When a sequel novel is part of a trilogy or series, it can help broaden the scope of a narrative and its world-building while providing a bigger canvas to explore more characters and subplots in greater depth.
Two internationally acclaimed science fiction writers who achieved such goals in Prometheus-winning Best Novel sequels are Poul Anderson and Ken MacLeod.
Previous articles in this series on Prometheus-winning sequel novels explored winners by Daniel Suarez (Critical Mass), Barry Longyear (The Hook), Travis Corcoran (Causes of Separation), Cory Doctorow (Homeland), Jo Walton (Ha’Penny) and Neal Stephenson (The System of the World).
Part 5 will discuss Anderson’s The Stars are Also Fire, the 1995 Best Novel winner, and MacLeod’s The Stone Canal, the 1998 Best Novel winner.
Both sequels are key works in their respective tetralogies.
ANDERSON’S THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE
Anderson, a frequent Prometheus winner, won his first and only award for Best Novel for The Stars Are Also Fire. (His four other Prometheus awards are for works inducted into the Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction: Trader to the Stars, The Star Fox, “No Truce With Kings” and “Sam Hall.”)
The Stars Are Also Fire, published in 1994, offers a thought-provoking scenario in a distant future in which man-made artificial intelligences have come to dominate human beings, while many people still struggle for freedom and independence in a new era of space exploration.
The point of view of The Stars Are Also Fire alternates frequently over five centuries between an early 21st-century era of occupation of Earth’s moon and later Earth/moon conflicts as genetically-altered-human Lunarians seek independence from Earth’s World Federation and Peace Authority.
A sort of sequel to Harvest of Stars, which focused on those leaving Earth, The Stars Are Also Fire focuses more on those who stayed behind, and features many fiercely independent and memorable characters.
The complex, far-flung novel, written late in Anderson’s career and often full of technical language, revisits familiar Anderson themes, from distrust of government to a melancholy pessimism about humanity’s future but also a brooding romanticism about the human adventure.
Anderson’s ambitious saga became a tetralogy that culminated with two more sequels: Harvest the Fire and Fleet of Stars.
For more about The Stars Are Also Fire, read the Prometheus Blog appreciation.
MACLEOD’S THE STONE CANAL: A FALL REVOLUTION SEQUEL
Scottish writer Ken MacLeod’s The Stone Canal, the 1998 Best Novel winner, is Book 2 in his Fall Revolution series and the sequel to The Star Fraction, the 1996 Best Novel winner.
The Stone Canal is impressive in its wide and thoughtful range of exploration of different political systems on different planets in our solar system in a future marked by wars, revolutions and space colonization. Complicating matters is that the future has become a cyberworld in which people’s memories and personalities can be downloaded or uploading to clones on demand.
Among the many exciting ideas that MacLeod explores are several of special interest to libertarian sf fans – including his complex and ambiguous depiction of capitalist anarchy on Earth, how free markets might develop on a terraformed planet in another solar system and the possibility of independent robots with individual rights.
MacLeod’s story also imagines the problems and challenges in determining identity, basic rights and ownership when more than one copy of a personality can be downloaded into working infrastructure. Those are basic meta-foundational libertarian questions also explored in non-fiction by such libertarian/liberal philosophers as John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Wilhelm Humboldt, Herbert Spencer, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick and Tibor Machan.
The diversity of MacLeod’s interesting characters ranges from Marxist mercenaries and Abolitionists to uploaded “Fast Folk,” robotic copies, old loves, old enemies, sex slaves and anarchy-capitalist escaped slaves living in a new republic in a high-tech city in another solar system.
The kaleidoscopic richness of MacLeod’s vision and his honest portrayal of a wide variety of conflicting political viewpoints including libertarianism make The Stone Canal a fascinating and worthy sequel.
His Fall Revolution tetralogy continued with The Cassini Division (Book 3) and The Sky Road (Book 4). Both respectively became Prometheus Best Novel finalists in 2000 and 2001.
The Fall Revolution series was re-published in 2009 in two paperback volumes: Fractions: The First Half of the Fall Revolution and Divisions: The Second Half of the Fall Revolution.
For more about The Stone Canal, read the Prometheus Blog appreciation.
For further reading: Other sequels that have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel are discussed in Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3 and Part 4 of this Prometheus Blog series exploring the popularity and appeal of sequels.
ABOUT THE LFS AND PROMETHEUS AWARDS
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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.
* 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.
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