1.The Islanders – Christopher Priest
2. Embassytown – China Miéville
3. Osama – Lavie Tidhar
4. Bringer of Light – Jaine Fenn
5. Mr. Fox – Helen Oyeyemi
6. The Testament of Jessie Lamb – Jane Rogers

1,2. excellent books, but the authors almost guarantee the shortlist anyway

3. this one is among the ones I have and plan to read as I like Mr. Tidhar’s Bookman series, but irrespective of its merits, title, subject and international author almost guarantees it too

4. this one I rate a high chance as it’s essentially the only core-sf written by a woman in the list outside of the boring to dreadful Willis duology and the very mediocre Tepper; I have not yet read it as I was quite disappointed by book 3 after I really enjoyed books 1 and 2 and I am essentially waiting for book 5 to see if I continue or not with the series.

5 and 6 are more speculative guesses, but I think that gender parity/minority representation/mainstream works will bring those two in the list.

Loved the Jane Rogers novel and I would add it to my choice of a six book list though I disagreed with the heroine’s choices, while Mr. Fox is another one I have and plan to read but its “book in a book” subject is one that puts me off badly, so despite really loving White is for Witching and enjoying the few pages I browsed in this one, I have been putting it off for a while now.

Personally I would choose 1,2,6, Greg Egan, Adam Roberts and James “Corey”.

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Here is the submission list with a "rd" added to the books I read and an "op" to the ones I have but only opened. Actually in quite a few cases I read enough to make my mind about the books I marked as opened, but I did not turn all the pages as in the Willis mammoth disaster that would have been a complete waste of my time for example.

Of the rest, many are by authors or with subjects I have no interest in and only a few - most notably Michael Cisco's novel, though I bought a few of his previous novels and have been trying to enjoy them with no success so far - intriguing enough to take a look.