This was an excellent year for interesting and informative interviews with a variety of authors, all worth reading (or rereading.)
The Prometheus Blog boasted more posted interviews in 2023 than ever before – most notably, with Australian sf writer Dave Freer, the first individual from the Southern Hemisphere to win a Prometheus award; and with the late great James Hogan, a two-time Prometheus winner for Best Novel.
David Drake, a prolific sf/fantasy author and Prometheus nominee, has died.
Drake, who died Dec. 10 at 78 from cognitive health problems, is being remembered as a leader and pioneer in military science fiction.
Drake, drafted into the U.S. Army to fight in Vietnam and Cambodia in the early 1970s, later brought a new level of granular realism to the subgenre based on his own experiences as a soldier.
Perhaps because Drake’s more than 80 books were focused on military sf, an action-oriented subgenre that tends to focus more on battles and military sf than ideas, few of his novels fit the distinctive focus of the Prometheus Awards exploring libertarian and/or anti-authoritarian themes.
Two-time Prometheus Award-winner James P. Hogan left a lasting legacy for sf fans and liberty lovers.
Hogan had a lot to say, both in fiction and non-fiction, about humanity, technology, liberty, science and politics.
Here is the sixth and final part of a Hogan interview previously unpublished in its full, uncut form:
Continue reading The Hogan Interview, part 6: On AI, favorite novels and advice to aspiring writers
Every year, when the Libertarian Futurist Society announces its Prometheus finalists in press releases, the two leading science-fiction/fantasy trade publications and other influential media cover it well – and promptly.
Happily, such positive coverage has occurred again this year, all within 24 hours of the LFS press release going out to the media.
Almost four dozen classic works of science fiction and fantasy have been inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, first presented four decades ago in 1983.
Libertarian Futurist Society members will select the next Best Classic Fiction inductee from four finalists, all first published or released more than 20 years ago.
The 2024 Hall of Fame finalists – just announced to the media in an LFS press release that’s already been reported on in full by File 770, a leading sf-industry trade publication – is varied in artistic form (including three novels and one song) and in its balance of the old and the new.
The current finalist slate, selected from 10 works of fiction (novels, stories and song) nominated by LFS members, recognizes both a first-time nominee and several stalwart candidates that have found favor with judges and voters in recent years.
Prometheus-winning author James P. Hogan was a maverick thinker who championed both liberty and technology while recognizing the reactionary and harmful impact of government, bureaucracy and irrationality on our lives.
Such themes are woven into his 26 novels, many short stories and essays – almost all of which remain available in print and mostly remain fresh and timeless today.
For posterity, the Prometheus blog is proud to be the first to post a lengthy and revealing interview that two-time Prometheus winner James P. Hogan gave just after the turn of the 21st century.
More than 90 percent of that interview was not included in a newspaper profile of Hogan, so it appears here uncut and complete for the first time.
Hogan (1941-2020) sadly is no longer with us, but almost all of his 26 novels remain in print – and many are worth reading or rereading for their ingenious premises, imaginative speculations (some of which have since come true) and their intelligent, insightful and realistic blend of science and politics.
After working for many years in England as an electrical engineer, computer salesman and digital-information executive, James P. Hogan wrote his first novel Inherit the Wind to win an office bet.
Against the odds, he won that bet. With his first novel an acclaimed bestseller that received quotable praise from Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov, Hogan was on his way – and he ultimately would write 26 novels before his untimely death in 2010 – including the Prometheus winners Voyage From Yesteryear and The Multiplex Man.
Here is the third part of a previously unpublished 2001 interview with Hogan, which sheds light on his work, philosophy and many novels:
I still remember reading James P. Hogan for the first time. What a discovery – and what a mind-expanding thrill.
His science-fiction novels were compulsively readable and scientifically plausible, while often upholding values I cherished, such as a commitment to reason, science, progress, persuasion, free inquiry and liberty.
I loved Inherit the Stars and The Genesis Machine – his first two acclaimed and bestselling novels – for their brilliant science-laced plots and fascinating ideas. And then I read Voyage From Yesteryear, an explicitly libertarian classic that won the 1983 Prometheus Award for Best Novel – and remains today one of the few novels that convincingly portrays a fully free society in a plausible future.
Two-time Prometheus winner James P. Hogan died in 2010, but his ideas, words and novels live on.
For the first time in print, here is the wide-ranging, full-fledged uncut interview (recently rediscovered among some boxes of papers and memorabilia) that Hogan gave in 2001 to LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg.
Continue reading Two-time Prometheus winner James Hogan: The long-lost interview
