By Michael Grossberg
How do Libertarian Futurist Society members rank the Best Novel finalists as they fill out the final Prometheus Awards ballot?
Members typically keep their rankings private, while the LFS vote-counting committee maintains strict confidentiality about the results, aside from the announcement of the winners. Today, though, on the verge of the midnight July 4 voting deadline, one LFS member chose to post a YouTube video explaining his rankings.
It’s the latest yeoman effort by novelist John C.A. Manley, who throughout this past awards-finalist season has repeatedly helped raise the visibility of the Prometheus Awards by posting YouTube discussions of award finalists and by reviewing each Best Novel finalist on his BlazingPineCones website.
“Help promote the fiction you want to see in the world,” Manley said in his email today to BlazingPineCones subscribers.
That’s an apt statement, which helps illuminates his (and our) vision of why the Prometheus Awards is important and clarifies why Manley has invested so much time and energy this year in highlighting our award.
So how did Manley, himself a Prometheus Best Novel nominee for All the Humans Are Sleeping, rank the five Best Novel finalists?
MANLEY’S SUSPENSEFUL COUNTDOWN
To find out, what his short video on YouTube, Rumble, BitChute, Instagram and X.
For each finalist, Manley picks the book off his living-room shelf and shows its cover as he begins discussing its merits. His discussions are frank, detailing what he loved (and didn’t love) about each novel.
To enhance the suspense, Manley begins by revealing his fifth-ranked choice first, moving up in succession to discussions of his fourth-ranked, third-ranked and second-ranked choices before revealing which finalist is his favorite.
As a reminder, here are the Best Novel finalists in brief, in alphabetical order by author: Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press); War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press); No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press); A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press); and Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)
Which of the finalists is Manley’s favorite?
And which novel will win this year’s Prometheus Award for Best Novel?
To answer the first question, watch Manley’s video.
To find out the answer to the second question, stay tuned to the Prometheus blog and the LFS website, where this year’s awards news should be posted within the next week.
BELIEF VERSUS IDEOLOGY IN TURTLEDOVE’S POWERLESS
Meanwhile, in a previously posted video, Manley discusses an interesting aspect of Powerless on The Corbett Report with James Corbett.
In the two-minute video, they explore “Belief Versus Ideology in Harry Turtledove’s Alternate History.”
Set James Corbett and I discuss just that — as part of a review of Harry Turtledove’s novel, Powerless (an alternative history in which the United States of America has become a collection of Soviet-ruled communist nations)…
“Ideology doesn’t specifically refer to beliefs. It refers to a group belief system,” Manley said.
“There’s nothing wrong with having your own beliefs… but the thing is, the problem is that no one in this society is allowed to have their own beliefs, or allowed to report that they have their own beliefs,” he said.
Inspired by Vaclav Havel’s classic essay “Power of the Powerless,” Turtledove sets his novel decades ago in a communist America where small moments of defiance or quiet resistance to governmental repression have unexpectedly big consequences.
Set in the western United States dominated by a Soviet-Union-fostered socialist tyranny, the novel begins with one shopkeeper’s impulsive and fed-up act of taking down from his grocery storefront window a required propaganda poster expressing solidarity with the state revolution.
“They have to take on the beliefs of what (Vaclav) Havel called a sacralized religion… rather than their own opinions about reality,” Manley said.
Kudos to Manley (and to Corbett) for devoting so many videos, podcast discussions and reviews to this year’s Best Novel finalists.
If every LFS member had similar means to discuss and promote our awards on videos and blogs as Manley has done, the Prometheus Awards might well be even more widely known and better understood.
ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of the 106 works that have won a Prometheus since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
