Double win

Aliette de Bodard has become the first writer to get both the best novel and best short story award in the same year at the British Science Fiction Association ceremony. Selections for the awards are made based on a shortlist that is drawn from suggestions made by the association’s members who cast their votes.

The other writers in the running for the best novel award this year included Justina Robson (Glorious Angels), Chris Beckett (Mother of Eden), Dave Hutchinson (Europe at Midnight) and Ian McDonald (Luna: New Moon). While contenders for the short story award were Nnedi Okorafor, Paul Cornell, Gareth L Powell and Jeff Noon.

De Bodard, who works as a system engineer in Paris, was given the awards for her novel The House of Shattered Wings, and for her short story ‘Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight’, which was published in the magazine Clarkesworld.

A new record

Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has made history. His fable ‘The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright’ has been translated into 30 languages, thereby making it “the single most translated short story in the history of African writing”, according to its publisher.

The simple plot of the fable carries a universal appeal, telling a tale of how “a long time ago humans used to walk on legs and arms, just like all the other four limbed creatures”, but “their rhythm and seamless coordination made the other parts [of the body] green with envy”, and “they started plotting against the two pairs”.

Written originally in Kikuyu, a Kenyan language, the fable was translated into English by Thiong’o himself. Among other languages, it is now available in French, Afrikaans, Igbo, Hausa and Arabic.