How do judges evaluate Prometheus Award candidates? By balancing the criteria of literary quality and pro-liberty themes within the fantastical genre

Editor’s note: To kick off a new year of judging and for the sake of greater transparency about the Prometheus Awards, the Prometheus Blog is posting an occasional series of essays by LFS awards judges about how they view our distinctive award standards and how they apply them to weigh candidates and nominees.

By William H. Stoddard

The Libertarian Futurist Society has long had a hybrid process for choosing its annual award winners.

First the members nominate books for Best Novel, and books or other works for Hall of Fame. Then committees of judges review the nominees and select the best five in each category (or sometimes four or six) as finalist. The members read these finalists and rank them from best to worst, and their votes are totaled to select the winners.

But what does “select the best” mean?

Continue reading How do judges evaluate Prometheus Award candidates? By balancing the criteria of literary quality and pro-liberty themes within the fantastical genre

Literary qualities: Questions to consider in judging the Prometheus Awards, part 2

By Michael Grossberg

Given the complexity and multiple variables in weighing works of speculative fiction for how well they fit the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Awards, many LFS members and Prometheus judges have found a set of questions useful to answer as they read different works and consider their eligibility and quality.

These questions also may help LFS members as they read and rank finalists before voting to choose each year’s Prometheus winners.

After outlining a set of basic eligibility questions in the previous Prometheus Blog post, this post will focus on further questions related to overall literary quality.

Continue reading Literary qualities: Questions to consider in judging the Prometheus Awards, part 2