Hall of Fame Award to Pournelle and Carr

Lifetime Achievement Award to Anderson

The Libertarian Futurist Society's award ceremony took place on stage at the MarCon masquerade, the convention's best attended event. At the start of the ceremony, all the Prometheus Award honorees attending came onto the stage: Karen Anderson, James P. Hogan, Brad Linaweaver, Victor Milan, J. Neil Schulman, L. Neil Smith, Vernor Vinge, and F. Paul Wilson.

The Survival of Freedom, an sf anthology edited by Jerry Pournelle and John Carr, won the 2001 Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction. The award was presented by Lynn Maners, chair of the Hall of Fame finalist judging committee, and accepted by F. Paul Wilson, who contributed the story "Lipidlegging" to the collection—Wilson made the following speech:

I'm happy to accept this for Jerry. I'm in the anthology, and I happen to know how hard it was at that time to sell anthologies. Anthologies in general did not sell well, and an anthology of libertarian science fiction was low on the list. I know because myself and a fellow named Karl Pflock tried to sell an anthology of new and reprinted libertarian science fiction, called Free the Future, and we got doors slammed in our face left and right.

It took someone like Jerry, on the tail of the success he had with Lucifer's Hammer, to sell the idea and bring it to fruition. There is fiction and nonfiction in the anthology, and it certainly deserves an award for the whole thing.

Jerry Pournelle sent the following message accepting the Hall of Fame Award for his anthology The Survival of Freedom:

I am very pleased to accept this award and I regret that I cannot be there to do it in person. Between writing commitments and keeping Niven functioning after his injuries I seem to have a career in Southern California.

Of course the real credit goes to the contributors.

It is perhaps time to bring this book out again with new prefaces, and some additional material. I am sure I can find a publisher. And I note that "Lipidlegging" is no longer science fiction at all. Alas, some of the other stories aren't fiction either.

But then we always knew that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—and that even if it is paid the tax consumers don't always deliver what they promised. Thank you all.

The second Special Award from the Libertarian Futurist Society was conferred on Poul Anderson for lifetime achievement in libertarian science fiction. This was the first award granted by unanimous agreement of the membership. L. Neil Smith, who conceived of the Prometheus Awards in the 1970s, presented the award. Karen Anderson accepted it on behalf of her husband, who was prevented from attending LFScon by a sudden illness. She commented, with a sly smile that evoked wide laughter, that

Poul regrets very much that he couldn't be at this convention, and now he's going to regret it even more.

The Masquerade master of ceremonies, Dr. Demento, commented that

With all these distinguished writers around, it's a welcome reminder of the roots of Marcon as a convention of readers of fine science fiction.