Forum: scifi.stackexchange.com
Tags: <books><awards>
Title: Has any Science Fiction/Fantasy novel won any of the big 3 literary awards?
Question: The big 3 awards are the  Man Booker International Prize , the  Pulitzer Prize , the  Nobel Prize in Literature .  I can't recall any novel, classified as Science Fiction/Fantasy by author/general public, that has won any of these awards.  Are there any?

Answers:
sents: text: That's difficult to answer, because the SF-ness of a work is not an objective criterion.
text: There's the added difficulty that the Nobel prize is usually awarded to an author for the sum of his work, not to a specific work.
text: Taking having an entry on ISFDB as a criterion, here's a list (not exhaustive, I just tried names that I thought might be considered ISFDB material).
text: They tend not to be published as SF — though some came too early and are now considered classics, and some would probably be published as SF if they weren't from a non-habitually-SF writer.
text: Several are typically classified as magical realism — when supernatural elements are used in a story but play a background, decidedly metaphorical role.
text: Rudyard Kipling , Nobel 1907, well-known for stories involving talking animals (most famously The Jungle Book ), but these are generally considered children's literature.
text: Selma Lagerlöf , Nobel 1909, now mainly remembered for The Wonderful Adventures of Nils , a children's book involving a child transformed into a pixie, but that book may not have played a big part in her being awarded the prize.
text: William Faulkner , Nobel 1949, Pulitzer 1955 for A Fable and 1963 for The Reivers .
text: A
text: Fable is sometimes classified as speculative fiction.
text: Isaac Bashevis Singer , Nobel 1978, sometimes incorporated supernatural elements from Jewish folklore in his tales .
text: Gabriel Garcia Marquez , Nobel 1982, played on the passage of time in One Hundred Years of Solitude .
text: William Golding , Nobel 1983, wrote some stories with SF-nal elements, such as The Inheritors .
text: Günter Grass , Nobel 1999, occasionally used SF-nal elements in his novels, most famously The Tin Drum (whose protagonist decided to stop growing up at age three).
text: Doris Lessing , Nobel 2007, wrote a few stories that can be considered SF.
text: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie , Booker 1981, uses an SF-nal element (telepathy).
text: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood , Booker 2000, has a science-fiction story within the story, which turns out to be closely linked to the main story.
text: The Famished Road by Ben Okri , incorporates supernatural elements from Nigerian folklore.
text: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon , Pulitzer 2001, is technically not SF, but full of SF-nal elements.
text: The Road by Cormac McCarthy , Pulitzer 2007, is post-apocalyptic and thus firmly SF.
text: None of the authors in this list are generally considered SF writers, though Michael Chabon comes close.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 24
sents: text: The Road by Cormac McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize a few years back.
text: The Nobel Prize for Literature is not awarded on the basis of a single novel but is given to an author for their contribution to the world of literature.
text: A quick scan of the list of Laureates suggests Doris Lessing who wrote the Canopus in Argos sequence which is most definitely Science Fiction.
text: The Booker prize list didn't suggest any Science Fiction although The Famished Road by Ben Okri has some fantastic elements (the Spirit World is perceived by the main character).
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/140/Amos
score: 8
sents: text: Harry Martinson was a Nobel laureate.
text: One of his best-known works is Aniara , about a starship.
text: Strictly speaking, Aniara isn't a novel, it's an epic poem.
text: But it's book-length, and it's science-fictional enough
text: that we carried it (along with many of the titles in Gilles' awesome list) at an SF bookstore I managed in the late 80s.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/2258/sjl
score: 3
sents: text: I'd say Marquez too.
text: Magical realism is basically just fantasy marketed towards readers who don't generally consider themselves people who "read fantasy".
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/1215/David Moran
score: 2
sents: text: Add Winston Churchill to the list -- Nobel Prize for literature, and he wrote some alternate history SF ("What
text: If Lee Had Not Won The Battle Of Gettysburg").
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/23/Mike Scott
score: 2
sents: text: Hermann Hesse, Nobel 1946 for
text: The Glass Bead Game
text: aka Magister Ludi -- a work set about four centuries from now, centering on a game of intellect.
text: Among the people it has inspired are the architect Christopher Alexander, whose Pattern Language is arguably a form of the Game, and the "father" of genetic algorithms, John Holland.
text: Speculative fiction should be proud to claim it.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/50485/Charles Cameron
score: 2

Summary of the answers:
"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize a few years ago. Laureates include Doris Lessing, who wrote the  Canopus in Argos  sequence, which is most definitely Science Fiction.  Harry Martinson  was a Nobel laureate. Marquez is also a suggestion.
Major literary awards have been won by Cormac McCarthy, Harry Martinson, Doris Lessing and Marquez. All have written books that could be classed as science fiction.