Michael Grossberg, who founded the LFS in 1982 to help sustain the Prometheus Awards, has been an arts critic, speaker and award-winning journalist for five decades.
Michael has won Ohio SPJ awards for Best Critic in Ohio and Best Arts Reporting (seven times).
He's written for Reason, Libertarian Review and Backstage weekly; helped lead the American Theatre Critics Association for two decades; and has contributed to six books, including critical essays for the annual Best Plays Theatre Yearbook and an afterword for J. Neil Schulman's novel The Rainbow Cadenza.
Among books he recommends from a libertarian-futurist perspective: Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist & How Innovation Works, David Boaz's The Libertarian Mind and Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress.
One of the things Poul Anderson was known for throughout his literary career was world-building. Much of this was planetary design, based on the natural sciences, in which he started out with stellar type, planetary mass, orbital radius, and elemental abundances and worked out the geology, meteorology, and biology of a world.
Poul Anderson (Creative Commons license)
Anderson was certainly one of the masters of this, up there with Hal Clement and Vernor Vinge. But he put equal effort into social scientific worldbuilding, creating economies, polities, and cultures, and developing plots for his stories from the conflicts they gave rise to. Orion Shall Rise, winner of the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, is a nearly pure example of social scientific world-building, set not in a distant solar system but on a future Earth.
In the Belly of the Whale, the 2025 Prometheus winner for Best Novel, was Michael Flynn’s last, posthumous novel and one of his richest and most resonant.
Exploring the complex lives, jobs, relationships, challenges and conflicts aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti, the epic 472-page novel takes some time to fully introduce its large cast of characters among 40,000 people who live in the hollowed-out asteroid ship dubbed The Whale.
Yet, patience is amply rewarded with Flynn’s plausible and intricate world-building, deep insights into social psychology and wise grasp of human nature.
In the Belly of the Whale, Flynn’s 14th and final novel, builds dramatic intensity coupled with rich and revelatory insights that freshen this seemingly familiar SF subgenre of the long colony-ship voyage. Flynn raises deeper questions than most SF writers, scientists or space-colonization enthusiasts have considered about the prospects and costs of such generations-long voyages.
How did Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress give leading libertarian thinker David Friedman the radical idea that society can develop just laws and functional legal systems without government?
What life events, travels, famous scientists and space projects helped shape the late Poul Anderson’s 1983 novel Orion Shall Rise, the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner?
How did the late Michael Flynn’s childhood lead him to become an award-winning science fiction writer?
Why does Flynn’s CAEZIK SF & Fantasy publisher view him as one of the most underestimated sf writers of his generation?
What Prometheus-winning sf/fantasy authors rank high among Friedman’s favorites – and why?
To find out, watch the recorded YouTube video of the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony:
Michael Grossberg, who chairs the Prometheus Best Novel judging committee, presented the Best Novel category Aug. 30 at the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony. Here is the transcript of his speech.
The Prometheus Awards, one of the oldest-sustained annual fan-based sf/fantasy awards after the Hugos and Nebulas, are unique in recognizing fantastical fiction that dramatizes the perennial conflict between liberty and power.
Since the Prometheus Award for Best Novel was first presented in 1979, 46 novels have won this annual category. Today, we will honor a 47th.
This year’s five finalists represent a diverse range of fiction by authors who appreciate how freedom makes possible and helps sustain peace, prosperity, progress, civility and social harmony – while its absence increases the risk of war, tyranny and other abuses of power.
Libertarian Futurist Society president William H. Stoddard emceed the 45th Prometheus Awards and introduced the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction, which was presented by libertarian luminary and Prometheus-nominated fantasy novelist David Friedman.
LFS President William H. Stoddard (Photo by Carol Stoddard)
The August 30, 2025 awards ceremony, presented live via Zoom on August 30, 2025, was recorded and later posted on Youtube. Here is the text of Stoddard’s speech:
The Prometheus Hall of Fame award was established in 1983.
Initially we gave it to two classic works of libertarian science fiction each year. Our first two winners were virtually inevitable choices: Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the book that established libertarian science fiction as a recognized genre, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the fictional treatment of libertarian ideas that brought large numbers of people into what became the libertarian movement.
