If you were nominated for a Prometheus Award for Best Novel, would you invite the world to watch you in the moment you found out whether your novel was selected among the finalists?
Novelist John C.A. Manley was willing to do that yesterday with his editor Peter Toccalino in an interesting and wide-ranging 40-minute video discussion of this year’s Best Novel nominees and finalists.
Personally, though, I’m not sure I’d be willing to do that – because after an initial discussion of the nominees, Toccalino read the Libertarian Futurist Society press release that went out to the media and LFS members a day earlier. And that’s when Manley learned that his novel didn’t make it into the top-five slate of finalists in what many Prometheus judges agreed has been an unusually strong year.
For one thing, I’d want to have some initial privacy to react to the news, especially if it was bad news. Whether I’d be delighted or disappointed, the news would be a surprise, and I’m sure I’d have a variety of emotions to process.
Manley and Toccalino’s video, titled “Reviewing the Prometheus Awards Finalists For Best Pro-Freedom SF/Fantasy Novel of 2026,” may be unprecedented in the 47-year history of the Prometheus Award precisely because of its big and suspenseful reveal, and its emotional impact.
The video is available to watch on YouTube, BitChute, Rumble and X. Manley adds a note on his website urging his readers, SF/fantasy fans and liberty lovers to share the video to “help promote the fiction you want to see in the world.”
By the way, the LFS website’s Videos page offers links to more than a dozen Prometheus-Awards panel discussions and awards ceremonies among the many that have been presented and recorded over the decades – and many are still interesting and inspiring to watch, featuring such luminaries as Harlan Ellison, F. Paul Wilson, C.J. Cherryh, Cory Doctorow, Barry Longyear, Sarah Hoyt, Wil McCarthy, Ken MacLeod, Daniel Suarez, David Friedman and Reason magazine’s Bob Poole, editor Katherine Mangu-Ward and book editor Jesse Walker.
But to my knowledge as the LFS co-founder back in 1981, this is the first video when we get to see a Prometheus-nominated author publicly react to finding out whether they’re a finalist.
Actually, Manley took the news pretty well, acknowledging in the subsequent video discussion with his editor that the slate of finalists this year is pretty strong -with one interesting caveat he noted about one finalist that he’s read and enjoyed.
Manley introduced the video, posted April 17 on his website, with this explanation: “… we quickly look at the fourteen nominations for this year’s Prometheus Awards. These are all science fiction or fantasy novels with a pro-liberty or anti-tyranny theme (including my novel, All The Humans Are Sleeping). After reviewing the line-up, we read the announcement from the judges revealing the five finalists…”
THE RULES OF THE AWARD
From the perspective of long-term LFS members and leaders who are so familiar with the Prometheus Awards that our understanding of their focus, eligibility rules and history has come to seem like second nature, the video was a welcome reminder that many people (even those who respect our award and admire it) remain unfamiliar with aspects of the award that seem self-evident to us.
Thus, several times Manley and Toccalino wondered about particular rules and aspects of the Prometheus Award and strived to make sense of them as they explained them, to their own understanding. They did convey a pretty good sense of our awards, but they didn’t always get the minutia correct (understandably, since the devil is in the details.
For instance, the other annual Prometheus category for the Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction is open to every type of fantastical fiction (including but not limited to novels) and works become eligible 20 years after their initial publication, broadcast, screening or staging.
All this is why we strive to explain the Prometheus Awards clearly on the Prometheus Blog in various explanatory articles and on LFS website’s home page, Prometheus Awards page, Membership page, Press Releases page, Newsletter page; relatively hidden Past Prometheus Best Novel Nominees and Finalists page, Past Prometheus Hall of Fame Nominees and Finalists page, Prometheus Awards Young Adult Honor Roll page and Prometheus Library Collection page.
MANLEY’S NOMINATED ‘ALL THE HUMANS ARE SLEEPING’
Kudos to the risk-taking entrepreneurship and public service of Manley, author of the Prometheus-nominated All the Humans Are Sleeping (Blazing Pine Cone Publishing).
Exploring themes of consent, freedom, self-determination and technocracy, Manley’s novel revolves around a man who chooses to take his daughter, an android and a few hundred worker bots to farm on a Scandinavian mountaintop after refusing to enter a virtual-reality simulation approved by a coercive United Nations for more than a billion survivors of a brief World War III nuclear apocalypse.
For more about All the Humans Are Sleeping, check out Manley’s earlier podcast interview about his novel on an episode of Just Right, a Canadian podcast.
ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of the 106 works that have won a Prometheus since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
