Anders Monsen

Sunni: Even though I've been aware of LFS and the Prometheus Award for several years, this is my first year of membership. And even though I've been so busy I haven't learned more about the group or joined in the conversation, it's exciting all the same. Learning more about pro-freedom science fiction and helping promote it fits in well with what Tom and I are trying to do at Endervidualism. Which reminds me—I'm glad you didn't take offense when I started this Salon. Since your blog's focus is liberty and culture, I guess one could say we're competitors after a fashion. [laughs]

Anders: The more the merrier! It's strange to think that the LFS has been around for 25 years, but with the explosion of the internet—and in particular, blogging—rarely have so many voices discussed liberty and culture as now. Of course, other groups discuss culture and, well, not liberty, but rather their visions of utopia. There's even another blog out there called Liberty and Culture, but its main focus is religion, individualism, and democracy, and much of the blog is critical of Muslims and Islam, far from my areas of expertise. My blog is sort of an offshoot of my editor role, but not directly affiliated with LFS in any way.

The LFS actually is one of the oldest fan awards in science fiction—exempting the Hugo Award, of course—and is quite unique in that as an organization it not just presents an award, usually in person at the World Science Fiction Convention, but also publishes a newsletter. I think over eighty issues of the newsletter have been published since 1982 ... not bad for a volunteer-driven organization. The quarterly schedule stumbled a few times, otherwise I think we'd be closer to issue #100.

Sunni: Where do you get all the great information you post to your blog, anyway? Are you able to spend some time every day checking a list of resources, or do people send you tips?

Anders: I wish! Mostly it's a pretty random process. I started blogging back in 2002, but for two years I kept my blog private, meant only as a way for me to bookmark interesting stories on liberty and fiction or film. I deliberately tried to limit my own opinions. I occasionally google for stories on libertarian SF, and find a few hits that way. I used to read libertarian author web sites, but many authors still are not online, or at best have static sites listing past and current works. I do read Locus Online every day to keep up with mainstream SF, but many of my posts are from either other blog sites that get the stories faster, or major news sites that I just stumble upon randomly. I went public with my blog in 2004, when I started editing Prometheus. In prior issues I always had a bunch of news stories talking about forthcoming books of interest to libertarians—I called the page Prometheus Project—but I decided this time to focus on published works in the newsletter rather than advance news.

A blog is better for briefer, more immediate posts, so the newsletter and the blog complement each other. Lately I've broken my initial rule and posted a few angry opinions—government data mining abetted by private companies—and some non-libertarian personal entertainment outbursts—Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet on DVD, for instance. But there's a ton of stuff out there that I miss, or that I fail to include in my blog because I don't yet have an angle or reaction. Wally Conger has a great blog that mixes entertainment and left-libertarian ideas. And he sees more movies than I do, so I get some great tips!