Don’t forget to watch the free online 2021 Prometheus Awards ceremony and LFS-Reason panel Saturday.
This is a rare opportunity to watch one of the annual Prometheus Awards program live, via Zoom. (The free link is posted below.)
First up will be a relatively short awards ceremony, followed immediately by a panel discussion, with Reason magazine as the media sponsor and two Reason editors as panelists, on “SF, Liberty, Alternative Publishing Trends and the Prometheus Awards.”
Here’s a preview:
* You’ll see LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg present the Best Novel category, along with a short overview of the Prometheus Awards’ distinctive focus and history.
* You’ll see Hugo, Nebula and Campbell-winning veteran sf author Barry B. Longyear accept the 2021 Best Novel award for The War Whisperer, Book 5: The Hook, one of the rare novels to imagine a fully libertarian society and attempt to do so realistically, by grappling with how a society that refuses to use taxation, conscription or any other form of legalized coercion against its people can defend itself against military aggression from threatened statist governments.
* You’ll see Libertarian Futurist Society president William H. Stoddard present the Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction, with bestselling writer F. Paul Wilson accepting the 2021 award for “Lipidleggin’,” his satirical but prescient short story about a future where saturated fats have become controlled substances in a paternalistic and health-fascist United States.
* And you’ll be able to enjoy Longyear, Stoddard, Reason editor-in-chief Katherine Mangu-Ward and Reason books editor Jesse Walker engage in a fascinating and freewheeling back-and-forth panel discussion.
Among the questions the panelists hope to explore:
* How is technology expanding book publishing and alternative fiction?
* How is that trend reflected more strongly than ever in this year’s slate of Best Novel finalists for the Prometheus Award?
* What’s the historic relationship among science fiction, liberty and the libertarian movement?
* Could that relationship be changing?
* What are the challenges and pitfalls of balancing artistic merit in fiction and awards with ideology and positive social values?
* How has the Prometheus Award and its judges navigated the potential tensions between ideas and action, art and politics?
The two-part Zoom program, produced by LFS veteran leader and board member Chris Hibbert, will begin at 3 p.m. Saturday Aug. 21 (Eastern Daylight Time).
The panel is expected to run until around 4:45 p.m. Saturday and will be recorded for posterity.
For live access, just before, at or after the start of the event, simply click on this Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88645567244?pwd=R3YwQW4yR1Q0Mm1QODRZeDdFR0RhQT09
After the 2021 awards ceremony (which is expected to run between 15 and 25 minutes), the LFS-Reason panel will begin on the same Zoom link.
The panel is expected to run about an hour, with some additional time for questions at the end.
This year is special, because most annual Prometheus Award ceremonies have taken place in person at World Science Fiction Conventions across America and around the world, or occasionally at North American Science Fiction Conventions or other major national and regional conferences.
While those annual conventions typically require travel, hotel stays and lots of time and expense, this year’s Zoom panel will be without charge to the public – and will allow any interested sf/fantasy fans and/or freedom lovers to watch the ceremony and panel from the privacy of their own homes.
So please take advantage of this unusual opportunity.
And keep checking back to visit this Prometheus Blog, where over the next week or so we plan to post text versions of both Prometheus acceptance speeches and much more.
* 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 modern genre.
* Read the introductory essay about the LFS’ 40th anniversary retrospective series of Appreciations of past Prometheus Awards winners, with an overview of the awards’ four-decade-plus history.
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards, join the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of winners – for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the recently updated Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website, which now includes links to all published Appreciations of past winners.
