From The Prometheus People

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

News update: 45th Prometheus Awards show set for Zoom at 2 p.m. Saturday (EST) Aug. 30

For immediate release:

The 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony will take place Saturday Aug. 30 at 2 p.m. Eastern time (11 a.m. Pacific) via Zoom and is open to the public.

This will be the first ceremony in the Prometheus Awards’ 46-year history in which both of this year’s winners – Poul Anderson (1926-2001) and Michael Flynn (1947-2023) – will be recognized posthumously, with eloquent, personal, revealing, amusing and inspirational speeches about their lives and works by the family members who loved them.

Among the speakers for the awards show, expected to run about 40-45 minutes:
* guest presenter David Friedman – a leading economist, law-and-economics professor, libertarian theorist, and Prometheus-nominated fantasy novelist
* Astrid Anderson Bear – daughter of the Hugo-winning SFWA Grand Master Poul Anderson (Tau Zero, The Broken Sword, The Psychotechnic League, Ensign Flandry, Time Patrol, The High Crusade, and wife of the late sf author Greg Bear (Eon, The Forge of God, Darwin’s Radio, Anvil of Stars)
* Kevin Flynn – brother of the late SF author Michael Flynn (Hugo Best Novel finalist for Eifelheim), Denver City Councilman, a retired journalist and co-author with Gary Gerhardt of the books The Order: Inside America’s Racist Underground and The Silent Brotherhood: The Chilling Inside Story of America’s Violent, Anti-Government Militia Movement.
* Shahid Mahmud – publisher of CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, which has published its first Prometheus-winning novel with Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale
* emcee and LFS president William H. Stoddard – a freelance editor and author of half a dozen SF role-playing-gaming books on GURPS
* Prometheus Blog editor-contributor Michael Grossberg – an award-winning, retired journalist and theater/film/book critic who chairs the Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee.

Astrid Anderson Bear will accept the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction for her father’s 1983 novel Orion Shall Rise.

Kevin Flynn will accept the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for his brother’s last novel, In the Belly of the Whale (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)

Orion Shall Rise – the fifth work by Anderson to be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, following Trader to the Stars (in 1985), The Star Fox (in 1995), “No Truce with Kings” (in 2010) and “Sam Hall” (in 2020) – explores the corruptions and temptations of power and how a free society might survive and thrive after a post-nuclear-war apocalypse on a largely depopulated Earth with the emergence of four drastically different socioeconomic societies.

In the Belly of the Whale – the third work by Michael Flynn to win a Prometheus award for Best Novel, following In the Country of the Blind (in 1991)and Fallen Angels (in 1992) – offers an epic drama and cautionary tale about challenges, conflicts and threats to liberty among 40,000 human colonists aboard a colossal generation ship during a long 12-light-years voyage to another star.


David D. Friedman (son of Milton Friedman and a leading libertarian theorist himself since the 1970s) will present the Hall of Fame category. Friedman’s speech will discuss libertarian science fiction and how he was influenced in his economic thinking by Prometheus-winning authors such as Robert Heinlein and Vernor Vinge.

Among Friedman’s books: The Machinery of Freedom, Price Theory: An Intermediate Text, Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World, Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life and the fantasy novels Harald, Brothers and Salamander.

Shahid Mahmud, CAEZIK publisher, will speak about Michael Flynn’s final posthumous novel and legacy.
Michael Grossberg, who will present the Best Novel category. contributed to six books, including essays in four editions of The Burns Mantle Yearbook of the Theater and a critical-essay afterword to the 2nd edition of J. Neil Schulman’s Prometheus-winning 1984 novel The Rainbow Cadenza (notable as perhaps the first sf novel to envision a future where gay marriage is normal and legal).

The 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony is open to the public (with subsequent reports and transcripts on the Prometheus Blog at www.lfs.org/blog/)

Here is the Zoom link to access and watch the 2-2:45 p.m. Saturday (EST) Aug. 30, 2025 event:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87344910540?pwd=rD6ckCN7j8k5Ytyh2n2YaQbpqoGkjr.1

Meeting ID: 873 4491 0540

Passcode: 396343

56 thoughts on “From The Prometheus People”

  2. I hope they get around to giving Poul’s Harvest of Stars the Hall of Fame Award sometime. I know its sequel/prequel/companion novel The Stars Are Also Fire won the main award when it came out, but the first one is, to me, his masterwork (which was enhanced by Also Fire, of course), and needs recognition.

    Liked by 4 people

  3. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » NEWS YOU CAN IN FACT USE:  News update: 45th Prometheus Awards show set for Zoom at 2 p.m. Saturday

  5. With a speaker named “Jihadi Mohammed” (Shahid Mahmud), and another one whose claim to fame is writing best sellers about the “right-wing militia threat”? Hard Pass.

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    1. Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

      You don’t have to enrich anyone you mistrust, but you should keep an eye on what they’re doing.

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      1. Precisely. And if you don’t like the choices, join the association and vote. I intend to. Now things are calming a little.
        Seriously, reading tea leaves from things like people’s names is what makes me REALLY afraid for No Man’s Land….
        Look, I understand everyone being oversensitive after the last 10 years, but all the same.

