The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced the finalists in the Best Novel category of the Prometheus Awards, representing the best pro-freedom novel of 2014:

• The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin (TOR Books, Nov. 2014) is a first contact novel by one of China’s best loved science fiction authors. Ye Wenjie, a young astrophysicist whose life is molded by experiences during China’s brutal Cultural Revolution, makes crucial decisions about the future of humanity. The struggle to make rational sense of the universe, using methods of logic and science, is essential to nearly all of the human and alien characters.
• Raising Steam, by Terry Pratchett (March 18, 2014, Knopf Doubleday) is the 40th Discworld novel and the last published in Pratchett’s lifetime.  further explores the theme of technological advances in communication and transportation and their liberating impact. Moist von Lipwig, the protagonist of Going Postal and Making Money, reappears as the key figure in the creation of the Discworld’s first railroad, and in the legal negotiations that make it possible.
• A Better World, by Marcus Sakey (Amazon, Thomas & Mercer, June 2014) is a sequel to Brilliance, which explored a world populated by people with fantastic talents. In this story, some Brilliants are using terrorism to work toward separation, while others work to make a more civil, cooperative society.
• Influx, the fourth techno-thriller by Daniel Suarez (Dutton Adult, Feb. 20, 2014), depicts a government so concerned about politically destabilizing and potentially dangerous innovations that it creates the Bureau of Technology Control to manage the introduction of new technologies. Inventors who don’t follow their edicts are sentenced to a high-tech prison. To end the impending new dark age, the prisoners must fight ruthless individuals already living in our future and armed with mind-blowing genetic technology.

The Prometheus Award was established in 1979 and is presented annually at the World Science Fiction Convention. Winners received a gold coin and a plaque. For a full list of past Prometheus Award winners in all categories, visit www.lfs.org.

The full press release follows the jump.

Continue reading →

The Libertarian Futurist Society will honor F. Paul Wilson with a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement on May 9 at Marcon.

Wilson has won four other Prometheus Awards during his career, including the first ever presented, in 1979, for Wheels Within Wheels.

He has been recognized often by the LFS over the decades. The other two novels in addition to Wheels that make up Wilson’s science fiction trilogy have been inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, Healer in 1990 and An Enemy of the State in 1991.

Wilson also won a Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 2004 for Sims, which explores foundational issues of individual rights.

Wilson will be the third recipient of an LFS Lifetime Achievement Award. Poul Anderson received the first in 2001 and Vernor Vinge received the second in 2014.

The full press release follows the jump.
Continue reading →

The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced the winners of the Prometheus Awards for 2014.

Best Novel
(tie)
Homeland  by Cory Doctorow (TOR Books)
Nexus by Ramez Naam (Angry Robot Books)

Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame)
Falling Free, Lois McMaster Bujold

Special Prometheus Award
Leslie Fish, author-filksinger, for the combination of her 2013 novella, “Tower of Horses” and her filk song, The Horsetamer’s Daughter.

Fish’s novella (published in the anthology Music of Darkover edited by Elisabeth Waters) faithfully tells the same story as her Pegasus-winning filk song. The story’s characters (especially the 12-year-old title character of the song) resist control of a wizard-backed government that wants to regulate, tax, and conscript them.

The above awards will be presented during the Special Awards ceremony at Loncon 3 on August 16.

Author Vernor Vinge will receive a Special Prometheus Lifetime Achievement Award in a separate ceremony at Conjecture/ConChord over the October 10-12 weekend.

The full press release follows the jump.
Continue reading →

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.

The Libertarian Futurist Society has released its list of finalists for the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.  The LFS gives the award to “outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that stress the importance of liberty as the foundation for civilization, peace, prosperity, progress, and justice.”

The 2014 finalists for the Hall of Fame Award are:

• “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 novel by Lois McMaster Bujold published in 1988, explores free will and self-ownership by considering the legal and ethical implications of human genetic engineering.
• Courtship Rite, a novel by Donald M. Kingsbury published in 1982, portrays a harsh desert planet’s exotic human culture founded on applying the mathematical concept of optimization in biology, political organization, and ethics.

Finalists are selected by a committee of the LFS. The winner will be chosen by a vote of members of the Libertarian Futurist Society.