Tag: Discworld

2024 Prometheus Hall of Fame acceptance speech: Stoddard quoting the late great Terry Pratchett on libertarianism and a key passage from The Truth

Editor’s note: As part of our coverage of the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony, the Prometheus Blog is posting a variety of reports and the full texts of all the speeches.

Terry Pratchett (Creative Commons license)

Here are the remarks of LFS President William H. Stoddard, a long-time Terry Pratchett fan. Stoddard stepped in to accept the 2024 Prometheus Hall of Fame for the late great Pratchett (1948-2015), whose Discworld comic-fantasy novel The Truth was inducted into the 2024 Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
Before his death, Pratchett was able to attend and speak at the 2003 Prometheus ceremony at the Worldcon, when he won his first Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Night Watch. 


By William H. Stoddard

Regrettably, Terry Pratchett cannot be with us to accept his award. But rather than talk about him, I’d like to quote some relevant words of his own.

Continue reading 2024 Prometheus Hall of Fame acceptance speech: Stoddard quoting the late great Terry Pratchett on libertarianism and a key passage from The Truth

2024 Prometheus Awards: Reason’s Bob Poole presents Hall of Fame category, with tribute to Pratchett and The Truth

Editor’s note: Veteran LFS member Robert Poole, who co-founded the Reason Foundation and has voted for the Prometheus Awards annually as one of the earliest LFS members, presented the Prometheus Hall of Fame category at the 44th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony. Here is the transcript of his remarks:

By Robert Poole

I’m honored to introduce the winner of the 2024 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

My Libertarian Futurist Society involvement dates back to the very first Prometheus Award ceremony.

Continue reading 2024 Prometheus Awards: Reason’s Bob Poole presents Hall of Fame category, with tribute to Pratchett and The Truth

Suarez and Pratchett: Both 2024 Prometheus Award winners earn well-deserved recognition – again

By Michael Grossberg

The third time’s the charm, as the saying goes. Yet, in the Prometheus Awards, it seems the second time around’s the charm, too.


In the 2024 Prometheus Awards, both winners are being recognized for the second time.

Daniel Suarez, winner of the 2024 Best Novel category for Critical Mass, previously won Best Novel in 2015 for Influx.

Meanwhile, the late Terry Pratchett, winner of the 2024 Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction for The Truth, was first recognized by the Prometheus Awards in 2003, when he won Best Novel for Night Watch.

When recently notified of the news that he’s won the Prometheus Award a second time, Suarez responded positively but soberly:

“Authoritarianism is on the march in this world once more, and I’m convinced the first step in resisting despots is to be free in one’s own thoughts and imagination. LFS is doing great work to keep free-thinking science fiction alive, and for that I thank you,” Suarez said in an email.

Continue reading Suarez and Pratchett: Both 2024 Prometheus Award winners earn well-deserved recognition – again

Hall of Fame finalist review: Terry Pratchett’s The Truth offers hilarious but serious comedy about the rise of newspapers and the value of a free press

By Michael Grossberg

The truth shall make you fret.

Er, that’s not quite right. I meant: “The truth shall make you free.”

And The Truth shall make you laugh, too, while sparking insights about freedom – especially freedom of the press.

Often, while recently rereading Terry Pratchett’s satirical Discworld novel, I laughed out loud. (What a pleasure in troubled times, especially for journalists like me coping with declining newspapers.)

THE POWER OF THE PRESS

The Truth, a 2024 Prometheus Hall of Fame finalist, tells a smart, sly and ultimately inspirational tale of underdogs seeking the truth against formidable opposition.

Continue reading Hall of Fame finalist review: Terry Pratchett’s The Truth offers hilarious but serious comedy about the rise of newspapers and the value of a free press

Review: Salman Rushdie’s Victory City affirms the virtues of liberty, trade and tolerance in a mythological historical fantasy about the cycles of civilization

By Michael Grossberg

Salman Rushdie, the courageous author acclaimed worldwide for both his fiction and personal courage in affirming libertarian values from artistic freedom and freedom of speech/press to the right of dissent, has written a wise and haunting novel in Victory City.


Rushdie’s historical fantasy – a Best Novel nominee for the next Prometheus Award – makes a poignant and powerful case for liberty as a key ingredient in the constellation of value and virtues that support human flourishing and the never-to-be-taken-for-granted rise of civilization.

Continue reading Review: Salman Rushdie’s Victory City affirms the virtues of liberty, trade and tolerance in a mythological historical fantasy about the cycles of civilization

Alternate history, progress, markets, and how fantasy can illuminate reality: An Appreciation of Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, the 2003 Prometheus Best Novel winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series of review-essays strives to make  clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how they fit the libertarian focus of the Prometheus Awards. Here’s an Appreciation for Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, the 2003 Prometheus winner for Best Novel:

By William H. Stoddard and Michael Grossberg

Night Watch, the 29th book in Terry Pratchett’s bestselling Discworld series and widely hailed as one of the best, focuses in his usual tongue-in-cheek style on what it takes to build a more-modern police force that eventually will be able to keep the peace and fight violent crime in one of the most unruly cities in fiction.

Filled with individualistic, anti-authoritarian and pragmatically libertarian themes that resonate with the actual history of our own planet and how market economies and modern civilization developed, this ingenious 2002 satirical fantasy blends political intrigue and police drama in a plot that also involves time travel back to the start of a legendary street rebellion.

Continue reading Alternate history, progress, markets, and how fantasy can illuminate reality: An Appreciation of Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, the 2003 Prometheus Best Novel winner