Sequels, part 9: By the numbers, Prometheus Awards history is full of Best Novel sequels

By Michael Grossberg

Throughout the 46-year history of the Prometheus Award, 505 novels have been nominated for Best Novel.

That’s a surprisingly large number, at least to me – and a cumulative total that I don’t believe has been calculated and reported before, or at least not in many years.

Yet, when I counted them up recently, I was even more surprised by the number of Best Novel nominees that turn out to be sequels. (Quite a few were hard to identify as sequels, by the way, until I researched each title – with some so obscure, and not immediately recognizable as sequels when nominated and read by Prometheus judges and LFS members, because many work fine as stand-alone stories without any obvious indications of previous works.)

Can you guess how many Best Novel nominees have been sequels?

Continue reading Sequels, part 9: By the numbers, Prometheus Awards history is full of Best Novel sequels

Sequels, part 5: Exploring the broader scope of Prometheus-winning sequel novels within Poul Anderson and Ken MacLeod tetralogies

By Michael Grossberg

When a sequel novel is part of a trilogy or series, it can help broaden the scope of a narrative and its world-building while providing a bigger canvas to explore more characters and subplots in greater depth.

Poul Anderson (Creative Commons license)
Ken MacLeod (Creative Commons photo)

Two internationally acclaimed science fiction writers who achieved such goals in Prometheus-winning Best Novel sequels are Poul Anderson and Ken MacLeod.

Previous articles in this series on Prometheus-winning sequel novels explored winners by Daniel Suarez (Critical Mass), Barry Longyear (The Hook), Travis Corcoran (Causes of Separation), Cory Doctorow (Homeland), Jo Walton (Ha’Penny) and Neal Stephenson (The System of the World).

Part 5 will discuss Anderson’s The Stars are Also Fire, the 1995 Best Novel winner, and MacLeod’s The Stone Canal, the 1998 Best Novel winner.

Both sequels are key works in their respective tetralogies.

Continue reading Sequels, part 5: Exploring the broader scope of Prometheus-winning sequel novels within Poul Anderson and Ken MacLeod tetralogies

Poul Anderson’s Hall of Fame winner ‘Star Fox’ on sale as ebook

The Star Fox by Poul Anderson, winner of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1995, currently is on sale as a Kindle for only $1.99.

1995 was a pretty good year for Anderson, at least as far as the Prometheus Award is concerned. Anderson also won the Prometheus Award that year for his novel The Stars Are Also Fire.

Continue reading Poul Anderson’s Hall of Fame winner ‘Star Fox’ on sale as ebook

Space exploration, A.I. and freedom: An Appreciation of Poul Anderson’s The Stars Are Also Fire, the 1995 Prometheus Best Novel winner

To highlight the four-decade history of the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society is publishing a series of review-essays explaining why past winners deserved recognition and fit the distinctive focus of the award on Liberty vs. Power. Here’s our Appreciation for Poul Anderson’s The Stars Are Also Fire, the 1995 Prometheus Best Novel winner.

By Michael Grossberg and Victoria Varga

Poul Anderson’s 1994 novel offers a thought-provoking scenario in a distant future in which man-made artificial intelligences have come to dominate human beings, while many people still struggle for freedom and independence in a new era of space exploration.

The point of view of The Stars Are Also Fire alternates frequently over five centuries between an early 21st-century era of occupation of Earth’s moon and later Earth/moon conflicts as genetically-altered-human Lunarians seek independence from Earth’s World Federation and Peace Authority.
Continue reading Space exploration, A.I. and freedom: An Appreciation of Poul Anderson’s The Stars Are Also Fire, the 1995 Prometheus Best Novel winner