The Libertarian Futurist Society made significant progress this year in raising its visibility worldwide and enhancing its website and blog.
If you haven’t had a chance to check it all out yet, why not take this New Year’s Eve weekend to take a fresh look, check out some of the links below and celebrate LFS success as well as the new year?
VISIT THE NEW VIDEOS PAGE!
Have you seen the new Videos page on the LFS website?
It’s now up, at the top of the Home page, with a clickable “Videos” link to the right of the “Blog” subhed.
Among the videos are the two 2020 panel discussions, one at the New Zealand Worldcon and the other at the Columbus NASFiC, that highlighted interesting perspectives by several Prometheus Award winners (Cherryh, Fancher, Hoyt and Wilson) and LFS leaders.
Ironically, although the pandemic and lockdowns harmed the lives, liberties and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and around the world, people demonstrated their resourcefulness and resilience in countless ways – including by pioneering the first all-online Worldcon and NASFiC, which made these outstanding LFS programs an online reality.
Thanks to LFS board members Chris Hibbert and Charles Morrison, whose website expertise and volunteer work helped make the new Videos page possible.
VISIT THE ENHANCED PROMETHEUS BLOG!
Launched in 2019, the Prometheus Blog’s retrospective Appreciation series continued on its roughly regular weekly pace throughout 2020 and is expected to continue well into 2021.
The purpose of the ambitious Appreciation series is to eventually recognize all past Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction winners with review-essays that explain why each work is appreciated by libertarians, classical liberals, other individual-rights advocates and freedom lovers – as well as appreciated by many sf/fantasy fans who may have enjoyed the winning works without realizing that they dramatize strong pro-freedom or anti-authoritarian content that the Prometheus Awards were established in the 1970s to honor and support.
Among the LFS members who have written appreciations, and/or volunteered to write more, are Michael Grossberg, Chris Hibbert, Tom Jackson, Jesse Markowitz, Anders Monsen, Eric Raymond and William H. Stoddard. Their efforts are much appreciated.
Bolstered by the Appreciation series and other routine LFS news updates, articles and links to interesting articles, the Prometheus Blog posted a record 63 articles in 2020. That’s up from 37 blog posts in 2019, 26 in 2018 and 23 in 2017. (The blog, a replacement for the printed quarterly Prometheus newsletter, was established in May 2017.)
More Prometheus Blog posts are being read and quoted from – including in the international Quillette magazine that very positively mentioned the LFS, the Prometheus Awards and many Prometheus-winning authors in an insightful and illuminating article in June 2020 on “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction.”
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PROMETHEUS BLOG!
Anyone can subscribe to the Prometheus Blog. It’s free!
To subscribe, visit the Blog page and click on the Subscribe link in the upper left of the blog. Then enter your email address and visit your email cue to confirm your address via the automatic LFS blog email just generated.
That’s all there is to it!
Once you subscribe, you automatically will receive an email with a direct link and the opening paragraphs each time a new blog review, essay, news note or awards update is posted.
Note: Of course, subscribing to the Prometheus Blog is no substitute for joining the LFS, which helps sustain the Prometheus Awards. To join, or to renew your membership – available at several levels, from Basic and Full to Sponsor and Benefactor – visit the LFS Membership page.
VISIT THE ENHANCED PROMETHEUS AWARDS PAGE!
As Appreciations of each past Prometheus winner are published on the blog, convenient Appreciation links are added to each on the Prometheus Awards page that lists all past winners in each of the three awards categories.
The Prometheus Awards page is interesting to scroll through on its own as a de facto recommended reading list for both sf/fantasy fans and libertarians.
You can see what’s won and who wrote it in each year. (Click on the work title to go to the Amazon page where that work is available for sale.)
The awards page also contains separate links, at the bottom of each awards-category list, to two somewhat “hidden” LFS website pages that list each year’s nominees and finalists for the Best Novel category, first presented in 1979, and the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, first presented in 1983.
For LFS members, the Classic Fiction nominees page can be fruitful to browse through to refresh your memory of past nominees that haven’t been inducted yet into the Hall of Fame – and which are still eligible for any LFS member to nominate.
FIND OUT HOW TO SUBMIT AWARD SUGGESTIONS!
Also recently added to the Prometheus Awards page, as well as the bottom of the Home page, is a handy link to a new submission-guidelines letter, designed to advise publishers, sf authors and sf fans on the best way to bring eligible potential nominees to the LFS’ attention.
Outsiders are welcome to submit works for consideration, which are then read and reviewed carefully by LFS judges and members, but only LFS members have the right to formally nominate eligible works for the Prometheus Awards annual categories (for Best Novel or Best Classic Fiction) or our occasional Special Awards.
VISIT THE NEWSLETTER PAGE TO READ BACK ISSUES!
Looking ahead to 2021, LFS members are working on enhancements to other parts of the blog and website – including the Newsletter page, which contains an Index of past issues of the former Prometheusquarterly newsletter (published from 1982 to 2010).
LFS Webmaster Chris Hibbert, working with Anders Monsen and other past editors and contributors to the Prometheus newsletter, are continuing to fill in the gaps and add entire back issues in PDF format as well as individual direct links to some of the most interesting reviews, interviews, columns and articles that are still worth reading.
SHOP & ‘SMILE’ TIL YOU DROP – AND HELP THE LFS!
As you shop during the holiday season or afterwards, or just purchase a book, CD, or other product online throughout the year, we want to remind you of an easy way to support the Libertarian Futurist Society without costing any more money.
Amazon’s Amazon Smile program generates revenues for 501(c)(3) nonprofit groups and charities registered with the IRS. (The Libertarian Futurist Society is a 501(c)(3) group and recognized by this Amazon program.)
All you have to do to take part is list the “Libertarian Futurist Society” as the group you support – then go to Smile.amazon.com (rather than the regular Amazon website) when you do your shopping.
Amazon will still use your existing Amazon account — the shopping experience is exactly the same — but will donate 0.5 percent of the purchase price to the Libertarian Futurist Society. (It doesn’t raise the price of your purchase; also, you can’t deduct any of the purchase from your taxes.)
For details of how to list the LFS as your supported nonprofit group and how to start shopping on Amazon Smile, please see Amazon’s FAQ at smile.amazon.com/about.
AND HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Finally, here’s a happy New Year to all sf/fantasy fans, freedom lovers, and Libertarian Futurist Society members.
We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and will continue to do so during the pandemic, and that every person on Planet Earth will have a healthy, safe, prosperous and free-er new year in 2021!
