Quite a few good novels have inspired sequels that won a Prometheus Award – 11, by my latest count and all discussed in previous parts of this ongoing series.
When SF/fantasy authors conceive original stories that imagine fresh worlds and compelling characters for the first time, it’s not surprising that they occasionally choose to return to those worlds and characters for a sequel – especially if the first novel receives wide readership and acclaim.
One such source of recognition is a Prometheus Award – and quite a few Best Novel winners, while not sequels themselves, have inspired sequels that have gone on to further Prometheus recognition at different levels.
Previous posts in this series on sequels have explored two outstanding Prometheus-winning examples of this pattern: Travis Corcoran’s The Powers of the Earth and its sequel Causes of Separation; and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother and its sequel Homeland. All four novels ended up winning the top Prometheus Award for Best Novel – a rare feat in our award’s 46-year history.
Yet, several other Prometheus-winning authors have accomplished something approaching that feat – including Sarah Hoyt, Victor Milan and the brothers and co-authors Dani and Eytan Kollins.
Although none of their sequels to their Best Novel winners won our top award, they all received further Prometheus recognition, from a basic nominations to being recognized among Best Novel finalists.
That’s a fairly good indication that their SF/fantasy fans, including LFS members found the sequels entertaining and satisfying follow-ups to previous favorites.
SARAH HOYT’S DARKSHIP NOVELS
Darkship Thieves, Sarah Hoyt’s 2011 Best Novel winner, launched an engrossing series blending Heinleinesque adventure, romance and anarchy in the asteroids.
Among Hoyt’s sequels: Darkship Renegades, A Few Good Men and Darkship Revenge, all Best Novel finalists, and Through Fire, a Best Novel nominee.
The first novel focuses on Athena Hera Sinistra, a reluctant heroine who never wanted to leave Earth or go into space.
Forced to flee her father’s luxury cruiser in a small lifeboat, Athena discovers the legendary Darkships, mysterious vessels that steal Earth’s power supply.
Her unexpected journey leads her to a hidden asteroid colony, thriving amid challenges with an anarchy-capitalist economy and individualistic but highly cooperative frontier culture.
Athena’s experiences widen in Hoyt’s sequels into a battle for survival against authoritarian Earth aristocrats and a larger quest for freedom that could transform humanity’s future.
Some good news: Hoyt recently mentioned plans to return to her Darkship Thieves series to write more novels.
DANI AND EYTAN KOLLIN’S UNINCORPORATED NOVELS
The Unincorporated Man, 2010 winner Dani and Eytan Kollin’s ingenious 2010 Prometheus Best Novel winner, explores core libertarian themes of self-ownership and liberty in a projected trilogy that expanded into a far-flung tetralogy.
Set in an expansive but challenging solar-system-wide future, the story begins with a billionaire businessman, secretly frozen in the 21st century with hopes of life extension, who is revived and given a healthy young body.
In this drastically changed future, each person is formed into a legal corporation at birth. Most people must struggle for years to attain meaningful control over their own life by getting a majority of their own shares.
Chronicling humanity’s expansion throughout our solar system, the novels build to a war between the inner planets and the Outer Alliance, which stretches from the asteroid belt to the Oort Cloud beyond Pluto.
Each novel in the tetralogy builds on its predecessors and expands to explore new settings and characters (including artificial intelligences) that complicate the suspenseful narrative and deepen its themes.
Among the Kollin brothers’ sequels: The Unincorporated War, The Unincorporated Woman and The Unincorporated Future, all Best Novel nominees with the latter becoming a finalist.
VICTOR MILAN’S CYBERNETIC SAMURAI NOVELS
During his life and long career, Victor Milán (2018) wrote almost 100 novels and many short stories, including several shared-universe works for the Star Trek, BattleTech, Wild Cards, Outlanders and Forgotten Realms series.
Milán won the 1986 Best Novel award for Cybernetic Samurai, a pioneering cyberpunk tale of love, duty and justice.
One of the undeservedly forgotten works of the early cyberpunk scene, Milán’s prescient 1985 novel explores the tensions between duty and free will, duty and love and duty and justice in a harsh future where some people struggle to be free within a largely totalitarian Earth.
Imagining a 21st century between the third and fourth world wars in a story whose hero is the world’s first sentient computer, Milan portrays a bloody and terrible future in which much of the world is destroyed but Japan becomes the last refuge of a dying free society and free market.
Although the computer-being, named Tokugawa by his female creator Dr. O’Neill, is imbued with personality and a sense of honor and immediately can access the world’s accumulated knowledge, he begins his self-aware life as ignorant and as innocent as a child and develops to maturity with help from an unauthorized “half-pacifist libertarian” mentor Michiko.
Following the success of Cybernetic Samurai, Milan wrote a sequel: The Cybernetic Shogun. Both novels were praised as two of his best works by his old friend, bestselling novelist George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones), in a tribute after Milán’s death.
The Cybernetic Shogun, a 1991 Prometheus Best Novel finalist, focuses on the aftermath of an act of nuclear hara-kiri initiated by the first computer to possess genuine intelligence, as the superconductor samurai’s two offspring battle over how best to save humanity from total destruction.
Brimming with thought-provoking drama and mature insights, Milan’s duology poignantly raises perennial questions for liberty lovers: Is power inevitable?
Can anyone wield proper and limited power responsibly without abusing it? Can something with ultimate power consider and act on the ultimate sacrifice?
Good questions to ponder – in an original novel or a sequel.
For further reading: Other sequels that have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel are discussed in Part 1, Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6 of this Prometheus Blog series exploring the popularity and appeal of sequels.
ABOUT THE LFS AND 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 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.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
