# The 32 Best Arthur C. Clarke Award-Winning Novels

> Four decades of jury picks, ranging from slim cult oddities to doorstop epics and literary crossovers. Some aged into classics; others deserve a second look.

*By YPB Team · Published October 29, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-32-best-arthur-c-clarke-award-winning-novels*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Black Man** — score 1000/1000
   Richard K. Morgan's 2007 thriller about a genetically engineered enforcer, published in the US as Thirteen; 2008 winner.
2. **The Calcutta Chromosome** — score 897/1000
   Amitav Ghosh's 1995 medical thriller woven around malaria research in colonial India; 1997 winner.
3. **Children of Time** — score 787/1000
   Adrian Tchaikovsky's 2015 epic of uplifted spiders and humanity's last ark ship; 2016 winner.
4. **The Handmaid's Tale** — score 787/1000
   Margaret Atwood's 1985 dystopia about a theocratic regime, the award's first winner in 1987.
5. **Synners** — score 787/1000
   Pat Cadigan's 1991 cyberpunk novel about hackers, music video and direct brain interfaces; 1992 winner.
6. **Bold as Love** — score 787/1000
   Gwyneth Jones's 2001 novel of rock stars running a fractured near-future Britain; 2002 winner.
7. **Dreaming in Smoke** — score 718/1000
   Tricia Sullivan's 1998 novel of a struggling colony linked to an unstable AI; 1999 winner.
8. **Song of Time** — score 636/1000
   Ian R. MacLeod's 2008 memoir of a dying violinist in a future Europe; 2009 winner.
9. **Iron Council** — score 636/1000
   China Miéville's 2004 revolutionary Western set in Bas-Lag; 2005 winner.
10. **Annie Bot** — score 636/1000
   Sierra Greer's 2024 novel narrated by a companion robot learning autonomy; 2025 winner.
11. **Unquenchable Fire** — score 538/1000
   Rachel Pollack's 1988 novel of a mystical modern America where a woman carries a miraculous child; 1989 winner.
12. **Take Back Plenty** — score 538/1000
   Colin Greenland's 1990 space-opera romp following pilot Tabitha Jute; 1991 winner.
13. **Zoo City** — score 538/1000
   Lauren Beukes's 2010 Johannesburg noir where the guilty are bound to animal familiars; 2011 winner.
14. **Deep Wheel Orcadia** — score 538/1000
   Harry Josephine Giles's 2021 verse novel in Orkney dialect set on a space station; 2022 winner.
15. **Fairyland** — score 418/1000
   Paul J. McAuley's 1995 biotech novel of engineered 'dolls' in a fractured Europe; 1996 winner.
16. **Perdido Street Station** — score 418/1000
   China Miéville's 2000 New Weird epic set in the teeming city of New Crobuzon; 2001 winner.
17. **Quicksilver** — score 418/1000
   Neal Stephenson's 2003 sprawling Baroque Cycle opener about Newton-era science; 2004 winner.
18. **Dark Eden** — score 418/1000
   Chris Beckett's 2012 tale of an inbred community on a sunless alien planet; 2013 winner.
19. **Ancillary Justice** — score 418/1000
   Ann Leckie's 2013 debut about a starship AI trapped in a single body, which swept the major awards; 2014 winner.
20. **The Old Drift** — score 418/1000
   Namwali Serpell's 2019 multigenerational Zambian saga that ends in the near future; 2020 winner.
21. **The Animals in That Country** — score 418/1000
   Laura Jean McKay's 2020 novel of a pandemic that lets people understand animals; 2021 winner.
22. **Venomous Lumpsucker** — score 418/1000
   Ned Beauman's 2022 satire of extinction credits and a vanishing fish; 2023 winner.
23. **In Ascension** — score 418/1000
   Martin MacInnes's 2023 novel of a marine biologist drawn from a deep-sea trench to outer space; 2024 winner.
24. **Body of Glass** — score 0/1000
   Marge Piercy's 1991 novel pairing a cyborg guardian with the Golem legend; 1993 winner.
25. **Vurt** — score 0/1000
   Jeff Noon's 1993 hallucinatory Manchester novel of feather-induced dreams; 1994 winner.
26. **Distraction** — score 0/1000
   Bruce Sterling's 1998 satire of a near-future, politically broken America; 2000 winner.
27. **Air** — score 0/1000
   Geoff Ryman's 2004 novel of a remote village facing an internet in the mind; 2006 winner.
28. **Nova Swing** — score 0/1000
   M. John Harrison's 2006 noir set beside a reality-warping zone called the Event Site; 2007 winner.
29. **The City & the City** — score 0/1000
   China Miéville's 2009 murder mystery in two cities sharing one space, his record third win in 2010.
30. **Station Eleven** — score 0/1000
   Emily St. John Mandel's 2014 post-pandemic novel following a travelling Shakespeare troupe; 2015 winner.
31. **Rosewater** — score 0/1000
   Tade Thompson's 2016 Nigerian first-contact thriller around an alien biodome; 2019 winner.
32. **When There Are Wolves Again** — score 0/1000
   E. J. Swift's ecological novel about rewilding and the return of wolves; 2026 winner.

Tags: books, sci-fi, awards, arthur c clarke award