The Electric State

"Stålenhag is fantastically well-known as an illustrator. An eight-episode series starring Rebecca Hall is in the works right now, I believe, based on one of his earlier book projects. But this a major work for him. There are over 100 illustrations in it, and he wrote the whole thing. It’s an absolute first for us: the first illustrated novel that the Clarke has nominated in all of its history. We have received a couple in the past, but we’ve not nominated them. I ought to be clear here that we spent a lot of time talking about this book from the very beginning when it arrived in an envelope. Critically: is it long enough to be a novel? Is it reliant on the imagery? Does the story stand up? The Clarke Award is the prize for the best science fiction novel, so we consider each element of that: we define ‘science fiction,’ we define ‘best’ and we define ‘novel.’ There is not a minimum word count, but we do say it has to be a substantial work. So, we tend to preclude novellas. But to take Ian McEwan, again – he has famously won literary prizes with very slim volumes. It’s a very hard one to define. So we don’t. Certainly Electric State is substantial in the sense that it’s a big. It’s a coffee table book, almost. A different size from all the other stuff that we get. It’s normally sold in the art section. But the judges have clearly felt that it’s substantial in the sense that its story has weight, and that’s why it’s been shortlisted. It’s really exciting to have it on the list. It’s a beautiful book, and I think really points to what science fiction publishing could be doing, I think. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s a shame not every author can illustrate their own work. But look at the fantastic works that somewhere like The Folio Society puts out now. They’ve really gone for science fiction in a major way in the last few years. I think of The Folio Society taking very old books – out of print books – and publishing them in beautiful editions. You’ve got Homer, and Marcus Aurelius, the Shakespeare collection. I’m only naming the ones that are on my book shelf. But recently they’ve put out 2001 : A Space Odyssey , they’ve done Stephen King, they’ve done a lot of Neil Gaiman, they’ve got Game of Thrones coming out… The point I’m making is that all of those works are illustrated. Think back to the days of pulp science fiction magazines – the space man shooting the monster-looking alien whilst the girl in the not-very-there silver dress is carried … You know the image I’m talking about. That kind of connection between the art and the story. This is very much a refreshing of that, and it would be so great to see more of those kind of works just being published. Yes. It does. Certainly, there are a lot of successful Kickstarter projects out there for science fiction. Another collection of essays and short stories, called Women Destroy Science Fiction was hugely successful a few years ago. Obviously it was not putting forward the argument that women are terrible and destroy science fiction. It was an ironic title. Becky Chambers, who has been nominated for the Clarke Award a couple of times, originally launched her first novel via a crowdfunding campaign. They are great ways for a canny editor to be able to say, ‘Look what the market’s already wanting to buy.’ They’re pre-tested."