Science-fiction writer Chris Beckett has won The Edge Hill Prize, awarded annually for a single author short story collection by Edge Hill University. Others on the shortlist included Booker winner Anne Enright and Whitbread winner Ali Smith.You can read an extract from Beckett's collection, The Turing Test here.
Beckett says he was still pinching himself at the win, and added :
I ... thought that being a science fiction writer could count against me: a lot of people don't like it, or look at it in some way as less than literary fiction. It's a little blow for the genre, as well as for me – it might persuade a few people that maybe it's worth looking at.Judge James Walton said that Beckett's entry had been the most enjoyable and impressive read:
It was Beckett who seemed to us to have written the most imaginative and endlessly inventive stories, fizzing with ideas and complete with strong characters and big contemporary themes. We also appreciated the sheer zest of his storytelling and the obvious pleasure he had taken in creating his fiction.
