2014 Prometheus Award Finalists

The Libertarian Futurist Society Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) for its annual Prometheus Awards were presented during Loncon 3, the 72nd annual World Science Fiction Convention August 14-18, 2014, in London.

Here are the Best Novel finalists (in alphabetical order by author) of this year's Prometheus Award for the best pro-freedom novel of 2013:

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 exposé of massive government abuse and corruption as part of a battle against tyranny and the 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, and 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 about human mutations that expand abilities but also threaten the status quo and trigger efforts to suppress emerging differences that undermine a free democracy.

Nine novels were nominated in the Best Novel category. The other 2013 novels nominated were Seven Against Mars, by Martin Berman-Gorvine (Wildside); Armageddon's Princess, by Anthony Pacheco (Amazon, Barnes Noble); The Long War, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (Harper Collins); and Shadow of Freedom, by David Weber (Baen Books).

The 2014 finalists (in chronological order) for the 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 storyby 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.

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.

Falling Free, a novel by Lois McMaster Bujold from 1988, explores free will and self-ownership by considering the legal and ethical implications of human genetic engineering.

The Prometheus Awards honor outstanding fiction that explores the possibilities of a free future, champions human rights, dramatizes the perennial conflict between individuals and coercive governments, or critiques the tragic consequences of abuse of power especially by the state.