2024 Philip K. Dick Award Nominees Announced

The nominees have been announced for the 2024 Philip K. Dick Award. Operated by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society along with the Philip K. Dick Trust, the award is presented annually for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States.

Nominees are listed below, along with cover art and descriptive text from their Goodreads listings.

Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon (Apex Book Company)

“Danged Black Thing is an extraordinary collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, patriarchy and womanhood, from a remarkable and original voice. Traversing the West and Africa, they celebrate the author’s own hybridity with breathtaking sensuousness and lyricism.

Speculative, realistic, and even mythological, but always imbued with truth, empathy, and Blackness, Danged Black Thing is a literary knockout.”

 

The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman (Tin House)

“Complex, philosophically searching, and gorgeously rendered, Rebekah Bergman’s The Museum of Human History is a sharp and startling debut about a young girl frozen in time in a world obsessed with youth and self-preservation.

“Weaving together speculative elements and classic fables, and exploring urgent issues from the opioid epidemic to the hazards of biotech to the obsession with self-improvement and remaining forever young, Rebekah Bergman’s The Museum of Human History is a brilliant and fascinating novel about how time shapes us, asking what ― if anything ― we would be without it.”

 

Infinity Gate by M. R. Carey (Orbit)

The Pandominion is a political and trading alliance consisting of roughly a million worlds. But they’re really all the same world ― Earth ― in many different dimensions.

And when an A.I. threat arises that could destroy everything the Pandominion has built, they’ll eradicate it by whatever means necessary ― no matter the cost to human life.

 

 

Wild Spaces by S. L. Coney (Tordotcom)

“An eleven-year-old boy lives an idyllic childhood exploring the remote coastal plains and wetlands of South Carolina alongside his parents and his dog Teach. But when the boy’s eerie and estranged grandfather shows up one day with no warning, cracks begin to form as hidden secrets resurface that his parents refuse to explain.

The longer his grandfather outstays his welcome and the greater the tension between the adults grows, the more the boy feels something within him changing ― physically ― into something his grandfather welcomes and his mother fears. Something abyssal. Something monstrous.”

 

Where Rivers Go To Die by Dilman Dila (Rosarium Publishing)

“The stunning, new collection from the Ugandan master of Africanfuturism. A young teen, haunted by the ghost of his father, takes it upon himself to save his brother and his people from a warlord’s marauding army. A frustrated detective is driven to the brink, confronting the vengeful spirit killing grooms on their wedding night. What happens when British colonials find Martians in Africa, a brash warrior battles his elders and ancient horrors in order to secure paradise for his people, or an exiled abiba is stolen away to find his true destiny?

Emerging Africanfuturist writer/director, Dilman Dila, brings us Where Rivers Go to Die , a startling collection of eight wonderful tales full of imagination, wonder, sorrow, power, and hope that weave Uganda’s wonderful myth and reality with its past, present, and possible future as only he can.”

 

These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs (Orbit)

“Jun Ironway—hacker, con artist, and occasional thief—has gotten her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for proof that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems.

The Kindom, the ruling power of the star systems, is inextricably tied up in the Nightfoots’ monopoly—and they can’t afford to let Jun expose the truth. They task two of their most brutal clerics with hunting her preternaturally stoic Chono, and brilliant hothead Esek, who also happens to be the heir to the Nightfoot empire.

But Chono and Esek are haunted in turn by a figure from their shared past, known only as Six. What Six truly wants is anyone’s guess. And the closer they get to finding Jun, the surer Chono is that Six is manipulating them all.”

 

First prize and any special citations will be announced on Friday, March 29, 2024 at Norwescon 46. Plans for the ceremony will be posted at Norwescon’s web site. The judges for this year’s award are Nicky Drayden, Gordon Eklund, Christopher V. Rowe, Kali Wallace (Chair), and Lisa Yaszek.