The late great Poul Anderson has received unexpected and positive recognition from the 2025 Worldcon, set for Seattle.
Partly in honor of the previous Seattle Worldcon in 1961, the Worldcon blog has paid tribute to Anderson’s novel The High Crusade, a 1961 Hugo finalist.
Continue reading Seattle’s upcoming Worldcon pays affectionate tribute to Poul Anderson
Our Early Readers program seeks more LFS members as volunteers to help enhance our annual Prometheus Awards and the nominating and judging process for the Best Novel category.
As described in the previous Prometheus Blog post, we’re looking for freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans who enjoy reading speculative fiction (broadly defined to include sci-fi, fantasy, alternate-history, dystopian literature, mythic fables, “social” sf, near-future politicial thrillers, etc.).
Our ideal Early Reader participants also should be knowledgeable about libertarian and free-market sociopolitical and economic analysis to discern whether such genre novels are good fits for the Prometheus Awards – or not.
Consistent with our nonprofit, all-volunteer libertarian organization of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans, we’ve structured our Early Readers program to maximize individual choice in several ways.
Over the most-recent Prometheus Awards nomination and judging cycles, more Libertarian Futurist Society members have made a genuine difference by volunteering to read and report on various novels to help us determine whether any deserved Best Novel nominations.
This post aims to introduce and explain the goals of our Early Readers program – with sincere hopes that more LFS members will decide to join our efforts over this next awards cycle.
Now’s an excellent time to volunteer, since we’ve just recently begun compiling potential candidates from sf/fantasy novels already published (or to be published) during 2024.
What we’re always striving to identify, within the much larger field of sf/fantasy and speculative fiction, are the relative few novels that seem relevant to the Prometheus Awards and its distinctive dual focus, at once literary and thematic.
Editor’s note: The Prometheus Blog is posting the texts of the inspirational and insightful speeches presented Aug. 25, 2024, during the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony.
LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg’s speech discusses the award’s Best Novel track record and introduced three-time Prometheus Best Novel winner Victor Koman, who presented the Best Novel category.
The Prometheus Awards, one of the oldest fan-based sf/fantasy awards after the Hugos and Nebulas, are unique in recognizing speculative fiction that dramatizes the perennial conflict between liberty and power.
That includes not only science fiction and fantasy, but also alternate history, mythology, fable, horror and near-future high-tech thrillers, so long as they explore the possibilities of a freer and better future based on voluntary cooperation and exchange instead of institutionalized coercion and tyranny.
The Libertarian Futurist Society is pleased to announce that prominent libertarian policy expert and lifelong SF fan Robert (Bob) Poole will be a presenter at the 44th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony.
Poole, a veteran LFS member and consistent Prometheus Awards voter for decades, co-founded the Reason Foundation, a leading libertarian think tank that publishes Reason magazine.
Now retired but with some important life lessons and insights to share, Rick Triplett has worked for the cause of liberty in many ways over many decades – including as a Prometheus judge, reviewer and board member in the Libertarian Futurist Society.
Here’s the fifth and final part of the Prometheus Blog interview with Rick, recently honored by the LFS board as the LFS’s first Emeritus member:
Q: What role can fiction play in helping to form the future or inspire people with new visions of a free-er future?
A:I think fiction is where big ideas are popularized and gain broad acceptance. We’ll always need intellectuals and polemicists to lay the theoretical groundwork of the movement, but we need novelists, screenwriters, and lyricists to get those ideas into the popular culture.
Continue reading The Rick Triplett interview, part 5: On the value of science fiction and education
Rick Triplett, 79, has seen the Prometheus Awards from the inside.
Recently recognized by the Libertarian Futurist Society board as the organization’s first Emeritus member after decades of service, Rick has served as a judge in all three categories of the Prometheus Awards – chairing the Special Awards committee and serving as a finalist-selection judge on the two committees that help whittle down candidates and nominees to a short list in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction categories.
So Rick’s views about the challenges of judging the Prometheus Award are worth sharing, as well as his insights about the pros and cons of various ideologies.
Here is the third part of the Prometheus Blog interview with Triplett.
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.
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
Those Libertarian Futurist Society members who’ve served for some time as finalist-selection judges or Early Readers for different categories of the Prometheus Award have come to find a variety of questions helpful.
These questions also may help LFS members as they read and rank Best Novel and Hall of Fame finalists before voting to choose each year’s winners – including this year.
Whether LFS members are considering the eligibility of an sf/fantasy novel for the Best Novel category, suggesting a candidate for nomination for Best Novel or Best Classic Fiction (the Prometheus Hall of Fame) or volunteering to read and report on various candidates as Early Readers, such questions can prove useful.
Accordingly, the Prometheus Blog is posting a sample set of such questions.
Continue reading Eligibility questions to ask when considering sf/fantasy for the Prometheus Awards
