{"id":9081,"date":"2025-05-29T00:03:40","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T05:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/?p=9081"},"modified":"2025-05-26T14:23:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T19:23:59","slug":"sequels-part-8-more-best-novel-winners-not-sequels-by-l-neil-smith-and-ramez-naam-that-inspired-sequels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/sequels-part-8-more-best-novel-winners-not-sequels-by-l-neil-smith-and-ramez-naam-that-inspired-sequels\/","title":{"rendered":"Sequels, part 8: More Best Novel winners (not sequels) by L. Neil Smith and Ramez Naam that inspired sequels\u2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Quite a few Prometheus Award Best Novel winners, while not sequels themselves, have inspired subsequent novels that have received further Prometheus recognition.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
L. Neil Smith in the 1980s (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Such winners by Sarah Hoyt (Darkship Thieves<\/a>),<\/i> Victor Milan (The Cybernetic Samurai<\/a>) <\/i>and Dani and Eytan Kollins (The Unincorporated Man<\/a>)<\/i> were examined in the previous post of this ongoing series about sequels.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ramez Naam (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Let\u2019s turn our attention here to Prometheus-winning works by Ramez Naam and L. Neil Smith. Both authors were inspired to write more than one follow-up novel to their initial Prometheus-winning novels.<\/p>\n

While Naam framed one complex story for his near-future Nexus trilogy, Smith conceived a variety of zestful and rambunctious stories all linked within his alternate-universe North American Confederacy series.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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

RAMEZ NAAM\u2019S NEXUS TRILOGY: NEXUS, CRUX, APEX<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ramez Naam won the 2014 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Nexus, <\/i>which launched his Nexus Trilogy.<\/p>\n

Set in the near future, the novel imagines the personal, social and political implications of an experimental nano-drug called Nexus 5 that can link humans together, mind to mind.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, the new drug and its possibilities divide humanity, with some wanting to exploit it, others to improve it and others to ban and eradicate it.<\/p>\n

When a young scientist is caught improving the drug, he falls into the dangerous world of international espionage.<\/p>\n

The novel, and the trilogy, build to an epic scope. As Naam weaves the many strands of his far-flung and suspenseful saga, the settings encompass illegal biotech markets, a remote mountain monastery in Thailand, underground parties in San Francisco, the headquarters of an elite Washington D.C. agency, and a secret lab beneath a Shanghai university.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Both sequels were recognized within the Prometheus Awards as Best Novel finalists.<\/p>\n

Crux<\/i>, published and nominated in the same year as Nexus,<\/i> is Book 2 of the trilogy.<\/p>\n

Set half a year after the release of Nexus 5 as the world has changed and become more dangerous, Crux follows several narrative threads that gradually intertwine among developments in the United States, Thailand, Vietnam and China.<\/p>\n

In the United States, as the terrorists of the Post-Human Liberation Front use Nexus to transform people into human time bombs aimed at the president and his allies, a government scientist, secretly addicted to Nexus, is endangered by his growing knowledge of forces behind the assassinations.<\/p>\n

In Thailand, Samantha Cataranes has found happiness with some children born with Nexus in their brains, but faces forces that could tear her new family apart.<\/p>\n

In Vietnam, Kade and Feng are on the run in Vietnam from the CIA and bounty hunters as Kade strives to stop the terrorists misusing Nexus before they spark global war between human and posthuman.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Shanghai, China, a postman child goes to dangerous lengths to free her uploaded mother from Chinese authorities.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>An exciting hybrid of science fiction and a near-future political suspense thriller, The Nexus trilogy culminates with Apex.<\/i><\/p>\n

As armies mobilize, political establishments collapse and global unrest widens, the Nexus-driven revolution opens the door for a new breed of post-human children to grow into their powers and become the planet\u2019s new apex species.<\/p>\n

Overall, Naam\u2019s trilogy offers intriguing speculations that remain timely and culturally relevant today about the possibilities of artificial intelligence and mind expansion, the nature of human consciousness and how new technological or pharmacological developments might impact our individual liberty and autonomy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
L. Neil Smith, as drawn by Scott Bieser (File photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

L. NEIL SMITH\u2019S GALLATIN ALTERNATE-UNIVERSE NOVELS<\/b><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>L. Neil Smith (1946-2021), won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel three times, including for Pallas<\/i><\/a> in 1994 and The Forge of the Elders <\/i>in 2001.<\/p>\n

