Heinlein Prize Trust working to sustain author’s legacy, spread liberty with digital archive, books, publishing contracts in Russia, China

By Michael Grossberg

With the late great Robert Heinlein having won more Prometheus Awards than any other author (including in 2023 for his story “Free Men,” inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame), LFS members and other Heinlein fans naturally should be interested in finding out more about organizations working to sustain his legacy.

Ginny and Robert Heinlein at their home in the 1980s (Photo from Heinlein Trust archives)

One of the most notable, visible and interesting groups is the Heinlein Prize Trust, established by Virginia (Ginny) Heinlein soon after her husband’s death in 1988.

Since then, the organization has published several books furthering commercial development in outer space, reprinted Heinlein’s entire body of writing in a deluxe leather-bound 46-volume edition, published graphic novels of two Heinlein classics and completed the preservation of Heinlein’s writings and memorabilia in a comprehensive digital archive.

Perhaps the most promising and newsworthy developments are the Trust’s recent efforts to make Heinlein’s stories and novels available around the world – including in countries under dictatorships.

“Only 15 to 20 percent of the world can be considered free, under even the most liberal interpretation of that world. That mans that about 80 percent of the world population today lives under an authoritarian government,” said Art Dula, primary trustee of the Heinlein Trust.

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Anderson, Heinlein, Tolkien, Hoyt, Pratchett and other favorite authors: The Prometheus interview (part 4) with Dave Freer

The Prometheus Award for Best Novel has been won over the decades by writers from the United States, England, Scotland and Finland – with Best Novel finalists from China, Japan, Canada and many other countries.

Dave Freer with his 2023 Prometheus Awards Best Novel plaque for Cloud-Castles (Photo courtesy of Freer)

But Dave Freer is the first writer from the Southern Hemisphere to win a Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Here is the fourth and final part of the Prometheus Interview with the Australian/Tasmanian author, the 2023 winner of the Prometheus for Best Novel for Cloud-Castles.

 Q: Do you have any favorites among Prometheus Award winners?

A: It’s a good reading list, isn’t it?  I think I have just about everything in the Hall of Fame.

 

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Problem-solving, blending satire with adventure, and skewering bureaucracy: Dave Freer’s Prometheus interview, part 3

Here is the third part of the Prometheus Interview with Australian author Dave Freer, 2023 winner of the Prometheus for Best Novel for Cloud-Castles.

Dave Freer (Photo courtesy of author)

Q: Are there common subjects or themes that you find yourself exploring and returning to in your different novels and stories?

A: Problem-solving. Endlessly. That’s what humans do best. It’s our species selective advantage.

Many animals are faster or stronger. We think our way out of the shit – that, often as not, we got ourselves into in the first place. We’re not sheep. We don’t need to follow, we can think, independently. I want to foment that.

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Coming of age as an individualist: Author Dave Freer’s Prometheus interview, part 2

Here is the second part of the Prometheus interview with Australian/Tasmanian author Dave Freer, the 2023 Prometheus winner for Best Novel for Cloud-Castles.

Author Dave Freer at his home desk in Tasmania Photo courtesy of author

Q: How did you first get interested in science fiction/fantasy?

A: I was born into it, you might say. No, not in a hut hopping the Taiga on a solitary chicken-leg as might seem likely, or even half way up a space-elevator, hanging between heaven and earth. Into a family where reading sf and fantasy were a norm.

If you think there to be nothing unusual about this, it is plain you know little of the country and times of my birth.

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The Prometheus interview with Dave Freer, the 2023 Best Novel winner for Cloud-Castles

“The outback of Australia was a very individualist place. So: I had my model.” – Dave Freer

Australian writer Dave Freer Photo courtesy of author

Dave Freer’s Cloud-Castles, the 2023 Prometheus Best Novel winner, offers a zestful and often funny coming-of-age adventure set on diverse habitats floating above a gas-giant planet.

 

The Australian author, who lives in Tasmania, considers himself “mostly a rational anarchist” in the tradition of Robert Heinlein. Freer was interviewed by email by Michael Grossberg, a Prometheus Blog editor.

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LFS co-founder on the coercive nature of the State, and the perennial tension between Liberty and Power

Why is government, by its nature, a distinctive threat to freedom?

LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg strived to answer that question in his speech introducing the Best Novel category of the 43rd annual Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Michael Grossberg, a veteran journalist and arts critic. File photo

BY MICHAEL GROSSBERG

The Prometheus Awards, one of the oldest fan-based sf/fantasy awards after the Hugos and Nebulas, are unique in recognizing speculative fiction that dramatizes the sadly perennial conflict between liberty and power.

As a journalist and arts critic for five decades, I can testify to the importance of awards in raising the visibility of valuable and rewarding works that might otherwise be overlooked.

 

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LFS President: Prometheus Hall of Fame honors reflect passages of time, recognition of merit

With the annual Sept. 30 deadline coming up soon for LFS members to nominate works for the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, this is a good time to remind ourselves what makes this annual category special.

LFS President William H. Stoddard did just that when he presented the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction at the recent 43rd annual Prometheus awards ceremony. Here are Stoddard’s remarks:

By William H. Stoddard

Unlike the Best Novel Award, the Prometheus Hall of Fame can be given to works in any narrative or dramatic form — short fiction, narrative verse, plays, movies, television and video episodes or series, graphic novels, songs, and so on.

It’s restricted to works that first appeared at least twenty years ago.

A great many of our award winners are older than that, often dating to before the LFS was founded.

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Final call for 2023 Prometheus Hall of Fame nominations (LFS members have nominated 6 novels, 2 stories, a song and a film so far)

With less than two weeks left until the Sept. 30 nominating deadline, Libertarian Futurist Society members have nominated ten works for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

Among the Hall of Fame nominees so far this year: six novels, two stories, a film and a song. That includes novels by Poul Anderson, Cecilia Holland, C.S. Lewis, Terry Pratchett and E.C. Tubb; both a novel and a story by Harry Turtledove; a story by R.A. Lafferty; a song by the Canadian art-rock group Rush; and, for the first time, a feature film written and directed by and starring Woody Allen.

Woody Allen (Creative Commons license)

Such varied forms of art and fiction reflects the broad scope of the Hall of Fame – an annual Prometheus Awards category that incorporates stories, novellas, novels, graphic novels, songs, albums, musicals, operas, plays, poems, films, TV episodes/series, anthologies or trilogies.

Read on to see the current list of nominees so far and how to nominate works (if you’re an LFS member) or submit works for consideration by members (if you’re an author, publisher or non-member).

Continue reading Final call for 2023 Prometheus Hall of Fame nominations (LFS members have nominated 6 novels, 2 stories, a song and a film so far)

Cycles of liberty, deaths, rebirths and new generations: LFS President frames the 2023 Prometheus Awards with historical perspective

Introduction: As part of our series of posts about the 43rd annual Prometheus Awards ceremony, which aired live internationally Aug. 19, 2023, here is the transcript of the sobering but inspiring remarks of the ceremony’s emcee, Libertarian Futurist Society President William H. Stoddard:

William H. Stoddard, LFS President (File photo)

By William H. Stoddard

Good afternoon, and welcome to the 2023 Prometheus Awards presentation. I’m William H. Stoddard, president of the Libertarian Futurist Society.

The purpose of the Prometheus Awards is to recognize works in the fantastic literary genres — science fiction, fantasy, horror, alternative history, dystopia, and others — with pro-liberty themes.

The awards have been given every year since 1982; we are now in our fifth decade.

Sadly, the twenty-first century has seen the deaths of many of our award winners.

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From the Heinlein Prize Trust archive: Robert Heinlein’s optimistic vision of the future and expansion through the solar system

Robert Heinlein was a lifelong optimist.

Robert Heinlein (Photo courtesy of the Heinlein Trust)

“Columbus sailed west for spices – and came back with Boulder Dam, Detroit and the Empire State Building. Every great new adventure of the human race has produced totally unexpected new profits,” he wrote in a 1947 letter, which the Heinlein Prize Trust’s primary trustee Art Dula shared recently with the LFS.

“The same inquisitive, questing, practical spirit that crossed the plains and conquered the air will turn up new wrinkles to make space and space flight pay,” Heinlein wrote in the letter, which Dula read from and commented on recently during the 43rd annual Prometheus awards ceremony.

“But what of that. You and I would go if there were never any dollar-and-cents reward in it. There is the greatest reason of all – the itch to go take a look.”

Continue reading From the Heinlein Prize Trust archive: Robert Heinlein’s optimistic vision of the future and expansion through the solar system