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As Prometheus Unbound nears two years in publication — I officially launched it on October 29, 2010 — now seems as good a time as any for a little reflection and reevaluation.

We’ve got some big things on the horizon: a site redesign built on Thesis 2.0; the launch of an original podcast in January 2013; professionally designed banner, logo, and favicon. The site is going to look slicker and, hopefully, load faster in the near future. We’re about to look more professional, expand into a new medium, and, hopefully, attract a new audience.

But at the same time, I don’t want to neglect our existing services. I need to personally rededicate myself to participating in the book club. I’ve let my involvement slip over the past couple of months while other things (teaching, kids, research, admin and design work for the site) demanded my attention. I also need to write news and review posts more regularly. We could use your help in this department, however. We’re always looking for more regular and irregular contributors to bring our readers more content, not just reviews but also news, interviews, articles, and more. Stop by the community forums as well. Say hello. Tell us what you’ve been reading or watching and what you think about it. We’d love to know and want to chat with you.

The main reason for this post, however, is that something made me wonder recently whether we’re sending out email updates too frequently. We’ve greatly increased our mailing list over the past couple of months and I want to make sure we continue to bring all of you great content and not make ourselves unwelcome in your inboxes.

Our email newsletter currently consists mostly of updates from our rss feed — the post(s) we publish in a given day — and two Lightmonthly Read updates every month. The email updates for posts are not quite daily, since we do not publish posts every day, but if we did then a digest email would be sent out once per day.

We’re always looking for ways to improve the services we provide here at Prometheus Unbound, so I thought I’d ask our readers what you want.

Would you prefer to continue getting email updates on a quasi-daily basis (usually just 1-3 times per week, whenever a new post is published) or on a weekly digest basis?

Let us know in the comments, or any other way you prefer to contact us.

While you’re at it, if you have any other comments, suggestions, or even criticisms, please do not hesitate to voice them.

The date has been set for our live author chat with J. Neil Schulman, whose Prometheus Hall of Fame Award–winning novel Alongside Night is being adapted into a film starring Kevin Sorbo (Hercules, Andromeda).

The event will take place via Google+ Hangout on Air on Saturday, November 10th at 9PM EST (that’s 6PM PST / 8PM CST). It will be streamed live for those who cannot fit into the Hangout and a recording will be uploaded to our YouTube channel afterward. For more details, and to RSVP, visit the official event page on Google+.

Here are the official movie trailer, music video, and Schulman’s talk at Libertopia about bringing the book to film:

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I’m pleased to see Laissez Faire Books publishing a new edition of this book. I may be unusual in this, but Anthem happens to be my favorite of Rand’s four major works of fiction. It is pithy, pared down to essentials, and more poetic. This guest editorial was originally published as the editorial preface of the new edition. — GAP

“The author does not understand socialism,” read the letter from MacMillan in reply to the submission of Ayn Rand’s novella, Anthem. They turned it down. Actually, the publisher didn’t understand socialism. Hardly anyone did in 1937, when this book was written. Rand, however, did understand socialism. She understood it so well that she knew it would result in the opposite of what it promised and that its proponents would eventually come to embrace its grim reality, rather than repudiate the system of thought.

In many ways, this book is one of the best dystopian novels ever written because it puts the central focus on the key failing of socialism: its opposition to progress. How is that possible given that progress is a central slogan in socialist thinking? The problem is that by collectivizing private property, socialism removes the machinery of progress itself. It abolishes prices and profits and calculation and the incentive to create. It puts a premium on political control, and politicians resent the revolutionary implications of entrepreneurship. Therefore, a consistently socialist society would not only be poor and backward; it would revel in those features and call them the goal.

Think about it. This was the 1930s, long before the environmental movement and long before the primitivist streak in socialist thinking was to emerge as an outright agenda to be imposed by force. But as a child in the old Soviet Union, Rand had seen it in action. She had seen how entrepreneurship and creativity had to be sacrificed for the collective, and how this drove civilization straight into the ground. A totalitarian society would not be a world with amazing technology and flying cars, but would exist only at a subsistence level. And it would try to stay that way.

