{"id":8991,"date":"2025-05-08T00:05:51","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T05:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/?p=8991"},"modified":"2025-05-05T22:29:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T03:29:40","slug":"sequels-part-4-while-few-sequels-surpass-their-originals-three-prometheus-best-novel-winners-by-doctorow-walton-and-stephenson-offer-rich-rewards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/sequels-part-4-while-few-sequels-surpass-their-originals-three-prometheus-best-novel-winners-by-doctorow-walton-and-stephenson-offer-rich-rewards\/","title":{"rendered":"Sequels, part 4: While few sequels surpass their originals, three Prometheus Best Novel winners by Doctorow, Walton and Stephenson offer rich rewards"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Let\u2019s face it: Most sequels don\u2019t measure up to the originals. Yet, when they meet – or surpass – expectations while offering further satisfactions in their own right, sequels deserve recognition.<\/p>\n

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While quite a large number of sequel novels have been nominated for a Prometheus Award over the past 46 years, only a fraction have gone on to become Best Novel finalists. Even fewer have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel – by my count, 10 novels, all worth reading or rereading.<\/p>\n

That’s especially impressive, since most novels fall short in various ways, reflecting the iron law of mediocrity. As the great SF short-story writer Theodore Sturgeon put it, in what came to be called Sturgeon\u2019s Law: \u201c90% of everything is crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond the general requirements of solid storytelling, strong characters, propulsive plots and believable settings that apply to all literature, writing a sequel poses additional challenges – especially in finding and delivering the tricky balance between the fondly familiar and the excitingly fresh.<\/p>\n

Fans of the original work tend to expect more in a sequel – more of the same pleasures they had in reading the first book, in part. Yet, whether they realize it consciously or not, fans also yearn to broaden their reading experience with new dimensions of narrative, character, setting, world-building and themes.<\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re a lifelong SF\/fantasy fan like me, you want a good novel or sequel to expand your imagination and deepen the intensity of your identification, empathy and emotion while reading it. This blog post will describe three sequel novels by Prometheus-winning writers that in my view fulfill such hopes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Three sequels that have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel have already been discussed in Part 2<\/a> and Part 3<\/a> of this Prometheus Blog series exploring the popularity and appeal of sequels: Daniel Suarez\u2019s Critical Mass,<\/i><\/a> the 2024 winner; Barry Longyear\u2019s The Hook<\/i>,<\/a> the 2021 winner; and Travis Corcoran\u2019s Causes of Separation<\/i><\/a>, the 2019 winner.<\/p>\n

Here are three more Prometheus-winning sequels worth a deeper look, with each one a key part of an impressive overall trilogy.
\n\"\"
\n<\/a>DOCTOROW’S HOMELAND: A LITTLE BROTHER SEQUEL<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cory Doctorow won his third Prometheus in 2014 for Homeland,<\/i> the sequel to Little Brother,<\/i><\/a> our 2009 Best Novel winner. Both novels offer timely dramas about an ongoing struggle for civil liberties against an invasive Big Brother-style National-Security State.<\/p>\n

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Cory Doctorow, winner of the 2009 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Little Brother, and Pat Reynolds accepting on behalf of J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s Lord of the Rings trilogy, which won in the Hall of Fame category.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Homeland<\/i>\u00a0follows the continuing adventures of Marcus Yallow, a government-brutalized young leader of a movement of tech-savvy hackers who previously had been detained arbitrarily and brutalized by the U.S. government after a terrorist attack on San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Set several years after Little Brother, <\/i>following the collapse of California\u2019s economy and the further growth of the government\u2019s powers, the novel centers on Yallow, now the public face of resistance and more constrained than ever, as he faces a dangerous decision whether to release a thumb-drive containing a provocative Wikileaks-style expos\u00e9 of massive government abuse and corruption.<\/p>\n

Doctorow completed his Little Brother trilogy – whose title evokes the Big Brother of Orwell\u2019s Prometheus Hall of Fame-winning Nineteen Eighty-Four <\/i>– with Attack Surface,<\/i> not quite a direct sequel but set in the same near-future America.<\/p>\n

For more about Homeland,<\/i> read the Prometheus Blog appreciation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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WALTON\u2019S HA\u2019PENNY: A SMALL CHANGE SEQUEL<\/b><\/p>\n

Jo Walton won her Prometheus Award for Ha\u2019Penny,<\/i> which tied for Best Novel in 2008 with Harry Turtledove\u2019s The Gladiator. <\/i>A sequel to Farthing, Ha\u2019Penny <\/i>is part of Walton\u2019s Small Change trilogy, which culminates with Half a Crown.
\n<\/i><\/p>\n

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

A cozy mystery and police procedural, Ha\u2019Penny <\/i>is set in an alternate-history timeline where the United Kingdom came to terms with National Socialist Germany in the 1930s.<\/p>\n

Much of the corruption in Walton\u2019s fascist United Kingdom takes place through the channels of influence among the \u201cright sort of people,\u201d as Stoddard notes in his Prometheus Blog appreciation.<\/p>\n

Walton\u2019s perceptive novel – and her entire trilogy – illuminates how an authoritarian government, even one well short of totalitarian, can corrupt society, create political pressures that could destroy careers and undermine even the daily basics of a murder investigation.<\/p>\n

For more about Ha’Penny,<\/em> read William H. Stoddard\u2019s Prometheus Blog Appreciation.<\/a><\/p>\n

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STEPHENSON\u2019S SYSTEM OF THE WORLD: A BAROQUE CYCLE SEQUEL
\n<\/b>
\nNeal Stephenson\u2019s The System of the World,<\/i> the 2005 Best Novel winner, is the ambitious and kaleidoscopic culmination of The Baroque Cycle trilogy.<\/p>\n

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Neal Stephenson in 2008 (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sequel to both Quicksilver<\/i> and The Confusion, System<\/i> is set within Europe\u2019s Baroque era, in which the gradual rise of reason and science come into conflict with power, tyranny and superstition.<\/p>\n

With Sir Isaac Newton and German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz as key characters, the saga charts the development in the late 1600s and early 1700s of the modern world\u2019s classical liberal institutions, which paved the way for modern libertarianism.<\/p>\n

As Stoddard observes in his Prometheus Blog appreciation, Stephenson\u2019s complex, multi-threaded plot offers a secret history of the origins of experimental natural science, the British monetary system, and the antislavery movement, among other elements of modernity.<\/p>\n

For more about The System of the World<\/em>, read Stoddard\u2019s Prometheus Blog appreciation.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Coming up:<\/strong> In the next part of our sequel series, three more sequels that have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel will be explored.<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t guess what they are, here are three clues:\u00a0 <\/span>One sequel was written by a three-time Prometheus winner, one, by a five-time Prometheus winner, and one, by a six-time Prometheus winner.<\/p>\n

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

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 the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including 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, which 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 Let\u2019s face it: Most sequels don\u2019t measure up to the originals. Yet, when they meet – or surpass – expectations while offering further satisfactions in their own right, sequels deserve recognition. While quite a large number of sequel novels have been nominated for a Prometheus Award over the past 46 years, only … Continue reading Sequels, part 4: While few sequels surpass their originals, three Prometheus Best Novel winners by Doctorow, Walton and Stephenson offer rich rewards<\/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":[249,9,2204,2605],"tags":[594,151,384,20,46,1557],"class_list":["post-8991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards-history","category-essay","category-neal-stephenson","category-sequels","tag-best-novel","tag-cory-doctorow","tag-jo-walton","tag-neal-stephenson","tag-prometheus-awards","tag-sequels"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-2l1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8991","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=8991"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9010,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8991\/revisions\/9010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}