Writer is the first to win best novel and best short story at British Science Fiction Association ceremony in the same year

Aliette de Bodard has scooped an unprecedented two British Science Fiction Association awards, for best novel and best short story.

It is the first time a writer has taken the two fiction awards since the programme began in 1970. Keith Roberts is the only other person to have won two awards at the BSFAs, when he won best artist and best short story in 1986.

De Bodard, who attended Ecolé Polytechnique and works as a system engineer in Paris, was announced the winner at the awards ceremony on Saturday night as part of the annual Easter weekend science fiction convention, this year taking place in Manchester under the name Mancunicon. De Bodard won for her novel The House of Shattered Wings, published by Gollancz, and for her short story Three Cups of Grief, By Starlight, which appeared in the magazine Clarkesworld.

After the ceremony, de Bodard told the Guardian she was “delighted and more than a bit shocked to have won two BSFA awards. I was honestly not expecting to walk home with either of them, especially since there were two very strong shortlists with wonderful contenders.”

De Bodard began writing after discovering authors Isaac Asimov and Ursula le Guin, and coming across Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction. The author describes The House of Shattered Wings as “set in a post-apocalyptic Paris and featuring fallen angels, a washed-out alchemist and a former Vietnamese immortal with a grudge”. In a review for the Guardian. Eric Brown said de Bodard had managed to create a “suspenseful thriller” which, despite the “hoary premise” of fallen angels, was “something startlingly and creepily original”.

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Other contenders for this year’s best novel award included Dave Hutchinson’s Europe at Midnight, Chris Beckett’s Mother of Eden, Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald and Justina Robson’s Glorious Angels. Writers in contention for the short story award were Paul Cornell, Jeff Noon, Nnedi Okorafor and Gareth L Powell, who was joint winner two years ago with his novel Ack-Ack Macaque.



The best nonfiction award went to novelist Adam Roberts for his collected volume of his science fiction criticism, Rave and Let Die, while best artist was won by veteran illustrator Jim Burns, for his cover design for Pelquin’s Comet by Ian Whates, taking Burn’s collection of BFSA trophies to 13.

The BSFA shortlist is drawn from suggestions made by the association’s members, who vote for their favourites in the run up to the Eastercon gathering. At Mancunicon, which finishes on Easter Monday, the next two years’ Easter convention bids were approved. In 2017 the convention will return to Birmingham and in 2018 it will be held in Harrogate.