Liberty, literacy and younger generations: Why Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer wrote Storm-Dragon, a Young Adult science fiction novel and current nominee

By Michael Grossberg

Prometheus-winning sf/fantasy author Dave Freer understands how liberty and literacy are intimately intertwined – a frequent theme explored here on the Prometheus Blog.

As Freer explains on the Mad Genius Club blog, his commitment to encouraging literacy and younger readers was a key motivation for him to write Storm-Dragon, a Young Adult science fiction novel that’s one of 10 2025 novels nominated so far for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

“We need young people reading,” Freer writes.

“It’s the one way you can future-proof your kids, because it is the one thing that will make them flexible enough to cope with whatever the future throws. It will give them advantages in learning – far more than schooling will,” he said.

Continue reading Liberty, literacy and younger generations: Why Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer wrote Storm-Dragon, a Young Adult science fiction novel and current nominee

Time travel and second chances: Sarah Hoyt’s new anthology includes a prequel story to her Prometheus-nominated No Man’s Land

By Michael Grossberg

Prometheus Award winner Sarah Hoyt has published an anthology about time travel and second chances.

Perhaps of greatest interest to LFS members, the six-story collection includes a prequel to Hoyt’s No Man’s Land, a current Best Novel nominee.

Six stories are included in Christmas In Time: Six Stories of Time Travel and Second Chances.

The No Man’s Land prequel is “What Child Is This,” which focuses on how a child’s accidental time-slip can save a man’s life and create the bonds of family love.

Continue reading Time travel and second chances: Sarah Hoyt’s new anthology includes a prequel story to her Prometheus-nominated No Man’s Land

Last call for Prometheus Best Novel nominations: With the mid-February nominating deadline approaching, 13 2025 novels have been nominated so far


By Michael Grossberg

With the annual nominations deadline for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel now less than a month away, Libertarian Futurist Society members are encouraged to bring to our attention any eligible candidates they’ve come across.

This is a reminder and last call for nominations for the oldest category of the awards, now 47 years old.

So far, 13 2025 novels have been nominated by LFS members, somewhat less than average for Best Novel, with Feb. 15 the deadline for LFS members to nominate eligible and worthy works.

The current and interim list includes works by three authors who have previously won Prometheus Awards: Dave Freer (Cloud-Castles), Sarah Hoyt (Darkship Thieves) and Harry Turtledove (The Gladiator.)

This year’s interim slate of nominees also includes the latest novel in Karl K. Gallagher’s Fall of the Censor series, which includes quite a few novels recognized as Best Novel finalists.

But it’s also nice to see nominated works by authors who’ve never previously been recognized in our awards. So far this year, more than half of the novels were written by first-time nominees: Max Harms, Andrew Knighton, John C. A. Manley, Ewan Morrison, Laura Montgomery, Ray Nayler and J. Kenton Pierce.

So what are the novels by these authors that have been nominated so far?

Continue reading Last call for Prometheus Best Novel nominations: With the mid-February nominating deadline approaching, 13 2025 novels have been nominated so far


Raconteur Press interviews J. Kenton Pierce, nominated for a Prometheus Best Novel award for A Kiss for Damocles

By Michael Grossberg

J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles, nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, offer space opera with young-adult appeal.

Pierce, nominated for the first time for a Prometheus Award, describes what inspired his novel and how it fits into his future history in an interview posted on the website of the book’s publisher, Raconteur Press.

Launching Pierce’s ambitious projected multi-book Tales of the Long Night saga, A Kiss for Damocles is set in a complex future where interstellar war has ravaged worlds and where the homesteaders on one planet are struggling to rebuild.

Continue reading Raconteur Press interviews J. Kenton Pierce, nominated for a Prometheus Best Novel award for A Kiss for Damocles

A happy 90th birthday, Robert Silverberg! (and why only one novel by this great libertarian sf writer has been nominated for the Prometheus Award)


By Michael Grossberg

Robert Silverberg at Worldcon 67. Creative Commons license

Revered science fiction writer Robert Silverberg celebrates a milestone today, Jan. 15, 2026.

He turns 90 today. So happy birthday, Mr. Silverberg!

That’s a long lifetime for any man, even in the 21st century, but its especially impressive and worth commemorating for Silverberg, one of the greatest and most prolific science fiction writers of the past century.

