Category: Author Updates

The recurring Orwellian threat: Nineteen Eighty-Four, an early Prometheus Hall of Fame winner, sadly retains its relevance and resonance today

By Michael Grossberg
Almost three quarters of a century after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the influence and prophetic power of George Orwell hasn’t faded.

Quite the contrary.

George Orwell, in his 1943 press card portrait (Creative Commons license)

With the rise of “cancel culture” and various online-sparked mob panics increasingly common in our so-called enlightened modern era and with such dystopian experiments as the recent failed roll-out of the current administration’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” it’s become virtually impossible to read informed commentary across a broad spectrum of opinion magazines and columnists without coming across Orwellian references and warnings these days.

Continue reading The recurring Orwellian threat: Nineteen Eighty-Four, an early Prometheus Hall of Fame winner, sadly retains its relevance and resonance today

Author update: Wil McCarthy writing sequels to Best Novel finalist Rich Man’s Sky

Rich Man’s Sky, one of five 2022 Best Novel finalists currently competing for the Prometheus Award, will have a sequel.

Actually, two!

Continue reading Author update: Wil McCarthy writing sequels to Best Novel finalist Rich Man’s Sky

Author update: Karl K. Gallagher continues writing his Fall of the Censor series

Author Karl K. Gallagher, a frequent Prometheus Awards nominee and Best Novel finalist, is keeping busy and catching up with an ambitious writing schedule – including a new novel just published: Captain Trader Helmsman Spy.

This is the fourth novel in the Fall of the Censor series for the Texas-based writer, currently a 2022 Best Novel finalist for two different novels (the second and third) in that series.

Captain Trader Helmsman Spy, published  May 9, 2022 by Kelt Haven Press, focuses on an exploratory mission to gather more information about the authoritarian Censorate in the ongoing series about a complex interstellar conflict between two long-separated but newly connected sets of human-colonized solar systems – one relatively free and peaceful, blending diverse cultures through mutual trade, and the other near-totalitarian in its murderous control of many planets and Orwellian cancellation of history and culture.

Continue reading Author update: Karl K. Gallagher continues writing his Fall of the Censor series

Heinlein’s Children: Tom Jackson’s fanzine essay on libertarians in sf fandom

Libertarianism and science fiction have been closely connected since their early history, a rich topic often explored here on the Prometheus Blog.

Robert Heinlein, a drawing (Creative Commons license)

Libertarian sf fan Tom Jackson explores their connections anew in his recently published essay “Heinlein’s Children: Libertarians in fandom.”

Published in “Portable Storage,” William Brieding’s sf fanzine, Jackson’s interesting and historically knowledgeable article offers a very readable introduction to the subject for the fanzine’s “The Great Sercon Issue Part One.”

Continue reading Heinlein’s Children: Tom Jackson’s fanzine essay on libertarians in sf fandom

Meet the author: Lionel Shriver, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist for Should We Stay Or Should We Go

Maverick American-British writer Lionel Shriver has been recognized – again – in the Prometheus Awards.

Author Lionel Shriver (Creative Commons License)

First nominated in 2017 for The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, which went on to become a Best Novel finalist, Shriver has been recognized as one of five 2022 Best Novel finalists for her novel Should We Stay Or Should We Go.

Continue reading Meet the author: Lionel Shriver, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist for Should We Stay Or Should We Go

Meet the author: Wil McCarthy, a Best Novel finalist for Rich Man’s Sky

Wil McCarthy has developed a reputation as one of today’s most imaginative, zestful, pro-science and realistic science-fiction writers.

His 11 novels and additional stories blend a Heinlein-esque flair for action and adventure with hard-science extrapolations, plausible futuristic scenarios and interesting characters.

Novelist Wil McCarthy (Photo courtesy of Baen Books)

And yet, McCarthy has never been recognized or nominated for a Prometheus Award – until this year.

McCarthy was nominated for the first time for Rich Man’s Sky, recently named by Libertarian Futurist Society judges one of five Best Novel finalists. The fast-paced 2021 novel dramatizes a near-future space race led by a group of four quite different billionaires.

Continue reading Meet the author: Wil McCarthy, a Best Novel finalist for Rich Man’s Sky

Meet the author: Karl K. Gallagher, a double Best Novel finalist for Between Home and Ruin and Seize What’s Held Dear

For only the third time in the 43-year history of the Prometheus Awards, one author has been recognized twice within one year as a Best Novel finalist.

Author Karl K. Gallagher (Creative Commons license)

That’s Karl K. Gallagher, whose 2022 finalists include Between Home and Ruin and Seize What’s Held Dear, respectively the second and third novels in his Fall of the Censor series.

Continue reading Meet the author: Karl K. Gallagher, a double Best Novel finalist for Between Home and Ruin and Seize What’s Held Dear

Meet the author: Nobel-Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro, a Best Novel finalist for Klara and the Sun

A Nobel-Prize-winning author has written a novel chosen as a Best Novel finalist – a notable and interesting intersection of two literary awards with quite different focuses.

Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017 (Creative Commons license)

Japanese-British author Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, writes mostly “mainstream” fiction that often conveys a wistful sense of loss and missed connections.

Klara and the Sun, Ishiguro’s latest novel about the ambiguous status of an intelligent and curious A.F. (Artificial Friend), was recently named by Libertarian Futurist Society judges as one of five 2022 Best Novel finalists.

Continue reading Meet the author: Nobel-Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro, a Best Novel finalist for Klara and the Sun

Christian libertarian novelist C.S. Lewis, a current Prometheus Hall of Fame finalist, receives attention in leading sf magazine

By Michael Grossberg

Tor.com, a leading online sf magazine, has published an intriguing article about bestselling writer C.S. Lewis. That’s welcome news to Lewis’ fans, including sf readers and Libertarian Futurist Society members.

The positive attention comes as LFS members are considering the 2022 Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists – which include That Hideous Strength, the third and final novel of Lewis’ Space Trilogy.

(For the record, the three other Hall of Fame 2022 finalists are Robert Heinlein’s novel Citizen of the Galaxy, Barry B. Longyear’s collection of stories in Circus World, and the Rush song “The Trees.”)

Continue reading Christian libertarian novelist C.S. Lewis, a current Prometheus Hall of Fame finalist, receives attention in leading sf magazine

Tor covers ‘Finnish Weird’

Johanna Sinisalo holds up her Prometheus Award (Photo by Ryan Lackey)

Tor.com, one of my favorite sites devoted to science fiction, ran a recent piece by Jonathan Thornton, “A Readers’ Guide to the Finnish Weird in Translation.”

If you check it out, you’ll notice that writer Johanna Sinisalo is a central figure in the genre and even named it: “Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo coined the term “suomikumma,” or Finnish Weird, to refer to a new strain of speculative fiction being produced by herself and her Finnish peers.”

Thornton then goes on to offer some recommendations, including an anthology edited by Sinisalo, and two of Sinisalo’s novels, Not Before Sundown and The Blood of Angels. 

Yet another Sinisalo novel, The Core of the Sun, won the Prometheus Award in 2017. As it happens, she won the same year the Worldcon was held in Helsinki, so we were able to present the award before Sinisalo’s local fans.

You can read an appreciation of The Core of the Sun by our own Chris Hibbert at this blog, and also read a piece about the book at Tor’s website, written by Natalie Zutter.