Libertarian Futurist Society
For immediate release: Monday, March 23, 2009
The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced finalists for this year's Prometheus Awards, which will be presented during Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, August 6-10, 2009, in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
The Prometheus finalists for Best Novel recognize pro-freedom novels published last year:
* Matter, by Iain Banks (Orbit Books) - Part of Banks' series of far-future space operas about the Culture, a utopia which reflects Banks' interest in anarchism through its avoidance of the use of force except when necessary for protection and defense. The novel focuses on an agent in Special Circumstances, the Culture's special forces unit, who returns to her home planet, a "shellworld" with multiple layers of habitation, after her father has been killed in a coup.
* Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (TOR Books) - A cautionary tale about a high-school student and his friends who are rounded up in the hysteria following a terrorist attack, the novel focuses on how people find the courage to respond to oppression.
* The January Dancer, by Michael Flynn (TOR Books) -The classic space opera, set in an interstellar civilization created by a wide-ranging human diaspora, revolves around how discovery of a an alien relic sends agents of a multisystem federation on a quest that exposes them to political and economic institutions of many different cultures and requires them to deal with threats to freedom, from piracy to political corruption.
* Saturn's Children, by Charles Stross (Ace Books) -A robot's adventures after all the humans in a society have died raises complex issues of ethics, duty, family and struggle in this Heinlenesque novel.
* Opening Atlantis, by Harry Turtledove (Penguin/Roc Books) - Set in a world where medieval Europeans discover an island continent in the Atlantic Ocean, this first novel in a new atternate-history series explores the politics of colonization and the struggle for self-determination while offering parallels and contrasts with development of the Americas.
* Half a Crown, by Jo Walton (TOR Books) -The sequel to Walton's Prometheus Award-winning Ha'penny concludes her alternative-history trilogy, set two decades after Britain reached accommodation with Hitler's Germany in the 1940s, with a chilling portrait of people all too willing to trade freedom for security.
Twelve novels were nominated this past year and read and voted on by 10 judges selected from LFS members. The other nominees: Truancy, by Isamu Fukui (TOR Books); Publicani, by Zak Maymin (CreateSpace); Liberation, by Brian Francis Slattery (TOR Books); Roswell, Texas, a graphic novel by L. Neil Smith, L. Rex F. May, Scott Bieser, and Jennifer Zach (Big Head Press); Anathem, by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow ); and By Schism Rent Asunder, by David Weber (TOR Books).
The 2009 Prometheus finalists for Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) were announced earlier. This category honors novels, novellas, stories, graphic novels, anthologies, films, TV shows/series, plays, poems, music recordings and other works of fiction first published or broadcast more than five years ago. This year's nominees are:
* Falling Free, a novel by Lois McMaster Bujold (1988);
* Courtship Rite, a novel by Donald M. Kingsbury (1982)
* "As Easy as A.B.C.," a short story by Rudyard Kipling (1912)
* The Lord of the Rings, a three-volume novel by J. R. R. Tolkien (1955)
* The Once and Future King, including The Book of Merlyn, a novel by T. H. White (1977)
* The Golden Age, a novel by John C. Wright (2002).
LFS Board member Fred Moulton (programming@lfs.org) will lead the Worldcon's Prometheus Awards ceremony, most likely on Friday afternoon (event details will be confirmed this summer).
For more information, contact LFS Board President Chris Hibbert (publicity@lfs.org).
Publishers and authors may submit 2009 novels for consideration and possible nomination by LFS members. Contact Michael Grossberg, Best Novel finalist judging committee chair (BestNovelChair@lfs.org or 614-236-5040).
To propose works published more than five years ago for consideration for the Hall of Fame, contact William H. Stoddard, Hall of Fame finalist judging committee chair (HallOfFame@lfs.org).
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