By Michael Grossberg
Fans of acclaimed fantasy writer Howard Andrew Jones and SF writer Ken MacLeod have been saddened by bad news from both Prometheus-recognized authors.
Jones, a 2024 Prometheus Best Novel finalist, has announced that he has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
Meanwhile, MacLeod, a three-time Prometheus winner for Best Novel, lost his beloved wife Carol last month.
Editor’s note: As part of our coverage of the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony, the Prometheus Blog is posting a variety of reports and the full texts of all the speeches.
Here are the remarks of LFS President William H. Stoddard, a long-time Terry Pratchett fan. Stoddard stepped in to accept the 2024 Prometheus Hall of Fame for the late great Pratchett (1948-2015), whose Discworld comic-fantasy novel The Truth was inducted into the 2024 Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
Before his death, Pratchett was able to attend and speak at the 2003 Prometheus ceremony at the Worldcon, when he won his first Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Night Watch.
Regrettably, Terry Pratchett cannot be with us to accept his award. But rather than talk about him, I’d like to quote some relevant words of his own.
Editor’s note: Veteran LFS member Robert Poole, who co-founded the Reason Foundation and has voted for the Prometheus Awards annually as one of the earliest LFS members, presented the Prometheus Hall of Fame category at the 44th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony. Here is the transcript of his remarks:
By Robert Poole
I’m honored to introduce the winner of the 2024 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.
My Libertarian Futurist Society involvement dates back to the very first Prometheus Award ceremony.
By Daniel Suarez
It is wonderful to receive this award, especially for a novel that means so much to me.
First: my thanks to the Libertarian Futurist Society — both for the principles this Prometheus Award represents and also for awarding it to me in a pivotal year for freedom of expression in science fiction.
Authoritarianism is on the march in this world once more, and the first step in resisting it, is to be free in one’s own thoughts and imagination. That is, after all, where sci-fi lives, and the LFS is helping to keep free-thinking science fiction alive.
Victor Koman, a veteran libertarian SF writer, had the honor of presenting the Best Novel category Sunday at the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony.
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.
Not one but two celebrity presenters will grace the 44th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony, set for Sunday Aug. 25 in a Zoom event set to begin at 2 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (11 a.m. Pacific time) and open to the public.
We invite Libertarian Futurist Society members, their families and friends, science fiction/fantasy fans and all freedom lovers to watch the roughly hourlong awards show, which is expected to include interesting, entertaining and substantive speeches by celebrity presenters, LFS leaders and this year’s Prometheus Award winner for Best Novel.
The late great Ray Bradbury memorably dramatized the dangers of censorship and book-burning in Fahrenheit 451.
Bradbury’s Prometheus-winning 1953 novel, inducted in 1984 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, is occasionally brought up as a cautionary tale in contemporary discussions about freedom of expression, censorship, school libraries and what books are appropriate for students of different ages to read.
Fahrenheit 451 is referenced anew in an interesting Thinkspot column that challenges common media reporting about “book bans” in government-run schools and libraries across the country.
But do the lessons of Fahrenheit 451 truly apply?
Is “book banning” tantamount to book-burning and other forms of State-enforced censorship?
Not all literary award-winners stand the test of time.
Most works of arts and entertainment fade – even winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the Oscars, Tonys, Grammys, Emmys, Hugo and Nebula awards. Yet when they last and take on the patina of a classic, they should be remembered and recognized.
For only the third time in the 45-year history of the Prometheus Awards, a former Best Novel finalist is being inducted into the Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
The Dragon Awards, presented annually at Dragon Con in Atlanta, have announced their 2024 finals – and one of this year’s Prometheus Best Novel finalists is among them.
Plus, among its finalist competitors is an author and her series previously recognized as a Prometheus Best Novel finalist.
So congratulations to Devon Eriksen and Martha Wells!
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.
