'The Dervish House' wins 2010 BSFA Best Novel Award

The winners of this year’s slate of British Science Fiction Association Awards were announced Monday during the 62nd Annual Eastercon in Birmingham, England.

For those of you unfamiliar with the BSFA Awards, they are given each year by the British Science Fiction Association to “honor works in the genre of science fiction.” Nominees and winners are selected by a vote of BSFA members and Eastercon members. (Eastercon is the common name of a long-running British sci-fi convention that dates back to 1948.)

This year’s winners, in four categories, included the following works:

Novel – “The Dervish House” by Ian McDonald

Short Fiction – “The Shipmaker” by Aliette de Bodard

Art – The cover of “Zoo City” by Joey Hi-Fi

Non-Fiction – “Blogging the Hugos: Decline” by Paul Kincaid

The Best Novel Award is arguably the most prestigious of the annual BSFA Awards, and McDonald, age 51, has won the BSFA Best Novel Award on two other occasions – in 2004 for “River of Gods” and in 2007 for “Brasyl.”

What follows is a complete list of all of McDonald’s books:

- “Desolation Road” (1988)
- “Empire Dreams” (1988)
- “Out on Blue Six” (1989)
- “King of Morning, Queen of Day” (1991)
- “The Broken Land” (1992)
- “Speaking in Tongues” (1992)
- “Kling Klang Klatch” (1992)
- “Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone” (1994)
- “Terminal Café” (1994)
- “Evolution’s Shore” (1995)
- “Sacrifice of Fools” (1996)
- “Kirinya” (1997)
- “Tendeléo's Story” (2000)
- “Ares Express” (2001)
- “River of Gods” (2004)
- “Brasyl” (2007)
- “Cyberabad Days” (2009)
- “The Dervish House” (2010)

Another of his novels, “Planesrunner,” is scheduled for release in 2012.

McDonald’s “The Dervish House” was one of five finalists for this year’s BSFA Best Novel Award. The other finalists were:

- “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi

- “Zoo City” by Lauren Beukes

- “The Restoration Game” by Ken Macleod

- “Lightborn” by Tricia Sullivan

To see a complete list of the all-time BSFA Best Novel winners, check out my Jan. 21, 2011 post at http://leepeacock2010.blogspot.com/2011/01/bsfa-awards-short-list-announced.html.

The BSFA began giving an award in non-fiction in 2001. What follows is a list of the all-time winners in the non-fiction category.

2001 – “Omegatropic” by Stephen Baxter
2002 – No award
2003 – “Reading Science Fiction” by Farah Mendlesohn
2004 – No award
2005 – “Soundings: Reviews, 1992-1996” by Gary K. Wolfe
2006 – No award
2007 – No award
2008 – “Rhetorics of Fantasy” by Farah Mendlesohn
2009 – “Mutant Popcorn” by Nick Lowe

In the end, how many of these books have you had a chance to read? Which did you like or dislike? Which would you recommend and why? Let us know in the comments section below.