Editorial

Now that the Prometheus Award and Hall of Fame Award for 2002 have been announced, the Libertarian Futurist Society begins looking toward the 2003 awards. Any nominations for deserving works should be brought to the attention of the judging committees, which will select five finalists in each category.

Inevitably, part of the work of the judging committees will be to decide which books are appropriate nominees. With some books the appropriateness is obvious; but some past nominees have stirred heated debate. In a movement devoted to individuality and personal judgment, this is probably a good thing—but it may create some uncertainty as to what sort of books are likely to be considered for the Prometheus Awards and thus as to which ones merit a nomination. To help guide LFS members looking for suitable nominees, here are some types of books that could qualify for the award.

First, a book could qualify for the Prometheus Award if it portrays a free society (usually but not necessarily of the future) and shows how it works. Second, it could qualify if it shows a process of historical change leading to increased freedom. Third, it could qualify if it shows how people can live by libertarian values, even in a society of limited freedom. Fourth, it could qualify if it portrays a statist or authoritarian society in ways that show the dangers of such societies. The award can go to either utopias or dystopias—or to novels abut conflicts of values in settings where no one sct of values, good or bad, predominates.

Within this broad field, what should we be looking for in choosing nominees and award winners? Works of true worth are going to be too individual and distinct to capture in a definition. But there are at least two classes of bad choices that we can try to avoid making: opportunism and sectarianism.

Sectarianism is an excessive focus on standards and concerns internal to one's own group—judging books by our agreement with their political ideas and nothing else. The risk in this approach is that non-libertarian readers will see no reason to read Prometheus Award books—and libertarians who recommend those books will find that they make poor introductions to libertarianism, because no one who isn't already libertarian would want to read them.

Conversely, opportunism is an excessive focus on external standards of success, from popularity to acclaim by literary critics—claiming any book with the slightest hint of support for our views as a libertarian work. Honoring such works ultimately dilutes the idea of libertarianism lo the edge of meaninglessness, or confuses it with various non-libertarian ideas.

Up to now. the LFS has done remarkably well at avoiding both problems. Let's keep it that way.