Publishers, acclaimed authors joining Arc Manor’s new Book Bale program for discounted books, exclusive interviews, readings

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.

Continue reading Publishers, acclaimed authors joining Arc Manor’s new Book Bale program for discounted books, exclusive interviews, readings

SF anthology ‘Visions of Liberty’ imagines future worlds without government: Part Two of an Appreciation of the 2005 Special Prometheus Award winner

By Michael Grossberg

Before you can build and sustain a fully free society, in earth or in space, you have to be able to fully imagine it.

Positive and persuasive visions of liberty – that can capture people’s imaginations as both desirable and feasible – are crucial to help sustain free and diverse societies where people have the best conditions to flourish. And whatever their differing perspectives, such visions must have plausibility, practicality and legitimacy.

That’s where science fiction can play a vital role – and Visions of Liberty, an anthology exploring different futuristic scenarios of freedom, fulfills that goal with fascinating, engrossing and surprisingly plausible stories.

Continue reading SF anthology ‘Visions of Liberty’ imagines future worlds without government: Part Two of an Appreciation of the 2005 Special Prometheus Award winner

Review: Exploring freedom on the frontiers of Free Space, the first explicitly libertarian sf anthology and first Prometheus Special Award winner

 

“Now we dare the great
Promethean sin
And bring fire back to heaven
on our rockets.”
– Robert Anton Wilson
“Free at Last,” from Free Space

By Michael Grossberg

Free Space, the first Special Prometheus Award-winner in 1998, has the distinction of being the first explicitly libertarian sf anthology.

Published in 1997 by TOR Books and edited by Brad Linaweaver and Ed Kramer, Free Space generated immense excitement among libertarian sf fans.

Today, almost a quarter century later, quite a few of its stories remain worth reading (or worth rereading) by freedom-lovers and, for that matter, anyone who enjoys interesting and imaginative sf speculations about humankind’s future in space.

The 352-page collection, dedicated to Robert and Ginny Heinlein, offers a wide range of stories and short fiction by 20 writers reflecting several generations and multiple perspectives.

Continue reading Review: Exploring freedom on the frontiers of Free Space, the first explicitly libertarian sf anthology and first Prometheus Special Award winner