Remarks Upon Acceptance into the Prometheus Hall of Fame
for Alongside Night
Noreascon III World Science Fiction Convention, September 2, 1989
Sheraton Boston Hotel
by J. Neil Schulman
This is an important award.
No, it doesn't have half a million dollars attached to
it like the Nobel Prize.
No, we aren't being broadcast into half the living rooms
on Earth like the Academy Awards.
No, the winner of this award will not have his picture
in The New York Times tomorrow.
This award does not even have the prestige with the
general public to ensure that a work winning it will remain in
print.
This is nonetheless an important award. It may well be
the most important award being given out on this planet today.
The year in which this award is being given out is the
year of Tienanmen Square ... where the world saw a freedom
movement assassinated with guns, gas, and clubs ... and one lone
freedom fighter hold back a tank with nothing more than courage.
The year in which this award is being given out is also
the year that, almost fifty years to the day from its invasion
by a foreign power, the people of Poland found themselves free
from domination by foreign powers.
The year in which this award is being given out is the
year that the United States government, finding itself without a
foreign power of any magnitude to oppose it, decided to begin
epanding its empire over the continent to its south, because
while the War on Drugs may not be much of a war, it's the only
war we've got.
We live in a world in which freedom of any sort is a
precarious and expensive commodity. The victories by the forces
of darkness are the lead stories in every newscast, on the front
pages of every news publication. I find that about 75% of what
is labelled news on the evening newscast is government
propaganda, not even rewritten enough to disguise its purpose.
Those who choose to see the world as it is, and write
about how it might be and ought to be, are a small but hardy
band. I am proud to be in a room with Prometheus laureates
Victor Koman and Brad Linaweaver. When our oppressors no longer
write the books on literary history, these names will shine.
I am proud to win an award whose previous winners
include George Orwell, Robert Heinlein, Ayn Rand, Robert Anton
Wilson and Rogert Shea, C.M. Kornbluth, and Ray Bradbury. When
our oppressors no longer write the books on literary history,
these names will shine.
I am proud that my book was chosen out of as prestigious
a collection of works as Zamyatin's We, Rand's We the Living,
Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, LeGuin's The
Dispossessed. When our oppressors no longer write the books on
literary history, these names will shine.
Great oaks from little acorns grow. The literature of
liberty contains the seeds of our liberation. The war to
liberate the human race will not be won only with guns. Guns can only
kill people; they can't kill ideas. The war will also be won with an
idea. It is a wrong idea that enslaves us: the idea that human
beings can't be trusted with their own lives. It is a right idea
that will free us: that if we do not begin trusting each other,
no one else will.
Each of the books that has won either the Prometheus
Award or has been inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame is a
weapon in the War to Liberate the Human Race. It may not be the
last War the human race must fight, but if we do not win it, we
will not survive to fight any others.
This is an important award because it is the only award
that recognizes we are engaged in a War of Liberation, that
recognizes what the price of losing this war is, that camped
behind enemy lines calls the honor roll of the soldiers who
dedicate their lives to victory.
I stand here because my name has been called. And
someday ... some day ... the War for Freedom will be won and the
names on that honor roll will shine.
I thank you all very much.