Ned Beauman has won the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction with his “twisted” and “bleakly funny” novel, Venomous Lumpsucker.
His winning book is set in the 2030s and follows the search for a surviving colony of a hyper-intelligent species of fish. Beauman was announced as the winner of the prestigious prize – which celebrates the best science fiction novel published in the UK last year – at a ceremony in London on Wednesday.