The Libertarian Futurist Society issued a press release on Friday, July 13th, announcing the winners (plural) of the 2012 Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian Novel.
The winners and finalists, with links to our reviews:
Snuff by Terry Pratchett (our current Lightmonthly Read; review coming in early August)
The 2012 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award winner is “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster.
Our Take
We’re not sure we would have recommended any of the finalists for the Prometheus Award this year.
We haven’t read The Freedom Maze yet, so we can’t question its selection as a co-winner. Maybe it is worthy and we’ll discover this if and when we get around to reading it. Clearly it meets the criteria of the LFS voting membership.
While we enjoyed Ready Player One we do not think it was libertarian enough to qualify for the Prometheus Award. The same goes for The Children of the Sky and The Restoration Game.
While In the Shadow of Ares was libertarian enough, and apparently written by actual libertarians (unlike many Prometheus Award winners), and we enjoyed it, we do think the writing quality was not quite there. The authors are ones to keep an eye on, however.
We’re currently reading Snuff and, as one would expect from Terry Pratchett, it is well written. Whether we think it is unambiguously libertarian enough remains to be seen. We’ll publish a review in early August.
We’d love to publish a review of Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze, if anyone is interested in submitting one.
In an interview on Geeks Guide to the Galaxy (Wired), econtard Paul Krugman discussed the relationship between science fiction and economics. He said that he was inspired to pursue economics by Asimov’s Foundation series. Quelle surprise! He also claimed economic laws change over time (I know, I know!), but he nevertheless embraces one unstoppable apriori economic law in the interview: greed.
Free online college course: Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World: Taught by Professor Eric S. Rabkin of the University of Michigan. Hosted by Coursera. The course will run 10 weeks and will cover Grimm, Carroll, Stoker, Shelley, Hawthorne & Poe, Wells, Burroughs & Gilman, Bradbury, LeGuin, and Doctorow (Little Brother). Click on over for more details and the registration form.
ISS astronaut impressed by private firm SpaceX’s Dragon vehicle: “Inside of the Dragon module. Beautiful. Spacious, Modern. Blue LEDs. Feels a bit like a sci-fi filmset. Of course it is from Los Angeles.” And “You could say a new era of spaceflight has begun. Soon private companies will take people to and from space.”
Like Prometheus Unbound, Cato Unbound is an online magazine, unbound and free of the limits of the dead-tree format, although they maintain a regular monthly schedule while we do not. Each month they cover a different big topic and invite several eminent thinkers to discuss it.
Cato Unbound invites their readers to take part in the discussion on their own websites, blogs, social networks, and the like. Particularly good posts could be officially included in the issue.
Lead Essay
This month’s lead essayist is literary scholar Sarah Skwire. In “Birth of the Clichés,” she argues that — contrary to mainstream and libertarian perception — the evidence that Western literature is anti-commerce is actually thin. Instead, she presents a more nuanced view “in which critiques of the market stand side by side with favorable depictions and even sound, encouraging advice for would-be businessmen.”
I’m pleased to announce that we’re launching our first book giveaway on Prometheus Unbound. Our very own Matthew Alexander has been generous enough to agree to give away free copies of his libertarian science fiction novel Wĭthûr Wē.
We’ll be giving away ebook copies in Kindle (mobi) format during the entire month of July 2012.
One lucky winner will also receive a signed paperback copy of Wĭthûr Wē.
Please help us promote this book giveaway. Share the book giveaway page (linked above) far and wide.
And congratulations to Matthew whose Wĭthûr Wē recently won the 2012 Libertarian Fiction Book of the Year presented by the Libertarian, Agorist, Voluntaryist & Anarch Authors & Publishers Association (LAVA).
One judge described Wĭthûr Wē as “[a] beautifully written explanation of anarcho-capitalism, without being overly didactic or so steeped in philosophy that the plot suffers.”
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I have much to say about Brin’s attacks on “dogmatic libertarians,” by which he means followers of Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand who worship property too much, but watch the video first and then continue on below for my commentary.1
It’s been a news-heavy month. Here are a few more tidbits:
Yesterday, Tor/Forge announced that it will make all of its ebooks completely free of DRM by early July 2012. This is a momentous and welcome change. Tor/Forge is a genre imprint of Macmillan, one of the Big Six publishers. It’s the first of these publishers to cave to author and cusotmer pressure on DRM. It may have helped that Macmillan is not a publicly traded company. Cory Doctorow believes more Big Six publishers are sure to follow; he’s “had contact with very highly placed execs at two more of the big six publishers.”
Last month, James Cameron promoted private deep-sea exploration. He’s also partnered with Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, and Ross Perot Jr., to back private space company Planetary Resources. Immediate plans are to design and build low-cost robotic spacecraft for survey missions. The firm, founded and chaired by Peter Diamondis (creator of the X-Prize Foundation) and Eric Anderson, hopes to then build on this technology and begin mining Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) within the next ten years. For an extended explanation of how and why Planetary Resources can succeed, read Phil Plait’s post on the Bad Astronomy blog. We live in exciting times for the exploration and exploitation of space.
Brian Doherty of Reason.com was able to visit the set of Atlas Shrugged, Part II — Either-Or, based on Ayn Rand’s inspiring novel, during part of its ongoing 31 day shoot. After poor box office sales and being panned by critics, including our own Matthew Alexander (read his review), many wondered whether the second and third installments would ever be filmed. Encouraging DVD and VOD sales convinced the wealthy “rights”-holder, John Aglialoro, to persevere and a few new Randian investors to hop on board. I’m not sure whether the budget is the same, but in a risky move two things certainly aren’t: the director and the entire cast.
Yes, you read that right. The director and the entire cast from the first film were not retained for the second and third installments. The irony is not lost on those of us who both recognize that so-called intellectual property is illegitimate and are painfully aware of how fiercely most followers of Ayn Rand cling to it that copyright appears to have played a major role in this potentially devastating turnover. As one of the producers, Harmon Kaslow, himself explains,
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