EDITORIAL | What’s New and Different in 2013

The new year has started off slow for us at Prometheus Unbound as we prepare some major new features and changes, but things are about to take off and I think 2013 is going to be an exciting one.

The Prometheus Unbound Podcast

We’ve been republishing some science-fiction-related episodes from the Mises Institute and Jeff Riggenbach’s Libertarian Tradition podcast, but within the next couple of days we’ll be launching our own original podcast. You’ve probably already listened to our promo for the podcast. We hope you like it and will help us promote the podcast by sharing it around to anyone you think might be interested in liberty and speculative fiction.

For our first episode, we have for you an interview with libertarian legal theorist and patent attorney Stephan Kinsella. If you’re not familiar with Stephan and his work, you may be wondering why we interviewed a patent attorney. Well, Stephan is a leading figure in the movement against intellectual property. After talking about his favorite science fiction and fantasy novels, and the new Hobbit movie, we go on to discuss with him the history and origin of intellectual property; how copyright has shaped and distorted the publishing and film industries; how the internet, piracy, and advancing technology are undermining the intellectual property regime and the antiquated business models built on it; the rise of self-publishing; and more.

In our second episode, we’ll be discussing libertarian speculative fiction. What qualifies a work of fiction as libertarian? What are the best, or our favorite, works of libertarian speculative fiction? Do libertarian authors tend to be too heavy-handed and preachy?  Does the Prometheus Award to a good job of finding and promoting libertarian science fiction? Why are so many winners of the award written by authors who are not themselves libertarian? We’ll seek to address these questions and more.

And in episode three, in February, we’ll be interviewing Jeffrey Tucker, the editor of Laissez Faire Books.

Subscribe to our podcast-only rss feed to get episodes directly on your phone, tablet, or mp3 player: http://feeds.feedburner.com/prometheusunbound/podcast.

We hope you enjoy the show and will help us spread the word.

Site Redesign

I’m redesigning the site from the ground up on the new version 2.0 of the Thesis Theme Framework for WordPress. I think it will be much more slick, professional-looking, and powerful than the current design.

Along with the podcast logo, I had a professional create a banner for the website. We’ll finally have a proper custom image to go in the header instead of the generic, out-of-place text of the title and subtitle that we’ve had for the past couple of years.

Expect to see Prometheus Unbound 2.0 make its debut sometime in January.

If you want a sneak peak, hit me up for a link to the development site in our Google+ community.

Google+ Community

While we do have our own forums integrated into the site, Google recently launched communities (or groups) on Google+ and they seem to be really taking off. We’ve had a Google+ community since Day One. If you haven’t checked it out and joined yet, please so do. We’d love to hang out with you there.

In my opinion, Google+ communities have better layout and functionality, conducive toward having conversations, than Facebook groups. I’ve set up a number of categories to facilitate sharing and discussion. Google search within communities also makes finding old posts and conversations very easy.

I’ve been sharing a lot of stuff to it that I used to share to the general public on Google+. While both I and Prometheus Unbound have a presence on Facebook, I’m really not a fan of that social network and I’m only sporadically active on it.  I expect the Google+ community will become our home away from home, so to speak.

I plan to make use of our Google+ community and Google+ Hangouts in a new way in connection with our Lightmonthly Read book club, so read on.

The Lightmonthly Read

We haven’t had as much participation in the book club as I had expected and hoped, not only in the discussions but also in the book selection process. Reading an extra book every month as well as having to craft several extra posts and emails for the club has also proven time consuming. Over time I allowed my own active participation to slip and both Matthew and I have been busier than usual lately. As a result, the book club has effectively been on hiatus for the past couple of months.

I don’t want to completely shut down the book club, however, with the possibility of reviving it sometime down the road when we have a larger and more actively involved community that wants it. I had hoped that the book club would help build such a community. It still might. But I need to decrease the workload and streamline the book selection process.

So here is how the Lightmonthly Read is going to work going forward in 2013. Instead of a community nomination and voting process, I will simply announce a book that I’m going to read and review anyway. I’ll post my initial reactions in the Lightmonthly Read forum as I read it. And those who are interested can read along and discuss it with me. Sometimes Matthew might take my place. We might even both announce a different book and lead a discussion around it at the same time on occasion.

I tend to read several books at once. I’m still reading Robert Heinlein’s short fiction collection The Man Who Sold the Moon from the last Lightmonthly Read. I’m reading the stories in order according to internal chronology, not their arrangement in the book, so check out my post in the forum if you want to follow along. I’ve already posted my reactions to the first story, “Life-Line,” as well.

Over the next few months I will be reading John Scalzi’s new serialized novel, The Human Division, in his Old Man’s War setting (a novel I very much enjoyed). The first installment was released this week and a new one will be out every Tuesday for the next 12 weeks. They’re $0.99 each on Amazon and Google Play. If you like Heinleinian military science fiction, I think you’ll like these books.

I hope you’ll join me in reading and discussing The Man Who Sold the Moon and/or The Human Division.

Also, although I won’t be discussing it as part of the book club, I’m currently reading a short nonfiction book by Seth Godin titled Tribes. Although this was not the author’s intent, I’m finding the book to be full of inspiration and positive implications for libertarian anarchism. If you’re curious to know more, you can wait for my review (on my own website) or chat with me on Sunday.

I will begin hosting a weekly Google+ Hangout every Sunday at 4pm EST. It’ll be kind of like office hours in that I’ll open the Hangout and keep it open for about an hour, whether or not anyone shows up. Pop in if you want to chat or just to say hello. Stay the whole time or only for a few minutes. We can talk about the current Lightmonthly Read, libertarianism and speculative fiction, writing and publishing, or just about anything. It’s up to you. These weekly Hangouts will be informal and unrecorded. I hope to see you there.

Main RSS Feed

A while back, when we moved the site from prometheusreview.com to prometheus-unbound.org, we also switched to a new Feedburner rss feed url. I mentioned then that we would be shutting the old feed url down in January 2013. Well, that time is upon us. So if you haven’t already switched to the new feed url, please do so now. I’ve deleted the old feed and set up a permanent redirect to the new one.

Old: http://feeds.feedburner.com/prometheusreview

New/Current: http://feeds.feedburner.com/prometheusunbound/posts

Call for Submissions

Matthew and I can’t do this alone. We need your help. We’re looking to build a thriving community around Prometheus Unbound and we’re hoping that some of you will become not only readers and listeners but also contributors to both the webzine and the podcast.

For the webzine, we’re looking for news; reviews; interviews; and articles on fiction, science, technology, history, writing, publishing, and more. Even if you can only do one post per month, or even just one post period, your contribution(s) will be greatly appreciated.

For the podcast, we’re looking for listener feedback, audio reviews, and the occasional guest for our themed discussion episodes.¹ Future discussion topics will include dystopian fiction, military science fiction, and banking in fiction. We’re open to suggestions for later episodes, so please send yours our way and let us know if you’re interested in being a guest on the show.

Here’s to a great 2013. I look forward to talking about libertarianism and speculative fiction with you.

1. Please don’t use your phone or the microphone built into your computer or webcam for the last two, however; get a good, but not necessarily expensive, dynamic or condenser microphone like the Audio Technica ATR2100 and a pop filter. Headphones of some sort will also be helpful for guests to prevent feedback and echoing. ↩