Prometheus-winning author F. Paul Wilson is undergoing speech therapy after having a stroke.
Prometheus finalist Gregory Benford, another veteran sf author well-known to both sci-fi fans and libertarians, also has been recovering from a stroke.
Libertarian futurists are sending our best wishes for a full recovery to Wilson and Benford, two bestselling (and libertarian) sf authors whose novels and stories have entertained and illuminated millions of readers.
Two well-known libertarian science fiction authors, each recent winners of Prometheus Awards, have been confirmed as VIP presenters at the next Prometheus Awards ceremony in 2022.
Authors Travis Corcoran and F. Paul Wilson, both multiple Prometheus Award winners, have graciously agreed to each present one of the two annual awards categories at the online event, set for 2-3 p.m. Saturday (EDT) August 13, 2022.
LFS President William H. Stoddard, who chairs the Hall of Fame finalist judging committee, will emcee the hour-long Zoom-produced awards show and introduce Wilson.
To highlight the Prometheus Awards’ four-decade history and make clear why each winner deserves recognition as a notable pro-freedom and/or anti-authoritarian work, the Libertarian Futurist Society has been publishing since 2019 an Appreciation series of all past award-winners.
Here is a review essay about F. Paul Wilson’s story “Lipidleggin’,” the 2021 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction. With this appreciation for this year’s winner, our Appreciation series for the Hall of Fame category of the Prometheus Awards is now complete.
Once you taste freedom, it’s harder to live your life without it.
Once you learn to enjoy the taste of something good, you naturally tend to want more of it.
The mouth waters, remembering how wonderful some things taste… like liberty…. and frying eggs in butter. Mmmm… yummy.
(Also, wouldn’t it be nice if petty bureaucrats and aspiring tyrants could be seduced by the mere taste of freedom?)
Such are my immediate thoughts after rereading “Lipidleggin’,” the 2021 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction.
Here is F. Paul Wilson’s acceptance speech for winning the 2021 Prometheus Award for Best Classic Fiction (the Hall of Fame) for his short story “Lipidleggin'”, which he delivered Aug. 21, 2021, during the online ceremony for the 41st annual Prometheus Awards:
By F. Paul Wilson
Many thanks to the members of the Libertarian Futurist Society for this honor.
I’ll be brief. (“Lipidleggin’” is a short story, after all.)
Back in the 1970s, a national health care system was a major political topic. (Some things never change, do they?) So I asked the next question: If the State is paying for your health care, won’t the State demand a say in behaviors that it considers hazardous to your health? Like, oh, say, banning saturated fats?
So, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I wrote this little cautionary tale about a day when foods with saturated fats – such as butter and eggs – would be banned by the government. I mean, I saw how it could happen, but never for a moment did I believe it would happen. Not in a free country like our good old U.S. of A.
To highlight the Prometheus Awards’ four-decade history, the Libertarian Futurist Society is publishing Appreciations of past award-winners that make clear why each deserves recognition as a pro-freedom work.
Here is our combined Appreciation of F. Paul Wilson’s Healer, the 1990 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner, and Wilson’s An Enemy of the State, the 1991 Hall of Fame winner.
“There used to be high priests to explain the ways of the king – who was the state – to the masses. Religion is gone, and so are kings. But the state remains, as do the high priests in the guise of Advisors, Secretaries of Whatever Bureau, public relations people, and sundry apologists. Nothing changes.”
– From THE SECOND BOOK OF KYFHO
When the first Prometheus Award was presented in 1979 to F. Paul Wilson for Wheels within Wheels, few realized that the sf mystery novel was an absorbing piece of what would become a much larger future-history saga.
Together with Wheels within Wheels, An Enemy of the State and Healer– respectively the 1990 and 1991 Prometheus Hall of Fame inductees for Best Classic Fiction – form one of the most libertarian sf trilogies ever written.
Set in a positive but realistically flawed interstellar future in which human beings have spread among the stars, the LaNague Federation trilogy focuses on an imperialist central State and empire that is toppled by Peter LaNague, a far-sighted revolutionary who abjures violence in favor of a subtle, long-term plan based on a sophisticated understanding of economics, markets, money and inflation.
CoNZealand, the 78th World Science Fiction Convention and the first Worldcon in history to be presented entirely online, pulled off the unprecedented feat with impressive organization and the dedication of countless volunteers and organizers.
In the process, the July 29 to Aug. 1 event offered the annual Hugo Awards ceremony and a dizzying variety of interesting panel discussions – including one suggested by the Libertarian Futurist Society to honor the Prometheus Awards’ recent 40thanniversary.
