![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lfs.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/220px-Robert_Heinlein_Amazing_5304-1.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>A: Robert Heinlein<\/a>, for ideals and heroic characters.<\/p>\n Larry Niven<\/a>, for ideas driving stories.<\/p>\n Lois McMaster Bujold,<\/a> for looking at what a change will do to people and how they’ll react.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Q: Who were the first sf\/fantasy authors that you read and enjoyed as a boy?<\/p>\n A: Heinlein was always my favorite, but I loved many others, including\u00a0Larry Niven, Zenna Henderson, Poul Anderson<\/a>, and J. R. R. Tolkien<\/a>.<\/p>\n When I was old enough to start buying my own books, I discovered Lois McMaster Bujold, David Weber, and Vernor Vinge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Q: Is it a coincidence that your list of favorite sf\/fantasy authors overlaps strongly with Prometheus Award-winning authors?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what I\u2019m referring to: Most notably, Poul Anderson has won more awards than anyone else except Heinlein \u2013 receiving recognition for Trader to the Stars,\u00a0<\/em>a 1985 Hall of Fame inductee; The Star Fox,<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>a 1995 inductee; \u201cNo Truce with Kings,\u201d<\/a> a 2010 inductee; \u201cSam Hall,\u201d<\/a> a 2020 inductee; and The Stars Are Also Fire<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>the 1995 Prometheus Best Novel winner.<\/p>\n Not to mention Bujold (Falling Free,\u00a0<\/em>the 2014 Prometheus Hall of Fame inductee); Niven (Fallen Angels, <\/em>the 1992 Best Novel winner co-written by Michael Flynn and Jerry Pournelle), Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings), <\/em>or\u00a0Vernor Vinge (Marooned in Real Time, A Deepness in the Sky, \u201cTrue Names\u201d).<\/em><\/p>\n Plus, Weber has been nominated five times for Best Novel.<\/p>\n Only Zenna Henderson hasn\u2019t been nominated for a Prometheus.<\/p>\n A: It\u2019s probably not coincidental that Zenna Henderson hasn’t been\u00a0nominated. Her stories focus on an intimate personal scale, people\u00a0hiding among a culture they don’t fit in to, and lack the grand scale For the larger group, no, it’s not a coincidence so much as it is a\u00a0genre. People read stories for various characteristics, most often Science fiction has the “sense of wonder” as its genre-defining characteristic. The Prometheus winners have a sense of freedom as their genre-defining characteristic, and people who love that in their stories will find others in that genre.<\/p>\n Q: As an adult sf fan, how have your tastes evolved and what are some current favorites?<\/p>\n \u2022 Lois Bujold’s Sharing Knife<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>series: This operates on multiple levels,\u00a0first a grizzled adventure hero fighting monsters with his spunky\u00a0sidekick, then a longer-term plot of a couple finding love despite bad\u00a0experiences, age differences, and coming from clashing cultures<\/p>\n A background question is how a society focused entirely on fighting a\u00a0specific threat can adapt as that threat fades away. And perhaps of\u00a0more interest to LFS members, a look at how an anarcho-fommunist\u00a0society and an anarcho-capitalist one interpenetrating with each other\u00a0can handle conflicts with each other and accept people moving from one\u00a0to another.<\/p>\n \u2022 Wen Spencer’s Alien Taste:\u00a0<\/em>Remember the monster from The Thing\/Who Goes There?<\/em><\/p>\n Now make it the\u00a0protagonist.<\/p>\n A teenage kid, found wandering the wilderness, trying to\u00a0find his origins while growing into a human adult.<\/p>\n \u2022 Walter Jon Williams’ Implied Spaces:\u00a0<\/em>A society which reached the edge\u00a0of the Singularity and stopped faces a conspiracy.<\/p>\n Compared\u00a0to this guy, Sauron is beating up elementary school kids for their\u00a0lunch money.<\/p>\n Q: Looking over the long list of Prometheus Award winners for Best\u00a0Novel from the past 43 years, do you have a favorite book or two?<\/p>\n A: Just two? No, not two.<\/p>\n Q: Ditto for the past winners of the Prometheus Hall of Fame. Which classics on that list do you most admire?<\/p>\n A: Most of them. That list looks a lot like my bookshelves growing\u00a0up — which also says my father was a fan of the freedom genre.<\/p>\n Many of my favorites are the short stories, which I’m glad to see getting I’d have to say Poul Anderson’s “No Truce With Kings”<\/a> is my favorite on the list. It’s not just a grand adventure story.<\/p>\n The climactic speech “Did you ever stop to think that maybe feudalism is\u00a0what suits man? Some one place to call our own, and belong to, and be\u00a0part of?” has made me averse to centralized plans of all types, and\u00a0encouraged me to reflect on the importance of understanding human\u00a0nature as it is, not how we want it to be, in planning societies. Q: How important do you think the Hugos, the Nebulas, the Prometheus and other sf\/fantasy awards \u2013 have been, and are to sf readers? Especially younger readers and others not as familiar with the field?