Congratulations to C.J. Cherryh for her latest well-deserved honor.
Cherryh, who co-wrote the 2020 Prometheus Best Novel winner (Alliance Rising) with her partner Jane S. Fancher, is the winner of the 2025 Forrest J Ackerman Award for Lifetime Achievement given by the members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.
The Forry Award, as it’s known informally, is Cherryh’s fourth career honor, according to a news note in File 770, a leading publication covering the sf/fantasy field. She was named a SFWA Grand Master in 2016 from the Science Fiction Writers Association, received the Skylark Award from the New England Science Fiction Association in 1988, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award from our friends in the Heinlein Society in 2021.
CHERRYH’S ACCLAIMED CAREER
Cherryh, who began writing stories at the age of 10 and published her first novel in 1976 for DAW Books, has written more than 80 books including the Hugo Award–winning novels Downbelow Station (1981) and Cyteen (1988). Cherryh also won a Hugo for the short story “Cassandra” (1979).
She is known for her intense third-person narrative voice and realistic SF world-building, especially in depicting an interstellar human future, alien cultures and her complex Alliance-Union universe.
THE ALLIANCE-UNION SERIES
Alliance Rising is the first book in Cherryh and Fancher’s projected Hinder Stars trilogy within their far-reaching interstellar Alliance-Union series.
Although Alliance Rising is Cherryh’s first work to win a Prometheus Award, several of her novels have been nominated over the decades for our award, including Pride of Chanur in 1983, The Kif Strike Back in 1986, and Finity’s End (a Best Novel finalist) in 1998.
Alliance Unbound, Book Two in the Hinder Stars trilogy about an intergalactic socioeconomic and political conflict among free traders and aggressive imperialist State forces, was a 2025 Prometheus Best Novel finalist. (There’s no word yet on when the third novel in the trilogy will be finished or published.)
By my count, Cherryh is the 13th Prometheus-winning author to be recognized with the Ackerman award. For the full list, visit the LASFS website and this Forry Awards page.
According to its website, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), founded Oct. 27, 1934, is the world’s oldest continuously active science-fiction and fantasy club…. Many members both run and volunteer at our annual West Coast Science Fantasy Conference (Westercon) and Loscon – the Los Angeles Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention.
ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* 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 international 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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