Anglia Ruskin University - Triumph for strange new worlds

A social work lecturer has won a national prize for The Turing Test - his collection of short stories that feature robots, alien planets and genetic manipulation. Chris Beckett, a science fiction writer who also teaches creative writing at Anglia Ruskin University, beat off stiff competition from Anne Enright, the Booker Prize-winning author, and novelist Ali Smith to take the Edge Hill Prize, awarded annually by Edge Hill University. "The other shortlisted authors have considerable reputations as literary authors and are published by major publishing houses, so it was great that the judges went for a collection of science fiction stories from a very small publisher, especially since none of the three judges was previously a science fiction reader," he said.