There's no doubt that Clarke won the Hugo on merit – not to mention the Nebula, British Science Fiction award, Jupiter award and Locus award. But the fact is that The Gods Themselves is excellent, and Rendezvous With Rama is a stone-cold classic. So pleasing, in fact, that if The Gods Themselves and Rendezvous With Rama were different books it would be tempting to ascribe their success to a sentimental desire among the SF community to give the ageing writers the kind of lifetime achievement award that occasionally makes the Booker prize seem ridiculous. There were no sub-clauses about sharing awards out between them, but the fact that Clarke won his first Hugo award for best novel the year after Asimov has a pleasing symmetry. They vowed that Clarke would always refer to Asimov as the best science writer and Asimov would call Clarke the best science fiction writer. It reached such a peak that some time in the late 1960s the two even agreed to a tongue-in-cheek agreement about their respective statuses, The Clarke-Asimov Treaty. The friendly rivalry between the two giants of science fiction, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov, was legendary among genre fans.
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