It's Not British, It May Not Be Science Fiction
But It Deserves the Award, So There

"The Arthur C Clarke award for British science-fiction writing has been running since 1987," claims The Guardian. Well, not exactly; the prize goes to "the best science fiction novel which received its first British publication during the previous calendar year," according to the official website, and this year they gave it to Neal Stephenson for Quicksilver, a dense tale of political and economic intrigue that spills over from Restoration-era England to embrace all of Europe and even some territories of the Ottoman. Here's the announcement, in which the book's described as "about the moment that yesterday turned into today."

In this subtle alternate history [Stephenson] addresses that fundamental paradigm shift which, in a sense, allowed science fiction to come into existence, when empirical science provided a completely new way of perceiving how the world works and where we belong in it. It is an exploration of the ways in which we began to see the world in terms of information, pointing out that capital itself is an information technology.

Thing is, I'm no expert on the late 17th century, but so far, the only thing that would make the novel, and the rest of the "Baroque Cycle," an alternate history is that it has fictional characters that don't exist in our universe, which would make every single novel set in the past alt-history sci-fi. Which is fine by me, I guess--and, actually, it's quite nice to see a rollicking good adventure in the "scientific fiction" vein Carl Djerassi has mined to some effect.

In case you were wondering, exactly one of the five other contenders was actually English: Manchester's Gwyneth Jones, who makes the nominated novel, Midnight Lamp, sound quite interesting, but good luck finding it in the U.S.