<\/p>\n A: I hate to say this, especially in this context, but I have the feeling that awards are being looked at less than they used to be by readers.<\/p>\n Thirty years ago it was very hard to find information on the\u00a0books you were looking at on the shelf. If you wanted help making up\u00a0your mind, an award mention on the cover could tip you over. Now there’s Amazon reviews, and Goodread reviews, and people talking books on blogs and twitter and videos.<\/p>\n On the flip side, there are hundreds of thousands, possibly over a million, new writers coming out with a book in English every year.<\/p>\n For someone on the long tail of the popularity curve, an award can bring enough attention to attract a larger audience.<\/p>\n * Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For a full 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 * 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 * 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 *\u00a0Join us<\/strong>! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards,\u00a0join\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital, and in some ways even more powerful than politics in the long run, by sparking innovation, better ideas, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights and differences.<\/p>\n Through recognizing the literature of liberty and the many different but complementary visions of a free future via the Prometheus Awards, the LFS hopes to help spread better visions of the future that help humanity overcome tyranny, slavery and war and achieve universal liberty and human rights and a better world (perhaps eventually, worlds) for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So far, in the first two parts of his Prometheus-blog interview, SF writer Karl K. Gallagher has answered questions about his own novels. Now, in the wide-ranging conclusion, the focus shifts to other authors and his favorite works – including the “sense of wonder” and “sense of freedom” that he gets from his favorite pro-liberty … Continue reading A sense of wonder: The Gallagher Interview (part 3), about Heinlein, Niven, Bujold and other sf authors, favorite novels, and what he thinks of awards<\/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":[32,1910,36,1863,1861,1860,2021],"tags":[1611,1610,1608,1606,1006,97,1071,20,46,21,1609,69,1612,1607],"class_list":["post-4652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-f-paul-wilson","category-interviews","category-j-r-r-tolkien","category-poul-anderson","category-robert-heinlein","category-vernor-vinge","tag-alien-taste","tag-diamond-age","tag-hugos","tag-jrr-tolkien","tag-karl-k-gallagher","tag-larry-niven","tag-lois-mcmaster-bujold","tag-neal-stephenson","tag-prometheus-awards","tag-robert-heinlein","tag-sharing-knife","tag-vernor-vinge","tag-wen-spencer","tag-zenna-henderson"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-1d2","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652","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=4652"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5440,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652\/revisions\/5440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nand action more common in the Prometheus nominees.<\/p>\n
\nfeeling a vicarious emotion: heroism for adventure stories, justice\u00a0for mysteries, love for romance, etc. Most stories tap into more than\u00a0emotion, making categorization hard.<\/p>\n<\/a>A: Excluding the classics, many of which I’ll still re-read, some of the newer books that come to mind as ones I’ll re-read for pleasure are:<\/p>\n<\/a>\u2022 Neal Stephenson’s The\u00a0Diamond Age<\/em>: A fascinating takes on how AI-enabled teaching can work and what a world of fragmented tribes would look like<\/p>\n<\/a>Alien invasion, individual pieces cut off turn into\u00a0<\/i>independent animals, almost impossible to kill?<\/p>\n<\/a>The villain’s goal is to unite humanity for the purpose of waging war against God to\u00a0extract reparations for all the suffering that’s ever been.<\/p>\n<\/a>The ones that appear most often on the re-read\u00a0list are Fallen Angels<\/em> (the 1992 winner by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn),\u00a0A Deepness in the Sky <\/em>(Vernor Vinge\u2019s 2000 winner), and Powers of the Earth\/Causes of Separation<\/a> <\/em>(Travis Corcoran\u2019s paired 2018 and 2019 winners), but I’ve read and enjoyed many of them.<\/p>\n
\nrecognition. “Lipidleggin'”<\/a>, “Harrison Bergeron,”<\/a> “True Names”<\/a>,
\nand Harlan Ellison’s “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ said the Ticktockman,<\/a>” are all great.<\/p>\n<\/a>A short story can focus its idea hard enough to make a lasting impression easier than a novel can.<\/p>\n
\n<\/a>
\nIt’s\u00a0one of the threads that fed into creating the clan-based society of\u00a0Corwynt in my Fall of the Censor stories.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n