The LFS Prometheus Awards badge, created last year as an option for finalists and winners to use to further publicize their awards recognition, is starting to be used – and in a highly visible way.
When the awards badge was designed and approved last year, LFS leaders expected that it would be used occasionally but most often as art visually enhancing an author’s blog or publisher’s website on the same page announcing the good news that a particular author or work of fiction has been recognized as a finalist or winner.
Even better, though, was the way the badge has been used this year for the first time by a Best Novel finalist: Author Gordon Hanka has just added the LFS badge to the front cover of his novel A Beast Cannot Feign.
Finalists and Winners had expressed a desire for a way to help them emphasize their accomplishment, and the Libertarian Futurist Society is proud to provide award badges to support that desire.
Only a few times have a publisher or self-published author added a reference to a novel winning the Prometheus Award on its print cover – most notably, Travis Corcoran’s The Powers of the Earth and its sequel, Causes of Separation.
Now that the LFS Badges are available, more Prometheus finalists and winners have the option to add them to any new editions of their Prometheus-recognized works.
Over the decades, publishers of several Prometheus Award winners have added the words “Prometheus Awards winner” – or less often, “Prometheus Awards finalist” – to the cover of a book.
But that usually took many months to occur, and appeared on the newly published paperback edition of a hardcover.
Today, in the more immediate and decentralized era of Internet-driven social media, increased self-publishing and ebooks, everything moves faster.
Hanka was able to add the LFS Prometheus Finalist badge virtually right away to the Kindle ebook of his satirical and provocative “first-contact” novel (and hopefully, presumably also plans to add it in print, once more copies of his hardback novel can be printed.)
First suggested by LFS board member Charlie Morrison, and created under his supervision by his talented team of graphics-arts designers at his Ohio medical-devices company, the LFS badge incorporates the names of the Libertarian Futurist Society and the Prometheus Award along with the organization’s Prometheus-fire logo and website.
Including the website is a crucial step forward, making it much easier for sf fans and the general public, who still may be unaware of the Prometheus Awards and its distinguished four-decade-plus history, to find out more about us and consider joining.
Back in the 1980s, some publishers added the words “Prometheus Awards winner” on the back of a later paperback edition of a winner, such as J. Neil Schulman’s The Rainbow Cadenza.
More often, inside the book, the publisher might include the fact that the author was a Prometheus Award winner in a biographical postscript note at the end.
Today, that important bit of news can be found in the bios or online Amazon author’s bios of quite a few Prometheus-winning authors, from James P. Hogan to Ken MacLeod.
Here, for instance, is MacLeod’s entire short bio on the Amazon pages, which quite prominently give the Prometheus pride of (first) place:
“Ken MacLeod’s SF novels have won the Prometheus Award and the BSFA award, and been shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. He lives near Edinburgh, Scotland.”
Similarly, the Prometheus Awards are mentioned toward the end of the longer biographical summary posted on the Amazon page describing Hogan’s The Two Worlds:
“James P. Hogan (1941-2010) was a science fiction writer in the grand tradition, combining informed and accurate speculation from the cutting edge of science and technology with suspenseful story-telling and living, breathing characters.
“Born in London in 1941, he worked as an aeronautical engineer specializing in electronics and digital systems, and for several major computer firms before turning to writing full-time in 1979. His first novel was greeted by Isaac Asimov with the rave, “Pure science fiction … Arthur Clarke, move over!” and his subsequent work quickly consolidated his reputation as a major SF author. He wrote over a dozen novels including Paths to Otherwhere and Bug Park, the “Giants” series, the New York Times bestsellers The Proteus Operation and Endgame Enigma and the Prometheus Award Winner The Multiplex Man.”
All of that is a definite plus, raising the visibility of the Prometheus Award – which was especially valuable in the awards’ early years, when far fewer readers and sf/fantasy fans were aware of it at all.
Today, after four decades of the Prometheus Awards establishing an impressive and distinguished track record of winners, the LFS badges can make even more of a difference because it also includes our website, making it that much easier for readers to check us out.
Note: The two LFS Badges – one for Prometheus finalists and the other for Prometheus winners – are available upon request to authors and publishers of past and present finalists and winners. Simply email bestnovel@lfs.org or secretary@lfs.org
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE:
* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – for 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 the full set of published appreciation-reviews of past winners.
* 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 the 2022 Prometheus ceremony with Best Novel winner Wil McCarthy (Rich Man’s Sky),and past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards, join the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), 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, and in some ways even more powerful than politics in the long run, by sparking innovation, better ideas, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights and differences.
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 better visions of the future that help humanity overcome tyranny, end slavery and war and achieve universal liberty and human rights and a better world (perhaps eventually, worlds) for all.
