A novel about rewilding and climate activism in Britain has been named this year’s winner of the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction.
When There Are Wolves Again by EJ Swift is an “ambitious study in the power of long-term hope in the face of climate breakdown”, said the award’s director, Tom Hunter.
The award, now in its 40th year, is given each year to “the best science fiction novel” first published in the UK in the previous year. It was named after British author Arthur C Clarke, who gave a grant to establish the award in 1987. Swift receives £2,026 in prize money, in keeping with the award’s tradition of increasing it incrementally each year since 2001.
When There Are Wolves Again follows two women across half a century in a near-future Britain. Lucy, whose childhood is shaped by the Covid lockdowns, becomes involved in climate activism and campaigns to revive Britain’s habitats, while Hester is a documentary-maker whose life was marked by the Chornobyl disaster. Their separate journeys eventually converge in 2070.
This year, judges considered a record 132 books submitted by 52 UK publishing imprints and independent authors.
In her Guardian review, Lisa Tuttle described the winning novel as “evocative and beautifully written”, praising it as a “character-driven … argument for rewilding in Britain”. Like Swift’s previous novel, The Coral Bones, she wrote, the book is “powered by a passionate love of nature and deep concern for the planet’s future”.
Judging chair Dr Andrew M Butler, a critic and academic, called it “a story of environmental change and possible recovery”.
Hunter added: “Science fiction at its most powerful is often not about predicting the future but showing us that no one future has to be inevitable.”
Swift was chosen as the winner over five other shortlisted authors: Matt Dinniman for Dungeon Crawler Carl, Laila Lalami for The Dream Hotel, Silvia Park for Luminous, qntm for There Is No Antimemetics Division and Lorraine Wilson for The Salt Oracle.
Swift’s previous novels include The Coral Bones, which was also shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award and the British Science Fiction Association award for best novel. She is also the author of the time-travel novel Paris Adrift and the Osiris Project trilogy, which explores the geopolitical impacts of environmental breakdown. She cites writers including Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Kim Stanley Robinson and Emily St John Mandel among her influences.
Clarke wrote about 100 works of science fiction and nonfiction, and also co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Margaret Atwood won the inaugural Arthur C Clarke prize in 1987 for The Handmaid’s Tale. Subsequent winners include Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (in 2017) and Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven (in 2015). Last year, US author Sierra Greer won for Annie Bot, a novel told from the perspective of a robot girlfriend.
Butler was joined on the judging panel by film and translation scholar Eliza Claudia Filimon, writer Antony Jones, novelist and editor Tiffani Angus, space physicist John Coxon, and games studies professor Esther MacCallum-Stewart.
