We are very proud to learn that Ken MacLeod's
The Restoration Game
has been nominated for a Prometheus Award. No connection between the award and our parent company, Prometheus Books, but it is a cool name! Congratulations to Ken. Here is the Prometheus Award official release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, March 31, 2012
2012 PROMETHEUS AWARD FINALISTS ANNOUNCED
The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced finalists for this
year's Prometheus Awards, which will be presented during the 70th World
Science Fiction Convention over Labor Day weekend in Chicago.
The Prometheus finalists for Best Novel recognize pro-freedom novels published last year:
- The Children of the Sky (TOR Books) - A sequel to Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and in the same universe as Prometheus-winning A Deepness in the Sky,
this novel focuses on advanced humans, stranded and struggling to
survive on a low-tech planet populated by Tines, dog-like creatures who
are only intelligent when organized in packs. The most libertarian of
the three human factions and their local allies must cope with the
world's authoritarian factions to advance peaceful trade over war and
coercion.
- The Freedom Maze (Small Beer Press) - Delia
Sherman's young-adult fantasy novel focuses on an adolescent girl in
1960 who is magically sent back to 1860 when her family owned slaves on a
Louisiana
plantation. With her summer tan, she's mistaken for a slave herself,
learning the hard way about her ancestors' attitudes and about courage,
respect, individual rights and personal responsibility.
- In the Shadow of Ares (Amazon Kindle edition) -
This young-adult first novel by Thomas L. James and Carl C. Carlsson
focuses on a Mars-born female teenager in a near-future, small
civilization on Mars,
where hardworking citizens are constantly and unjustly constrained by a
growing, centralized authority whose excessive power has led to
corruption and conflict.
- Ready Player One (Random House) - Ernest
Cline's genre-busting blend of science fiction, romance, suspense, and
adventure describes a virtual world that has managed to evolve an order
without a state and where entrepreneurial gamers must solve virtual
puzzles and battle real-life enemies to save their virtual world from
domination and corruption. The novel also stresses the importance of
allowing open access to the Internet for everyone.
- The Restoration Game (Pyr Books) - Set in a
world whose true nature is a deeper mystery, this philosophical and
political thriller by Ken MacLeod (winner of Prometheus awards for Learning the World, The Star Fraction, and The Stone Canal)
explores the dark legacy of communism and the primacy of information in
shaping what is "reality" amid Eastern European intrigue, online
gaming, romance and mystery.
- Snuff (Harper Collins) - A Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett (winner of a Prometheus Award for Night Watch, also set in Discworld), Snuff
blends comedy, drama, satire, suspense and mystery as a police chief
investigates the murder of a goblin and finds himself battling
discrimination. The mystery broadens into a powerful drama to extend the
world's recognition of rights to include these long-oppressed and
disdained people with a sophisticated culture of their own.
Thirteen novels were nominated this past year and read and voted on
by 10 judges, selected from LFS members. The other nominees:
Cowboy Angels, by Paul McAuley (Pyr Books);
The Hot Gate: Troy Rising III, by John Ringo (Baen Books);
REAMDE, by Neal Stephenson (William
Morrow);
Revolution World, by Katy Stauber (Night Shade Books);
Sweeter Than Wine, by L. Neil Smith (Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick);
Temporary Duty, by Ric Locke (Amazon; Kindle edition, Ric's Rulez blog); and
The Unincorporated Woman,, by Dani and Eytan Kollin (TOR
Books).
For more than three decades, the Prometheus Awards have
recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that stress
the importance of liberty as the foundation for civilization, peace,
prosperity, progress and justice.
**
The 2012 Prometheus finalists for Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame)
were announced earlier. This category honors novels, novellas, stories,
graphic novels, anthologies, films, TV shows/series, plays, poems,
music recordings and other works of fiction first published or broadcast
more than five years ago:
Falling Free, a novel by Lois McMaster Bujold (1988);
"'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman", a story by Harlan Ellison (1965)
"The Machine Stops", a story by E. M. Forster (1909)
"As Easy as A.B.C.", a story by Rudyard Kipling (1912)
The Worldcon's Prometheus Awards ceremony most likely will take
place, as in previous years, on the Friday afternoon of Labor Day
weekend (to be confirmed this summer at a Chicago Worldcon hotel and
meeting room to
be announced).
For more information, contact LFS Publicity Chair Chris Hibbert (hibbert@mydruthers.com).
To submit 2012 novels for consideration and possible nomination
by LFS members, contact Michael Grossberg, Best Novel finalist judging
committee chair (mikegrossb@aol.com or 614-236-5040).
To propose works published more than five years ago for the Hall
of Fame, contact William H. Stoddard, Hall of Fame finalist judging
committee chair (whswhs@mindspring.com).
For more information, visit www.lfs.org
by Andrew P. Mayer
by Ari Marmell
by Mark Hodder
is one of five nominations in the category of Young Adult Book. Congratulations also to Planesrunner cover artist 
in the YA section), Resnick, Rusch, Sykes. Always nice to see.
is getting some very high praise: