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The French do a lot of things better than we do, and putting on a science fiction festival is clearly one of them. Les Utopiales, Nantes’ international SF festival, held its 27th edition from 29 October to 1 November under the theme “Perspectives”. On the final day it handed its top literary prize to a British writer, and gave another of its book awards to a second Brit while it was at it.
The 2026 Prix Utopiales went to Claire North for Les Dieux lents, the French edition of her space opera Slow Gods, published in France by Le Bélial’. The Prix Julia Verlanger went to RJ Barker’s Les Vaisseaux d’Os, which is The Bone Ships to English readers and published there by Leha. Completing the set, the Prix Utopiales Jeunesse went to Romain Benassaya’s Cor Serpentis, and the comics prize to Cyril Bonin’s Karl.
It was a properly British-flavoured shortlist, too. North’s competition included Gogmagog by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard, so two of the five nominated novels came from these islands, up against French-language books by Guillaume Chamanadjian, Thomas Gunzig and Lucie Mosca. A jury chaired by the science broadcaster Nicolas Martin made the decision.
Claire North is the pen name of Catherine Webb, who published her first novel as a teenager and has since written as Kate Griffin too, apparently on the principle that one career is never enough. As North she won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and the World Fantasy Award for The Sudden Appearance of Hope, so a trophy from Nantes joins a fairly crowded shelf. Barker’s The Bone Ships, a nautical fantasy about ships built from the bones of sea dragons, already won the British Fantasy Award for best novel at home. The French clearly agree with us, only rather later and with better wine.
Utopiales is now one of Europe’s biggest SF gatherings, and its prizes are a real pointer to which translated books are finding readers in France. They barely register in the British press, which is a shame, because a London-born writer beating the local talent at France’s flagship SF festival ought to be a story somebody tells. It may say something that British SF often goes down better in translation than it does at home. It may just say that the French read more. Either way, congratulations to both, and chapeau.
The full results are listed at File 770, and the festival’s own site is at utopiales.org.
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