Book News: Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver takes Arthur C. Clarke Award

The Arthur C. Clarke award is awarded annually for the best science fiction novel published in Britain during the prior calendar year. It was established with a grant from Arthur C. Clarke in 1987 and is a jury-chosen award. The monetary prize of the award matches the year in which it is awarded, so this year's award is worth £2004.

Neal Stephenson was awarded this year's Arthur C. Clarke award for Quicksilver, Volume 1 of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy.

Quicksilver is an historical novel, and on the surface it is difficult to see what business it has winning any science fiction awards. However Stephenson, long known as "the hacker-Hemingway," has in this work created an alternate history that sets out to tie the origins of science and alchemy to the information age. To just what end Stephenson takes this remains to be seen. The Confusion, the second book of his trilogy was published earlier this year and the third volume isn't due out until this fall.