{"id":2663,"date":"2020-12-07T21:08:42","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T03:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lfs.org\/blog\/?post_type=aiovg_videos&p=2663"},"modified":"2020-12-10T13:25:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T19:25:30","slug":"novelist-f-paul-wilson-lfs-co-founder-michael-grossberg-and-lfs-leader-tom-jackson-in-the-conzealand-worldcon-panel-on-freedom-in-sf-forty-years-of-the-prometheus-awards","status":"publish","type":"aiovg_videos","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/aiovg_videos\/novelist-f-paul-wilson-lfs-co-founder-michael-grossberg-and-lfs-leader-tom-jackson-in-the-conzealand-worldcon-panel-on-freedom-in-sf-forty-years-of-the-prometheus-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Novelist F. Paul Wilson, LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg and LFS leader Tom Jackson in the CoNZealand Worldcon panel on \u2018Freedom in SF: Forty Years of the Prometheus Awards\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a sample excerpt from the 50-minute CoNZealand Worldcon video, here is how LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg, a veteran newspaper journalist and arts critic, answered one of Tom Jackson’s questions:
\nQ:\u00a0<\/strong>After four decades, how have public perceptions of the Prometheus Awards evolved?
\nA:\u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s been great to see nominated authors and libertarian sf fans take it seriously from the start. Pretty quickly, publishers respected it enough to put the words \u201cPrometheus Awards winner\u201d or even Prometheus Awards finalist on the covers or backs of the paperbacks of winners, and it\u2019s often mentioned in author\u2019s bios and blogs.
\nIn recent years, we\u2019ve been pleasantly surprised by several major articles that have been published in respected publications that favorably mention the LFS and the Prometheus Awards \u2013 most notably, a recent article on \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction\u201d\u00a0<\/em>in\u00a0Quillet<\/em>te<\/a>,\u00a0a very cosmopolitan and international online magazine championing science, reason and liberty from a maverick and classical liberal and\/or civil libertarian perspective.<\/p>\n

Let me quote from Jordan Alexander Hill\u2019s June 2020 article on quillette.com:
\n\u201cIt is 2020, and though socialism is again in vogue\u2026 libertarian SF is showing no signs of waning\u2026. Libertarian-leaning authors have had an outsized, lasting influence on the field. Libertarians even have their own SF literature awards. Each year, the Prometheus and Prometheus Hall of Fame awards are given out by the Libertarian Futurist Society, a tradition dating back to the late 1970s. Instead of a trophy, winners are given a one-ounce gold coin \u201crepresenting free trade and free minds.\u201d
\n\u201cThe soil of speculative fiction has the right nutrients for the flourishing of libertarian values\u2026Unlike most ideologies that advocate forms of protectionism and Luddite restrictionism, the libertarian outlook values choice, freedom, and market solutions\u2026. Another element (in sf), certainly, is a general openness to radical new ideas and an instinctive rejection of stale convention and custom\u2026 Perhaps this is why so much of SF expresses itself as dystopian fiction, a genre which, by its very nature, cannot but take on a libertarian flavor. Totalitarianism, war, and wide-scale oppression is almost always carried out by state force. Liberation, accordingly, must come in the form of negative rights \u2014 that is, \u201cfreedom from\u201d \u2014 and voluntarism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Michael Grossberg (File photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Also, notably, Tor.com has recognized the Prometheus Awards favorably.
\nHere\u2019s an excerpt from James Davis Nicoll\u2019s article \u201c40 Years of the Prometheus Award\u201d:
\n\u201cThe Prometheus Award is an interesting case \u2026 Four decades is an impressive achievement. The current process is an interesting mixture of popular award (all members of the Society can nominate works for any category) and juried (committees for each category use ranked ballots to produce the finalist slate) \u2026 The results are as remarkable as the award\u2019s longevity \u2026 the LFS ranges far outside the borders of conventional American libertarian thought \u2026 with equally diverse selections on the nominee lists. (Recent lists of winners and finalists) are a reminder of just why following this particular award can be rewarding for readers of all stripes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novelist F. Paul Wilson, the first Prometheus winner in 1979, joined LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg and LFS board member Tom Jackson, the moderator, in a wide-ranging discussion of fiction, ideas and history Aug. 1, 2020 during CoNZealand, the first streaming Worldcon.
\nWilson discussed what the first Prometheus Awards ceremony was like, which of his Prometheus-winning novels is a particular favorite, how he feels about being known in some circles as a \u201clibertarian sf writer\u201d and discussed a possible Repairman Jack movie.
\nWilson and Grossberg, meanwhile, discussed why should there be a Prometheus award and what are some of their favorite winners. Grossberg recalled which winners were especially gracious, how the awards have evolved over the years, and whether they\u2019ve become more literary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","aiovg_categories":[],"aiovg_tags":[],"class_list":["post-2663","aiovg_videos","type-aiovg_videos","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aiovg_videos\/2663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aiovg_videos"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/aiovg_videos"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"aiovg_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aiovg_categories?post=2663"},{"taxonomy":"aiovg_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aiovg_tags?post=2663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}