2024 Prometheus Awards ceremony: LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg on the Best Novel track record, the power of liberty and the dangers of power

Editor’s note: The Prometheus Blog is posting the texts of the inspirational and insightful speeches presented Aug. 25, 2024, during the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Michael Grossberg, a veteran award-winning journalist and arts critic. File photo

LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg’s speech discusses the award’s Best Novel track record and introduced three-time Prometheus Best Novel winner Victor Koman, who presented the Best Novel category.

By Michael Grossberg

The Prometheus Awards, one of the oldest fan-based sf/fantasy awards after the Hugos and Nebulas, are unique in recognizing speculative fiction that dramatizes the perennial conflict between liberty and power.

That includes not only science fiction and fantasy, but also alternate history, mythology, fable, horror and near-future high-tech thrillers, so long as they explore the possibilities of a freer and better future based on voluntary cooperation and exchange instead of institutionalized coercion and tyranny.

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See the video of the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony, with speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Daniel Suarez and Victor Koman, Reason’s Bob Poole and LFS leaders

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 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.

Continue reading See the video of the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony, with speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Daniel Suarez and Victor Koman, Reason’s Bob Poole and LFS leaders

2024 Prometheus Awards: Best Novel presenter Victor Koman’s speech on mortality, the awards’ longevity, the diversification of publishing and the future of liberty


Victor Koman, a veteran libertarian SF writer, had the honor of presenting the Best Novel category Sunday at the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Prometheus-winning novelist Victor Koman in 2019 Photo courtesy of Koman

Who better to fulfill that role than Koman, one of very few writers to win as many as three Prometheus awards for Best Novel?

Here, for the record, is the transcript of Koman’s speech.

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Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole confirmed as presenter for 44th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony Aug. 25

Robert Poole (Photo courtesy of Reason Foundation)

The Libertarian Futurist Society is pleased to announce that prominent libertarian policy expert and lifelong SF fan Robert (Bob) Poole will be a presenter at the 44th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Poole, a veteran LFS member and consistent Prometheus Awards voter for decades, co-founded the Reason Foundation, a leading libertarian think tank that publishes Reason magazine.

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Three-time Prometheus winner Victor Koman to present Best Novel category at our public 2024 awards ceremony

Victor Koman, a veteran libertarian sf writer who’s won three Prometheus Awards for Best Novel, has agreed to speak and be a presenter at the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Prometheus-winning novelist Victor Koman (Courtesy of author)

Koman will present the Best Novel category at the online Zoom ceremony, tentatively planned for a Saturday afternoon in mid- to late August.

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Rabbit Test: Samantha Mill’s story, which swept this past year’s sf awards, has been hailed as libertarian (But that depends on your view of its central issue.)

By Michael Grossberg

One short story swept the major sf awards this past year – including the Hugos, the Nebulas and the Locus awards.

That story is “Rabbit Test,” by Samantha Mills.

According to at least one veteran libertarian sf fan, Mill’s story fits the distinctive focus of the Prometheus Award.

“The well-written story has a strong individual-liberty theme,” said Fred Moulton, a now-retired former LFS leader and Prometheus judge. (And the vast majority of libertarians likely would agree.)

But does it?

Continue reading Rabbit Test: Samantha Mill’s story, which swept this past year’s sf awards, has been hailed as libertarian (But that depends on your view of its central issue.)

Of the writers who’ve won the most Prometheus Awards, which of their works should you read first?

By Michael Grossberg

The Prometheus Award has been presented more than 100 times, but which authors have won the most? And which of their winning works should you read first, if you aren’t familiar with them?

In the original Best Novel annual category, which I’ll focus on here, only 10 authors have won more than one – and only four writers have won as many as three.

(Try to guess their names, just for fun, without taking a peek at the LFS website’s Prometheus Awards page, which lists all past winners.)

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Prometheus laureate Victor Koman inaugurates The Agorist Archives of Samuel Edward Konkin III

Prometheus-winning author and scholar Victor Koman is leading a new project to digitize the papers and publications of Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3) for posterity.

Konkin, a libertarian philosopher and activist who led the “agorist” wing of the libertarian movement in the 1970s and 1980s, influenced quite a few libertarians and libertarian science fiction writers, such as the Prometheus Award winners J. Neil Schulman, Brad Linaweaver and Koman himself.

Sam Konkin at a convention. Photo by Victor Koman

 

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Free enterprise in space: An Appreciation of Victor Koman’s Kings of the High Frontier, the 1997 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s 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 freedom. Here’s our Appreciation for Victor Koman’s Kings of the High Frontier, the 1997 Best Novel winner.

By Michael Grossberg

Victor Koman’s 1997 novel dramatizes the dream of getting into space with an libertarian twist: The massive effort is achieved through the voluntary social cooperation of mutual trade and mutual aid through private enterprise.

Set in a subtly alternate reality, the story imagines a profit-enhanced competition to reach the stars, which anticipated the X Prize that saw Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne reach space in 2004.

Kings of the High Frontier highlights the shortsighted bureaucratic and political efforts of a government-run program like NASA, with its consequences in corruption, wasteful mismanagement and stagnation.

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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.

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