Novelist Ian R. MacLeod has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction. His novel, "Song of Time," took the £2,009 award for England's prestigious literary prize.

According to the Guardian, the shortlist included "Anathem" by Neal Stephenson and "Martin Martin's On the Other Side" by Mark Wernham. In other award news, Ursula K. Le Guin recently won her sixth Nebula Award.

Arthur C. Clarke Award judicial chair Paul Billinger explained the choice: "This was a very strong shortlist and it was a particularly intense and long shortlist meeting this year ... What swung it in the end [for "Song of Time"] was the emotion, the feeling from it--and the characterisation."