A murder mystery that unfolds within a travel guide is up against a far–future reimagining of the Fall myth as former winners of the British Science Fiction award for best novel Christopher Priest and China Miéville clash on this year's shortlist.

Priest's The Islanders is a travel guide to the Dream Archipelago, a world distorted by "temporal gradients", while Miéville's Embassytown is set on the distant planet of Arieka, "where there are shallows, dangerous juts and matterbanks of everyday space in the always", and where humanity is clashing with the planet's natives, "insect-horse-coral-fan things". The two award-winning authors are up against newcomer Lavie Tidhar's debut novel, Osama, set in a world without terrorism where private detective Joe is hired to find the obscure author of novels about Osama Bin Laden.

The shortlist is completed by Kim Lakin-Smith's Cyber Circus, the story of a floating circus of bio-engineered freaks in a post-apocalyptic future, and by Adam Roberts's By Light Alone, set in a world where humanity has been modified to photosynthesise sunlight with its hair, putting an end to hunger.

The shortlists are picked by nominations from the British Science Fiction Association membership, with Terry Pratchett's new Discworld novel Snuff and Charles Stross's Rule 34 just missing out on a place in the final five, according to awards administrator Donna Scott.

"It's no real surprise to see China Miéville riding high, with nominations in both the best novel and best short fiction categories – his popularity doesn't seem to detract from his sheer coolness," Scott said. Miéville is shortlisted in the best short fiction category for a story, Covehithe, which was commissioned by theguardian.com/books as part of an Arts Council-funded series of stories on the subject of oil. "His writing is both entertaining and jolly clever and he seems to scoop up so many awards I'm sure his mantelpiece is a nightmare to dust. Christopher Priest is another writer who has garnered a lot of mainstream respect, and both his and Adam Roberts novels seemed to be very popular from the start of nominations."

Niall Harrison, editor-in-chief of speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons, called this year's line-up "strong, with ambitious, varied, and politically challenging novels" from both new and established writers. "I'm particularly pleased to see Lavie Tidhar's Osama, which reimagines contemporary narratives about terrorism as literal alternate worlds," he said.

The winners of the British Science Fiction Awards will be announced in April, at Eastercon in London.

Best Novel

Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith (Newcon Press)

Embassytown by China Miéville (Macmillan)

The Islanders by Christopher Priest (Gollancz)

By Light Alone by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

Osama by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)

Best Short Fiction

The Silver Wind by Nina Allan (Interzone 233, TTA Press)

The Copenhagen Interpretation by Paul Cornell (Asimov's, July)

Afterbirth by Kameron Hurley (Kameron Hurley's own website)

Covehithe by China Miéville (The Guardian)

Of Dawn by Al Robertson (Interzone 235, TTA Press)

Best Non-Fiction

Out of This World: Science Fiction but not as we Know it by Mike Ashley (British Library)

The SF Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition ed. John Clute, Peter Nicholls and David Langford (website)

Review of Arslan by M J Engh, Abigail Nussbaum (Asking the Wrong Questions blog)

SF Mistressworks, ed. Ian Sales (website)

Pornokitsch, ed. Jared Shurin and Anne Perry (website)

The Unsilent Library: Essays on the Russell T. Davies Era of the New Doctor Who (Foundation Studies in Science Fiction), ed. Graham Sleight, Tony Keen and Simon Bradshaw (Science Fiction Foundation)

Best Art

Cover of Ian Whates's The Noise Revealed by Dominic Harman (Solaris)

Cover and illustrations of Patrick Ness's A Monster Calls by Jim Kay (Walker)

Cover of Lavie Tidhar's Osama by Pedro Marques (PS Publishing)

Cover of Liz Williams's A Glass of Shadow by Anne Sudworth (Newcon Press)