The short list has been announced for what might be Britain's only prize for short story collections, the
Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story. On the shortlist are:
- Chris Beckett, The Turing Test (Elastic Press)
- Gerard Donovan, Country of the Grand (Faber)
- Anne Enright, Yesterday’s Weather (Random House)
- Shena Mackay, The Atmospheric Railway (Random House)
- Ali Smith, The First Person and Other Stories (Hamish Hamilton)
Some people have
expressed surprise that Chris Beckett, a science fiction writer, should be in contention alongside 'literary heavyweights.' His publisher,
Elastic Press, is certainly a lot smaller than those of the other contenders.
Beckett, who said he'd tried writing stories without the science fiction element, but found himself thinking "oh, just put a robot in it", was also pleased to be "recognised outside the field" of science fiction. "It's nice company to be in," he said. "I never understand people saying that short story collections don't sell. It's odd, because we're always being told what a short attention span everyone has nowadays, so you would have thought that short stories would be popular. [They're] different to a novel in that they're much more concentrated. It would be much more work to write an 80,000 word short story collection than an 80,000 word novel ... That's the beauty of the short story – it can be very rich, densely packed."
"Some people have expressed surprise that Chris Beckett, a science fiction writer, should be in contention alongside 'literary heavyweights.'"And some people are idiots. I'd back an sf writer against a Booker winner any day of the week. Remember when Ballard lost out in the Booker finals to Anita Brookner? EMPIRE OF THE SUN vs HOTEL DU LAC. It was like Mike Tyson vs Ronnie Corbett. You could see from her face on the stage that even she didn't believe it.
ReplyDelete(By which I mean, if I didn't make it clear, that the result tells you everything about the Booker and nothing about the books.)
ReplyDeleteAgree. The real story is that he's published by a small publisher up against the big boys. Good to see sf short story publishing getting some recognition.
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