Category: Best Novels

Steampunk, Victorian technology, secret history and freedom of choice: An Appreciation of Michael Flynn’s In the Country of the Blind, the 1991 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fit the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our appreciation of Michael Flynn’s In the Country of the Blind, the 1992 Prometheus winner for Best Novel.

By William H. Stoddard

Michael Flynn’s In the Country of the Blind came out in 1990, the same year as William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine. While the word “steampunk” was somewhat older (coined in 1987 by K.W. Jeter for Victorian fantasies generally), these two novels gave the genre one of its central themes: the use of Victorian technology and social transformation as an analog of (then-) recent computer technology, making steampunk parallel to cyberpunk.

For both novels, a central technology was Charles Babbage’s “analytical engine,” a proposed machine that would have been fully programmable in the manner of an electronic computer.

Gibson and Sterling made the analytical engine the basis for an alternate history – a literal “difference engine.” Flynn did something subtler: He made the analytical engine the basis for an only minimally fictionalized version of real-world history.

Continue reading Steampunk, Victorian technology, secret history and freedom of choice: An Appreciation of Michael Flynn’s In the Country of the Blind, the 1991 Prometheus Best Novel winner

Ethics, liberty, scientific innovation and abortion: An Appreciation of Victor Koman’s Solomon’s Knife, the 1990 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fit the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our  Appreciation for Victor Koman’s Solomon’s Knife, the 1990 Prometheus winner for Best Novel:

By Michael Grossberg

Victor Koman’s Solomon’s Knife imaginatively extends the typically partisan and predictable debate over abortion into new territory.

His provocative 1989 novel imagines a plausible future in which a controversial new surgical procedure is devised that could help women with unwanted pregnancies and women who want children but can’t become pregnant.

At the heroic center of the libertarian-themed medical thriller, which takes its title from the biblical story of King Solomon that tests two women over a baby, is a surgeon who risks her career to do the clandestine new type of surgery to help a beautiful woman seeking a routine abortion.

Continue reading Ethics, liberty, scientific innovation and abortion: An Appreciation of Victor Koman’s Solomon’s Knife, the 1990 Prometheus Best Novel winner

Alternate history, warped ideology, national socialism and the omnipotent State: An Appreciation of Brad Linaweaver’s Moon of Ice, the 1989 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fit the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here is our Appreciation for Brad Linaweaver’s Moon of Ice, the 1989 Best Novel winner:

By Michael Grossberg

Brad Linaweaver conceived a richly detailed, provocative, and acclaimed alternate-history saga in Moon of Ice.

The meticulously researched 1988 novel – expanded from a 1981 novella published in Amazing Stories and nominated in 1982 for the Nebula Award – imagines an increasingly libertarian United States that provides a refuge for those fighting the evils of statism and collectivism.

Continue reading Alternate history, warped ideology, national socialism and the omnipotent State: An Appreciation of Brad Linaweaver’s Moon of Ice, the 1989 Prometheus Best Novel winner

God, atheism, a dying assassin in an SF noir fantasy: An Appreciation of Victor Koman’s The Jehovah Contract, the 1988 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fit the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our  Appreciation for Victor Koman’s The Jehovah Contract.

By Michael Grossberg

Victor Koman’s audacious 1987 thriller-noir-fantasy The Jehovah Contract centers on dying atheistic assassin Del Ammo – masquerading as a private detective, and living in the ruins of a terrorist-bombed skyscraper – who’s given a contract to kill God.

Yes, God!

Clever philosophical speculations by Koman, a veteran libertarian, accent his suspenseful and prescient story, set in a near-future Los Angeles, as the assassin finds a way to excise the concept of God from the minds of humanity and enable a more laissez-faire “Creatrix” to return to power.
Continue reading God, atheism, a dying assassin in an SF noir fantasy: An Appreciation of Victor Koman’s The Jehovah Contract, the 1988 Prometheus Best Novel winner

Advanced technology, global politics, monopoly power and a struggle for liberty: An Appreciation of Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Real Time, the 1987 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fits the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our Appreciation for Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Real Time, the 1987 Best Novel winner.

By William H. Stoddard

In 1985, Vinge’s The Peace War lost out to No Award in the Prometheus voting. In 1987, its sequel, Marooned in Realtime, was recognized as Best Novel — the first of several Best Novel and Hall of Fame awards to the author.

The Peace War had shown a market-oriented and anarchistic society in a future central California. But it wasn’t portrayed in detail, and existed within a larger world that was decidedly NOT libertarian, controlled by the repressive Peace Authority. And one of the viewpoint characters was a military officer who considered the libertarian society that Vinge sketched unsustainable.

