Sarah Hoythas always been a wonderful storyteller who frequently crosses genre boundaries with engrossing results.
With No Man’s Land, nominated for this year’s Prometheus Award for Best Novel, Hoyt has outdone herself.
Blending the tropes and appeal of science fiction and fantasy, Hoyt weaves many enticing elements into the three-volume novel. Her two deftly entwined stories encompass space opera, mystery, romance, adventure, suspense, intrigue and politics in a vivid “first contact” saga leavened with humor and humanity.
J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles is a compellingly readable work of science fiction. It offers its readers an inherently dramatic situation: The struggle to survive and rebuild civilization in the aftermath of an apocalyptic war.
To add tension, remnants of the other side still linger, in the form of orbital systems waiting to strike down any resurgence of advanced technology.
It’s great to see one widely respected sf/fantasy author in praise of another. Especially when such praise reminds us of the talents and achievements of a truly grand master of sf/fantasy who has passed but is far from forgotten.
Jo Walton tips her hat to the late great Poul Anderson in her monthly book-review column for Reactor magazine.
Walton, who won her own Prometheus Award for Ha’penny, singled out the multiple-Prometheus-winning Anderson on her recommended-reading shortlist for All One Universe, his 1996 short-story anthology.
“This collection of stories and essays is just delightful—great thought-provoking stories, and mostly interesting essays, and I loved it,” Walton writes.
Libertarian Steve Burgauer has written a dozen novels.
Libertarian SF novelist Steven Burgauer (Photo courtesy of author)
Although Burgauer writes historical and adventure novels, too – including his recently released The Mystery of the Broken Gargoyle – much of his work falls within the genre of science fiction.
Among his SF novels: The Railguns of Luna, Skullcap, The Grandfather Paradox, A More Perfect Union, Moonbeam and The Fornax Drive.
How was Burguauer first attracted to science fiction?
What makes him keep writing it?
And how does he relate such speculative fiction to the future, to progress and to liberty?
For me as a boy, The Star Dwellers was revelatory.
An idealistic drama about a fraught “second contact” between Earth humans and ancient aliens, James Blish’s 1961 novel sparked my thinking about ethics, economics and politics.
I couldn’t have imagined at the time what reading yet another Young Adult science fiction novel would lead me to, but ultimately The Star Dwellers paved the way for me to develop into a full-fledged libertarian by the early 1970s.
“People come to libertarianism through fiction. They come through Ayn Rand… Robert Heinlein…. L. Neil Smith.”
– Libertarian feminist author Wendy McElroy at the 2000 Prometheus Awards ceremony
For quite a few libertarians, “It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand.” Or Robert Heinlein. Or other freedom-loving science fiction writers.
James Blish in the 1960s (Creative Commons license)
For me, though, my introduction to libertarian and classical-liberal ideas and ideals began earlier – at least in part – with James Blish.
Specifically, Blish’s The Star Dwellers.
When I read Blish’s 1961 novel as a pre-teen in the early 1960s, I came to understand for the first time key insights about voluntary consent and mutual exchange for profit as the best foundation for peace and progress.
Now a finalist for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction, The Star Dwellers is a young-adult-oriented science fiction novel that revolves around a fraught “second contact” between star-faring humans and an ancient, advanced alien species.
The first human beings to journey into deep space since 1972 might be on their way as early as today.
The first flight of America’s ambitious Artemis mission aims to lift off in early March for the first crewed mission around the Moon since the Apollo era. Initially scheduled for February, Artemis 2 might take off on its next window in early April if the mission can’t make any of five potential launch dates March 6-9 or March 11.
The Artemis 2 Orion rocket on the Cape Canaveral launching pad (NASA file photo)
“NASA does not expect to be able to land astronauts on the moon before 2027, at the earliest. Realistically, it’s unlikely that such an undertaking would occur before 2028. But the Artemis II mission is no perfunctory exercise. This will be a difficult and dangerous mission, and it’s a precursor to America’s eventual return to our nightly neighbor — this time, to stay,” columnist Noah Rothman wrote in an insightful National Review article about the prospects of the upcoming mission.
Size matters – or at least it can make a big difference, in helping a novel to achieve greater dramatic impact in its scope, depth, narrative complexity and emotional power.
Quite a few longer novels have been recognized by the Prometheus Awards over the past 47 years, whether as nominees, finalists or winners – from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged to the recent nomination of Sarah Hoyt’s three-volume No Mans Land for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
The three classic and epic works by Tolkien, Stephenson and Rand rank No. 1, 2 and 3 in page length in the history of the Prometheus Awards – as detailed in previous Prometheus Blog articles about the three bestselling winners and No Man’s Land.
So what are all the Prometheus-recognized novels and their ranks in page lengths on our top-12 list?
Of the many novels that have won a Prometheus Award over the past 47 years and are still widely read today, a notable few have done so with the help of their longer length and epic scale.
Or at least size can significantly enhance a novel, if the writers are experts and at the top of their game. If well-structured, well-paced and compelling enough to sustain the reader’s interest, longer novels can attract and retain the reader’s interest even through hundreds of pages.
The question arises in fiction when authors conceive novels that are noticeably bigger in word count and longer in page length than usual.
In theory, a bigger novel makes possible a larger canvas, allowing for an epic scope, a more complex narrative, richer world-building, more full-bodied characters, greater subtleties and depths.
Whether or not ambitious authors fulfill that potential and achieve their literary goals when writing bigger novels varies, of course. So does whether readers will find it rewarding to invest the extra time needed to read such magnum opuses.
Such questions are interesting and timely to ponder now that Sarah Hoyt’s No Man’s Land has been nominated for the Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
