Want to meet learned and passionate readers? Go to the Arthur C Clarke awards for sci-fi, says Andrew McKie

At very few book awards do you find the door manned by stormtroopers. But in that regard, as in several others, science fiction is different. One obvious distinction between the Arthur C Clarke Award, for the best science fiction novel published in Britain the previous year, and the Man Booker is that a lot of people care, a lot.