Here is the second part of the Prometheus-blog interview with sf writer Karl K. Gallagher.
A 2022 Best Novel finalist for his Fall of the Censor novels Between Home and Ruin and Seize What’s Held Dear, Gallagher is in the midst of completing his projected nine-volume Censor series.
His fourth novel in the series, Captain Trader Helmsman Spy, was published in May.
SF author Karl K. Gallagher is in the midst of writing his ambitious multi-volume Fall of the Censor series, an interstellar saga set in the distant future.
The series, popular with libertarian sf fans, now includes four published novels, two of which became 2022 Best Novel finalists: Between Home and Ruin and Seize What’s Held Dear.
If you’re a fan of science fiction and fantasy and appreciate a bargain, you’ll want to check out the just-opened book sale by a group of indie authors – including a current Prometheus Best Novel finalist.
But hurry! There’s a deadline….
The book sale runs through June 21, in coordination with the Libertycon science fiction convention, and includes discounts on published novels and books by many libertarian and pro-freedom authors.
Frequent Best Novel finalist Karl K. Gallagher is among the participating authors.
Note: This is the latest Prometheus-blog review of our 2022 Best Novel finalists, following previously posted reviews of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun and Lionel Shriver’s Should We Stay Or Should We Go.
In Seize What’s Held Dear, the third volume of Karl Gallagher’s The Fall of the Censor series, the action returns to Corwynt, a planet controlled by the Censorate that the Fieran protagonists visited in the first volume. Much of the story develops in parallel tracks following the situation on the planet’s surface and the continuing struggle in space.
The primary conflict grows out of the Censorate’s basic rule that access to information is to be restricted as much as possible. In a fashion similar to China’s Qin Dynasty, access to historical works is prohibited, and their mere possession is a capital crime.
The result is a totalitarian society of a novel sort, different from those in classic dystopias. Fiera, the planet that opposes the Censorate after a hyperspatial route between them has reopened, has no such prohibition — and for that very reason the Censorate cannot tolerate its survival. Fiera doesn’t offer a model for a libertarian society, but it’s comparatively free and is struggling to preserve that freedom.
Author Karl K. Gallagher, a frequent Prometheus Awards nominee and Best Novel finalist, is keeping busy and catching up with an ambitious writing schedule – including a new novel just published: Captain Trader Helmsman Spy.
This is the fourth novel in the Fall of the Censor series for the Texas-based writer, currently a 2022 Best Novel finalist for two different novels (the second and third) in that series.
Captain Trader Helmsman Spy, published May 9, 2022 by Kelt Haven Press, focuses on an exploratory mission to gather more information about the authoritarian Censorate in the ongoing series about a complex interstellar conflict between two long-separated but newly connected sets of human-colonized solar systems – one relatively free and peaceful, blending diverse cultures through mutual trade, and the other near-totalitarian in its murderous control of many planets and Orwellian cancellation of history and culture.
Continue reading Author update: Karl K. Gallagher continues writing his Fall of the Censor series
For only the third time in the 43-year history of the Prometheus Awards, one author has been recognized twice within one year as a Best Novel finalist.
That’s Karl K. Gallagher, whose 2022 finalists include Between Home and Ruin and Seize What’s Held Dear, respectively the second and third novels in his Fall of the Censor series.
Even after building up a relatively consistent track record over 43 years, the Prometheus Awards can surprise by venturing here and there into new territory and new authors.
This year’s interesting and varied slate of five Best Novel finalists, selected from 16 nominees by LFS members serving as judges on the Best Novel finalist-selection committee, happens to reflect several intriguing “firsts” or rarities in the history of the awards.
Here are the five finalists, all published in 2021 and contenders for the 2022 Prometheus Award, to be presented online in August at a time and place to be announced:
• Between Home and Ruin, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press, 227 pages)
• Seize What’s Held Dear, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press, 244 pages)
• Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber and Faber, 321 pages)
• Rich Man’s Sky, by Wil McCarthy (Baen Books, 291 pages)
• Should We Stay Or Should We Go, by Lionel Shriver (Harper Collins, 266 pages)
Just from looking over the finalists list, can you guess any of those “firsts?
As a sort of fun “pop quiz,” why not take a moment to ponder that – before clicking over to the jump page of this blog, which has the answers.
Continue reading The 2022 Best Novel finalists reflect a few interesting “firsts”
If one of the salutary effects of the Prometheus Award for Best Novel over the decades has been to help raise the visibility of new, young or emerging talent, that goal might well be furthered by this year’s larger-than-usual slate of nominees.
These 16 novels, published in 2021 and listed below, reflect a wide range of styles, from the satirical to the sorrowful and from hard sf to mythic fantasy.
