The short list for this prize has just been released and further reported on the author's own website. To make the list there are various criteria but the most important, for me, is that the authors be realists of a larger reality:
Here's the shortlist (in alphabetical order): follow the links to find a copy of the book online at bookshop.org. ; sadly some of these books have not escaped from the US of A yet so you will have to source a copy off one of the International distributors such as Amazon or Bookdepository. Descriptions below have been culled from elsewhere, unfortunately uncredited, but they definitely are not mine.“Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.”Ursula K. Le Guin
After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang (Stelliform Press)
Dragons were fire and terror to the Western world, but in the East they brought life-giving rain...
Now, no longer hailed as gods and struggling in the overheated pollution of Beijing, only the Eastern dragons survive. As drought plagues the aquatic creatures, a mysterious disease - shaolong, or "burnt lung" - afflicts the city's human inhabitants.
Jaded college student Xiang Kaifei scours Beijing streets for abandoned dragons, distracting himself from his diagnosis.
Elijah Ahmed, an American medical researcher, is drawn to Beijing by the memory of his grandmother and her death by shaolong.
Interest in Beijing's dragons leads Kai and Eli into an unlikely partnership. With the resources of Kai's dragon rescue and Eli's immunology research, can the pair find a cure for shaolong and safety for the dragons? Eli and Kai must confront old ghosts and hard truths if there is any hope for themselves or the dragons they love.Appleseed by Matt Bell (Custom House)
"Woven together out of the strands of myth, science fiction, and ecological warning, Matt Bell's Appleseed is as urgent as it is audacious." Kelly Link, Get in Trouble
An epic speculative novel from Matt Bell, a breakout book that explores climate change, manifest destiny, humanity's unchecked exploitation of natural resources, and the small but powerful magic contained within every single apple.
In eighteenth-century Ohio, two brothers travel into the wooded frontier, planting apple orchards from which they plan to profit in the years to come. As they remake the wilderness in their own image, planning for a future of settlement and civilization, the long-held bonds and secrets between the two will be tested, fractured and broken—and possibly healed.
Fifty years from now, in the second half of the twenty-first century, climate change has ravaged the world.Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom Publishing)
In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Elder Race, a junior anthropologist on a distant planet must help the locals he has sworn to study to save a planet from an unbeatable foe.
Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.
But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) and although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).
But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, for his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon…The Employees by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken (New Directions)
Olga Ravn explores what it really means to be human while questioning the logic of productivity and a life governed by work. Translated by Martin Aitken.
The near-distant future. Millions of miles from Earth. The crew of the Six-Thousand Ship consists of those who were born, and those who were made. Those who will die, and those who will not. When the ship takes on board a number of objects from a strange new planet, the crew find themselves becoming deeply attached to them. Human and humanoid employees both start aching for the same things. Warmth and intimacy. Loved ones who have passed. The far-away Earth, which now only persists in memory.
The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber (Graywolf Press)
The first Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize winner, a story of a girl's fantastical sea voyage to rescue her father
The House of Rust is an enchanting novel about a Hadhrami girl in Mombasa. When her fisherman father goes missing, Aisha takes to the sea on a magical boat made of a skeleton to rescue him. She is guided by a talking scholar's cat (and soon crows, goats, and other animals all have their say, too). On this journey Aisha meets three terrifying sea monsters. After she survives a final confrontation with Baba wa Papa, the father of all sharks, she rescues her own father, and hopes that life will return to normal. But at home, things only grow stranger.
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber's debut is a magical realist coming-of-age tale told through the lens of the Swahili and diasporic Hadhrami culture in Mombasa, Kenya. Richly descriptive and written with an imaginative hand and sharp eye for unusual detail, The House of Rust is a memorable novel by a thrilling new voice.How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (William Morrow)
For fans of Cloud Atlas and Station Eleven, Sequoia Nagamatsu's debut is a wildly imaginative, genre-bending work spanning generations across the globe as humanity struggles to rebuild itself in the aftermath of a climate plague.
"Haunting and luminous ... An astonishing debut" – Alan Moore (creator of "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" )
"A powerfully moving and thought provoking read. At times sublime, strange and deeply human" - Adrian Tchaikovsky, bestselling author of the Children of Time series
Dr. Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter's research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations.
Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways. Among those adjusting to this new normal are
- an aspiring comedian, employed by a theme park designed for terminally ill children, who falls in love with a mother trying desperately to keep her son alive;
- a scientist who, having failed to save his own son from the plague, gets a second chance at f
atherhood when one of his test subjects-a pig-develops human speech; - a man who, after recovering from his own coma, plans a block party for his neighbours who have also woken up to find that they alone have survived their families;
- and a widowed painter and her teenage granddaughter who must set off on cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.
From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead, How High We Go in the Dark follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humanity endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world. This is a story of unshakable hope that crosses literary lines to give us a world rebuilding itself through an endless capacity for love, resilience and reinvention
The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente (Tordotcom Publishing)
Catherynne M. Valente returns with a gripping vision of our own drowned future.
The future is blue. Endless blue...except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.
Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she's the only one who knows it. She's the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it's full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.
But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido)
Darcie Little Badger introduced herself to the world with Elatsoe. In A Snake Falls to Earth, she draws on traditional Lipan Apache storytelling structure to weave another unforgettable tale of monsters, magic, and family. It is not to be missed.
Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She's always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories.
Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been outcast from home. He's found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake.
Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli's best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven't been in centuries. And there are some who will kill to keep them apart.
- Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil (Soho Teen)
Inspired by the Greek myth of Iphigenia and the Grimm fairy tale "Brother and Sister," Michelle Ruiz Keil's second novel follows two siblings torn apart and struggling to find each other in early '90s Portland.
All her life, seventeen-year-old Iph has protected her sensitive younger brother, Orr. But this summer, with their mother away at an artist residency, their father decides it's time for fifteen-year-old Orr to toughen up at a wilderness boot camp. When he brings Iph to a work gala in downtown Portland and breaks the news, Orr has already been sent away. Furious at this betrayal, Iph storms off and gets lost in the maze of the Old Town. Enter George, an odd Robin Hood who swoops in on a bicycle, bow and arrow at the ready, offering Iph a place to hide out while she figures out how to track down Orr.
Orr, in the meantime, has escaped the camp and fallen in with The Furies, an all-girl punk band, and moves into the coat closet of their ramshackle pink...
The winner will be announced later this year on 21st October 2022 - Ursula K. Le Guin’s birthday!
