Today, Oct. 2, is Vernor Vinge’s birthday.
If he had lived, Vinge would have been 80 years old.
Born Oct. 2, 1944, Vinge died in March, 2024 after struggling for several years with progressive Parkinsons disease.
Yet, Vinge is worth remembering (and likely to be well-remembered) for his consistently brilliant and often prescient science fiction – several works of which have been recognized with Prometheus Awards over the decades.
Here’s the Prometheus Blog appreciation of Vernor Vinge’s story “The Ungoverned,” the 2004 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction.
“The Ungoverned” is one of the rare sf stories to portray a plausible and fully libertarian society. Moreover, Vernor Vinge does so with intelligence, subtlety, vision and enjoyable narrative twists.
Set in the ungoverned lands of a recovering future Kansas after a social collapse, Vernor Vinge’s 1985 novella focuses on what happens when New Mexico’s statist government tries to invade anarchist-libertarian Kansas with unexpected results.
The Libertarian Futurist Society’s ongoing Appreciation series strives to make clear what libertarian futurists see in each of our past winners and how each fits the Prometheus award’s distinctive focus on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our Appreciation for Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Real Time, the 1987 Best Novel winner.
In 1985, Vinge’s The Peace War lost out to No Award in the Prometheus voting. In 1987, its sequel, Marooned in Realtime, was recognized as Best Novel — the first of several Best Novel and Hall of Fame awards to the author.
The Peace War had shown a market-oriented and anarchistic society in a future central California. But it wasn’t portrayed in detail, and existed within a larger world that was decidedly NOT libertarian, controlled by the repressive Peace Authority. And one of the viewpoint characters was a military officer who considered the libertarian society that Vinge sketched unsustainable.
In contrast, Marooned in Realtime’s characters look back to a past in which libertarian values had triumphed, and the central character is widely admired for his role in bringing down one of the Earth’s last states (a story told in “The Ungoverned,” a novella that won the LFS’s 2004 Hall of Fame Award).
The libertarianism stands out more.
Continue reading Advanced technology, global politics, monopoly power and a struggle for liberty: An Appreciation of Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Real Time, the 1987 Prometheus Best Novel winner
Our Appreciation series highlights the four-decade history of the Prometheus Awards. Here’s an Appreciation for No Award, the 1985 winner in the Best Novel category.
When the Libertarian Futurist Society started giving regular awards for Best Novel, ballots mailed to members offered the option of voting for None of the Above.
In 1985, None of the Above won, for the first and – up to now – the only time.
Continue reading An Appreciation of No Award, the 1985 Prometheus Best Novel choice
Libertarian futurists champion peaceful, non-violent behavior over acts of aggression, whether committed by individuals, groups or governments.
In fact, modern libertarian political philosophy is based on the principle of non-aggression – coupled with self-ownership (and self-defense against aggression) as the core of property rights, the strongest and most practical base for all human rights, properly understood.
So it’s fascinating to read science fiction and fantasy that explores such themes.
In the latest issue of Tor.com, writer James Davis Nicoll surveys the sf/fantasy literature and offers several examples of works that fit that focus in “SFF Works In Which Violence is Not the Solution.”
