The shortlist for the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award science fiction book of the year was released on June 7.

The six titles are:

• Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman (Sceptre) 
• The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz) 
• Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick (Gollancz) 
• The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Michael Joseph) 
• The Coral Bones by E. J. Swift (Unsung Stories) 
• Metronome by Tom Watson (Bloomsbury) 

Chair of Judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler, said: “This year we’ve shortlisted authors that have never made the Clarke Award’s top six before. It’s always good to see new authors or authors new to science fiction standing out from so many submissions. I look forward to what I suspect will be a passionately argued decision.”

This year’s winner will be announced on August 16.
 
The winner will receive a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2023.00; a tradition that sees the annual prize money rise incrementally by year from the year 2001 in memory of Sir Arthur C. Clarke.
 
The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2023 were: Dave Hutchinson and Francis Gene-Rowe for the British Science Fiction Association; Kate Heffner and Nicholas Whyte for the Science Fiction Foundation; and Georgie Knight for the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival. Dr Andrew M. Butler represented the Arthur C. Clarke Award directors in a non-voting role as the Chair of the Judges.

[Based on a press release.]