In contrast, Marooned in Realtime’s characters look back to a past in which libertarian values had triumphed, and the central character is widely admired for his role in bringing down one of the Earth’s last states (a story told in “The Ungoverned,” a novella that won the LFS’s 2004 Hall of Fame Award).

The libertarianism stands out more.
Continue reading Advanced technology, global politics, monopoly power and a struggle for liberty: An Appreciation of Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Real Time, the 1987 Prometheus Best Novel winner

Pioneering cyberpunk tale of love, duty, justice: An Appreciation of Victor Milan’s The Cybernetic Samurai, the 1986 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fits the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our Appreciation for Victor Milan’s The Cybernetic Samurai, the 1986 Best Novel winner.

By Michael Grossberg

One of the undeservedly forgotten works of the early cyberpunk scene, Victor Milan’s prescient 1985 novel The Cybernetic Samurai explores the tensions between duty and free will, duty and love and duty and justice in a harsh future where some people struggle to be free within a largely totalitarian Earth.

Imagining a 21st century between the third and fourth world wars in a story whose hero is the world’s first sentient computer, Milan portrays a bloody and terrible future in which much of the world is destroyed but Japan becomes the last refuge of a dying free society and free market.
Continue reading Pioneering cyberpunk tale of love, duty, justice: An Appreciation of Victor Milan’s The Cybernetic Samurai, the 1986 Prometheus Best Novel winner

An Appreciation of No Award, the 1985 Prometheus Best Novel choice

Our Appreciation series highlights the four-decade history of the Prometheus Awards. Here’s an Appreciation for No Award, the 1985 winner in the Best Novel category.

By William H. Stoddard

When the Libertarian Futurist Society started giving regular awards for Best Novel, ballots mailed to members offered the option of voting for None of the Above.

In 1985, None of the Above won, for the first and – up to now – the only time.

Continue reading An Appreciation of No Award, the 1985 Prometheus Best Novel choice

Artistic freedom, creativity, conscription and gay marriage: An Appreciation of J. Neil Schulman’s The Rainbow Cadenza, the 1984 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what LFS members and other libertarian sf/fantasy fans see in each of our past winners and how each fit the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our Appreciation for J. Neil Schulman’s The Rainbow Cadenza, the 1984 Prometheus Best Novel winner:

Romantic and passionate, J. Neil Schulman’s The Rainbow Cadenza explores the power of art, the thirst for creativity and the threat to such individuality and self-expression in a future Brave New World dominated by one world government.

Schulman was prescient and years ahead of his time in envisioning a positive future where gay marriage is normal and legal.
Yet, his complex story portrays a very mixed and disconcerting dystopian future where teenage women are drafted into government prostitution service for three years, clones are treated as inferior and a new underclass called Touchables are hunted for sport.

Continue reading Artistic freedom, creativity, conscription and gay marriage: An Appreciation of J. Neil Schulman’s The Rainbow Cadenza, the 1984 Prometheus Best Novel winner

Authoritarian imperialism vs. free-market anarchy in an interstellar future: An Appreciation of James P. Hogan’s Voyage From Yesteryear, the 1983 Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fits the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our Appreciation for James P. Hogan’s Voyage to Yesteryear, the 1983 Prometheus winner for Best Novel:

By Michael Grossberg

Two human civilizations, long separated across light years, confront significant philosophical and political differences when they make renewed contact decades after a World War III devastated the Earth and led to the rise of widespread authoritarian governments there.

When the Earth’s three superpower governments engage in a space race to renew contact with the lost colony on Chiron in the Alpha Centauri system colony’s descendants, the Americans arrive first with an authoritarian goal of invasion and domination.

Meanwhile, the Chiron colonists – sent from Earth generations before in a ship with babies raised by robots in order to start fresh and avoid the bad habits and prejudices of Earth – have developed a radically free libertarian society founded on the belief that each individual has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Continue reading Authoritarian imperialism vs. free-market anarchy in an interstellar future: An Appreciation of James P. Hogan’s Voyage From Yesteryear, the 1983 Best Novel winner

Rambunctious adventure in an alternate-history multiverse: An Appreciation of L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach, the 1982 Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fits the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our appreciation for L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach, the 1982 Prometheus Award winner for Best Novel:

By Michael Grossberg

Rollicking and fun-loving, L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach was one of the most influential books of the Libertarian movement as its ideas were spreading in the early 1980s.

Smith’s imaginative sci-fi multiverse adventure imagines alternate time lines accessible through the probability broach, a portal to many worlds.

Continue reading Rambunctious adventure in an alternate-history multiverse: An Appreciation of L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach, the 1982 Best Novel winner