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.
In 2003, when our Best Novel Award went to his novel Night Watch, he spoke about Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, the Discworld’s greatest city:
“And what can he tell himself? Only that, whoever you fight for, the damn government always gets in; that when lawlessness walks the streets, the authorities will bend all their efforts to keeping honest men unarmed (they possibly don’t see it that way, but can never quite grasp the fact that criminals don’t obey the law, the cads), and that policemen are sometimes tempted into being sheepdogs who prefer to keep the flock corralled rather than protect it from the predators, because it’s easier to bite sheep than wolves.
He learns that the people who declare that the innocent have nothing to fear are wrong, because the innocent certainly should fear; they fear the guilty and, especially, they should fear, distrust, and fight the kind of people who say “the innocent have nothing to fear.”
So am I a libertarian? We don’t have that tradition in England, where just about every politician would classify themselves as a libertarian and each one would mean something different. But currently we have a government that lacks wisdom, perspective, or talents, is centrist, arrogant, and talks incessantly about rights while it curtails freedoms.
I see fragments of Night Watch all around me. So, right now. I’m feeling very libertarian indeed.”
(We might note that this is even more chillingly true now than it was two decades ago.)
And in The Truth, in a final conversation between the Patrician and the novel’s hero, William de Worde, he sums up its theme with admirable brevity:
“I’m sure we can pull together, sir,” William responds when the Patrician asks him not to upset Commander Vimes “more than necessary.”
Raising his eyebrows at William’s reply, the Patrician responds:
“Oh, I do hope not, I really do hope not. Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.”
He smiled. “It’s the only way to make progress.”
Thank you for those words, Sir Terry, and for the delightful story that contains them. And thank you, everyone, for joining us.
Note: The 44th Prometheus awards show, recorded by LFS Webmaster Chris Hibbert, has been posted on Youtube and will be on the LFS website’s Video page.
Meanwhile, the Prometheus Blog is publishing the full texts of the awards ceremony’s eloquent, inspiring and sometimes amusing speeches by Best Novel presenter Victor Koman, a three-time Prometheus-winning novelist; Best Novel winner Daniel Suarez (Critical Mass); LFS President William H. Stoddard, who emceed the Zoom event and accepted the Hall of Fame award for the late great Terry Pratchett; and LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg, who chairs the Best Novel finalist judging committee and introduced the Best Novel category and Koman.
* Read three-time Prometheus winner Victor Koman’s 2024 Best Novel presenter speech on mortality, the award’s longevity, the diversification of publishing and the future of liberty.
* Read 2024 Best Novel winner Daniel Suarez’s acceptance speech for Critical Mass on “How SF offers a critical forum to imagine new ideas and futures”
* See the video of the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony.
* The 44th Prometheus awards show, recorded by LFS Webmaster Chris Hibbert, has been posted on the LFS website’s Video page and on Youtube.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:
* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including 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, which now 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.
* 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.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt), Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.
* 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 believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future – and in some ways can be even more 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, liberties, individuality, moral autonomy and human dignity.
Through recognizing the literature of liberty and the many different but complementary visions of a free future via the Prometheus Awards, the LFS hopes to help spread ideas and ethical principles that help humanity overcome tyranny, end slavery, reduce the threat of war, repeal or constrain other abuses of coercive power and achieve universal liberty, respect for human rights and a better world (perhaps ultimately, worlds) for all.
