In Ascension by Martin MacInnes is the winner of the 38th Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year. The selection was revealed today at an award ceremony held in London.

The annual Arthur C. Clarke Award is presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year.

Chair of the Judges, Dr Andrew M. Butler said:

As always, the judging session was filled with emotion and intelligence and it took a while for Martin MacInnes’s In Ascension to emerge as the front runner. It shows us, in the words of one judge, “vistas between the cellular and the cosmic.” It’s an intense trip and for once it’s a winner that is in the tradition of Clarke’s own novels.

Martin MacInnes receives a trophy in the form of a commemorative engraved bookend and prize money to the value of £2024.00; 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 2024 consisted of Dolly Garland and Stark Holborn for the British Science Fiction Association, Nic Clarke and Tom Dillon for the Science Fiction Foundation, and Glyn Morgan for the SCI-FI-LONDON film festival. 

[Based on a press release.]