Tag: Prometheus Best Novel finalist

Prometheus finalist author Devon Eriksen releases audiobook of Theft of Fire (but what about the sequel?)

Theft of Fire, a 2024 Prometheus Best Novel finalist, is now available as an audiobook.

Author Devon Eriksen has announced the belated recording and availability of the audiobook, which is available on Apple Books, Google Play and Kobo.

Billed as the first novel in Eriksen’s Orbital Space series and blending hard SF, romance, mystery, suspense and even comedy, Theft of Fire offers a Heinleinesque space opera portraying a free-frontier space culture where big risks can lead to big rewards.

“Was it easy? No. Was it cheap? Also no. But thanks to the support of Kickstarter backers, the Theft of Fire: Orbital Space #1 audiobook exists, and I am so delighted to announce it now,” publicist Christine Eriksen wrote in a blog update on Eriksen’s website, devoneriksen.com

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Best Novel finalist review: Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale offers sobering drama about un-libertarian aspects of multi-generation colony-ship voyages

By Michael Grossberg

In the Belly of the Whale, the ambitious final and posthumous novel by two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn, explores the complex lives, work, challenges and conflicts aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti.

The epic multifaceted 472-page novel takes some time to fully introduce its large cast of characters among 40,000 people who live in the hollowed-out asteroid ship dubbed The Whale. Yet, patience is rewarded with Flynn’s highly plausible and intricate world-building and wise grasp of human nature.

In the Belly of the Whale – one of 11 2024 novels nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel – builds dramatic intensity coupled with rich and even revelatory insights that freshen this seemingly familiar SF subgenre while raising deeper questions than most SF writers, scientists or space-colonization enthusiasts have considered about the prospects and costs of such generations-long voyages.

Continue reading Best Novel finalist review: Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale offers sobering drama about un-libertarian aspects of multi-generation colony-ship voyages

Author’s update: HarperCollins has published Mania, two-time Best Novel finalist Lionel Shriver’s alternate-history novel critiquing radical egalitarianism

By Michael Grossberg

Maverick bestselling novelist Lionel Shriver is at it again, skewering popular shibboleths of elite culture and critiquing false ideologies through her imaginative and insightful fiction.

Author Lionel Shriver in 2006 Photo: Walnut Whippet, Creative Commons license

Shriver, recognized twice over the past decade as a Prometheus Best Novel finalist, has written Mania, a new 286-page alternate-history novel published April 9 by HarperCollins Publishers.

The publisher’s description highlights a theme that seems promising from the perspective of the Prometheus Awards:

“With echoes of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, told in Lionel Shriver’s inimitable and iconoclastic voice, Mania is a sharp, acerbic, and ruthlessly funny book about the road to a delusional, self-destructive egalitarianism that our society is already on.”

Continue reading Author’s update: HarperCollins has published Mania, two-time Best Novel finalist Lionel Shriver’s alternate-history novel critiquing radical egalitarianism