With a vast and potentially larger worldwide online audience watching from many countries on Zoom and Discord platforms but avoiding direct physical contact for safety during the pandemic, the New Zealand Worldcon seized the potential to be seen more widely. One happy consequence was raising the visibility worldwide of the Libertarian Futurist Society and the Prometheus Awards.
The Libertarian Futurist Society will raise its visibility online and around the world this summer with events and Prometheus-winning speakers and LFS leaders at both the World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) and the North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC).
Everything will take place safely during these “virtual cons,” set up to protect online participants and viewers during the pandemic – which means that LFS members and the public will be able to watch, participate and ask questions from the comfort of their own homes via computers, smart TVs, tablets or smart phones.
WORLDCON PROMETHEUS PANEL
Bestselling, Prometheus-winning novelist F. Paul Wilson (An Enemy of the State, Sims, Healer, Wheels within Wheels, Repairman Jack series) will headline the LFS’ Worldcon panel on “Freedom in SF: Forty Years of the Prometheus Award.”
Celebrating the recent 40thanniversary of the awards, the Worldcon panel will explore the distinctive focus and impressive track record of the many diverse winners of one of the oldest continuing fan-based awards in the sf/fantasy field after the Hugo and Nebula awards.
(To find out who has won the 2020 Prometheus Awards, read the LFS press release posted on the LFS website.)
To make clear why past winners deserved recognition as pro-freedom sf/fantasy and how they fit our award, we’ve published Appreciations of all past Prometheus Award-winners. Here’s the appreciation for F. Paul Wilson’s Sims, the 2004 Prometheus Best Novel winner:
BY MICHAEL GROSSBERG
Paul Wilson’s 2003 novel Sims, set in a plausible near-future, explores the struggle of the sims, a genetically engineered cross between humans and chimpanzees, for freedom and respect.
After impressive advances in genetics research that have made possible the elimination of many genetically transmitted diseases, the SimGen Corporation has created the transgenic species of sims or Humanzees (human-chimp hybrids).
May 15, 2020 update: Due to the “uncertain health situation” regarding the ongoing pandemic and the unreliable travel restrictions, the Columbus 2020 NASFiC organizers have announced with a “heavy heart” that the long-awaited Columbus event has been canceled.
As of May, the organizers are exploring the possibility of planning and presenting a virtual event with various speakers and panels during that same Aug. 20-23, 2020 weekend – including programming and perhaps an online version of the annual Prometheus Awards ceremony.
The organizers also are planning to publish an online souvenir book for all attending and supporting members.
The LFS will post additional updates as we learn more and plans are solidified.
The North American Science Fiction Convention will be held Aug. 20-23, 2020 in Columbus, Ohio – and guess who will be among the guests of honor and speaker-panelists?
The Columbus 2020 NASFiC has announced on its Facebook page that bestselling sf/fantasy/horror novelist F. Paul Wilson – the first Prometheus Award winner and a Special Prometheus Lifetime Achievement award recipient – will attend the Columbus NASFiC as the Prometheus Awards Guest of Honor.
Wilson’s appearances, talks, panel discussions and author signings will be a centerpiece of the Libertarian Futurist Society’s third LFScon (dubbed LFScon III), which will run as an informal “mini-con” within the larger North American Science Fiction Convention. Several main-program-track panel discussions are being planned, devoted to themes of broad interest to freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans, libertarian futurists and general attendees.
The LFS also will present our 2020 Prometheus Awards ceremony during the NASFiC’s biggest single event: it’s Saturday-night Masquerade.
Introduction: To highlight the four-decade history of the Prometheus Awards, which the Libertarian Futurist Society is celebrating in 2019, we are posting a series of weekly Appreciations of past Prometheus Award-winners, starting with our earliest Best Novel awards.
Here’s the first Appreciation for F. Paul Wilson’s Wheels within Wheels, which won the first Prometheus Award in 1979.
At the end, we also include a few recent comments by Wilson, looking back 40 years at the very-different era and context in which he wrote his novel.
By Michael Grossberg
An sf murder mystery hailed by the Library Journal for its “cleverly planted clues” and “all the satisfaction of a good Agatha Christie,” this 1978 novel was the first work of fiction to receive the Prometheus Award, initially established by writer L. Neil Smith to recognize more libertarian sf fiction.
With the benefit of hindsight, looking back at Wilson’s work from the perspective of the 40thanniversary of the Prometheus Awards in 2019, one appreciates this novel even more as part of a fascinating larger whole: Wilson’s LaNague Federation series, set in an interstellar future in which an imperialist central State is toppled by a decentralized libertarian social order that unleashes an era of peace, prosperity, progress and broad respect for individual rights.
