The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced the Best Novel and Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction Prometheus Award winners for 2024.

THE PROMETHEUS AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL

Critical Mass, by Daniel Suarez (Dutton) has won the 2024 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for novels published in 2023.

The citation says:

Set in the inner solar system, this fast-paced science fiction thriller follows engineer-entrepreneurs striving against the odds to use space-mined materials to build infrastructure in space for commercial development.

Heroic characters risk their lives in an audacious mission to complete a space station, allowing construction of a nuclear-powered spaceship and rescue of stranded crew members on the distant asteroid Ryugu. The resourceful band must achieve their goals amid shortsighted opposition, censorship, shifting alliances and international tensions of Earth governments.

Unusually realistic in depicting the perils of living and working in space, Suarez achieves a high level of plausible engineering speculation. Government is shown as the problem and cooperation through free enterprise as part of a space-based solution to problems on Earth.

Included is a plausible depiction of the creation of a functional, private, decentralized currency beyond the reach of Earth, relevant in this era of inflationary government fiat money.

The other 2023 Best Novel finalists were Theft of Fire, by Devon Eriksen (Devon Eriksen LLC); Swim Among the People,  by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press); God’s Girlfriend, by Dr. Insensitive Jerk (AKA Gordon Hanka) (Amazon); and Lord of a Shattered Land,  by Howard Andrew Jones (Baen Books).

 THE PROMETHEUS HALL OF FAME FOR BEST CLASSIC FICTION

The Truth, a 2000 novel by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins), won the 2024 Best Classic Fiction award and will be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.

The citation says:

First nominated for the Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 2001, when it became a finalist, The Truth is part of Pratchett’s humorous but historically informed Discworld series.

This story revolves around the incidental founding by a struggling scribe of the Discworld’s first newspaper, using the newly invented printing press in the city of Ankh-Morpork. Amidst cutthroat competition, shadowy opponents, a political crisis and threats to a free and independent press, the newspaper evolves in the free market – just as real newspapers did historically.

All too timely in its focus on misinformation and its affirmation of the value of freedom of speech and the press as a bedrock principle sustaining free societies while serving as a vital check on criminality and corrupt government, the novel portrays how journalists find and report the facts (or not) and strive to communicate “the truth.”

Smart and sly, hilarious but serious, The Truth ultimately offers an inspirational tale of underdogs fighting for the truth against formidable opposition.

The other Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists were Orion Shall Rise, a 1983 novel (Timescape) by Poul Anderson; “The Trees,” a 1978 song by the Canadian rock group Rush; and Between the Rivers, a 1998 novel (TOR) by Harry Turtledove.

AWARDS CEREMONY. The 44th annual Prometheus Awards will be presented online, most likely on a Saturday afternoon in mid- to-late August, in a Zoom awards ceremony with three-time Best Novel winner Victor Koman as a speaker and presenter.

PROMETHEUS AWARDS HISTORY. The Prometheus Awards, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), was first presented in 1979, making it one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently in sf.

In the words of the LFS:

For more than four decades, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between liberty and power, favor voluntary cooperation over institutionalized coercion, expose the abuses and excesses of coercive government, and/or critique or satirize authoritarian systems, ideologies and assumptions.

Above all, the Prometheus Awards strive to recognize speculative fiction that champions individual rights, based on the moral/legal principle of non-aggression as the ethical and practical foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, mutual respect, civility and civilization itself.

While the Best Novel category is limited to novels published in English for the first time during the previous calendar year, Hall of Fame nominees — which must have been published, performed, broadcast or released at least 20 years ago — may be in any narrative or dramatic form, including novels, novellas, stories, films, television series or episodes, plays, musicals, graphic novels, song lyrics, or verse.

The Best Novel winner receives a plaque with a one-ounce gold coin, and the Hall of Fame winner a plaque with a smaller gold coin.

[Based on a press release.]