2024 Prometheus Awards ceremony, with speeches by Best Novel winner Daniel Suarez (Critical Mass), Reason’s Bob Poole, three-time Prometheus winner Victor Koman, LFS leaders and quotes from the late Terry Pratchett (The Truth)


How can science fiction and fantasy help people envision a freer, better future?

Can a grippingly realistic novel about near-future space commercialization play a role in transforming dreams of such progress into scientific and economic fact?



How important is humor in exposing and surviving oppression and tyranny?

Such are among the fascinating and fertile questions explored by SF authors, LFS leaders and freedom-loving SF/fantasy fans during the recent 44th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Airing live Aug. 25, 2024, the half-hour-long ceremony honored Daniel Suarez, winner of the 2024 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Critical Mass; and the late great Terry Pratchett, whose comic-fantasy Discworld novel The Truth was inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

To whet your appetite to see the video, here are a few quotes from the 44th Prometheus ceremony:

From Best Novel winner Daniel Suarez’s acceptance speech for Critical Mass:

• “Authoritarianism is on the march in this world once more, and the first step in resisting it, is to be free in one’s own thoughts and imagination. That is, after all, where sci-fi lives, and the LFS is helping to keep free-thinking science fiction alive.”

* “If there is a central theme to all my books, it’s how we retain human agency in the face of rapid technological change. However, there was no orthodoxy demanded of me for this award. I was not required to belong to any particular group or political party — my work was allowed to speak for itself. That’s refreshing, in this day and age, and I’m honored to accept this award from the LFS.”

* Growing up I devoured science fiction. Niven, Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov, and so many other authors. Science fiction was my escape into potential futures. It made me think. Made me want to learn more about science and engineering. And gave me a feeling that wondrous achievements were within our reach. In short: that the future could be better than the present. Unfortunately, many people no longer think that’s true.”

From the Best Novel presenter speech by Victor Koman, a three-time Prometheus Best Novel winner for The Jehovah Contract, Solomon’s Knife and Kings of the High Frontier:

* “…addlepated statists aside, it is our children, both literally and metaphorically, for whom we write. As members of the Libertarian Futurist Society, we read and we write about a future of Freedom, and of the constant battle between Tyranny and Liberty, Collectivism and Individuality, Dark Ages and Renaissance.”

* “Now, Kindle readers and ePub versions of books abound and are considered valid avenues for publication.

Nearly all of our nominee novels this year would not have been considered “legitimately published” thirty years ago.

But in the 21st Century, they have found their way almost directly from writer to reader, and now the Libertarian Futurist Society stands ready — for the forty-fourth time (or forty-third — I’m lookin’ at you, 1985!) — to honor an author for a novel of “speculative fiction that champions individual rights, based on the moral/legal principle of non-aggression as the ethical and practical foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, mutual respect, civility, and civilization itself.”

From the Reason Foundation’s Bob Poole, a veteran LFS member and Prometheus voter who presented the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction, won by Terry Pratchett’s novel The Truth.



* “I’m not generally a fan of fantasy, as opposed to pure science fiction, but I make a huge exception for Pratchett’s brilliant political satire.

Every DiscWorld novel provides new ways in which Pratchett slyly critiques aspects of statism and politics. The Truth is a great example, presenting a story about the protagonist’s painful learning experience in introducing the first-ever newspaper in Ankh-MorPork, facing and eventually triumphing over a great many obstacles.”

* “Pratchett is a wonderful wordsmith.

In telling a story, he plays games with language and the assumptions which are sometimes embedded into what people don’t realize they are saying.
As a long-time writer and editor myself, discovering those little gems is part of the fun of reading Pratchett.”

From the late great Terry Pratchett, quoted by LFS President William H. Stoddard from Pratchett’s 2003 Prometheus Best Novel acceptance speech for Night Watch, another comic fantasy novel in the Discworld series that includes The Truth, inducted this year into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

“So am I a libertarian? We don’t have that tradition in England, where just about every politician would classify themselves as a libertarian and each one would mean something different. But currently we have a government that lacks wisdom, perspective, or talents, is centrist, arrogant, and talks incessantly about rights while it curtails freedoms,” Pratchett said.

“I see fragments of Night Watch all around me. So, right now. I’m feeling very libertarian indeed.”

From LFS President William H. Stoddard, who chairs the Prometheus Hall of Fame finalist judging committee and who introduced the Hall of Fame category and Hall of Fame presenter Bob Poole:

* “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.”

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, individuality 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.