Category: prometheus (Page 1 of 2)

The Libertarian Futurist Society announced on July 22 the winners of the annual Prometheus Award for best libertarian futurist fiction. Winner for Best Novel is The Unincorporated Man by Eytan Kollin and Dani Kollin, and for best classic work, the short story “No Truce With Kings,” by Poul Anderson.

From the LFS:

The Unincorporated Man is the first novel publication by the Kollin brothers. It is the first novel in a planned trilogy to be published by Tor. The Unincorporated Man presents the idea that education and personal development could be funded by allowing investors to take a share of one’s future income. The novel explores the ways this arrangement would affect those who do not own a majority of the stock in themselves. For instance, often ones investors would have control of a person’s choices of where to live or work. The desire for power as an end unto itself and the negative consequences of the raw lust for power are shown in often great detail. The story takes a strong position that liberty is important and worth fighting for, and the characters spend their time pushing for different conceptions of what freedom is.

Poul Anderson’s novels have been nominated many times, and have won the Prometheus Award (in 1995, for The Stars Are Also Fire), and the Hall of Fame Award (1995 for The Star Fox and 1985 for Trader to the Stars). He also received a Special award for lifetime achievement in 2001. This was the first nomination for “No Truce With Kings.”

Poul Anderson’s “No Truce with Kings” was first published in 1963. Like many science fiction stories of that era, it was set in a future that had endured a nuclear war. Anderson’s focus is not on the immediate disaster and the struggle to survive, but the later rebuilding; its central conflict is over what sort of civilization should be created. The story’s title comes from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Old Issue,” which describes the struggle to bind kings and states with law and the threat of their breaking free. Anderson’s future California is basically a feudal society, founded on local loyalties, but it has a growing movement in favor of a centralized, impersonal state. As David Friedman remarked about this story, Anderson plays fair with his conflicting forces: both of them want the best for humanity, but one side is mistaken about what that is. This story is classic Anderson and, like many of his best stories, reveals his libertarian sympathies.

Some sites that posted the news of the Prometheus Awards announcement include IO9 (with close to 100 comments, most of them snarky and dismissive of libertarianism), Liberty & Power, and Locus Online.

The current novel I’m reading is British writer George Mann’s Ghosts of Manhattan, a steampunk alternate history novel by Pyr Books set in early 20th century New York. So far two very interesting aspects in the first couple of chapters. The first is a snarky comment about politicians by a cop, the second that the protagonist is a superhero/vigilante who fights crime outside the law, much like Batman, Spider-Man and the like. I don’t know where the book will end up, but despite a few rough stylistic edges and odd cliches, it is holding my attention. I’m sure I’ll end up writing a review for the next Prometheus, if there is a next Prometheus.