Reactor has just published a Murderbot novelette by series author Martha Wells. And it’s free to read.
Titled “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy,” Wells’ new novelette can be read as a stand-alone but related story for those who have read Artificial Condition, the second book in The Murderbot Diaries.
Many Libertarian Futurist Society members have read Wells’ Prometheus-nominated series about a rogue security robot who secretly gains free will – especially her first four books including Artificial Condition.
So the new story should be of great interest, and also easy to read in context.
It’s not that often that a Prometheus-award-recognized novel or story is adapted to the large or small screen.
So it’s newsworthy, as well as something of a relief, to report that the Apple TV+ new streaming series of Murderbot is pretty entertaining.
Martha Wells’ Murderbot stories and novels have won Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, and have been nominated for the Prometheus Award, where her first set of novellas was recognized as a Best Novel finalist. So hopes were high for the TV series, which began streaming in May.
Based on the suspenseful and intelligent half-hour episodes of its first season, Apple TV’s series seems faithful to Well’s acclaimed series of novellas and novels about a rogue security robot who secretly gains free will.
Martha Wells, author of the Murderbot series (Creative Commons license)
Martha Wells’ Murderbot novellas and novels have become bestsellers and award-winners.
Besides winning Hugo and Nebula and Locus awards, various works in the series also have been recognized with Prometheus Award nominations, resulting in the first four linked novellas being selected together as a Best Novel finalist.
The Murderbot series has now been adapted into an Apple TV+ streaming series starring Alexander Skarsgard.
Why are these stories so popular – not only with SF fans in general but libertarian SF fans in particular?
Good news for Murderbot fans: All of the novellas in Martha Wells’ acclaimed, bestselling and Prometheus-nominated series about a self-aware robot have been bound together in paperback for the first time.
The three-volume set – accessibly but unimaginatively titled The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 1, 2 and 3 – has been published by TOR Books, to capitalize on the Apple TV new TV series based on the stories.
The set includes all four Murderbot novellas that were combined into one 2019 Prometheus Best Novel nomination and went on to be selected among that year’s finalists: All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy.
Network Effect, a full-length Murderbot novel, also was nominated for a Prometheus Award in 2021 in the Best Novel category.
Great Britain’s Royal Mint is honoring George Orwell – also worth celebrating today on the anniversary of his birthday June 25, 1903 – with a new coin, 75 years after his death in 1950.
Best known for his Prometheus-winning classics Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, the British novelist and essayist will be celebrated with a new£2 coin.
In the Orwellian spirit of the well-known Nineteen Eighty-Four catch phrase that “Big Brother is watching you,” coin artist Henry Gray created a coin design that appears to be an eye, but at its center is actually a camera lens surrounded 360 degrees by the famous phrase.
Two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn has become a Best Novel finalist again this year for In the Belly of the Whale, an epic work illuminating the complex lives, work, challenges, conflicts and threats to liberty aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti.
Two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn (Creative Commons license)
Flynn previously won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for In the Country of the Blind (in 1991) and Fallen Angels (in 1992), co-written with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
One of the most frequently recognized authors within the 46-year history of the Prometheus Awards, Flynn wrote works that were ranked Best Novel finalists seven times – a track record exceeded only by Ken MacLeod, L. Neil Smith and F. Paul Wilson.
Sadly, Flynn, who died at 75 in 2023, is no longer around to do interviews about his final, posthumous novel.
But in Part Five of our ongoing Prometheus Blog series documenting how each of our 2025 Best Novel finalists have received broader cultural recognition for their fiction, talent and imagination, we offer the next best thing: One of the best and last interviews Flynn gave before he passed.
C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher won the 2020 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Alliance Rising, the first novel in their projected Hinder Stars trilogy dramatizing the early years of interstellar merchants forging a peaceful free-trading alliance within Cherryh’s Hugo-winning larger Alliance-Union series.
Left to right: Jane S. Fancher and C.J. Cherryh (File photo)
Now Alliance Unbound, Cherryh and Fancher’s sequel to Alliance Rising, is competing for another Prometheus Award as one of five 2025 Best Novel finalists.
