L. Neil Smith
In January, L. Neil Smith was announced as the next recipient of a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement Award from the Libertarian Futurist Society. The organization will present it to him at MileHiCon in Denver.
Smith will be presented with the Prometheus award, a gold coin mounted on a plaque, at 7 p.m. Friday October 28, during the opening night of the convention
Smith is the fourth author history to receive the LFS’ Lifetime Achievement Award. The previous recipients were Poul Anderson (2001), Vernor Vinge (2014) and F. Paul Wilson (2015).
Including their Lifetime Achievement awards, Anderson, Vinge, Wilson and now Smith have all been recognized five times with various Prometheus Awards. (The only author to receive more awards from the LFS was Robert Heinlein (1907-1988), with a grand total of six.)
Smith is the creator of the Prometheus Award, presenting it in 1979 to Wheels Within Wheels by F. Paul Wilson. In order to transform the one-time award into an annual program, the Libertarian Futurist Society was organized by Grossberg and other fans in 1982 to take over and sustain the awards program. Since the initial award to Wilson, Smith has not played a role in the LFS. Visit lfs.org to see a comprehensive list of Prometheus Award recipients and for more information about the Libertarian Futurist Society.
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I met him in 1975 or 1976, when he came into the comic store I was managing. We talked a while, and blue-skied the notion of doing a comic book. I didn’t see him again, though, which is only fair, since he didn’t see me again. Congratulations to him, anyway, especially for using my home town as a springboard for his first book.