The Anomaly

"Right, so I’ve tried to talk about all of our shortlisted books in ways that will give readers an insight into the kinds of books they are and what made them appealing to our judges without moving into spoiler territory, and I’m going to have to be extra careful with these next three books! There’s a high-concept plot trigger here which I can talk about: the ‘anomaly’ of the title relates to an inexplicable event whereby a plane and all onboard are duplicated. One plane lands as normal, the other three months later, but other than that small fact they are identical. The repercussions from this, told across a multi-viewpoint narrative, the attempts to understand what happened and to uncover if indeed such an anomaly may have occurred before, are what drives this book, and indeed its million-plus readers to find out what happened. To say more would be to say too much, but I can say this is a book that garnered a lot of discussion from our judging panel just as it has driven conversations all around the world. There is a huge global appetite for science fiction and whole scenes we are barely aware of here in the English-speaking parts of the world, although I am glad that this is another trend that is definitely shifting. Shout out to all those editors, anthologists, translators, and authors working to make that happen. Another recent work in translation from our own shortlists I would wholeheartedly recommend is Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, and I’d also encourage readers to seek out an increasing range of short fiction anthologies focusing on either works in translation or original works in English from international authors in China, the African continent and elsewhere on Planet Earth."