Arthur C Clarke award calls on SF fans to help reinvent the prize

The prestigious British science fiction prize, the Arthur C Clarke Award, is facing "an immediate and pressing need for change", with official funding from its founder, Clarke himself, now at an end. The prize's administrator Tom Hunter has thrown open the question of what comes next in an open letter to science fiction fans this week, and asking for their views on its future.

The award, established by Clarke in the 1980s, goes annually to the best science fiction book published in the UK, and was awarded this year to China Miéville's The City and the City, an unprecedented third win for the author. Margaret Atwood was the first winner with The Handmaid's Tale in 1987, with other notable recipients including Amitav Ghosh (The Calcutta Chromosome, 1997), Christopher Priest (The Separation, 2003) and Neal Stephenson (Quicksilver, 2004).

The award has always been run on a voluntary basis, with the funding going to support a cash award matched to the year (so this year the prize money was £2,010). But since Clarke's death in 2008, and the winding-up of his UK company Rocket Publishing, which funded the prize, the money has come to an end.

Hunter said the 2011 Award, which will mark the prize's 25th anniversary, will definitely go ahead "one way or another", but that new arrangements will need to be made for subsequent years.

"The Award is now faced with an immediate and pressing need to change, adapt and re-evaluate its role and function as it moves into 2012 and its next quarter century," he wrote in his open letter, adding that it was an opportunity to reinvent the award for the next quarter-century. "I see our previous funding model slipping away as a necessary transition and the first step on the road to transforming the Award into a more deeply engaged social enterprise," he said.

Hunter asked readers for their views on how important a UK-focused prize is in an increasingly international and digital science fiction marketplace, and how much the success and credibility of the award depend on having a cash prize.

Hunter said he had already had a wide response from members of the highly engaged science fiction community, particularly after his letter was tweeted by novelist Neil Gaiman, a former Arthur C Clarke Award judge, who has more than 1.5m Twitter followers.

"I've had lots of personal emails saying 'Please don't shut'," Hunter said. "It confirms there is definitely life in the award. Our long-term funding could include sponsorship opportunities, crowd-sourced funding using social media to take small amounts of money from lots of people, or partnerships. We are putting out music tracks based on famous Arthur C Clarke quotes, and there is a short story anthology with a boutique publisher with some great names on it, produced in partnership with us. There are lots of things ticking along. The open letter is to say, 'This is what's happening, what do you think?' before we start rolling out a whole programme."