Annal:1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award

Unquenchable Fire

Rachel Pollack

• 1989 Clarke winner
• Score: 10.39

It’s uncomfortable to be chosen for Great Things. A lot of fantasists admit that, but Pollack’s Jennie Mazdan shows us just how uncomfortable it can be. This is suburban fantasy, reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s suburban SF, and the protagonist is a nice suburban middle-class person who, in a recognizable America informed with rational, non-Christian divine powers, copes with supernatural imposition on her life. Perfectly balancing the anchoring familiar mundanities against her brilliant, fascinating Living World—surly bureaucrats at the National Oneiric…

The Empire of Fear

Brian Stableford

• 1989 Clarke shortlist
• Score: 6.39

Since the sixteenth century, England has been a land ruled by the Undead. Vampires rule with terror and the darkly-seductive promise of life eternal for the lucky few. Edmund Cordery, member of the cabal pledged to penetrate the mysteries of the vampires and destroy them, strike the first blow. But it will fall to his son, Noell, to carry on the crusade of human against inhuman. And it will fall to those who come after Noell to keep the struggle alive for over three centuries—from England to Malta to modern-day America, where destiny will decide finally whether the forces of horror or humanity will hold sway over all….

Philip K. Dick Is Dead, Alas

Michael Bishop

• 1989 Clarke shortlist
• Score: 6.39

It is 1982. The United States has a permanent Moonbase. Richard M. Nixon is in the fourth term of the “imperial presidency.” And an eccentric novelist named Philip K. Dick has just died in California.

Or has he? Psychiatrist Lia Pickford, M.D., is nonplussed when Dick walks into her office in small-town Georgia, with a cab idling outside, to ask for help. And Cal Pickford, a longtime Dick fan stunned by the news of his hero’s death, is electrified when his wife tells him of the visit.

So begins a sequence of events involving Cal in the repressive Nixon regime, the affairs of an aging movie queen, a hip but frightened Vietnamese immigrant and an old black man who works as a groom—all leading up to a fateful confrontation between Dick, Cal, and Nixon himself on the moon.

Kairos

Gwyneth Jones

• 1989 Clarke shortlist
• Score: 6.39

 

Rumors of Spring

Richard Grant

• 1989 Clarke shortlist
• Score: 6.39

 

Life During Wartime

Lucius Shepard

• 1989 Clarke shortlist
• 1987 Philip K Dick nominee
• Score: 12.39

David Mingolla is one of many drug-pumped grunts slugging it out in the rotten jungles of Guatemala, an expendable pawn in an endless, amoral war. Then he meets Debora, an enigmatic young woman who may be working for the enemy, and stumbles into the deadly war zone of psychic conflict where the mind is the greatest woapon, and thoughts are used to kill.

Whores of Babylon

Ian Watson

• 1989 Clarke shortlist
• Score: 6.39

Alex Winter and Deborah Tate arrive by hovercraft at the city of Babylon, lying on the river Euphrates in the Arizona desert. He is a sociology drop-out from the University of Oregon at Eugene who wants to become a Babylonian. She has a much stranger ambition.

Their minds are babbling in the Greek that has been pumped into them via computer interface at the University of Heuristics. To them, English has yet to be invented and the young king Alexander lies dying in his palace. The city is dominated by the tower of Babel, its spiral roadway curling up towards the heavens and wide enough for several donkey carts. And women sit outside the Temple of Ishtar, waiting for some stranger to drop a coin in their laps. The prospect seems to fascinate Deborah. She wants to become one of the Whores of Babylon.