What might have more lasting impact than a Prometheus award? (Or, what happened when I googled Rudyard Kipling’s “As Easy as A.B.C.”)


By Michael Grossberg

Sometimes, a review of a good novel can have a lasting impact, even more than an award or award nomination – something to ponder as we begin a new year of the blog and of the Prometheus Awards.

Perhaps that might seem counterintuitive or even heretical, when it comes to the Prometheus Awards and its 45-year-old track record of more than 100 winners – 106 at last count, including 46 in the Best Novel category, 48 in the Best Classic Fiction category and 12 Special Awards.

Yet, that thought was sparked recently by what happened when I was rereading Rudyard Kipling’s 1912 story “As Easy as A.B.C.” – one of four classic works selected as finalists for the Prometheus Hall of Fame – and decided to research it further via Google.

When I googled the words “Rudyard Kipling and “As Easy as A.B.C.,” guess what popped up rather high on the Google web links?

After understandable top rankings for The Kipling Society (which posts the complete story on its website, free for anyone to read), Good Reads, Wikipedia and the American Literature website, Google lists the Libertarian Futurist Society – specifically, a review-essay on “Kipling’s Political Theme in ‘As Easy as A.B.C.’”

Astonishingly, when that substantial and informed essay by William H. Stoddard was first published in the Summer 2011 issue of our former printed quarterly Prometheus newsletter (Volume 29, Number 4), only about 200 copies of that issue were printed and mailed across North America and a few overseas subscribers in Europe or South America.

Who knows? Back then, maybe just a few hundred people read that issue, and that article, if one assumes that friends and family members of Prometheus subscribers and Libertarian Futurist Society members might also have chanced upon it.

Yet, after LFS Webmaster Chris Hibbert and other LFS members worked hard on their multi-year project (mostly accomplished now, but still ongoing in parts) to add web links and PDF transcripts without charge to the Newsletter page of the LFS website at www.lfs.org, that limited-circulation essay is now far more widely available for anyone around the world to discover and read.

Thanks in the widest sense to the overall pattern of innovation, invention and people-serving progress that historically and philosophically has been unleashed as a result of even the partial emergence of the modern liberal/libertarian socioeconomic world order, one of the most thoughtful and insightful articles I’ve read about Kipling and his “airship utopia” future history is now part of the common cultural heritage of humanity.

Who knew that would happen when that issue of Prometheus was published and sent to such a relatively small mailing list? I know I didn’t, and I doubt Stoddard or anyone else within the LFS imagined that felicitous outcome either.

Upon further reflection, I began to ponder a new possibility and its implications for this blog.

What if the most important and most lasting thing that the LFS and the Prometheus awards can accomplish, over time, is not so much the mostly short-run impact of judges and members nominating works for our award, selecting finalists and voting on the annual winners?

What if, just as important and in some ways perhaps more influential in the long run, are the essays and reviews that we write and post online for fans and the general public to read?

What if, from now on (or at least, for many years, since forever is a long time), just about anyone with web access anywhere around the world can discover and read this essay about Kipling or any other posted review about any Prometheus-nominated work or author?

Robert Heinlein, a drawing (Creative Commons license)

How many people might thereby discover fresh aspects of and insights about Kipling’s classics?

Ursula K. Le Guin (Creative Commons license)

Or for that matter, how many more might thereby deepen their appreciation of outstanding, lasting works by Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Vernor Vinge, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, Terry Pratchett, Neal Stephenson, Ray Bradbury, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kurt Vonnegut, Ken MacLeod, F. Paul Wilson, L. Neil Smith, Sarah Hoyt, Barry Longyear, Victor Koman, Ursula Le Guin, C.J. Cherryh, Travis Corcoran, Dave Freer or any of the other Prometheus-winning authors whose works have won one of our awards since the late 1970s?

Nominating and ranking eligible works for the Prometheus Awards, or any other SF/fantasy award, is certainly important – as a way for fans and critics to recognize and remember worthy works that deserve to be read or viewed or heard, in some cases even years or decades after their first publication or appearance.

Yet, sometimes, a published review that’s available online can reach a much wider audience – one that might stretch on for generations to come.

Prometheus Awards press releases are more transitory. And while full lists of annual nominees and finalists in the 45-year history of the Prometheus Awards can be found, as a matter of historical record and for reference, from links on our Prometheus Awards page, most people tend to forget many nominees or finalists after a few years.

For instance, do you remember what else was a Prometheus finalist in 2000, when Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky deservedly won for Best Novel?

(Now it can be told department: I picked that year because it was one of the best and most competitive in Prometheus history, with such acclaimed SF writers as Gregory Benford, James Hogan, Ken MacLeod and Neal Stephenson competing with Vinge among the finalists.

Vernor Vinge in 1989 (From LFS photo file)

That year, there were at least two finalists good enough to win, and the other novel went on years later to be among the first previous Best Novel finalists to be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.)

Ultimately, of course, both awards and reviews are important.

Both a Prometheus Blog review and Prometheus Awards recognition can raise the profile of a worthy work of fiction and potentially introduce it to a larger audience and new generations.

As a new year dawns, therefore, keep in mind the possibility of writing a review – or even just a few paragraphs – describing your appreciation for a speculative novel or other work that might appeal to other LFS members and libertarian SF/fantasy fans.

For more information or to submit an article for the blog, contact Michael Grossberg (at bestnovel@lfs.org ) or one of the other Prometheus Blog editors.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:

* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including 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, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.

* 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.

* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt), Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.

* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.

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 association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.

Published by

Michael Grossberg

Michael Grossberg, who founded the LFS in 1982 to help sustain the Prometheus Awards, has been an arts critic, speaker and award-winning journalist for five decades. Michael has won Ohio SPJ awards for Best Critic in Ohio and Best Arts Reporting (seven times). He's written for Reason, Libertarian Review and Backstage weekly; helped lead the American Theatre Critics Association for two decades; and has contributed to six books, including critical essays for the annual Best Plays Theatre Yearbook and an afterword for J. Neil Schulman's novel The Rainbow Cadenza. Among books he recommends from a libertarian-futurist perspective: Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist & How Innovation Works, David Boaz's The Libertarian Mind and Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress.

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