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“What ifs” are the bread and butter of science fiction. What if organized crime overthrew the United States government and took over? What would life be like under the mafia? Would the people of North America be better off? These are the questions C.M. Kornbluth sought to answer in his science-fiction novel The Syndic (1953).

The Syndic is of interest to libertarians, not least because it was honored with the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award in 1986 by the Libertarian Futurist Society. This edition of the novel includes a forward and an afterward by Jeff Riggenbach that set the historical context for Kornbluth’s work and life and their relevance to libertarians. The Syndic is a fast-paced, entertaining tale replete with insights into the nature of the state and of war. Indeed, it could arguably be deemed an antiwar novel; but the insights do not end there.

As The Syndic opens, the continent of North America has long been divvied up between the Syndic and the Mob. The former United States government continues to exist in exile in Iceland and Ireland as the North American Government (NAG; an apt acronym). After an odd prologue composed of historical documents that set the stage for us, we’re introduced to our main viewpoint character, Charles Orsino, a low-ranking young bagman for the Syndic, who spends his days politely shaking down small businesses in the 101st New York Police Precinct for protection money and playing a brutal version of polo with jeeps and firearms instead of horses and mallets.

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I listen to a number of podcasts on books and writing in the science fiction and fantasy genre. I find them interesting and valuable as a fan, as the editor of Prometheus Unbound, and as an aspiring author myself. I think you will as well, so I’ve created a curated list of my favorites and what I’m listening to now. Do you listen to any of these? Are there any I haven’t listed that you would recommend? Let us know in the comments.

General SF&F Book Podcasts

These are mostly general science fiction and fantasy podcasts about books, although movies and tv shows do come up on some of them as well. If you’re interested in the craft and business of writing, it would be worthwhile to subscribe to these not only to keep up with the state of the field but also because they often feature authors, editors, publishers, and agents as interviewees or guests.

The SF Signal Podcast — The Hugo-nominated podcast of the indispensable Hugo-winning SF Signal website. Hosted by Patrick Hester. The schedule is one interview episode and one discussion episode per week. The podcast features a wide range of interviewees, guests, and panelists, including a core group of regulars, from the science fiction, fantasy, and horror community. I haven’t listened to the new, separate Crossing the Gulf podcast hosted by Karen Burnham (a NASA engineer) and Karen Lord yet.

Adventures in Scifi Publishing — Hosted by Shaun Farrell, Moses Siregar (The Black God’s War), and Brent Bowen. A long-running podcast featuring discussion and interviews with the biggest and hottest names in the genre community as well as newer authors. The experienced hosts are self-published or aspiring authors themselves. Update: Founder Shaun Farrell has had to step down from hosting AISFP, but he relinquished the reins to new host Tim Ward so the show will go on.

The Coode Street Podcast — A rather informal and, as they say, rambly conversation between editor Jonathan Strahan (Life on Mars) and academic and reviewer Gary K. Wolfe (Evaporating Genres). There is the occasional guest, but mostly it’s just the two hosts. You can learn a lot about the current state of the genre, and especially its rich history, from these widely read veterans.

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This month we’ve been reading and discussing Matthew Alexander’s libertarian science fiction novel Wĭthûr Wē in our book club. Over the weekend, on Sunday, we held our first Lightmonthly Read Author Chat with Matthew. The turnout wasn’t quite what we’d hoped for, but it was our first event — a successful proof of concept that we will build on. Matthew read a couple of early chapters from the new novel he’s working on, The Preferred Observer, and then we had a nice, long conversation with Mike DiBaggio and Michel Santos. Thanks, guys, for joining us.

If you missed the Google+ Hangout for whatever reason, you can watch the YouTube recording below:
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