As Libertarian Futurist Society members enter the final weeks of reading and voting toto determine the 2025 Prometheus winners for Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (the Prometheus Hall of Fame), it’s notable and illuminating – and hopefully helpful – to report on how each of this year’s Best Novel finalists has been sparking discussions and interviews and gaining recognition within the broader culture.
Certainly, Cherryh and Fancher, life and writing partners, have received significant and wide attention over the years in interviews and podcasts.
Part Four of our ongoing Prometheus Blog series highlighting the influence and impact of this year’s Best Novel finalists offers representative excerpts and links to several of the most interesting interviews of these co-authors, including insights into the novels in their Hinder Stars trilogy.
Wil McCarthy has been receiving broad attention for the tetralogy launched with Rich Man’s Sky, the 2022 Prometheus Best Novel winner.
Beggar’s Sky, one of five 2025 Best Novel finalists, is the third novel in his exciting science fiction/mystery series and the direct sequel to Poor Man’s Sky.
With Prometheus Awards voting in its final weeks before the July 4 deadline, it’s worth highlighting how each of the authors of this year’s Best Novel finalists have been receiving broader cultural attention in interviews, podcasts and rave reviews.
In Part three of our ongoing series, we highlight and provide links to four interviews that McCarthy has done about his complex series, which projects the twists and turns in the industrial development and colonization of our solar system primarily through the private efforts of four billionaires.
Perhaps the most interesting and timely of McCarthy’s interviews was the one he did with Paul Semel after the publication of Beggar’s Sky.
Buoyed by the Prometheus Award recognition for his novel Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, British author Danny King is receiving international attention.
As the voting period enters its last three weeks to determine the winners of the next Prometheus awards, it’s worth highlighting how King’s novel and other of this year’s Best Novel finalists have been gaining recognition and sparking discussions in the broader culture. That includes Lionel Shriver’s Mania (the focus of the previous Prometheus blog post in this series.)
British writer Danny King (Creative Commons license)
During the wide-ranging interview, King discussed the anti-authoritarian and libertarian themes of Cancelled, what inspired him to make the central character of his “utopian/dystopian” tale a “woke” lesbian woman, and the unexpected difficulty he had getting his latest novel published.
The podcast hails Cancelled as “the latest book of multi-award winning writer Danny King” and “a satirical novel set in a future world in which saying or thinking the wrong thing gets you cancelled from mainstream society.” According to the description of that podcast (Episode 13), Liberty Itch writer Tom Volcanos ask Danny about “Cancelled, being cancelled, and writing in our brave new world where being cancelled is all too real,” according to the podcast description.
As voting enters its final weeks to determine the winners of the next Prometheus awards, it’s worth highlighting how several of this year’s Best Novel finalists have been gaining recognition and sparking discussions in the broader culture.
That includes Lionel Shriver’s Mania, Danny King’s Cancelled, Wil McCarthy’s Beggar’s Sky, C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher’s Alliance Unbound, Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale, based on interviews, podcasts and publications we’ve come across.(If you become aware of columns, podcasts, interviews or other media coverage of any of our Best Novel finalists, or for that matter, our Hall of Fame finalists, please let us know as soon as possible!)
Author Lionel Shriver (Creative Commons License)
Mania, in particular, has sparked both timely commentary and podcasts, including an interesting interview with Shriver and a Substack column drawing parallels between Mania and today’s cultural-political trends.
Dutch-American writer and courageous dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali invited Shriver, an international best-selling author, to join her on a podcast for a lengthy interview – with some relevant excerpts quoted below.
Meanwhile, on Holly’s Substack column, Holly “Mathnerd” has written a column titled “The Sound of One Window Shifting” about “the moment a satirical novel I read and enjoyed last year stopped feeling like fiction.”
That novel, of course, is Shriver’s Mania – whose satirical and cautionary themes are highlighted in the Prometheus blog review.
