Neal Stephenson (Creative Commons photo)
Neal Stephenson, a favorite of many of us in the Libertarian Futurist Society, has won the 2018 Robert A. Heinlein Award.
The award is given for “outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space.”
Victor Koman’s Kings of the High Frontier, winner of the 1997 Prometheus Award, has just been reissued as a reasonable priced Kindle ebook ($5.95.)
We weren’t the only folks who liked it; see the Amazon page for endorsements from the likes of Gregory Benford and Ray Bradbury.
Jerry Pournelle at NASFiC in 2005. Public domain photo by G.E. Rule.
If you follow science fiction news, you likely have heard by now about the death of Jerry Pournelle, who died Sept. 8, age 84.
Pournelle was arguably best known for his collaborations with Larry Niven, which earned Hugo nominations for The Mote in God’s Eye, Inferno, Lucifer’s Hammer and Footfall. He won the Prometheus Award in 1992 for Fallen Angels, a collaboration with Larry Niven and Michael Flynn, and the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 2001 for The Survival of Freedom, an anthology he co-edited with John F. Carr.
You can read a tribute to Pournelle from Sarah Hoyt, herself a Prometheus Award winner (for her novel Darkship Thieves.)
There is also a useful Wikipedia entry.
See also the Science Fiction Encylopedia article.
The Libertarian Futurist Society has chosen The Core of the Sun, by Johanna Sinisalo, as the 2017 winner in the Best Novel category of the 37th annual Prometheus Awards.
LFS members also voted to induct Robert Heinlein’s story “Coventry” (first published in 1940 in Astounding Science Fiction) into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for best classic fiction.
In a separate awards process, the LFS also recently selected the first chapter of Freefall, a Webcomic by Mark Stanley, to receive a Special Prometheus Award in 2017.
Continue reading Sinisalo wins Prometheus Award for The Core of the Sun
By Chris Hibbert
Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun is a finalist for the Prometheus Award this year. It has enough SF elements to qualify as standard near-future fiction, and provides biting social commentary. In feel, it reminds me a lot of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but I liked this better in several ways.
The story takes place in a future Finland that has managed to selectively breed its women so that they’re either docile sex dolls and mothers (“eloi”), or sterile, powerless but competent workers (“morlocks”). They’ve also outlawed psycho-active drugs from alcohol to heroin, and somehow included capsaicin (hot peppers) on that list.
Continue reading Review: The Core of the Sun, by Johanna Sinisalo
