Tag: Alliance Unbound

C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher’s Alliance Rising, Alliance Unbound and Hinder Stars trilogy: How our Best Novel finalists are receiving broader attention (Part Four)


By Michael Grossberg

C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher won the 2020 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Alliance Rising, the first novel in their projected Hinder Stars trilogy dramatizing the early years of interstellar merchants forging a peaceful free-trading alliance within Cherryh’s Hugo-winning larger Alliance-Union series.

Left to right: Jane S. Fancher and C.J. Cherryh (File photo)

Now Alliance Unbound, Cherryh and Fancher’s sequel to Alliance Rising, is competing for another Prometheus Award as one of five 2025 Best Novel finalists.

As Libertarian Futurist Society members enter the final weeks of reading and voting to  to determine the 2025 Prometheus winners for Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (the Prometheus Hall of Fame), it’s notable and illuminating – and hopefully helpful – to report on how each of this year’s Best Novel finalists has been sparking discussions and interviews and gaining recognition within the broader culture.

Certainly, Cherryh and Fancher, life and writing partners, have received significant and wide attention over the years in interviews and podcasts.

Part Four of our ongoing Prometheus Blog series highlighting the influence and impact of this year’s Best Novel finalists offers representative excerpts and links to several of the most interesting interviews of these co-authors, including insights into the novels in their Hinder Stars trilogy.

Continue reading C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher’s Alliance Rising, Alliance Unbound and Hinder Stars trilogy: How our Best Novel finalists are receiving broader attention (Part Four)


In their own ways, the 2025 Best Novel finalists embody the dramatic potential of novels with epic scope


By Michael Grossberg

One aspect of fantastical fiction that can make it especially vivid and dramatic is when authors create an imaginative story with epic scope.

A work of fiction that offers such a vast and even cosmic perspective can enhance that distinctive sense of wonder that has defined some of the best science fiction or fantasy.

Each of this year’s Prometheus Best Novel finalists benefits in some ways from aspiring to and achieving great scope.

Continue reading In their own ways, the 2025 Best Novel finalists embody the dramatic potential of novels with epic scope


Exploring the appeal and challenge of sequels with four Prometheus nominees: Machine Vendetta, Shadow of the Smoking Mountain and Best Novel finalists Alliance Unbound and Beggar’s Sky


By Michael Grossberg

Sequels are increasingly popular these days – especially within the fantastical or speculative genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Among this year’s recently announced five Prometheus Best Novel finalists are two sequels: Alliance Unbound and Beggar’s Sky.

Of the 11 2024 SF/fantasy novels nominated for this year’s 45th Best Novel award, four are sequels – including Shadow of the Smoking Mountain and Machine Vendetta.

Each sequel navigates a tricky balance between the fresh and the familiar.

Each can be enjoyed by newcomers as a stand-alone book. Yet, each is enriched by previous world-building and continuing characters that makes them rewarding for the author’s ongoing fans.

How each novel builds on its predecessors, or in some cases departs from them, varies in ways that help illuminate the appeal of sequels and their challenges.

Continue reading Exploring the appeal and challenge of sequels with four Prometheus nominees: Machine Vendetta, Shadow of the Smoking Mountain and Best Novel finalists Alliance Unbound and Beggar’s Sky


Best Novel finalist review: Cherryh and Fancher’s Alliance Unbound dramatizes the crucial fact of scarcity as merchant ships pursue voluntary trade amid authoritarian threats


By William H. Stoddard

Alliance Unbound is the sequel to Alliance Rising, which won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 2020. It appears that this may be the second volume of a trilogy, as the final pages leave important issues unresolved.

Taken together, these novels form a prequel to Cherryh’s Alliance/Union series, one of the larger future histories in the past few decades. (It began in 1981 with Downbelow Station, which won her first Hugo Award for best novel.)

The crucial fact driving its events is scarcity. 

There are only three planets with biospheres: Earth, Pell’s World, and Cyteen. Orbital habitats in other solar systems — notably Alpha Station, located at Barnard’s Star, where Alliance Rising was set — are ultimately dependent for supplies, especially biomass, on those three systems; Alliance Rising’s plot turned on Earth’s starving Alpha Station of resources to advance its own goals, and a key point in Alliance Unbound is the discovery of nearly priceless Earth goods on Downbelow Station, which orbits Pell’s World.

Cherryh and Fancher’s characters are well aware of such issues of scarcity and value, being interstellar merchants who spend their lives going from solar system to solar system, with holds full of high-value cargo and computer memories full of equally valuable data.

Continue reading Best Novel finalist review: Cherryh and Fancher’s Alliance Unbound dramatizes the crucial fact of scarcity as merchant ships pursue voluntary trade amid authoritarian threats


The Best Novel finalists range from exciting visions of humanity’s challenging possible futures in space to cautionary dystopian tales on Earth

By Michael Grossberg

This year’s five Prometheus Best Novel finalists plausibly imagine everything from dystopian Earth scenarios sparked by authoritarian true-believer cults to more positive but challenging interstellar futures for humanity.

C.J. Cherryh, left, and Jane Fancher (Photo courtesy of Jane Fancher)

Works published in 2024 by C.J. Cherryh & Jane S. Fancher, Michael Flynn, Danny King, Wil McCarthy and Lionel Shriver will be competing for the 45th Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn (File photo)

First presented in 1979, the Prometheus Awards have recognized hundreds of authors and a dizzying variety of works. This year’s slate of finalists embrace the old and the new.

Of these authors, British writer Danny King is new to our award, being recognized for the first time as a Best Novel finalist.

British writer Danny King (Creative Commons license)

Lionel Shriver, a Portugal-based American writer who’s lived in Nairobi, Bangkok, Belfast and London, is being recognized for the third time as a Best Novel finalist.

Author Lionel Shriver in 2006 Photo: Walnut Whippet, Creative Commons license

Wil McCarthy, and writing partners Cherryh and Fancher, each previously won a Prometheus Award, while Flynn (1947-2023) is a two-time previous Best Novel winner being recognized posthumously for what may be his last work.

Novelist Wil McCarthy (Photo courtesy of Baen Books)

In brief, here are this year’s Best Novel finalists, in alphabetical order by author:
* Alliance Unbound, by C.J Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher (DAW)
* In the Belly of the Whale, by Michael Flynn (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy)
* Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, by Danny King (Annie Mosse Press)
* Beggar’s Sky, by Wil McCarthy (Baen Books)
* Mania, by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins Publishers)

Continue reading The Best Novel finalists range from exciting visions of humanity’s challenging possible futures in space to cautionary dystopian tales on Earth

File 770’s year-end best-novels recommended reading list includes four Prometheus Best Novel nominees


By Michael Grossberg

File 770, a leading SF/fantasy publication that frequently posts reviews, has offered its annual list of outstanding novels.

Of the 35 novels on File 770’s “2024 Recommended SF/F List,” four have been nominated by LFS members for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Meanwhile, four other novels on that list also have been under review on our unofficial “short list” of 2024 candidates to consider for nomination.

Continue reading File 770’s year-end best-novels recommended reading list includes four Prometheus Best Novel nominees