O Clarke Award é um prémio inglês atribuído a obras de ficção científica, originalmente estabelecido com fundos de Arthur C. Clarke com o objectivo de promover este género em Inglaterra. O vencedor é escolhido de entre uma pequena lista de seis obras, por uma juri de voluntários entre escritores, críticos ou fans.

Este ano faziam parte da listagem:

  • Song of Time: Ian R. MacLeod – PS Publishing
  • The Quiet War: Paul McAuley – Gollancz
  • House of Suns: Alastair Reynolds – Gollancz
  • Anathem: Neal Stephenson – Atlantic
  • The Margarets: Sheri S. Tepper – Gollancz
  • Martin Martin’s on the Other Side: Mark Wernham – Jonathan Cape

Destes seis, um dos mais falados tem sido sem dúvida a obra de Neal Stephenson, Anathem. No entanto, o vencedor foi Song of Time, de Ian R. MacLeod.

Fica aqui a sinopse, disponível no site da editora PS Publishing:

A man lies half-drowned on a Cornish beach at dawn in the furthest days of this century. The old woman who discovers him, once a famous concert violinist, is close to death herself… or a new kind of life she can barely contemplate. Does death still exist at all, or has it finally been obliterated? And who is this strange man she’s found? Is he a figure returned from her past, a new messiah, or an empty vessel? Is he God, or the Devil?

Filled with love and music, death and life, mind-stretching ideas and sheer, simple humanity, spanning the world from the suburbs of Birmingham to the streets of a new-Renaissance Paris via the ruins of post-apocalyptic India, Multi-award winning author Ian R MacLeod here creates some of his most powerful scenes, and his most extraordinary, and yet most believable, characters. If you care about the future, if you care about good story-telling, Song of Time is a must-read.