By Michael Grossberg
File 770, a leading SF/fantasy publication that frequently posts reviews, has offered its annual list of outstanding novels.
Of the 35 novels on File 770’s “2024 Recommended SF/F List,” four have been nominated by LFS members for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Meanwhile, four other novels on that list also have been under review on our unofficial “short list” of 2024 candidates to consider for nomination.
Each year, SF/fantasy publications, critics and readers compile annual lists of the past year’s best fiction.
Such lists can be helpful to examine for general readers and Prometheus Awards judges, because they bring to our attention or remind us of significant works worth checking out and that might otherwise be overlooked.
Consider, for example, the “Best SF books of 2024” list by SF2 Concatenation (Science Fact & Science Fiction Concatenation), a digital zine website and online archive focused on reviewing SF books, news and related media.
Of the eight 2024 novels recognized on the Concatenation “bests” list, half have figured in some way in the current cycle of Prometheus Awards judging for Best Novel – a relatively high degree of overlap.
One of the most exciting and promising Libertarian Futurist Society outreach projects in years is our new Prometheus Awards Collection for Libraries.
The ambitious project offers a carefully curated selection of Prometheus-winning novels to be donated and mailed to interested libraries across the country upon their request.
The set of brand-new books was chosen to expand the range and variety of notable and acclaimed science fiction on library shelves across the country – especially to aid smaller libraries, which may have more limited resources.
Continue reading Introducing the Prometheus Awards Collection for Libraries
George Orwell’s emphasis on clarity of language and objective definitions, exemplified in his seminal essay on “Politics and the English Language,” remains worth emulating in 2025 and beyond.
When so many so-called public intellectuals, columnists, opinion leaders and even professional economists embrace popular fallacies and use misleading language, it’s harmful both to literacy and liberty.
How pleasing it is, then, when a nationally known economist not only uses words accurately, in opposition to common misconceptions, misinformation and ideological bias, but also demonstrates how well he understands and appreciates Orwell’s classic fiction.
TANSTAAFL!
Many libertarians and other freedom-loving SF fans know that term well. For those who don’t recall, it’s an acronym for “There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.”
The Grand Master SF writer Robert Heinlein did his share to popularize the acronym in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. His bestselling, Hugo-winning novel, about a libertarian revolution on the Moon, was one of the first works inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
So did free-market economist and classical liberal Milton Friedman, who often quoted it over the years.
Both libertarians used the acronym to communicate the idea that nothing is truly free, and there’s always a cost to any decision.
But did the popular catchphrase inadvertently also spread a misunderstanding about economics?
Editor’s note: To kick off a new year of judging and for the sake of greater transparency about the Prometheus Awards, the Prometheus Blog is posting an occasional series of essays by LFS awards judges about how they view our distinctive award standards and how they apply them to weigh candidates and nominees.
I am, and have been for many years, one of the 12 judges who screens LFS membership suggestions about novels deserving of the Prometheus Award.
This past year we had a record number of Best Novel nominations for the 2024 award – 17 – and trying to evaluate all of them in the time we have available was a real strain. In the future I think all the judges would prefer to see fewer but higher-quality submissions.
So I’m going to talk about what I consider a high-quality submission. Other judges have slightly different criteria and I’m not claiming to speak for them; but I will try to focus on the criteria I think we have in common, and towards the end of this post I’ll describe some axes of controversy within the committee’s emailing-list discussions and comparative reports.
By Michael Grossberg
Acclaimed fantasy author Howard Andrew Jones has passed away.
Jones, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist last year for Lord of a Shattered Land, died almost five months after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in September 2024, according to the Fandom Pulse blog.
Continue reading Acclaimed fantasy writer and Prometheus finalist Howard Andrew Jones, R.I.P.
Editor’s note: To kick off a new year of judging and for the sake of greater transparency about the Prometheus Awards, the Prometheus Blog is posting an occasional series of essays by LFS awards judges about how they view our distinctive award standards and how they apply them to weigh candidates and nominees.
The Libertarian Futurist Society has long had a hybrid process for choosing its annual award winners.
First the members nominate books for Best Novel, and books or other works for Hall of Fame. Then committees of judges review the nominees and select the best five in each category (or sometimes four or six) as finalist. The members read these finalists and rank them from best to worst, and their votes are totaled to select the winners.
But what does “select the best” mean?
What do Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, James P. Hogan, Sarah Hoyt, Victor Koman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken MacLeod, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, L. Neil Smith, Neal Stephenson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Vernor Vinge and F. Paul Wilson have in common?
Some rank high among bestselling and even world famous authors; some are not quite as well known but still have sold millions of copies of their books, and a few are lesser-known writers who deserve a wider readership.
Yet they’re all writers who have written notable speculative fiction (generally science fiction and/or fantasy) that in different ways championed freedom-loving themes and exposed the evils of authoritarianism.
And all of the above have been recognized for such works by winning Prometheus Awards – some for Best Novel, some for Best Classic Fiction and several for both annual award categories.
By Michael Grossberg
Sometimes, a review of a good novel can have a lasting impact, even more than an award or award nomination – something to ponder as we begin a new year of the blog and of the Prometheus Awards.
Perhaps that might seem counterintuitive or even heretical, when it comes to the Prometheus Awards and its 45-year-old track record of more than 100 winners – 106 at last count, including 46 in the Best Novel category, 48 in the Best Classic Fiction category and 12 Special Awards.
Yet, that thought was sparked recently by what happened when I was rereading Rudyard Kipling’s 1912 story “As Easy as A.B.C.” – one of four classic works selected as finalists for the Prometheus Hall of Fame – and decided to research it further via Google.
When I googled the words “Rudyard Kipling and “As Easy as A.B.C.,” guess what popped up rather high on the Google web links?
