Aliette de Bodard. Image: Lou Abercrombie
By Dennis Abrams | @DennisAbrams2
‘Two Very Strong Shortlists’
At The Guardian, David Barnett reports that Aliette de Bodard — who previously has won two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award for her short stories — has won both Best Novel and Best Short Story nods at the British Science Fiction Association awards ceremony this past Saturday.This is the first time a writer has won both fiction awards since the program began 46 years ago.
De Bodard, who works as a systems engineer in Paris, won for her novel The House of Shattered Wings (Gollancz) and for her short story, “Three Cups of Grief, By Starlight,” published in Clarkesworld magazine.
After receiving her awards, de Bodard told The Guardian that she was “delighted and more than a bit shocked to have won two BSFA awards. I was honestly not expecting to walk home with either of them,” she said, “especially since there were two very strong shortlists with wonderful contenders.”
The paper reports that de Bodard describes her novel as “set in a post-apocalyptic Paris and featuring fallen angels, a washed-out alchemist and a former Vietnamese immortal with a grudge.”
De Bodard was born in the States but raised in Paris where she lives and works today. She considers French her first language.
The other novels on the shortlist were:
- Dave Hutchinson, Europe at Midnight, Solaris
- Chris Beckett, Mother of Eden, Corvus
- Ian McDonald, Luna: New Moon, Gollancz
- Justina Robson, Glorious Angels, Gollancz
The award for best nonfiction went to novelist Adam Roberts for his collected science fiction criticism, Rave and Let Die.