The Air Force will posthumously award the Silver Star on Friday to Francis Gary Powers, whose capture in 1960 after his spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union became a Cold War flash point.
Maze heads both categories ahead of the resumption of the series in the German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen next weekend, and looks destined to capture the title from U.S. star Lindsey Vonn.
This book, which describes the descendants of a civilisation that has converted the material in its planets into a giant ringlike structure around its sun, was inspired by Freeman Dyson's idea that a truly technologically advanced species would endeavour to capture as much light as possible by building a spherical shell around its central star.