Another Prometheus-winning author has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association’s Hall of Fame.
Jo Walton, who won a Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Ha’Penny, is one of three Canadians inducted into Canada’s 2024 Hall of Fame.
Born in Wales, Walton has lived since 2002 in Montreal “where the food and books are much better,” according to her website and a report in File 770.
JO WALTON
Walton’s induction seems well-deserved, given the impressive scope and quality of Walton’s novels and stories (listed on her website).
Walton’s works have been nominated four times for a Prometheus Award, with three of her four nominated novels going on to become Prometheus Best Novel finalists.
Besides Ha’Penny, a 2008 Prometheus Best Novel winner, Walton also was recognized by the Libertarian Futurist Society for Half a Crown, the sequel to Ha’Penny and a 2009 Best Novel finalist ; The Just City, a 2016 Best Novel finalist; and Necessity, a 2017 Best Novel nominee.
In Ha’penny – the middle novel in her alternate-history trilogy and a follow-up to Farthing – Britain has slowly been turning more fascist after making peace with Hitler in 1941.
A plausible and gripping fusion of a police procedural and cosy mystery with dystopian alternate history, Ha’penny revolves around Scotland Yard Inspector Peter Carmichael as he investigates an explosion in a London suburb that leads to evidence of a conspiracy.
The story portrays the fall of a society into totalitarianism, emphasizing subtle moral corruption rather than overt brutality.
For more on Walton’s Ha-Penny, read the Prometheus Blog’s review-essay Appreciation.
Walton is the third Prometheus Award-winner recognized by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association with their top “lifetime achievement” honor.
The other two were Canadian Cory Doctorow, a three time Prometheus Best Novel winner, and Canadian-born American SF writer A.E. Van Vogt, a posthumous Prometheus Hall of Fame winner.
A.E. VAN VOGT
Van Vogt, inducted in 1980 into the Canadian organization’s Lifetime Achievement Awards, was inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame in 2005 for his classic SF novel The Weapon Shops of Isher.
Imaginative and ingenious, van Vogt’s 1951 novel dramatizes the power of self-defense to sustain personal freedom.
Moreover, the novel A classic and superior example of hard sf blended with sociopolitical SF during the early golden age of science fiction, the novel introduced one of the most famous political slogans in science fiction: The Right to Buy Weapons is the Right to Be Free.
Set i a future dominated by a dictatorial Empire of Isher, the story focuses on how that unjust and oppressive authority is challenged by some mysterious Weapon shops, which become a source of alternative opposition to tyranny.
For more about the novel, read the Prometheus Blog appreciation essay-review of The Weapon Shops of Isher.
CORY DOCTOROW
Doctorow, inducted in 2020 into the Canadian SF/F Hall of Fame, first won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 2009 for Little Brother.
He won his second Best Novel award in 2013 for Pirate Cinema, and his third in 2014 for Homeland, the sequel to Little Brother.
In his bestselling Little Brother, Doctorow offers a powerful cautionary tale about threats to liberty from the National Security State.
Now widely considered a modern classic in the coming-of-age and dystopian genres, the novel revolves around a high-school student and his techno-geek friends who are rounded up in the hysteria following a terrorist attack.
With nods to Orwell’s Big Brother, famously dramatized in the early Prometheus Hall of Fame winner Nineteen Eighty-Four, Little Brother focuses on the plucky band of teen-agers as they’re forced to defend themselves against the Department of Homeland Security’s attacks on the Bill of Rights.
Rounded up and imprisoned in a general sweep and subjected to harsh treatment, the teenagers attempt to assert their rights and, after being released, work to build tools that make it possible for private citizens to communicate privately and to organize out of the government’s sight. Doctorow’s libertarian emphasis is on how people find the courage to respond to oppression.
For more about Doctorow’s Prometheus-winning novels, read the Prometheus Blog Appreciations of Little Brother, Pirate Cinema and Homeland.
OTHER CANADIANS RECOGNIZED
According to Mike Glyer’s File 770 news report about the Canadian SF/F awards, the other two Canadians inducted into this year’s Hall of Fame are Chris Hadfield and Nalo Hopkinson.
Hadfield is a retired astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot. He was the first Canadian to command the International Space Station and walk in space.
Jamaican-born Canadian resident Nalo Hopkinson is an award-winning sf/fantasy author and artist. Among her novels: Sister Mine, The New Moon’s Arms and Brown Girl in the Ring.
She was the youngest Grand Master and first woman of African descent to receive the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master lifetime honor from the Science Fiction Writers of America.
Other great SF authors, writers and artists inducted in the Canadian SF/F Hall of Fame over the decades include David Cronenberg, William Gibson, Tanya Huff, Guy Gavriel Kay, Charles de Lint, Judith Merril, Spider & Jeanne Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer and Robert Charles Wilson.
For a full list of past CSFFA Hall of Fame winners, visit the website of the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association.
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.
