{"id":10423,"date":"2026-03-28T00:02:48","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T05:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/?p=10423"},"modified":"2026-02-23T14:01:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:01:12","slug":"jo-walton-on-poul-anderson-one-prometheus-winner-recommends-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/jo-walton-on-poul-anderson-one-prometheus-winner-recommends-another\/","title":{"rendered":"Jo Walton on Poul Anderson: One Prometheus winner recommends another\u2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s great to see one widely respected sf\/fantasy author in praise of another. Especially when such praise reminds us of the talents and achievements of a truly grand master of sf\/fantasy who has passed but is far from forgotten.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jo Walton tips her hat to the late great Poul Anderson in her monthly book-review column for Reactor<\/i> magazine.<\/p>\n

Walton, who won her own Prometheus Award for Ha\u2019penny,<\/i> singled out the multiple-Prometheus-winning Anderson on her recommended-reading shortlist for All One Universe<\/i>, his 1996 short-story anthology.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis collection of stories and essays is just delightful\u2014great thought-provoking stories, and mostly interesting essays, and I loved it,\u201d Walton writes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bucking the common tendency to focus on new and newer works, Walton\u2019s salutary column<\/a> for Reactor (formerly tor.com<\/a>) offers a pithy recommended-reading shortlist that often highlights older novels worth reading or rereading by SF\/fantasy and other genre authors.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jo Walton in 2014 (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ANDERSON\u2019S ALL ONE UNIVERSE
\n<\/b>
\n\u201cSometimes I have said that all of SF can be seen as variations on a theme by Poul Anderson, because he wrote so many now-standard things for the first time. Also he threw out ideas as minor pegs in stories that other people would have made into whole trilogies. This is the stuff I grew up on,\u201d Walton writes.<\/p>\n

All One Universe <\/i>is described on Amazon as \u201ca richly varied assortment of stories by a master of the science fiction genre.\u201d Besides his stories, Anderson offers \u201cilluminating essays that provide commentary on his own stories and on the works of other literary figures, including Rudyard Kipling and John W. Campbell, Jr.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson\u2019s anthology is currently available on Amazon for $2.99 (as a Kindle ebook) and $13.60 in hardcover.<\/p>\n

Walton recommends the anthology in part because of its great range of subjects.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing at NASA as the Voyager pictures came in! Uncleftish Beholding! And the stories are SF or alternate history and they\u2019re terrific\u2026. If you like science fiction stories, if you like Anderson or if you want to try Anderson, you can\u2019t go wrong with this,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poul Anderson (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF POUL ANDERSON<\/b><\/p>\n

Anderson (1926-2001), the first author to be honored with a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement, has won seven Prometheus Awards, including for Best Novel in 1995 for The Stars Are Also Fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most recently, Anderson\u2019s 1983 novel Orion Shall Rise<\/a> <\/i>was inducted in 2025 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Other Anderson works inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame include his novel Trader to the Stars <\/a>(in 1985), his novel The Star Fox<\/a> (in 1995), his story \u201cNo Truce with Kings\u201d<\/a> (in 2010) and his story \u201cSam Hall\u201d <\/a>(in 2020.)<\/p>\n

Anderson won the Hugo Award seven times and the Nebula Award three times. In 1998, the Science Fiction Writers of America made Anderson its 16th SFWA Grand Master. In 2000, he was inducted into the fifth class of the\u00a0 <\/span>the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame as one of two deceased and two living writers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Jo Walton accepting her Prometheus Award in 2008<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF JO WALTON<\/b><\/p>\n

Walton, meanwhile, has earned her own similarly lengthy list of awards and achievements – well beyond the Prometheus award.<\/p>\n

The Welsh-Canadian sf author won the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2012 for her fantasy novel Among Other<\/i>s.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also won the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw,<\/i> the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for her fantasy novel Lifelode<\/i> and the 2015 Tiptree Award for her alternate history My Real Children.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ha\u2019penny,<\/em> a 2008 Prometheus Best Novel winner (along with Harry Turtledove\u2019s The Gladiator), <\/i>is the sequel to Farthing, <\/i>Walton\u2019s first science fiction novel after establishing herself as a fantasy writer.<\/p>\n

Along with Farthing<\/em> and Half a Crown<\/i>, the sequel to Ha\u2019penny,<\/i> the three novels are part of Walton\u2019s Small Change series bending alternate history with the cozy mystery genre. The dystopian setting is an alternate history in which a now-fascist and corrupt United Kingdom made peace with Adolf Hitler before the involvement of the United States in World War II.<\/p>\n

For more about what makes Ha\u2019penny <\/i>so rewarding and how it fits the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Awards on literary quality and liberty, read LFS President William H. Stoddard\u2019s review-essay Appreciation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Besides her Prometheus-winning Ha\u2019Penny,<\/em> Walton has been nominated for a Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Half a Crown<\/i>\u00a0(in 2008),\u00a0The Just City<\/i> (in 2016) and Necessity<\/i>\u00a0(in 2017).<\/p>\n

A personal note: I\u2019m a fan and regular reader of Walton’s book-review column, always fascinating to pore over to discover novels and authors worth reading – including quite a few I’d overlooked or had never heard about before.<\/p>\n

But I am constantly amazed each month by how much Walton is able to read and review – easily over a dozen books, sometimes much more – and still somehow manages to maintain the momentum of her prolific career as a writer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS<\/b><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us!<\/b> To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, \u00a0join<\/a> the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.<\/p>\n

* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/b>For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced \u00a0Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0on the LFS website. This page 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\u2019 distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Watch 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\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/a><\/p>\n

* Read \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/a> an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/i>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg It\u2019s great to see one widely respected sf\/fantasy author in praise of another. Especially when such praise reminds us of the talents and achievements of a truly grand master of sf\/fantasy who has passed but is far from forgotten. Jo Walton tips her hat to the late great Poul Anderson in her … Continue reading Jo Walton on Poul Anderson: One Prometheus winner recommends another\u2028<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,1585,1861,37],"tags":[2801,385,384,6,2802],"class_list":["post-10423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-fiction-in-the-news","category-poul-anderson","category-memorial-tributes","tag-all-one-universe","tag-hapenny","tag-jo-walton","tag-poul-anderson","tag-small-change-trilogy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-2I7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"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=10423"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10432,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10423\/revisions\/10432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}