Days of judgment

I'm actually rather in favour of a really first class literary row from time to time and the SF community in the UK hasn't had such an interesting one for years (I'm referring to Chris Priest's remarks about the Clarke Awards). While feeling that this whole process has been rather hard on both Charlie Stross and the jurors, not to mention the silent but traduced Mark Billingham, I nevertheless haven't read such entertaining remarks in various comments threads for some time. But with heated debate across the blogosphere, articles in the national press, a commendably dignified if necessary reticence on the part of the current jurors, and letters flying off to the papers of the 'Dear Sirs, I was shocked/sickened/revolted....etc' variety, it's not a bad lead up to one of the genre's major awards.

I haven't read any of this year's shortlist, nor am I on the jury (I was last year, and if all goes to plan, will be again for next year's list), so it would be disingenuous of me to comment on the books themselves. Nor am I too happy with ad hominem attacks, but over the last couple of hours I have noticed a couple of comments about an 'obvious agenda' on the part of the Clarke jury. If you want it from the (talking) horse's mouth, this isn't how the process works. Doubtless you do get a bias according to the makeup of a particular combination of people, as it's a consensual process, but I think it's verging on an unecessary degree of paranoia to start discussing 'obvious' ulterior motives.