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No stranger to the Prometheus Award, Gallagher previously has been nominated for four other novels – while Captain Trader Helmsman Spy,<\/em>\u00a0the latest in his Fall of the Censor series, is a current Best Novel nominee.<\/p>\n Storm Between The Stars,\u00a0<\/em>the first novel in his Fall of the Censor series, was a 2021 Best Novel finalist.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the three novels in his interstellar Torchship trilogy (Torchship, Torchship Pilot\u00a0<\/em>and Torchship Captain)\u00a0<\/em>were combined by LFS judges into one nomination (since together, they tell one complete story) and became a 2018 Best Novel finalist.<\/p>\n Gallagher, who lives outside Fort Worth, Texas, with his wife Laura, daughter Maggie, son James and cat Kethry (named after the Mercedes Lackey character), recently was interviewed by Michael Grossberg, a Prometheus Blog editor.<\/p>\n Q: How did you get interested in science fiction\/fantasy?<\/p>\n A: There’s an old joke about the golden age of science fiction being\u00a012, implying whatever books you read first are the best ones.\u00a0My father died when I was young and I inherited his SF collection, so for\u00a0me the golden age spanned from the 19th century “Edison’s Conquest of\u00a0Mars” to stories from the early \u201870s. Most were from the \u201840s through\u00a0\u201860s, so I had a wide grounding in the classics of the field.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: Where did you grow up and go to school?<\/p>\n A: I\u00a0was born in upstate New York, where my parents were attending A: My father’s book collection included non-fiction on rocketry and astronomy, including references from his experiments with model rockets. Between them and stories such as (Heinlein\u2019s) “The Man Who Sold the Moon” I was fascinated with designing and building spacecraft and planning missions to other worlds.<\/p>\n Q: You\u2019ve earned engineering degrees from MIT and USC, designed weather satellites for TRW, controlled weather satellites for the Air Force, designed a rocket-ship for a start-up and done systems engineering for a fighter plane. Were there any historical events related to space that especially inspired you to go into engineering as a career?<\/p>\n A: My childhood reading was enough to convince me to major in One of the investigating commissioners was a professor from our department, who shared a number of details about the investigation that didn’t make the news. That gave me a determination to make sure what systems I worked on were done right so we wouldn’t have such disasters again.<\/p>\n A: As I was finishing up my Lost War\u00a0<\/em>duology, I cast about for ideas for\u00a0the next project. I had a description of a world I\u2019d made for an RPG.<\/p>\n There was a scene of a crew dealing with a breakdown on their\u00a0freighter. And there were a couple of ideas I\u2019d been kicking around:\u00a0one for a more complex version of hyperspace, as opposed to the empty\u00a0void it is in many SF stories. I wanted hyperspace to be someplace\u00a0dangerous, forcing changes in spaceship designs and battle tactics.<\/p>\n The other concept was thinking about the problems people have in\u00a0large, crowded societies. What would a large society look like if\u00a0everyone was grouped into Dunbar\u2019s Number size units?<\/p>\n Then I stumbled\u00a0across the \u201cCensorate\u201d government agency in Chinese history (sort of\u00a0an Imperial inspector general) while looking for a better name than\u00a0\u201cempire\u201d and the whole concept came together.<\/p>\n Q: How would you describe the central themes explored in the Fall of the Censor series?<\/p>\n The Censorate side of the story is studying how a powerful bureaucracy\u00a0cripples itself by not letting information rise through the A: Readers want them. I regularly see my greatest sales from the complete Torchship\u00a0<\/em>Trilogy omnibus. When writers discuss how long a series should be, everyone keeps finding that longer sells better.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a caveat there \u2014 some readers have been burned by never-finished series and will only start one when the last book is out. But generally whenever a new book in a series comes out someone will start reading it from the beginning.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure how much of this is a change in tastes versus the But the hungriest readers will gobble down a ten-book series and ask for more.<\/p>\n For more information about Karl H. Gallagher’s current and upcoming novels, visit Kelt Haven Press’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Coming up soon:\u00a0<\/strong>Part 2 of the Gallagher interview, focusing on his Torchship trilogy, favorite sf authors and the impact of the Prometheus Awards.<\/p>\n * Watch the videos<\/strong>\u00a0of 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 Video page.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n * Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For a list of winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced\u00a0Prometheus Awards page\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to the full set of published appreciation-reviews of past winners.<\/p>\n * Read\u00a0\u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/em>\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
\ncollege. We bounced around for a few years, following my father’s
\nacademic aspirations, and then settled on Long Island. I went to
\ncollege at MIT, majoring in Aero\/Astro Engineering.<\/p>\n<\/a>Q: Many of your novels \u2013 including your Torchship\u00a0<\/em>trilogy and your ongoing Fall of the Censor series – focus on space travel and space exploration. How did you get interested in that?<\/p>\n
\nengineering. When I was a freshman at MIT the Shuttle Challenger
\nexploded, shattering many of our aspirations.<\/p>\n<\/a>Q: What inspired your Fall of the Censor series?<\/p>\n<\/a>A: The stories on Corwynt are focusing on how a society of small clans can function with a modern population and economy. As the stories touch on other worlds, I want to show the variety of ways people can live, when each culture is effectively isolated from each other (the Censorate doesn\u2019t care how you live, as long as you obey).<\/p>\n
\n\u2018thermocline of truth\u2019 and how destroying history ruins your ability
\nto function efficiently.<\/p>\n<\/a>Q: Why do you think so many more writers today seem to write series or\u00a0trilogies, rather than stand-alone novels?<\/p>\n
\nInternet enabling readers to obtain the whole series. Decades back I
\nspent many hours in used book stores, and would occasionally pick up a
\nduplicate because I wanted to complete that series and wasn\u2019t sure if
\nI had that volume at home. Now Amazon helpfully tells you if you\u2019ve
\nbought a book already, and keeps the entire backlist available as
\nebooks (Not, alas, true for all older books yet).<\/p>\n<\/a>People will still buy stand-alone novels \u2014 Andy Weir (The Martian, <\/em>Prometheus Best Novel finalist\u00a0Artemis<\/em>) <\/em>is having great success with them.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n