Nobody, except me, a few days ago – and possibly Christopher Priest himself – have appreciated that his dawn raid against the Clarke Award is a version of the Sculthorpe Earth Cry from the Islands: self-referentially linked by me here: http://weirdmonger.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/sculthorpe-earth-cry.html
The Earth Cry effectively features in one of the sixty longlisted novels that was not even read. Unread, inferentially, you see, as they got its title wrong on all the public lists.
Is this just another crazy blog or what?
Last Balcony: Essex Serpents and Pier’s Echo 
If you do a search on Sculthorpe (Scunthorpe/Hull?) you will see his music’s connections with Islands and Islanders, eg his latest: Shining Island.
Cf: an earlier theory: LIFE ON MARS / THE AFFIRMATION: https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/life-on-mars/
i.e. “inferentially”, otherwise they would have corrected it. Just my playful way to say they didn’t read all sixty thoroughly.
Christopher Priest withdraws his comments about Mark Billingham:
http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/1093/clarke-award-and-mark-billingham/
https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/the-call-of-the-silly/
The Call of the Silly – ‘crazy’ after all. 🙂
Chomu Press have written today an interesting comment about the Christopher Priest controversy on their Facebook page.
I made it no secret in various places over the last few weeks in public that I considered their publication of HERE COMES THE NICE by Jeremy Reed as the novel that should win.
In fact, before I knew it was on the Clarke Awards longlist, I publicly listed it as my favourite novel of 2011.
https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/clarke-award-2/#comment-3558
I’ve bought Island dreaming today to go with my Earth Cry cd I’ve had for some years.
My views on THE GRADUAL (2016) – https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2016/10/25/the-gradual-by-christopher-priest/