Annal:2006 Prometheus Award for Best Novel
From AwardAnnals
Results of the Prometheus Award in the year 2006. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Learning the World: A Scientific Romance
- 2006 Prometheus winner
- 2006 Clarke shortlist
- 2006 Hugo-Novel nominee
- Score: 22.56
Humanity has spread to every star within 500 light-years of its half-forgotten origin, coloring the sky with a haze of habitats. Societies rise and fall. Incautious experiments burn fast and fade. On the fringes, less modified humans get on with the job of settling a universe that has, so far, been empty of intelligent life.
The ancient starship But the Sky, My Lady! The Sky! is entering orbit around a promising new system after a four hundred year journey. For its long-lived inhabitants, the centuries have been busy. Now a younger generation is eager to settle the system. The ship is a seed-pod ready to burst.
Then they detect curious electromagnetic emissions from the system’s Earth-like world. As the nature of the signals becomes clear, the choices facing the humans become stark.
On Ground, second world from the sun, a young astronomer searches for his system’s outermost planet. A moving point of light thrills, then disappoints him. It’s only a comet. His physicist colleague Orro takes time off from trying to invent a flying-machine to calculate the comet’s trajectory.…
Chainfire: Book 9 of Sword of Truth
- 2006 Prometheus finalist
- Score: 6.56
With Wizard’s First Rule and seven subsequent masterpieces, Terry Goodkind has thrilled readers worldwide with the unique sweep of his storytelling. Now Goodkind returns with a new novel of Richard and Kahlan, the beginning of a sequence of three novels that will bring their epic story to its culmination.
After being gravely injured in battle, Richard awakes to discover Kahlan missing. To his disbelief, no one remembers the woman he is frantically trying to find. Worse, no one believes that she really exists, or that he was ever married. Alone as never before, he must find the woman he loves more than life itself….if she is even still alive. If she was ever even real.
- 2006 Prometheus finalist
- Score: 6.56
A gripping YA fiction debut by bestselling author Walter Mosley. Walter Mosley is one of the best known writers in America. In his first book for young adults, Mosley deftly weaves historical and speculative fiction into a powerful narrative about the nature of freedom. 47 is a young slave boy living under the watchful eye of a brutal slave master. His life seems doomed until he meets a mysterious run-away slave, Tall John. Then 47 finds himself swept up in a struggle for his own liberation.
The Hidden Family: Book 2 of Merchant Princes
- 2006 Prometheus finalist
- Score: 6.56
Miriam, a hip tech journalist from Boston, discovered her alternate world relatives in The Family Trade, and with them an elite identity she didn’t know was hers. Now, in order to avoid a slippery slope down to an unmarked grave, Miriam, known as Lady Helge to the Family, starts applying modern business practices and scientific knowledge to a trade dominated by mercantilists—with unexpected consequences for three different timelines, including the quasi-Victorian one exploited by the hidden family.
Charles Stross is one of the big new SF writers of the 21st century, and the saga of The Merchant Princes is his most ambitious work yet.
RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone
- 2006 Prometheus finalist
- Score: 6.56
Jeremy has a dream: To be the greatest lightmaker for the greatest west coast rock band, RebelFire.
But what can he do? He’s just a kid. A kid trapped in a prison-like school. Trapped in a world where dreams are “treated” with drugs – and roving patrols make sure you take your dose.
Trapped in the Zone, where travel without a permit is impossible. Trapped under the all-controlling eye of spycams, sensors, and monitors.
Trapped by the chip in his wrist that regulates everything Jeremy can – or can’t – do.
Trapped in a world where some far-off control freak can even decide what music he’s allowed – or forbidden – to hear.
Jeremy’s only choice is to shut up and do as he’s ordered.
But some people were never meant to be controlled…
Enter the world of RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone.
The Black Arrow: A Novel
- 2006 Prometheus finalist
- Score: 6.56
The Resistance Has Begun…
The portals are everywhere, now. Scanning for weapons, for drugs…. No getting out of line.
The people had forgotten how to fight back. There was no one to show them how. Or was there…?
What if the indignities Americans now endure in the nation’s airports — ID checks, invasive body searches—expanded onto our city streets?
What if pedestrian and motorist alike could be searched at roadblocks without pretext, pulled from their cars…machine-gunned if they stepped out of line?
The year is 2031, and the Ashcroft-Poindexter police state is at full bray. Will Americans continue to endure such indignities like sheep? Or will they begin to gather in basement and abandoned subway tunnel, seeking a leader who can show them how to use the ancient tools of bow and sword to win back their freedoms…striking from the silence of the night?
Against this backdrop, “The Black Arrow” is a sweaty love story, as an elegant and voluptuous newspaper columnist and a fiery young warrior lass vie for the affections of wealthy record company executive Andrew Fletcher,…
