Plutoshine

"So, when we’re in the call for submissions phase of the award asking publishers for books, we pay a lot of attention to what’s out there, who’s talking about what, to make sure we get every book we possibly can for our judges. One thing I’ve learnt is that the more people from different parts of the science fiction community enthuse about a book to me, the more likely it is to also appeal to our judges. I saw this in the early days of publication for Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice , which of course went on to win not only the Clarke Award but a whole slew of other major science fiction prizes as well. I can’t guarantee that we’ll see the same for Plutoshine , of course, but I would say that the enthusiasm for Lucy’s book that I’ve seen took me right back to that moment with Ann in 2013 and 2014, and I’m already looking forward to her future books! And now we get to the ‘why’ of why this book has some great buzz about it! It’s surprising, given science fiction’s identification with space, that more of it isn’t set within our home solar system. Or maybe it isn’t as the pace of scientific discovery around those worlds most immediately beyond our own is now so advanced it’s a brave author who is going to hinge their plot on a world that might be redefined in real life before their book even hits the shelves. Either way, when a book like Plutoshine does comes out I think people automatically notice it more both because of that relative difference to so much intergalactic science fiction and also because our human curiosity about our solar system remains even if outside of the realms of fiction its more usually the robots who get to do all the actual space exploring right now! I think Pluto has also held a unique place in our planetary—or dwarf planetary—fascination precisely because of its distance from us and its unstable categorisation as a celestial body. For writers, I can only imagine how much resonance there must be with it being the namesake of the Roman god of the underworld. So, you have here a twin challenge of a world that exists and we are learning more about all the time alongside a readership who is not only keen to read solar system-based science fiction and is, in all likelihood, going to be just as up on the research as you are. What to do? Science fiction historically has often been criticised for its cardboard characters and emphasis on technical plotting—the infodump—versus other modes of fiction. Now, we might say that’s unfair, but as creators, editors and fans we also learn from that conversation, and just as with any Earth-bound literary work, the world we create and the characters we populate it with hinges on the connection a writer can make to the imagination of their readers. The spell that makes it real, as it were. Here Lucy makes her Pluto every bit as much a rich and evocative character as Dickens’ London , Atwood’s Gilead or, looking beyond our own planet once again, Herbert’s Arrakis ."