Yet, Smith perhaps had his biggest impact with his influential first novel, which sparked many sequels.<\/p>\n

The Probability Broach,<\/i><\/a> the 1982 Best Novel winner, was the first of many zestful novels in Smith\u2019s alternate-universe North American Confederacy series about a profound and ongoing philosophical and sociopolitical conflict between Jeffersonian decentralist and Hamiltonian authoritarian societies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Among its seven sequels in the Gallatin Universe, five were recognized as Prometheus Best Novel finalists: The Nagasaki Vector, Thom Paine Maru, The Gallatin Divergence<\/i> and The American Zone, <\/i>which brings the saga to its close.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A lifelong libertarian who deeply loved America and its noble but flawed constitutional order, Smith imagines an alternate history that emerges from just a change in a single word in the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n

As a result, the United States has become replaced by a prosperous and more advanced libertarian society with a bare-minimum night-watchman state – the next best thing to the type of society without government dreamed of by such leading libertarian thinkers of the 1970s-1980s as Murray Rothbard and David Friedman.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Also known as the Gallatin Universe because of the pivotal role of real-life person Albert Gallatin at the point of time-line divergence in 1794, this freer, more civilized and peaceful future is threatened by the Federalists, also known as Hamiltonians because of their centralizing-coercive-government ideology, most identified in actual history with Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist Party after the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

Just to be clear, Smith named his evil antagonists Hamiltonians decades before Lin-Manuel Miranda partially rehabilitated the reputation of the undeniably flawed Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and perhaps the most authoritarian in his centralist-statist views of all the Founding Fathers, with his celebratory award-winning musical Hamilton.<\/i><\/p>\n

Smith, a former policeman and ardent Second Amendment advocate, envisioned his libertarian alternate history as both well-armed and far more peaceful than today\u2019s America.<\/p>\n

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

Two other sequels in the series were nominated for Best Novel: The Venus Belt and Their Majesties\u2019 Bucketeers.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Venus Belt,<\/em> the first sequel published, is set in outer space and charts other settlements in the Gallatin Universe solar system, while the Hamiltonians strive to establish a new civilization in interstellar space by kidnapping and enslaving a quarter of a million women as breeding stock.<\/p>\n

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

Their Majesties\u2019 Bucketeers, <\/i>which introduces characters who later interact with others in the Gallatin Universe, is refreshingly atypical within this series. It\u2019s basically a pastiche of the Sherlock Holmes tales and introduces the Lamviin, a trilaterally symmetrical race of aliens native to an arid planet.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Brightsuit MacBear<\/i> (1988), a Best Novel nominee, and Taflak Lysandra <\/i>(1989) were the first two Smith novels in a projected new series set in the North American Confederacy universe.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
L. Neil Smith in 2016 at Colorado’s Milehicon, where he received a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement (File photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you consider all of the authors and their sequels covered in this series, one has to conclude that giving readers more of what they\u2019ve enjoyed before, enhanced by new situations and characters within the same universe, can be a proven path to success.<\/p>\n

For further reading: <\/b>Other sequels that have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel are discussed in Part 1<\/a>, Part 2<\/a> , Part 3<\/a>, Part 4<\/a>, Part 5<\/a>, Part 6<\/a>, and Part 7,<\/a> of this Prometheus Blog series exploring the popularity and appeal of sequels.<\/p>\n

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

ABOUT THE LFS AND 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 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 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 Quite a few Prometheus Award Best Novel winners, while not sequels themselves, have inspired subsequent novels that have received further Prometheus recognition. Such winners by Sarah Hoyt (Darkship Thieves), Victor Milan (The Cybernetic Samurai) and Dani and Eytan Kollins (The Unincorporated Man) were examined in the previous post of this ongoing series … Continue reading Sequels, part 8: More Best Novel winners (not sequels) by L. Neil Smith and Ramez Naam that inspired sequels\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":[32,2203,2605],"tags":[463,462,29,461,460,63,2620],"class_list":["post-9081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-l-neil-smith","category-sequels","tag-apex","tag-crux","tag-l-neil-smith","tag-nexus","tag-ramez-naam","tag-the-probability-broach","tag-the-venus-belt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-2mt","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9081","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=9081"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9195,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9081\/revisions\/9195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}