Annal:2004 Philip K. Dick Award

Life

Gwyneth Jones

• 2004 Philip K Dick winner
• Score: 10.54

“Life” is a richly textured fictional biography of the brilliant Anna Senoz, a scientist who makes a momentous discovery about the X and Y chromosomes. Anna’s discovery provokes widespread sexual rage and impacts cruelly on her career, her marriage, and her child. Ultimately, Anna faces a challenge that the practice of science alone cannot meet.

Apocalypse Array

Lyda Morehouse

• 2004 Philip K Dick citation
• Score: 8.54

Amariah McMannus isn’t your normal, everyday, trouble-making teenager. Her mother’s a legend in the cybernetic and law-enforcement communities. Her father is the Archangel Michael. The Antichrist is about to get married to Satan-and Amariah herself just may be the next messiah…

The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Minister Faust

• 2004 Philip K Dick nominee
• Score: 6.54

Hamza and Yehat are The Coyote Kings—best friends, one a disgruntled dishwasher and the other a video store clerk, but each brilliant in his own right. Yehat guilds prototypes of space-age inventions in his spare time, while Hamza, a former English honors student kicked out of university, writes lush, lyrical poems when he’s not blocked—which, these days, is nearly always.

When the gorgeous, mysterious Sherem shows up in E-Town decked out in desert finery, Hamza’s creative spark is ignited. Who is this sophisticated woman who speaks arcane African tongues, quotes from obscure comics and Star Wars movies, yet seems somehow too ethereal for the world Hamza inhabits? And what is the lost artifact that she and a cast of coiffed collectors and criminal cultists so desperately seek? As Hamza falls blindly in love with Sherem, little does he know that he and Yehat play the biggest part of all in the recovery of the ancient relic—and in the future of all living beings.

Stable Strategies and Others

Eileen Gunn

• 2005 WFA–Collection nominee
• 2004 Philip K Dick nominee
• Score: 12.55

This collection of tightly crafted, highly imaginative short stories employs surrealist, satirical, and fantastical devices to explore politics, class, and gender. From a hilarious tale about bioengineering and the stresses of climbing the corporate ladder to an evocative story of a woman who loses a sock at the the laundromat and finds she’s missing a bit of her soul, these science fiction stories showcase an award-winning writer’s compelling vision of the universe. Computer pioneers, cross-country skiers, and aliens figure into these literary stories that challenge the boundaries of imagination with quirky, anti-establishment characters and visionary technological extrapolation.

Air: A Novel

Geoff Ryman

• 2006 Clarke winner
• 2005 Campbell 2nd
• 2005 Nebula nominee
• 2004 Philip K Dick nominee
• Score: 30.56

Chung Mae is the only connection her small farming village has to culture of a wider world beyond the fields and simple houses of her village. A new communications technology is sweeping the world and promises to connect everyone, everywhere without power lines, computers, or machines. This technology is Air. An initial testing of Air goes disastrously wrong and people are killed from the shock. Not to be stopped Air is arriving with or without the blessing of Mae’s village. Mae is the only one who knows how to harness Air and ready her people for it’s arrival, but will they listen before it’s too late?

City of Pearl: Book 5 of Wess'Har series

Karen Traviss

• 2004 Philip K Dick nominee
• Score: 6.54

Three separate alien societies have claims on Cavanagh’s Star. But the new arrivals—the gethes from Earth—now threaten the tenuous balance of a coveted world.

Environmental Hazard Enforcement officer Shan Frankland agreed to lead a mission to Cavanagh’s Star, knowing that 150 years would elapse before she could finally return home. But her landing, with a small group of scientists and Marines, has not gone unnoticed by Aras, the planet’s designated guardian. An eternally evolving world himself, this sad, powerful being has already obliterated millions of alien interlopers and their great cities to protect the fragile native population. Now Shan and her party—plus the small colony of fundamentalist humans who preceded them—could face a similar annihilation…or a fate far worse. Because Aras possesses a secret of the blood that would be disastrous if it fell into human hands—if the gethes survive the impending war their coming has inadvertently hastened.

Banner of Souls

Liz Williams

• 2006 Clarke shortlist
• 2004 Philip K Dick nominee
• Score: 12.56

One of Spectra’s most imaginative and talented authors now takes us on a phantasmagoric journey into a strange future fueled by haunt-tech: a technology which works by harnessing energy from of the realm of the dead. But who are the mysterious race known as the Kami who brought haunt-tech to earth? Saviors from another world, or something else entirely? And how does the child named Lunae who can manipulate time with a thought fit into the puzzle? It is up to the Martian warrior Dreams-of-War to answer these questions before life as she knows it comes to an end.