Reading List · Science fiction
The Arthur C. Clarke Award is given each year to the best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom in the previous year. It was established in 1987 with a grant from Arthur C. Clarke, and the first winner was Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. A panel of judges nominated by the British Science Fiction Association, the Science Fiction Foundation and the Sci-Fi-London festival chooses a shortlist of six and then the winner. The prize money, in pounds, matches the year: £2026 in 2026.
By Lisanne Swart · 40 winners since 1987 · Science fiction · All literary prizes · Last reviewed 28 October 2026
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E. J. Swift's When There Are Wolves Again won the 40th Arthur C. Clarke Award in London in August 2026, chosen from a record 132 submissions. Dates for the 2027 award were not found in the sources consulted.
Quick answer
The Arthur C. Clarke Award is the UK's annual prize for the best science fiction novel first published in Britain in the previous year, awarded since 1987. The latest winner, in 2026, is When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift.
How this page chooses
The timeline at the top lists every winner, all 40 of them. The latest fifteen have their own entry further down, oldest first; the titles in the timeline that you can click are those.
Under each book is a line of plain fact about the book or its author, and nothing that cannot be checked.
Oldest first. The line in red is a fact about the book or its author, not an opinion about it.
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Sixteen-year-old Jessie narrates a near future in which a genetically engineered virus, Maternal Death Syndrome, kills pregnant women, while her scientist father works on a team trying to stop it.
Longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize.
An isolated community descended from two stranded settlers lives in a valley on a sunless rogue planet they call Eden, until a teenager, John Redlantern, challenges its rules and leads a search for new land.
First book of Beckett's Eden trilogy, followed by Mother of Eden and Daughter of Eden.
Breq, the last surviving ancillary of a starship AI destroyed by treachery, pursues revenge against the ruler of the Radch, an empire whose ship AIs control human bodies as soldiers.
The only novel to have won the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards; it was Leckie's debut.
A fictional pandemic, the Georgia Flu, kills most of the world's population; the novel moves between the years before and after the collapse, following a travelling theatre troupe in the Great Lakes region.
A National Book Award finalist, adapted as an HBO Max miniseries in 2021.
On a terraformed planet, genetically modified spiders develop a civilisation guided by an AI, while an ark ship carrying frozen humans from a ruined Earth searches for a new home.
Followed by Children of Ruin, Children of Memory and Children of Strife (2026).
Cora, an enslaved woman, escapes a Georgia plantation by way of a literal underground railway, travelling through several states while a slave catcher named Ridgeway pursues her.
Also won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2016 National Book Award; adapted by Barry Jenkins for Amazon Prime Video in 2021.
Set in a future in which artificial wombs have become the main method of human reproduction and infertility has been eradicated, the novel follows how these changes shape family life.
Anne Charnock's first novel, the self-published A Calculated Life, was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist.
An alien dome has sealed off the Nigerian town of Rosewater, and its fungal xenoforms give a few “sensitives” access to a shared information network; one of them, Kaaro, works for a secret government branch.
First book of the Wormwood Trilogy and inaugural winner of the Nommo Award for Novel; Thompson is a British psychiatrist.
Three interwoven families across three generations in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, are linked by the actions of an early settler near Victoria Falls, in a novel that moves from history into science fiction.
Namwali Serpell's debut novel; it also won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
A speculative novel about communication between species, set against a pandemic; it was inspired by the author's own infection with chikungunya, caught at a writers' festival in Bali.
Also won the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia's richest literary award; it was McKay's debut novel.
A science fiction verse novel and romance set on a space station orbiting a gas giant, written in Orcadian, the Scots dialect of Orkney, with an English translation running alongside the text.
Published by Picador Poetry; Giles withdrew it from the Highland Book Prize longlist over a lack of minority representation on shortlists.
Scientist Karin Resaint is hired by a mining company to judge whether the venomous lumpsucker, a fish, is intelligent, which under a system of extinction credits would make destroying it more costly.
Ned Beauman was named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2013.
Leigh Hasenbosch grows up in a near-future Rotterdam protected by dikes, becomes a marine scientist studying a newly found deep-sea vent, and later joins a space mission to an anomalous object.
Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.
Annie, a companion robot built for her owner Doug, grows more self-aware after he switches her into a self-learning mode, and begins to question whether she can live on her own terms.
Sierra Greer is a pen name of an American novelist who had earlier published romance novels.
The novel follows two women over roughly fifty years in a near-future Britain, their separate journeys meeting in 2070, in a story of rewilding and environmental recovery.
Also won the BSFA Award for Best Novel; a companion to Swift's The Coral Bones, shortlisted for the Clarke in 2023.
Arthur C. Clarke gave the grant that established the award in 1987. It is run by the Serendip Foundation, and its judges are volunteers nominated by three supporting organisations: the British Science Fiction Association, the Science Fiction Foundation and, since 2019, the Sci-Fi-London film festival. Books must be submitted by their publishers, and since 2016 self-published titles can qualify under certain conditions.
Until 2001 the winner received £1000; since then the prize money has risen each year to match the year, in memory of Clarke, so the 2026 winner received £2026 and an engraved bookend. The 2026 award was the 40th. Award director Tom Hunter has said the prize faced possible closure after its 25th year, following Clarke's death.
China Miéville is the only author to have won three times, for Perdido Street Station, Iron Council and The City & the City. Pat Cadigan and Geoff Ryman have each won twice, while Stephen Baxter has the most nominations without a win. Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice is the only novel to have won the Clarke, the Hugo and the Nebula.
Because eligibility depends on first UK publication, the award uses British titles, which sometimes differ from American ones: Marge Piercy's Body of Glass was published in the US as He, She and It, and Richard K. Morgan's Black Man as Thirteen. The 2026 award drew a record 132 submissions from 52 eligible imprints and independent authors.
It is the UK's annual award for the best science fiction novel first published in Britain in the previous year, presented since 1987.
E. J. Swift won the 40th award for When There Are Wolves Again, a near-future novel about rewilding.
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer.
The prize money in pounds equals the year, so the 2026 winner received £2026, together with an engraved bookend.
China Miéville, with three wins; Pat Cadigan and Geoff Ryman have each won twice.
Science fiction novels in English by authors of any nationality, first published in the UK in the previous calendar year and submitted by the publisher.
A volunteer panel nominated by the British Science Fiction Association, the Science Fiction Foundation and the Sci-Fi-London film festival, with a chair.
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, in 1987.
Winner list last verified 28 October 2026.
The notes on this page are all mine,
and the books are all theirs.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
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