        Liked by 1 person

    5. Mahmud is there because he published one of the winners; Flynn is there because that winner was his brother. And Bear is there because the other winner was her father. It’s not in the LFS’s power to compel writers to have only ideologically correct family and business ties. (And it would be rude for us to snub kin who are proud of them.) But if you want to judge the LFS as an organization, take a look at the novels that win its awards—I’ve disagreed with some of the choices over the years, but I think the average recommends the LFS’s choices. And if you disagree, well, at least you’ll have judged us by our own views and decisions.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. That’s fair.

        In my (our?) defense, there’s a flinch reaction after watching seemingly every group/institution we’ve ever relied on succumb to the progressive infection. Too often (if not usually), after people with those bona fides show up in an organization’s official business, its unofficial business shifts to kicking out people that don’t toe the socialist line.

        I did see your name in there, and having read some of your stuff, that did mitigate in favor of giving everybody the benefit of the doubt. :)

        Plus, in today’s vicious political climate, if the proxy awardees are willing to be seen in libertarian company — let alone being seen to be publicly proud of an award that actually does hew to libertarian principles — that’s no small thing in itself. Respect for that.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I left a response earlier today that either disappeared into the ether or hit one of the magical invisble WP spam triggers. Anyway, to summarize that much longer comment, I’d say my response was a justifiable reflex, given the skinsuiting of so many ostensibly non-leftist organizations in recent years, but I also admit that it’s unsupported by any solid evidence. I’m willing to trust you that it was inaccurate and revise that hasty conclusion.

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        1. And now the missing comment appears. Where the hell did it come from? I posted it from a different computer and a different network HOURS ago.

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        2. You’re certainly entitled to judge the LFS by the visible evidence. But I think the choice of award winners is more directly relevant evidence for what concerns you, as that’s what our members actually vote on!

          Liked by 1 person

  6. Julian May might have been earlier than Flynn with gay marriage, but her Milieu Trilogy was not libertarian. Fun, though.

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Thanks for this! I’ve got to watch that show. I met David Friedman once, in the early 70s, and have a copy of Machinery of Freedom from back then.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Odd that in almost 60 years of reading SF, I’ve never heard of Michael Flynn or any of his books.

    Though looking at a list, most of his stuff seems to have come out after the mid-90s when tradpub became a poor use of my entertainment budget.

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    1. Fallen Angels 1992 was written with Niven and Pournelle. The Greenie / Commie loons have taken over the developed countries and outlawed technological progress, stranding the remaining inhabitants of US and Russian space stations for years. Then one day a couple of astronauts crash down and need rescuing. Hijinks ensue.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. In the Kingdom of the Blind is a brilliant riff on conspiracy theories and secret histories.

      Firestar should have been a massive popular bestseller, as it was about the first private initiative to get into space, roughly contemporary to when the book was published. Makes a great companion piece to Victor Koman’s Kings of the High Frontier.

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    3. Sounds like Paul William’s lost Kermit song lyrics, before they had an intervention and he changed it up.

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    1. I won’t be able to make it. Don’t even ask about this week. My mom who is well into her nineties, broke her leg. And this is the minor thing this week. Sigh. But I’ll look at the video later. (There will be video, right?)

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      1. One of our other officers will be videorecording the Zoom, and making it available as soon as can be managed. There are other people who are asking for the video.

        Liked by 1 person

  12. …

    Eleanor’s face hardened. “Then it’s worse than we thought.”

    Svensson stared at the glowing tip of his cigarette, the smoke curling into the fog-dimmed room. His voice was low, resolute.

    “No. It’s exactly what I thought. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

    The war wasn’t over. It had simply changed uniforms.

    ….

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  13. …

    The platform tilted, flames bursting from its heart. The sea swallowed steel as towers crumpled, a titan dragged under.

    Volkov was gone. The Wolves’ listening post was destroyed.

    But Connolly knew his words were true.

    The Wolves did not die with one old soldier.

    They were everywhere.

    And this war was only beginning.

    …

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  14. Does anyone else find themselves writing but not finishing ten or more books at the same time… Or is these rookie numbers?

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    2. I get triggered to write a couple of pages of a scene, rather than a whole bunch of starts. I’ll see something, say, an odd-looking stump by the side of the trail, and my mind goes off in a flight of fantasy with it. I started doing that back in 1980? 1981? when I was stationed at McChord AFB in Washington and did a bunch of hiking in the Olympic Peninsula and on Mount Rainier. Rainier had a couple of old ruined shelters stone foundations along some of the trails that were really cool. And visiting the various cliff dwellings all over the southwest is another great source. My biggest problem is trying to tie enough of these together into a coherent story, and then filling in the connections.

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    3. Dang, those snippets are good stuff. I want to read whatever they’re part of. (Am I remembering correctly that you just published your first novel?)

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      1. Not to dox myself; but Sarah has posted some of mine in the promo posts…

        The one about the Wolves took a wildly different turn down a path I didn’t like last night and I basically just started over.

        The one with Svensson is about 30% done. Maybe.

        And then I got ideas about another series…

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  17. Uh

    i don’t know about letting Flynn anywhere near a libertarian sci-fi award

    come back when he says those two b0ooks that he co-authored are fiction.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. The Prometheus Awards “show” was… spectacular. (Yes, preventable ‘technical’ glitches and all.)

    And fun, and informative… never knew there was a movie made of “Alongside Night”, for instance.

    So thanks for the heads-up; and ICYMI, there is a post-show video coming, see above.

    (Now, back to my accustomed wide-eyed lurking.)

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