz)
We Are Not Anonymous — Stephen Oram (Nudge the Future)
Tomorrow Was Beautiful Once — Amy Orrell (Elsewhen Press)
Esperance — Adam Oyebanji (Arcadia)
Requiem — John Palisano (Flame Tree Press)
The Great West Wood — Philip Palmer (Hellbooks)
Luminous — Sylvia Park (Magpie)
The Expansion Project — Ben Pester (Granta Books)
Terms of Service — Ciel Pierlot (Angry Robot)
The Perfect Stranger — Brian Pinkerton (Flame Tree Press)
The Expanded Earth — Mikey Please (Corsair)
Future’s Edge — Gareth L. Powell (Titan Books)
Big Time — Jordan Prosser (Dead Ink)
There is No Antimemetics Division — qntm (Del Rey)
The Enduring Universe — Kritika H. Rao (Titan Books)
Fable for the End of the World — Ava Reid (Del Rey)
Halcyon Days — Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
The Sea Eternal — Emery Robin (Orbit)
Space Brooms! — A. G. Rodriguez (Angry Robot)
Atlantis Afire — Gene Rowe (Ministry of Lies)
Shadows Upon Time — Christopher Ruocchio (AdAstra)
The Antidote — Karen Russell (Chatto & Windus)
Animals — Geoff Ryman (NewCon Press)
The Shattering Peace — John Scalzi (Tor)
When the Moon Hits Your Eye — John Scalzi (Tor)
A Thousand Blues — Cheon Seon-ran, translated Chi-Young Kim (Doubleday)
Freebourne — Salman Shaheen (Roundfire Books)
Thrum — Meg Smitherman (Penguin)
Stars Like Us — Stephen K. Stanford (Flame Tree Press)
Star Pyramid — Ian Stewart (Elsewhen Press)
Starship Salvager — Jarom Strong (Second Sky)
Blob: A Love Story — Maggie Su (Sceptre)
Conform — Ariel Sullivan (Tor Bramble)
When There Are Wolves Again — E. J. Swift (Arcadia)
The Waiter — Kwan Ann Tan (The Emma Press)
Archipelago of the Sun — Yoko Tawada translated by Margaret Mitsutani (Granta Books)
Shroud — Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)
Bee Speaker — Adrian Tchaikovsky (AdAstra)
The Book of Records — Madeleine Thien (Granta Books)
The River Blade — T. R. Thompson (Roundfire Books)
This Guilded Abyss — Rebecca Thorne (Tor)
Lucky Day — Chuck Tingle (Titan Books)
Aerth — Deborah Tomkins (Weatherglass Books)
Space Oddity — Catherynne M. Valente (Corsair)
The Merge — Grace Walker (Magpie)
Artificial Wisdom — Thomas R. Weaver (Bantam)
The Salt Oracle — Lorraine Wilson (Solaris)
Basilisk — Matt Wixey (Titan Books)
Down in the Sea of Angels — Khan Wong (Angry Robot)
Water Moon — Samantha Sotto Yambao (Penguin)
Sunbirth — An Yu (Harvill, Vintage)
The Clarke Award directors have released this submissions data as an open-source resource intended to showcase the breadth and diversity of UK science fiction literature and publishing.
This forms part of the award’s ongoing commitment to self-accountability, the positive promotion of science fiction, and supporting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across the UK publishing industry and wider science fiction community.
Also we know lots of people like to discuss or try and guess the shortlist in advance and, if that’s you, good luck and enjoy!
