Prometheus Award Finalists Selected

• Michael Flynn, Lodestar (Tor)
• Ken MacLeod, The Sky Road (Tor)
• Terry Pratchett, The Truth (HarperCollins)
• L. Neil Smith, Forge of the Elders (Baen)
• Steve White, Eagle Against the Stars (Baen)

The Prometheus Award judges' committee has chosen the five finalists listed above for this year's Best Novel award. Three of the authors are previous Prometheus Award winners; Pratchett and White are new nominees. Full LFS members, sponsors, and Benefactors will receive ballots for the final selection with this issue of Prometheus.

Michel Flynn won the Prometheus Award in 1991 for In the Country of the Blind and shared it with co-authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in 1992 for Fallen Angels. Lodestar is the third in a series of novels about near-future private space-exploration. Firestar and Lodestar were both Prometheus Award nominees; the final novel in the series. Falling Stars was published in February of this year.

Ken MacLeod won the Prometheus Award for two novels in the same series as The Sky Road—The Star Fraction in 1996 and The Stone Canal in 1998. The third in the series The Cassini Division, was a finalist last year. The series is a future history of competing libertarian and socialist movements in an era of interplanetary and interstellar exploration.

The Truth is Terry Pratchett's 25th Discworld novel. The Discworld series began with parodies of well-known fantasy series but has since developed themes of its own, including the dangers of arbitrary power and the benefits of trade, technology, and urbanization. The Truth explores the effects of one new technology, the printing press.

L Neil Smith received the Prometheus Award in 1982 for The Probability Broach, his first published novel, which introduced the North American Confederacy, and in 1994 for Pallas. Forge of the Elders is the first appearance of the entire work as a single volume; its first two parts were published separately as Contact and Commune and Converse and Conflict in slightly different versions. This novel portrays a collectivist Earth encountering "capitalist monsters from outer space."

Eagle against the Stars portrays a near-future Earth attempting to resist trade imposed by aliens with advanced technology and advanced weapons. White's previous novels include the Starfire series written with David Weber.

For reviews of several of these novels, see pp. 5 and 6.

This year's Best Novel will receive a one-ounce gold coin, twice the size of previous awards. The award is planned for WorldCon in Philadelphia over Labor Day weekend. Ballots are due by July 5 (please mail by July 1).