The Old Drift takes prestigious science fiction award with what judges called ‘an extraordinary saga that spans eras from Cecil Rhodes to Rhodes Must Fall’
The Underground Railroad, a fantastic reimagining of US slavery, takes the UK’s pre-eminent science fiction prize a day after being longlisted for the Man Booker
Children of Time, about humans who leave a dying Earth for a terraformed planet where they meet a strange new species, praised for Clarkean sense of wonder
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, which follows a troupe of actors across a devastated America, praised by judges for transcending the post-apocalypse genre
International debutantes – two of them women – make up half of list, joining established writers in race for UK's foremost science fiction prize, writes Alison Flood
Chris Beckett beat Kim Stanley Robinson and Ken MacLeod to win the UK's top science fiction prize for his novel about an incestuous colony stranded on an alien planet
Arthur C Clarke award goes to 'classic' novel exploring the limits of pregnancy