Editor’s note: As part of our coverage of the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony, the Prometheus Blog is posting a variety of reports and the full texts of all speeches – including LFS President William H. Stoddard’s overview of the history and focus of the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
The Libertarian Futurist Society began giving Hall of Fame Awards in 1982, with awards to two libertarian classics: Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, a key work for the emergence of the modern day libertarian movement, and Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the foundational work of libertarian science fiction and still one of its best.
In recent years, as earlier Prometheus Award nominees have become old enough to be regarded as classics, we’ve adopted a requirement that Hall of Fame nominees must have been published at least twenty years ago, and must not have won the Best Novel award.
In his elegy for William Butler Yeats, the English poet W. H. Auden wrote that
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives . . .
Our Hall of Fame Award honors works and authors that have attained this kind of longevity, and that still have something to say to libertarians now, in a time when libertarian voices are increasingly desperately needed.
This year’s Hall of Fame Award will be presented by Robert Poole, Jr., a co-founder of the Reason Foundation, one of the organizations advocating libertarian approaches to public policy.
He has written on a variety of issues from a libertarian viewpoint, primarily emphasizing transportation policy, and is the author of Rethinking America’s Highways (published 2018).
Poole is an LFS member of long standing and an active participant in our selection of award winners. We’re very pleased to have him joining us to present this year’s award for classic libertarian fiction.
* See the video of the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony.
Note: The 44th Prometheus awards show, recorded by LFS Webmaster Chris Hibbert, has been posted on the LFS website’s Video page and on Youtube.
As part of our coverage and for convenience of those who prefer to read the speeches, the Prometheus Blog also is publishing a series of reports on the ceremony with the full texts of its eloquent, inspiring and sometimes amusing speeches by:
* Read Bob Poole’s speech as 2024 presenter of the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction.
* Read the Hall of Fame acceptance speech for Terry Pratchett’s novel The Truth.
* Read 2024 Best Novel winner Daniel Suarez’s acceptance speech for Critical Mass on “How SF offers a critical forum to imagine new ideas and futures”
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:
* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt), Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future – and in some ways can be even more powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, liberties, individuality, moral autonomy and human dignity.
Through recognizing the literature of liberty and the many different but complementary visions of a free future via the Prometheus Awards, the LFS hopes to help spread ideas and ethical principles that help humanity overcome tyranny, end slavery, reduce the threat of war, repeal or constrain other abuses of coercive power and achieve universal liberty, respect for human rights and a better world (perhaps ultimately, worlds) for all.
