Astrid Anderson Bear, daughter of the late SFWA Grand Master Poul Anderson (1926-2001) and wife of the late sf author Greg Bear, accepted the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction for Poul Anderson’s novel Orion Shall Rise.
Astrid spoke during the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony, presented live via Zoom on Aug. 30, 2025, and recorded to post later on Youtube and on the Prometheus Blog.
By Astrid Anderson Bear
Thank you to the members of the Libertarian Futurist Society for voting to induct my dad’s novel, Orion Shall Rise, into the Prometheus Awards Hall of Fame.
Published in 1983, this wide ranging book is in his Maurai universe, a loosely connected series of works set on a post-apocalyptic future Earth.
Orion Shall Rise takes place roughly 500 years in our future, and brings together characters from the principal powers on the planet: the Domain, controlling much of western Europe by means of a huge aerostat, Skyholm, that has survived since the nuclear wars hundreds of years previously; the Maurai Federation, a coalition of Pacific Islanders centered in New Zealand; and the Northwest Union and its powerful Lodges in the Pacific Northwest of North America.
The Maurai are enforcing a nuclear ban on the rest of the world, and the Northwest Union is gathering ancient fissile materials for a mysterious project known as Orion. A growing influence on thought is the increasing numbers of practitioners of Gaeanism, who see the Earth as a living organism to be communed with and protected.
Then, as I like to say, plot ensues, as the characters and societies clash in the service of their own goals and ambitions. I had not read Orion Shall Rise before, and what a ride it is! A friend I was talking with at the recent Worldcon commented that for pretty much any political system, there is a Poul Anderson story about it, and this dives deeply into three. One can find more than one parallel to the situations that are unfolding in the US today.
I’ll not go into a detailed summary, but the book holds up after forty-two years and has a closing sequence of events that will keep you turning pages briskly.
Influences on the writing of Orion Shall Rise are as varied as the memoirs of World War One German privateer Count von Luckner, trips from Dad’s childhood on, to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, an epic attempt to sail a small boat (the Ariadne) from Seattle to Los Angeles with Jerry Pournelle, and my parents’ long friendship with French paleontologist Francois Bordes, who wrote science fiction under the pen name Francois Carsac.
The castle of Beynac, a power center in the book, has been brooding over the Dordogne region of France since the 12th century, and is located near the Bordes family home in Carsac. I feel confident my parents went there when they visited the Bordes in the mid-1960s. It’s nice to think that it survives deep into this millennium.
A brief mention of the fine conversations of the long-past Pinckard Era salons is a nod to the rich intellectual weekends that Tom and Terri Pinckard hosted in their Santa Maria, California, home in the 1970s and 80s.
My parents went to Cape Kennedy many times to watch rocket launches, from Apollo in the 1970s and on to some shuttle launches in the 1980s as well. Friendships with rocket scientists, physicists, and scientists of all stripes are all in the mix that went into this book.
And of course Orion, the nuclear pulse powered spaceship that — spoiler alert — does rise as the novel concludes, is closely modeled after the designs of Project Orion from the late 1950s.
I’m not positive that my dad and Freeman Dyson ever met, but it is likely, and Dyson is called out in the text of the book. As an aside, for a fascinating in-depth history of Project Orion, let me commend to you, Project Orion, the True Story of the Atomic Spaceship, by George Dyson, which uses his dad’s papers as well as personal recollections to tell that history.
At the end of Orion Shall Rise, the pleas for nuclear power to be used solely in peaceful ways, especially for space flight, are set against the pervasive desires of humans to seek power and domination over each other.
Will we evolve our thinking enough to be able to do this?
We are left to wonder and hope.
Thank you again for the honor bestowed on Orion Shall Rise.
WATCH THE 45TH PROMETHEUS AWARDS CEREMONY
* Watch the full 45-minute video of the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony, which was recorded Aug. 30, 2025 with six eloquent, thought-provoking, occasionally poignant or amusing speeches by David D. Friedman, Astrid Anderson Bear, Kevin Flynn, LFS President William H. Stoddard and LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg. The ceremony is posted on YouTube and available to see here.
ABOUT POUL ANDERSON
Poul Anderson (1926-2001) was a major American science fiction writer and SFWA Grand Master who won the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Nebula Award three times, the World Science Fiction Convention’s Hugo Award seven times and the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Award seven times (including this year’s award to Orion Shall Rise.)
Orion Shall Rise is the fifth work by Anderson to be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, following Trader to the Stars (in 1985), The Star Fox (in 1995), “No Truce with Kings” (in 2010) and “Sam Hall” (in 2020.)
Anderson also won the 1995 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for The Stars Are Also Fire.
ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS AND THE LFS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
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