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THE Kil鈥檔 Time website urges: 鈥淓xpress yourself and have fun painting your own pottery in our upbeat contemporary studio.鈥� This is David Brin鈥檚 Kil鈥檔 People to a T: upbeat, contemporary, pottery, fun and, yes, expressing himself. His 鈥淜il鈥檔鈥� is killing, too. Private eye Al Morris duplicates his personality into short-lived ceramic clones to cope with cases and chores. Privacy is dead. As archetype and clones chime in with different accounts of the same day, it gets confusing. Brin鈥檚 question 鈥� what is human? 鈥� catalyses profound changes 鈥渂etwixt damnation and impassion鈥檇 clay鈥�. The saving grace for his clay is the discovery of the world-soul, where all are equal.

Dabbling in another soul pool, the bardo of Buddhism, you will find the excellent and intelligent Kim Stanley Robinson. The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternative history; plague in northern Europe killed everyone during late antiquity. The book is a fan of events, unfurled, snapped shut by death, unfurled again. People are reborn, coming nearer to a revolt in the bardo. Then they can change the world, rather than dying in an endless cycle of violent fights for power. The rice and salt remind us that without a full rice bowl there is no revolution, without that pinch of salt, no health.

His writing is a pleasure, married to a story that lures you back to the subtle shifts in culture and to rethink the teleology that passes for the history of science. A winner, but for two strong contenders: Light and The Separation.

In M. John Harrison鈥檚 Light the galaxy is bright with unimaginable light when Seria Mau, dazzled pilot of the spaceship White Cat, smashes another vessel into spinning pieces. Back on Earth, a mathematician has reached the white-out stage of knowledge of the quantum world. Kearney鈥檚 cats are white and not white, his killings random. He only loses his fear at the gift of light and death: 鈥淭he light roared in on him unconfined: he felt it on his skin, he heard it as a sound. It was light unburdened, light like a substance: real light.鈥�

Space opera should be a big production and this is extraordinary, rich and shocking. Christopher Priest鈥檚 The Separation is strong competition. A poem by Tom Paulin about why Nazi Rudolf Hess flew to Portugal during the Second World War finds a full answer in Priest鈥檚 alternative history. But the peace that breaks through is fragile. The twins 鈥� RAF pilot and conscientious objector 鈥� reach cusps of change, war triumphs, peace fails or vice versa. Priest鈥檚 writing is gripping, and it鈥檚 one of those rare books that reveal what writing is: manner and matter twinned and entwined.

China Mi茅ville shares with Martin Amis that gift of making the unlikeable come to life, yet remain horribly unlikeable. In his horribly brilliant book, The Scar, two lovers map out their passion with matching cuts, their faces both a geography and history of their obsession. They rule a floating city on a vast ocean, scarred with a rift to the heart of the planet. Entertainment? Watch two fighters slice their skin, shaping the congealing, altered blood into armour before they fight.

Elizabeth Moon鈥檚 Speed of Dark focuses on the human as she speculates about the near future. She asks how far from the norm is it comfortable or possible to be, and still be regarded as human? Lou is part of a coterie of autistic people, all working for a corporation that is bullying them into 鈥渧olunteering鈥� for experimental neural implants to make them 鈥渘ormal鈥�.

Moon鈥檚 spare prose, her engagement with the awkwardness of Lou鈥檚 world of patterns and rigid behaviour and her narrative drive, make this compelling. Lou fences, and the pouncing and retreating of the fight flavour the book.

This year鈥檚 short list is excellent. My choice would be Robinson, but it鈥檚 the wrong year for him. Harrison will win.