C. Robert Cargill Nominated for Clarke Award

Austin novelist C. Robert Cargill has just been announced as one of the six nominees for the 32nd Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of the year for his third book, Sea of Rust.

If the name Cargill sounds familiar for film fans, that's because he also co-wrote Marvel's Doctor Strange, and was director Scott Derrickson's on-set collaborator during shooting. The pair had previously created the Sinister franchise together, and prior to that Cargill was best known as a film critic, part of Spill.com and writing as Massawyrm for Ain't it Cool News.

However, Cargill has also become a best-selling novelist: first with his two modern fantasy novels (the Austin-based Dreams and Shadows, and its sequel, The Queen of Dark Things), and now with his post-post-apocalyptic volume Sea of Rust, in which even the robots that outlasted humanity face their inevitable doom.

This morning the short list for the award was release (read the full line-up here). Responding to the announcement of his inclusion, this morning Cargill tweeted, "*Honored* doesn't begin to cover it."

Awarded by the Serendip Foundation, the Arthur C. Clarke Award is named after the master of late 20th century science fiction, the mind behind the original story of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama, and one of the original futurists, predicting the value of geostationary satellites for global communication (no, really, look it up).

The winner of the 2018 award will be announced at Foyles Bookshop in London, UK, on July 18. Cargill's next book, short story collection We are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories, will be published on June 12 by Harper Collins.