The Prometheus Award
Well…THE GOLDEN AGE did not win the Prometheus award it was up for…but neither did the other books I was expecting. Instead, LORD OF THE RINGS won the coveted prize.
http://sfscope.com/2009/07/2009-prometheus-award-winners.html
Funny that a tale of mystical Norse-medieval sentiment would win out over an openly pro-Libertarian morality play about individual effort. Gee, I even had a scene where one character lectures another on Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage, and in the appendix I mention the drawbacks of allowing a central bank to interfere with the credit market. Whether it is good or bad storytelling to mention Ricardo in an SFF book, I would have thought this was the sort of thing pro-free-market readers would rejoice to read.
Ah well, maybe artistic merit counts for more than partisan ideological purity after all. So I dare not complain.
However, this means I will not be writing that science-fictionalized version of F. A. Hayek I had been planning: THE GALACTIC ROAD TO STAR SERFDOM, in which R. John Galt, a golden robot programmed with the Three Laws of von Mises, together with space-outlaw Santiago and the smart-alec detective "Win" Bear Kropotkin, matches wits with the evil parallel-universe version of Hari Seldon who, just as the Galaxy is breaking free of Imperial dominion from the planet Splendid Wisdom, uses Cleometry, the predictive science of history, to attempt to smother cosmic freedom once more into a single Second Empire, by means of credit and currency manipulation. Hijinks abound when robot Galt falls in love with the fierce yet lovely space-locomotive magnate Dagny D’Anconia. You’ll be breathless with boredom at the fifty-page long speech the superrobot gives over galactic radio, explaining his metaphysics, epistemology, and economic theory!
Instead I will write something staring a space princess. I mean, if Tolkein can win the Prometheus Award by portraying a divinely sanctioned monarch like Aragorn (Elessar I to historians) I should be able to do the same with my Princess Aura-Leia.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
