Anne Charnock

Anne Charnock (born 8 June 1954) is a British author of science fiction novels. In 2018, she won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in science fiction, for her novel Dreams Before the Start of Time.

Career Born in Bolton, England, Charnock has a background in environmental science, journalism, and fine art, which she incorporates into her science fiction writing. She has worked as a science writer for The Guardian and New Scientist, and as a foreign correspondent.

A Calculated Life is set in a dystopian near-future Britain shaped by advances in genetic engineering and corporate power; its protagonist is a ‘simulant’ (part human, part AI) leased to a corporation to generate economic predictions. It was nominated for the 2013 Philip K. Dick Award. Charnock’s novella The Enclave, set in the same world, follows migrant workers attempting to make a living in the UK, and it was published in a quartet of novellas by NewCon Press alongside works by Neil Williamson, Simon Morden and Alastair Reynolds.

Charnock is also the author of Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind (47 North), published in 2015, a novel that braids together past, present and future, with a 15th-century Italian female artist at its centre.

Her 2017 novel Dreams Before the Start of Time (47 North), is set in a future world where artificial wombs have become the primary method of reproduction and infertility has been eradicated. It won the Arthur C. Clarke award for science fiction in 2018.

In 2017, Charnock won the BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction for her novella The Enclave, published by NewCon. and served as a judge for the Kitschies Awards in 2024.

Awards