It’s understandable and legitimate when a novelist promotes their own work. After all, most do – and in our highly competitive and decentralized era of print and digital publishing and self-publishing, any author would be foolish not to invest significant time and energy beyond their daily writing to raise their visibility.
So it’s all the more impressive when a Prometheus-winning novelist, responding to a routine query to find out if any of their novels in the works might fit our award’s distinctive focus, brings up on her own the work of an up-and-coming novelist previously unknown to us.
That’s what Sarah Hoyt did recently in bringing Holly Chism and her latest novel to our attention.
“Holly Chism is one of the great, unappreciated authors of our generation. Her work reminds me a lot of Clifford Simak’s,” Hoyt said.
Hoyt, a four-time Prometheus Best Novel finalist and the 2011 Best Novel winner for Darkship Thieves, has recommended in particular Chism’s novel Light Up the Night.
A FIGHT FOR FREEDOM IN A DYSTOPIAN FUTURE
Set in America in a dystopian future, Chism’s pro-freedom science fiction novel focuses on valiant efforts by a debt-ridden family and their small town to use a new form of cold-fusion energy to achieve freedom and independence from a totalitarian government.
In this dystopian future, the federal government has forged a corporatist partnership to use a monopoly on electric power to oppress and exploit the people, driving most into veritable and feudalistic debt slavery.
Here’s how the Amazon listing of Chism’s self-published novel describes the plot and central characters:
“Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either.”
“Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.
“But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.”
Although Light Up the Night does incorporate some futuristic technology, its primary focus appears to be mostly on what could be called “social” science fiction – as one reader makes clear in his positive Amazon review:
‘Someone smarter than me (so the right people assure me) once said, “you’ll own nothing and be happy.” This is the world in which the story begins. Light Up the Night shows the peril of electrifying everything and tolerating a government that outlaws alternatives. Whereas (Orwell’s) 1984 had the thought police and televisions monitoring everyone, Light Up The Night has a tyrannical electrical utility monopoly that threatens service interruptions. Imagine an electrician’s boot stamping on a human face forever,” reader Steve D. Poling wrote in his review.
“Add to this witch’s brew widespread debt slavery. Whereas bankruptcy can dispatch loans for anything else, college loans are forever. And when the government is the lender the borrower is enslaved until the government cannot wring anything more from the slave. Thus grandparents are left to raise grandchildren as the government moves its slaves around the country like pawns on a chessboard,” Poling writes.
“In this hellscape the story starts with a grandfather and his grandson who find loopholes through which they can escape the electrical utility and win the freedom of his family and his community. And it isn’t just the menfolk doing engineering things that fights tyranny. The story also shows the women folk doing their part to replace dystopia with traditional solutions to social problems. In particular, the story shows nonviolent responses to government snitches.”
If any of the above sounds like Chism has written a novel that seems deserving of the Libertarian Futurist Society’s attention and awards recognition, that’s what’s motivated this post.
Chism has written at least 20 science fiction and fantasy novels based on her Amazon page, including Escape Velocity, The Schrodinger Paradox: Cataclysm, Certified Public Assassin, The Law of Magical Contagion, The God’s Head, Faerie Gifts, The Last Pendragon and Bite-Sized, the first of her vampire-themed four-novel Liquid Diet Chronicles series.
She looks like a writer to watch.
NOTE: With so many fantastical novels published each year (including but not limited to science fiction and fantasy), it’s more challenging than ever for LFS members and Prometheus judges to diligently scan that vast and burgeoning field for works that might fit the distinctive dual focus of our award on both literary quality and liberty.
Thus, we greatly appreciate it whenever a promising author or work is brought to our attention, so that we can raise its visibility with LFS members, other libertarian sf/fantasy fans, other freedom-loving readers of entertaining fiction and sf/fantasy fans in general.
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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YaY anything Sarah says is to be met with Huzzahs; and Holly certainly sounds like an amazing Author! I will be looking for her!