One aspect of fantastical fiction that can make it especially vivid and dramatic is when authors create an imaginative story with epic scope.
A work of fiction that offers such a vast and even cosmic perspective can enhance that distinctive sense of wonder that has defined some of the best science fiction or fantasy.
Each of this year’s Prometheus Best Novel finalists benefits in some ways from aspiring to and achieving great scope.
THE ENHANCED VISTAS OF A SERIES
While individual novels can attain epic scope, writers often can achieve it more easily by creating on a much larger canvas – such as writing a series of linked novels or sequels set within the same fictional universe.
Among this year’s five Best Novel finalists, one finds that larger canvas most obviously in the two sequel novels: Alliance Unbound, C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher’s direct sequel to the 2020 Best Novel winner Alliance Rising and set within the Alliance-Union future history; and Beggar’s Sky, Wil McCarthy’s sequel to the 2022 Best Novel winner Rich Man’s Sky and the third book in what’s likely to end up as a tetralogy.
Both Prometheus finalists skillfully show us new vistas, fresh situations and new characters in their future histories about humanity’s exploration and developments beyond our solar system – and make us want to see more.
Other examples of superior SF/fantasy series, which I rank among my favorites, include Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Vorkosigan Saga (including her Prometheus-winning Falling Free), Orson Scott Card’s Ender series, Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld comedy-fantasy series (including the Prometheus-winning Night Watch and The Truth), Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space (including Machine Vendetta, nominated this year for Best Novel), and Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (including his Prometheus-winning The System of the World.)
ROBERT HEINLEIN’S EPIC CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY
Yet, in some ways, I think it’s even more impressive when an author can build a world of epic scope within one book.
One of my favorites in that regard is Citizen of the Galaxy, perhaps the best and certainly the most epic story of Robert Heinlein’s many beloved sf “juveniles.”
Inducted in 2022 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, Citizen of the Galaxy offers a coming-of-age story that takes its central character Thorby from boyhood to adulthood, from the lowest class to the highest and from slavery to freedom.
In the process, Thorby experiences the many different levels and conditions of life on different planets and becomes fully familiar with the extremes, pluses and negatives of his future interstellar civilization – a truly vast range indeed, and brilliantly revealed by Heinlein through Thorby’s eyes.
Reading the current crop of Prometheus Best Novel finalists, I was reminded of Citizen of the Galaxy in particular as a good example of the potential rewards when a novel takes its central character from one end of a society and world to the other.
MICHAEL FLYNN’S IN THE BELLY OF THE WHALE
In addition to Alliance Unbound and Beggar’s Sky, Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale ends up showing us every corner and class and conflict within its focus – a large asteroid ship with 40,000 human colonists, facing a variety of technological, social and political problems two centuries into a much longer projected voyage to establish a colony in another star system.
LIONEL SHRIVER’S MANIA
Meanwhile, Lionel Shriver’s Mania, set within an alternate-history recent America, focuses on a radically individualistic teacher and mother who’s canceled for questioning the deranged new egalitarian orthodoxy denying any variability in intelligence or talent. Yet, ultimately, Shriver’s darkly satirical and cautionary fable reveals a complete picture of this brave new world and how everything is warped by the latest mania.
DANNY KING’S CANCELLED
Danny King’s Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, roughly parallel in many ways to Shriver’s Mania as a timely dystopian warning about the excesses of true believers, achieves the same epic scope in a somewhat different way.
Through King’s relentless focus on his protagonist Sienna as the single narrator, we see the brave new world of an an authoritarian New Britannia through her eyes.
Initially in a privileged position in this dystopian future dominated by a progressive-feminist politics warped into a totalitarian pseudo-religion, Sienna eventually is reduced in status and forced to open her eyes to the many downsides and hidden horrors of her world.
Ultimately, Cancelled reveals New Britannia from its top to its bottom, completing an epic arc of disillusionment, comeuppance and bittersweet redemption.
Where Heinlein’s hero in Citizen begins as a slave, achieves his freedom and rises to the top of his interstellar future, though, King’s Sienna goes through the same radical and disruptive transformation – but in reverse, reduced from privilege to slavery and the brink of death.
For some, that reverse progression may make Cancelled more difficult to read and appreciate than Heinlein’s more optimistic and inspiring juvenile classic.
Similarly, the dystopian aspects dramatized in both Mania and In the Belly of the Whale may make these Best Novel finalists more daunting to experience, at least at first, than the more positive glimpses of our possible future explored by McCarthy, Cherryh and Fancher.
But patient readers will be rewarded by all five Best Novel finalists, each a powerful and haunting work of fantastical fiction that sparks deeper thoughts while touching the emotions and expanding our imagination.
ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS AND THE LFS
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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.
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