British Science Fiction awards 2012 revealed its list of finalist and all the contenders for the award are males.

The shortlisted contenders for the British Science Fiction Association's best novel award have just been announced and this year they are all men.

Administrator Donna Scott said that "if we were going to get a novel 'breaking through' to the mainstream literary prizes, I do believe it will happen soon", predicting that "this year's novel shortlist will certainly get people talking. There are some who might say this shortlist has been heavily weighted towards those who already have awards form - where are the new guys? But for me, the pleasure in reading great fiction is that there is nothing fast-food about a really good book. These are writers who have all been judged 'the best' at some point before, but writing, like cooking, takes time to develop to become truly refined, and what we have here are books written with tremendous skill, by people who really know how to tell a story."

Scott said the five books chosen showed that "there is still an immense enthusiasm out there for stories which deal with the discovery of new worlds, new technologies, and different ways of being, and for books which aren't afraid to tackle sociopolitical questions about us, here and now, within this liberating genre". The winner will be announced at Eastercon in Bradford this Easter.

The list reads as follows:

Best novel

Dark Eden by Chris Beckett (Corvus)

Empty Space: a Haunting by M John Harrison (Gollancz)

Intrusion by Ken Macleod (Orbit)

Jack Glass by Adam Roberts (Gollancz)

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

Best short story

"Immersion" by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld #69)

"The Flight of the Ravens" by Chris Butler (Immersion Press)

"Song of the body Cartographer" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (Phillipines Genre Stories)

"Limited Edition" by Tim Maughan (1.3, Arc Magazine)

"Three Moments of an Explosion" by China Miéville (Rejectamentalist Manifesto)

"Adrift on the Sea of Rains" by Ian Sales (Whippleshield Books)

Best artwork

Ben Baldwin for the cover of Dark Currents (Newcon Press)

Blacksheep for the cover of Jack Glass (Gollancz)

Dominic Harman for the cover of Helix Wars (Rebellion)

Joey Hifi for the cover of Thy Kingdom Come (Jurassic London)

And the cover artwork for Chris Beckett's Dark Eden (Corvus)

Best non-fiction

"The Complexity of the Humble Space Suit" by Karen Burnham (Rocket Science, Mutation Press)

"The Widening Gyre" by Paul Kincaid (Los Angeles Review of Books)

The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge University Press)

The Shortlist Project by Maureen Kincaid Speller

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