{"id":6036,"date":"2023-07-19T14:00:34","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T19:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/?p=6036"},"modified":"2024-01-03T19:33:34","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T01:33:34","slug":"the-power-of-prometheus-2023-best-novel-winner-dave-freer-shares-thoughts-about-the-greek-legend-and-heinlein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/the-power-of-prometheus-2023-best-novel-winner-dave-freer-shares-thoughts-about-the-greek-legend-and-heinlein\/","title":{"rendered":"The power of Prometheus: 2023 Best Novel winner Dave Freer shares thoughts about the Greek legend (and Heinlein)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian writer Dave Freer had some interesting thoughts about the Greek God Prometheus and Robert Heinlein after learning that his novel Cloud-Castles<\/em> has won the 2023 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAccording to Aeschylus, (Prometheus) caused blind hope to live in the hearts of men (a goal of my writing if ever had one),\u201d Freer wrote in \u201cPrometheus Bound,\u201d<\/a> his latest post on the Mad Genius Club blog.<\/p>\n

\u201cA trickster who stole fire from the gods for man and pushed them towards science and technology, as well deceiving the powers-that-be (Zeus) of the day, into choosing the rubbish which looks good on the outside, instead of the good that looks rubbish on the outside… he’s my sort of guy,\u201d Freer said.<\/p>\n

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Australian writer Dave Freer Photo courtesy of author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Freer also acknowledges the late great Heinlein, whose novelette \u201cFree Men\u201d was recognized as a winner this year in the other annual Prometheus category for Best Classic Fiction. (Heinlein’s story will be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame and Freer will accept his award for Best Novel at a live Zoom Prometheus Awards ceremony, tentatively scheduled for early Saturday afternoon – Eastern U.S. time – on Aug. 19. Stay tuned for more awards-ceremony updates.)<\/p>\n

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Robert Heinlein (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI feel a total imposter when looking at some the other works so honored over the years. Imagine being recognized alongside Robert Heinlein? My cup overflows,\u201d Freer wrote.<\/p>\n

ABOUT CLOUD-CASTLES<\/strong><\/p>\n

The rest of his blog post \u2013 well worth reading – discusses his thinking behind Cloud-Castles<\/em> and what inspired its many fascinatingly different cultures, societies and settings, both human and alien.<\/p>\n

Freer explains how his comical adventure\/coming-of-age novel differs from most \u201cmodern sf\u201d and how the different human societies and cultures he portrays in the vast clouds above a gas-giant planet reflect different aspects of Australia \u2013 both good (the frontier outback culture) and bad (the bureaucratic, centralized and authoritarian aspects and trends of the country).<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe story is not set in a future which is thinly dressed up culturally and outlook east coast urban US. It’s profoundly Australian and makes fun of the sacred cows of the above,\u201d Freer writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are good and bad aspects to that – The part of Australia that accepts authority no matter how illogical and outright nasty, that accepts that only criminals and the government should be armed – and the part of Australia that gave us the Eureka Stockade, and the self-sufficient independence of the those who moved deep into the outback – as often as not to avoid authority.<\/p>\n

\u201cI attempted to create the two extremes – an extremely constrained urban environment, and one in which the normal constraint on working anarchy – the ability to leave any form of constraint without too much difficulty. How co-operation could\/must work if there really is no effective means of compulsion (all governments trend toward compulsion and the reduction of individual freedoms. It takes constant effort to restrain this tendency.)\u201d<\/p>\n

Freer wrote Cloud-Castles<\/em> consciously \u201cas a thing of layers, each intended for different purposes.\u201d To entertain. To make people laugh. And to make people think.<\/p>\n

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Freer ends his column on an inspiring note, championing freedom, the power of ideas and why seeing freedom dramatized in fiction is so important.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are lots of ideas there. I don’t preach them or dictate them. I just show them. There are various others. And finally… well I raise hope in the hearts of men. Freedom can exist,\u201d Freer writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we see that, it is not a flame that dies easily.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Visit the Mad Genius Club blog at https:\/\/madgeniusclub.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Check out the LFS press release<\/a> about the 2023 Prometheus winners.<\/p>\n

For more about Dave Freer winning the Prometheus Award for Cloud-Castles,<\/em> and becoming the first Australian writer and first writer from the Southern Hemisphere to receive Prometheus recognition, check out this recent blog post.<\/a><\/p>\n

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IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE:
\n<\/strong>
\n<\/u><\/strong>* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For the full list of Prometheus 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

*\u00a0Watch\u00a0 <\/strong>videos <\/strong>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.<\/strong><\/a><\/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

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Australian writer Dave Freer had some interesting thoughts about the Greek God Prometheus and Robert Heinlein after learning that his novel Cloud-Castles has won the 2023 Prometheus Award for Best Novel. \u201cAccording to Aeschylus, (Prometheus) caused blind hope to live in the hearts of men (a goal of my writing if ever had one),\u201d Freer … Continue reading The power of Prometheus: 2023 Best Novel winner Dave Freer shares thoughts about the Greek legend (and Heinlein)<\/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":[32,687,31,1860],"tags":[2020,1983,594,1839,1841,1934,2013,16,21],"class_list":["post-6036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-award-acceptance-speech","category-awards-news","category-robert-heinlein","tag-free-men-prometheus-hall-of-fame","tag-australia","tag-best-novel","tag-cloud-castles","tag-dave-freer","tag-mad-genius-club","tag-outback-culture","tag-prometheus-award","tag-robert-heinlein"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-1zm","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036","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=6036"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6043,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6036\/revisions\/6043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}