Little Brother wins the Prometheus Award for libertarian science fiction
Wouldya lookit that! I've won the Libertarian Futurist's Society's Prometheus Award for my novel Little Brother! As with all the other awards LB has been up for this year, I'm even more honored by the company I'm in than the award itself; this year's Prometheus nominees included Charlie Stross's Saturn's Children, Matter by Iain Banks, The January Dancer by Michael Flyn, Opening Atlantis by Harry Turtledove, and Half a Crown, the wrenching conclusion to Jo Walton brilliant Farthing/Ha'penny alternate history trilogy. And this year's Prometheus Hall of Fame winner was Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. These books and these writers are all incredibly humbling company to find oneself among.
The Prometheus will be given out at the WorldCon, and the award includes an actual, no-fooling gold coin. So yes, I'll be walking around the Montreal Worldcon with a pocket full of gold, don't tell anyone.
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Congrats, Cory! I might actually have to snag this and read it, now. (blush)
Bob 'dj BC' Cronin
Congrats, Cory!
Out of curiosity, Cory- do you consider LB a "Libertarian" work? I am personally tickled pink that this award went to a guy who occasionally writes about the virtues of nationalized health care.
Congrats! Little Brother was my favourite read of 2008
-mustafa
Wow. The Libertarian Futurist Society's Prometheus Award. The award ceremony must have been PACKED!
"Libertarian Futurist's Society"
It already exists, it's called Somalia.
Congratulations, Cory! You did indeed win out over some distinguished finalists. But can anybody enlighten me as to what makes Lord of the Rings either a Libertarian or a Futurist novel?
congrats on yet another imaginary award
Congratulations!Hope the Hugo goes well. Not to rain on the parade (and bring your own damn umbrella, no room under mine) but Iain Banks is most definitely not a libertarian. His fellow Scots, Ken Macleod, might qualify as a libertarian/Trotskyite mashup, but Banks is essentially a utopian socialist. Always remember, the best short definition of libertarian is anarchy for rich people.
Let the whinging begin.
Congrats Cory, you've earned it. I picked up Little Brother a couple months ago and ate through it, then recommended it to all my friends. It's one of my favorite reads of last year.
Wait, my sense of time seems to be off. It was one my favorite reads of THIS year, so far.
Congratulations.
@#9 Kid Geezer
and the best short definition for democrat is 'rich people are evil', whilst republican would be 'poor people are stupid'.
all three reek of the kind of ignorance that seems to thrive in a sound bite society. better definitions:
democrat: "lets force everyone into charity"
republican: "lets force everyone into slavery"
libertarian: "lets force nobody to do anything"
and still they are incredibly lacking - except the libertarian one - because it's a philosophy that's internally consistent enough that, with a little effort, one can pretty well encompass it in a single sentence.
libertarian: "lets force nobody to do anything"
libertarian: "lets eat the weak". There, I fixed it for you.
There's a rich tradition of left-libertarians since the beginning of the libertarian movement.
Although, frankly, given the tarnishing much of the core movement has suffered by hitching its fate with recent corporatist big-government warmongering Republicans, I would be surprised if they're not all looking for a very different name right now. You know you've screwed up the branding badly when even "anarchist" looks like a less negative term...
No no no, it goes like this:
libertarianism: "Smash the state."
conservatism: "Date the state."
progressivism: "Fellate the state."
By the way, as a member of LFS, I voted for Cory's book, and am pleased to see it won. It was a very fine story with a strong libertarian theme, that of a plucky young individualist cleverly thwarting the Surveillance State.
I'm aware that Cory is only libertarian on some issues, and my vote was not a general endorsement of the author or his other works, although I like some of them too, even when they don't hew to my ideology.
@17 Scott Bieser. I'm a little curious about the idea that someone can be "libertarian" on only some issues. Seems there is some picking and choosing and ignoring going on here. Nutbastard's handle pretty well sums up his spirited rejoinder.
But my bad. I am genuinely curious as to the rationale behind the Banks nomination. Terrific book, imho, but frankly only a moron could make a case that it is a libertarian themed novel.
If you are a libertarian you just learn to suck it up and deal with the fact that everyone pretty much disagrees with you on something and agrees with you on something else. I have know more then one libertarian to hang out with far leftist lefty folks for years without anyone realizing that they had a libertarian among them, simply because they reserve their indignation for libertarian things that any lefty can agree with. "Republicans want to crush our civil liberties, prevent consenting adults from getting married because they are of the same sex, invade other nations, subsidize evil corporations, tightly restrict immigration, have Palin be our VP, and keep us from smoking pot?!? Fucking bastards!"
If anything, a libertarian can often muster up more indignation quicker because their core ideals can be summed up in a no nonsense definition that anyone can agree will describe their behavior in about a sentence or two, which makes taking a principled position trivial. Just don't let any of your leftist friends know what you think about tax policy or trade, and they will never know an evil libertarian is amongst them.
