Seattle’s upcoming Worldcon pays affectionate tribute to Poul Anderson



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.

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The Rick Triplett interview, part 4: On aikido, the right of self-defense, free trade and first-contact stories

Here is part 4 of the Prometheus Blog interview with Rick Triplett, a lifelong science fiction fan, decades-long libertarian, a veteran Prometheus Awards judge and recently honored as the Libertarian Futurist Society’s first Emeritus member.

Rick Triplett demonstrating the art of aikido in 2007 at a community cultural festival (Photo courtesy of Triplett)

Q: You’ve practiced aikido for many years – and have even demonstrated the martial art at area festivals. What attracted you to aikido and does it have any relevance to your libertarian views?

A: Aikido is a non-aggressive martial art (virtually the only one).

Its strategy is to de-escalate rather than resort to fighting; its tactics are to avoid and restrain, rather than to damage the opponent. Although its techniques can damage or kill, they are applied in a measured way that at least attempts allowing an attacker to shift from domination to negotiation.

It respects human agency including one’s own right to self-defense.

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Entrepreneurship and a swashbuckling merchant-hero: Poul Anderson’s Trader to the Stars, a 1985 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner

The Libertarian Futurist Society is publishing an Appreciation series of Prometheus award-winners that makes clear why each winner deserves recognition as notable pro-freedom and/or anti-authoritarian in theme. Here is our Appreciation of Poul Anderson’s Trader to the Stars, a 1985 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction.

By Michael Grossberg
    Trader to the Stars, part of Anderson’s interstellar and libertarian-themed Future History series written over four decades, offers three loosely interconnected and longer stories about the free-trade-oriented Polesotechnic League operating during a Terran Empire.

Blending adventure, mystery and sf with some swashbuckling heroism and vivid descriptions often evoking Norse sagas, this 1964 book centers on Nicholas van Rijn, a resourceful and clever Danish merchant-hero (Anderson was Danish-American).

Anderson, always a realist about humanity with a sensibility of a melancholy romantic, portrays both humans and aliens as self-interested, striving to make a buck and satisfy their various needs amid an imperfect world of struggling and flawed peoples – in short, a future just like today.

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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.
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