2014 Prometheus Award Finalists

The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced the Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) finalists for the Prometheus Awards, which will be presented during Loncon 3.

Best Novel

  • Homeland, by Cory Doctorow (TOR Books) is a sequel to Doctorow’s Prometheus winner Little Brother and follows the continuing adventures of a government-brutalized but still-idealistic young leader of a movement of tech-savvy hackers who must decide whether to release an incendiary Wikileaks-style expose of massive government abuse and corruption as part of a struggle against the invasive national-security state.
  • A Few Good Men, by Sarah Hoyt (Baen Books), set in the same future as Hoyt’s Prometheus-winning Darkship Thieves and the beginning of her Earth’s Revolution saga, blends drama, romance, intrigue into a suspenseful struggle against a vicious tyranny of an entrenched and cloned elite that offers lessons about the roots of dictatorship, the seeds of revolution and our American heritage of freedom.
  • Crux, by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot Books), is the sequel to Nexus and further extends a fascinating exploration of possibilities for both freedom and vicious mind control with emerging medical/computer technologies.
  • Nexus, by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot Books) offers a gripping exploration of politics and new extremes of both freedom and tyranny in a near future where emerging technology opens up unprecedented possibilities for mind control or personal liberation and interpersonal connection.
  • Brilliance, by Marcus Sakey (Thomas & Mercer) is a futuristic suspense thriller and a parable of democracy’s downfall about an ambivalent federal agent pursuing a “brilliant,” one of a small emerging percentage of humans with unusual abilities that threaten the status quo and trigger efforts to suppress emerging differences.

Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction

  • “As Easy as A.B.C.”, a short story by Rudyard Kipling published in London Magazine in 1912, presents an ambiguously utopian future that has reacted against mass society (which was beginning to emerge during Kipling’s day) in favor of privacy and freedom of movement.
  • “Sam Hall,” a short story by Poul Anderson published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1953, depicts a regimented future America obsessed with security and facing a libertarian revolution aided by cybernetic subversion.
  • “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” a short story by Harlan Ellison published in Galaxy in 1965, is a dystopian satire set in an authoritarian society dedicated to punctuality, in which a lone absurdist rebel attempts to disrupt everyone else’s schedules.
  • Falling Free, a 1988 novel by Lois McMaster Bujold, explores free will and self-ownership by considering the legal and ethical implications of human genetic engineering.
  • Courtship Rite, a 1982 novel by Donald M. Kingsbury, portrays a harsh desert planet’s exotic human culture founded on applying the mathematical concept of optimization in biology, political organization, and ethics.