As for Cory's book in particular, I have not yet read it myself, but if the theme is crushing a police state and cursing excessive laws and the state that enforces them, it doesn't take a political scientist to figure out why libertarians might like it. That doesn't make Cory a libertarian. Believe me, if enjoying an artist's work makes you their political alignment, anyone with even a tickle of a sense of humor would be a libertarian through Trey Parker.
lib⋅er⋅tar⋅i⋅an
/ˌlɪbərˈtɛəriən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [lib-er-tair-ee-uhn] Show IPA
Use libertarian in a Sentence
–noun
1. a person who advocates liberty, esp. with regard to thought or conduct.
2. a person who maintains the doctrine of free will (distinguished from necessitarian ).
–adjective
3. advocating liberty or conforming to principles of liberty.
4. maintaining the doctrine of free will.
Origin:
1780–90; libert(y) + -arian
Related forms:
lib⋅er⋅tar⋅i⋅an⋅ism, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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lib·er·tar·i·an (lĭb'ər-târ'ē-ən)
n.
1. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
2. One who believes in free will.
[From liberty.]
lib'er·tar'i·an adj., lib'er·tar'i·an·ism n.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Libertarian
Lib`er*ta"ri*an\ (-t[=a]"r[i^]*an), a. [See Liberty.] Pertaining to liberty, or to the doctrine of free will, as opposed to the doctrine of necessity.
Libertarian
Lib`er*ta"ri*an\, n. One who holds to the doctrine of free will.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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libertarian
1789, "one who holds the doctrine of free will" (opposed to necessitarian), from liberty (q.v.) on model of unitarian, etc. Political sense of "person advocating liberty in thought and conduct" is from 1878. U.S. Libertarian Party founded in Colorado, 1971.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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congrats, Cory.
I liked reading the book, and it makes me scary.
congratulations! is it coincidence i ordered this book from my book club 3 days ago? hmmmmmmmmmm
Congratulations, Cory! A very well deserved win. LITTLE BROTHER was definitely the one of those books that was most about liberty. Also, it's a terrific book.
I hate to break it to you though, the gold coin is mounted on a plaque, which makes it easier to display but harder to jingle in your pocket. You could take it off the plaque, of course. They say they don't mind what you do with it -- and of course they would say that, they're Libertarians! I'm keeping the one I won last year in case the economy entirely collapses, and then I'll melt it down into farthing sized gold coins and have a new gold standard economy for my entire street.
Yah, go Cory! Keep it up!
As the LFS member who originally nominated The Lord of the Rings for the Hall of Fame, I can tell you exactly why I picked it for a libertarian award. It's about the power to rule others as a danger . . . both an external danger, in the form of conquest and a repressive surveillance state, and an internal danger, in the temptation, corruption, and outright addiction of power. Trying to use the One Ring for good will fail to achieve anything good and will corrupt the user, which is why characters such as Galadriel and Gandalf fear it . . . even if the "good" is the defense of freedom. The past decade of American history, with the emergence of a security state resistant to legal restraints (which is what Little Brother is about), offers some practical illustrations of the continuing applicability of this theme.
On the other hand, Tolkien also gives us the Shire, which, if not ideologically libertarian, has a quite minimal government in the older Jeffersonian spirit. And he makes it his central symbol of what the tyranny of Mordor would destroy, almost without noticing it.
William H. Stoddard
Libertarian science fiction? I'm going to have to report that one to the Department of Redundancy Department.
Ha,
Perhaps if the Shire was a gated community in the suburbs..
Congratulations, Cory. It's an excellent book, and as you said, you won against a crowded field of great books.
For people who are trying to figure out who wins our award, an important point is that we somehow manage to pay attention to the books rather than the authors. Our winners are from all over the political map, but the books that win our awards are consistently pro-freedom (or anti-tyranny; dystopias have also won.)
Recent winners include avowed socialists and other statists as well as libertarians, but their works are strongly pro-freedom, and that's what we care about.
Chris Hibbert (LFS President)
WHSWHS, that was a shockingly good defense of The Lord of the Rings as a libertarian book.
...except that even in Lord of the Rings, the people of Minas Tirith have socialized healthcare in the form of Aragon's healing hands.
Rindan, Thank you; I'm glad you found my comments well reasoned. I wrote about the Shire specifically at greater length in a Mythopoeic Conference paper some years ago, "Law and Institutions in the Shire," now available at http://www.troynovant.com/, if you're curious.
Tolkien wasn't an ideological libertarian, and as far as I can tell he wasn't strongly ideological in any direction; he was more like Fangorn saying, "I am not on anybody's side, because nobody is wholly on my side." But a book can speak to my libertarian concerns without being ideologically libertarian. And from the award votes over at least the past few years it seems most of our voting members feel the same way.