Continue reading A happy 90th birthday, Robert Silverberg! (and why only one novel by this great libertarian sf writer has been nominated for the Prometheus Award)


No Man’s Land: The epic novel that Prometheus winner Sarah Hoyt was born to write


By Michael Grossberg

Sarah Hoyt views No Man’s Land, nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, as the epic story that she was born to write.

So what took her so long? The three-part novel required much of Hoyt’s life to gestate, mature and blossom – and therein lies another epic story.

“It’s been with me since I was 14,” Hoyt told me in an email interview.

Set in an interstellar future where humanity colonized many planets but also lost touch with some for centuries or millennia, the three-part 2025 novel blends tropes of science fiction and fantasy in intriguing ways.

Continue reading No Man’s Land: The epic novel that Prometheus winner Sarah Hoyt was born to write


Hall of Fame Finalist Review: C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength dramatizes warring ideologies of good and evil, freedom and tyranny

By Michael Grossberg

Bestselling British author C.S. Lewis wrote more than 30 books of fiction and non-fiction. With estimated sales approaching 200 million copies in print, Lewis (1898-1963) is best-known for his children’s fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia and his devilish epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters.

Lewis also wrote science fiction – most notably, his Space Trilogy, which culminates with That Hideous Strength, Lewis’ most libertarian novel.

Selected by LFS judges as one of this year’s Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists for Best Classic Fiction, That Hideous Strength offers a dystopian and metaphysical vision that dramatizes warring ideologies of good and evil, freedom and tyranny.

Continue reading Hall of Fame Finalist Review: C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength dramatizes warring ideologies of good and evil, freedom and tyranny

R.I.P., John Varley, a cutting-edge Heinleinesque sf writer and Prometheus winner

By Michael Grossberg

John Varley, winner of the 1999 Prometheus Award for Best Novel, is being remembered for his intelligent, imaginative, cutting-edge science fiction.

John Varley. Photo: Creative Commons license

Varley, who died in December at the age of 78 in Beaverton, Oregon, was “truly one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time,” wrote his fellow sf writer and friend David Brin in a tribute in the just-published January 2026 issue of Locus magazine.

An American science fiction writer (1947-2025), Varley often was Heinleinesque in his positive vision of human resilience and innovation and his ability to tell stories that blended adventure, suspense, believable characters, intelligent world-building and an epic sense of wonder.

In fact, Varley’s work often has been compared to frequent Prometheus winner Robert Heinlein, especially by the Canadian SF critic-author John Clute. So it made a lot of sense when Varley received the Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2009.

“He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments,” Clute wrote about Varley in his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

Continue reading R.I.P., John Varley, a cutting-edge Heinleinesque sf writer and Prometheus winner

Good news: The Prometheus Awards blog and LFS website have been ranked among the best libertarian blogs and websites of 2025

By Michael Grossberg

FeedSpot, a website aggregator, has released its updated list of the “60 Best Libertarian Blogs and Websites in 2025.”

The Libertarian Futurist Society and its Prometheus Awards blog, launched just six years ago, is ranked 39th on the FeedSpot list, which ranks 399 libertarian websites.

That’s relatively high up on the list, one of many ranked by Feedspot, an online platform that aggregates and organizes content from a wide variety of websites on many different subjects and themes.

Continue reading Good news: The Prometheus Awards blog and LFS website have been ranked among the best libertarian blogs and websites of 2025

The best of the blog: Highlights of 2025, from two probing series to an unusually moving and stimulating 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony

By Michael Grossberg

As we look back at what was published on the Prometheus Blog over the past year, it’s hard to pick the very best articles and reports to highlight.

Among our more sustained efforts, we launched an awards-standards series, with essays by William Stoddard and Eric Raymond exploring the criteria for Prometheus nominations, and devoted an 11-part series to analyzing the pros and cons of the increasing popularity of sequels in pop culture and in our awards.

Novelist Michael Flynn at an sf convention several decades ago (File photo)

Yet in this final of three “Best of the Blog” posts highlighting some of our best work of 2025, reporting on our 45th awards ceremony may rank highest.

For the first time in the history of the Prometheus Awards, the Best Novel winner was recognized posthumously. While we continue to mourn the passing of Michael Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, this year’s well-deserved award for his final novel In the Belly of the Whale paved the way for one of our most emotional and inspirational acceptance speeches.

Continue reading The best of the blog: Highlights of 2025, from two probing series to an unusually moving and stimulating 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony