Belated Clarke Award Nominees Post

Did I forget to do this last week? I think I did...

Well, the bickering has already begun, and, once you see the traditionally odd shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award (which I sometimes think is designed to be given to the person least likely to know about it, care about it, or be willing to accept it), you'll understand why.

(Or at least part of why; the other part is that fandom is about bickering.)

Anyway, the nominees for this year do not include Ian McDonald's Brasyl (which, I suppose, means it's too much like regular science fiction), but does include:

• The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua - Snow Books
• The H-Bomb Girl by Stephen Baxter - Faber & Faber
• The Carhullan Army by Sarah Hall - Faber & Faber
• The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall - Canongate
• The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod - Orbit
• Black Man by Richard Morgan - Gollancz

The only one of those I've read is Black Man (published in the US as Thirteen), which did not overly impress me. I have Execution Channel on the stack, but haven't yet had a mood sunny enough that I needed that book to cut through it. From a quick glance at Amazon UK, the books I wasn't previously familiar with seem to be equally gloomy.

Is the UK determined to reclaim its mantle (from wherever Peter Watts is standing right now) as the home of the most depressive SF on earth, or is something else going on here?