Not all literary award-winners stand the test of time.
Most works of arts and entertainment fade – even winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the Oscars, Tonys, Grammys, Emmys, Hugo and Nebula awards. Yet when they last and take on the patina of a classic, they should be remembered and recognized.
For only the third time in the 45-year history of the Prometheus Awards, a former Best Novel finalist is being inducted into the Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
Not all literary award-winners stand the test of time.
Most works of arts and entertainment fade. Yet when they last and take on the patina of a classic, they should be recognized.
For only the third time in the history of the Prometheus Awards, a former Best Novel finalist has been inducted into the Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
Terry Pratchett’s novel The Truth, first recognized by the Libertarian Futurist Society as a 2001 Best Novel finalist, has won the 2024 award for Best Classic Fiction.
Before The Truth was inducted this year into our Hall of Fame, only two other Best Novel finalists have received that rare honor: Lois McMaster Bujold’s Falling Free and Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.
The Prometheus Award for Best Novel has been won over the decades by writers from the United States, England, Scotland and Finland – with Best Novel finalists from China, Japan, Canada and many other countries.
But Dave Freer is the first writer from the Southern Hemisphere to win a Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Here is the fourth and final part of the Prometheus Interview with the Australian/Tasmanian author, the 2023 winner of the Prometheus for Best Novel for Cloud-Castles.
Q: Do you have any favorites among Prometheus Award winners?
A: It’s a good reading list, isn’t it? I think I have just about everything in the Hall of Fame.
Some are calling it a “Netflix for books.”
Arc Manor is venture testing a new approach to sf publishing in cooperation with a number of publishers and authors – including several recognized via the Prometheus Awards.
Arc Manor, best known to LFS members as the sf publisher of Prometheus winners Robert Heinlein and L. Neil Smith, is gearing up for Book Bale, its new download-books subscription program, with a special July discount.
So far, in the first two parts of his Prometheus-blog interview, SF writer Karl K. Gallagher has answered questions about his own novels. Now, in the wide-ranging conclusion, the focus shifts to other authors and his favorite works – including the “sense of wonder” and “sense of freedom” that he gets from his favorite pro-liberty sf novels.
Q: Which authors in particular have influenced you most as a writer – whether in terms of their style, themes or spirit?
A: Robert Heinlein, for ideals and heroic characters.
Larry Niven, for ideas driving stories.
Lois McMaster Bujold, for looking at what a change will do to people and how they’ll react.
Here is the Prometheus Blog Appreciation of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Falling Free,
the 2014 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction:
By Michael Grossberg
Falling Free is a Nebula-award-winning sf novel that explores free will and self-ownership, two important concepts at the foundation of our humanity and liberty that also happen to be at the core of modern libertarianism and classical liberalism.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s 1987 novel, part of her bestselling Vorkosigan Saga, considers the legal and ethical implications of human genetic engineering.
In particular, the story conveys the personal impact on the rights and liberties of “manufactured beings” owned by corporations – a theme also explored in F. Paul Wilson’s Prometheus-winning novel Sims.