The next year’s award went to two classic dystopias, George Orwell’s 1984and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
Since then we’ve settled down to one winner a year, and opened the award not merely to novels but to work in any narrative or dramatic form. Such works become eligible 20 years after their original publication.
To present this year’s award, we have the honor of having David Friedman as a guest speaker.
“The only person who might have envisioned a future as outlandish as our present is the Seattle-based author Neal Stephenson.”
Neal Stephenson in 2019 (Creative Commons license)
That’s the interesting and notable view of British-American historian Niall Ferguson, expressed in his Time Machine column on Substack.
To back up his thesis, Ferguson offers a detailed argument revolving around Stephenson’s 1995 science fiction novel The Diamond Age.
Along with his earlier breakthrough cyberpunk (or post-cyberpunk) novel Snow Crash (1992), The Diamond Age put Stephenson on the map as a visionary writer to watch – and read.
“I think Michael was one of the most underrated authors in the genre… his work holds up to some of the best science fiction I’ve ever read.
— Shahid Mahmud, publisher of CAEZIK SF & Fantasy
Novelist Michael Flynn at an sf convention several decades ago (File photo)
Introduction: CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, a company led by Shahid Mahmud, published Michael Flynn’s last and posthumous novel In the Belly of the Whale, the 2025 Prometheus winner for Best Novel – and the first novel originally published by CAEZIK to win a Prometheus Award.
In his comments during the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony, Mahmud paid tribute to Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75 after an impressive career writing science fiction. Winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award, Flynn was nominated seven times for the Hugo Award (including Best Novel for Eifelheim) and eight times for the Prometheus Award, winning three times for Best Novel.
Arc Manor Books, whose CAEZIK SF & Fantasy imprint published our 2025 Prometheus Best Novel winner, is having a special ebook sale.
Available through Sunday Sept. 14 at significant ebook savings are several novels by Prometheus winners – including Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale, the 2025 Best Novel winner.
“Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel last month! This epic, hard science fiction tale unfolds aboard a colossal generation ship, where a decaying aristocracy faces rebellion after a mysterious death in the abandoned “Burnout” region,” publisher Shahid Mahmud said.
David D. Friedman added excitement and intellectual stimulation as the guest presenter at the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony.
David Friedman (Photo provided by Friedman)
A leading libertarian theorist (The Machinery of Freedom), economist (Price Theory: An Intermediate Text) and law-and-economics professor (Law’s Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters), David is also a Prometheus-nominated sf/fantasy novelist (Harald, Salamander, Brothers).
Friedman presented the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction during the Aug. 30 ceremony. Here is the text of his speech, which followed an introduction by LFS President William (Bill) Stoddard.
By David D. Friedman
Bill mentioned my friend Vernor Vinge, who is in part responsible for my writing my second novel.
I described to him my idea for that and for the alternative, a sequel to my first novel (Harald, a 2007 Prometheus Best Novel nominee). He thought Salamander would more interesting, so I wrote it. He was right.
I thought I’d start by saying a little about what I’ve learned relevant to libertarianism from science fiction.
As some of you may know, Vernor’s story “The Ungoverned” (inducted in 1994 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame) is about a stateless society, modeled on my ideas, being invaded by an adjacent state.
Seeing that society through the eyes of a novelist rather than an economist showed me things about it that would not have occurred to me….
Astrid Anderson Bear, daughter of the late SFWA Grand Master Poul Anderson (1926-2001) and wife of the late sf author Greg Bear, accepted the Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction for Poul Anderson’s novel Orion Shall Rise.
Astrid Anderson Bear (Photo courtesy of Bear)
Astrid spoke during the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony, presented live via Zoom on Aug. 30, 2025, and recorded to post later on Youtube and on the Prometheus Blog.
By Astrid Anderson Bear
Thank you to the members of the Libertarian Futurist Societyfor voting to induct my dad’s novel, Orion Shall Rise, into the Prometheus Awards Hall of Fame.
Published in 1983, this wide ranging book is in his Maurai universe, a loosely connected seriesof works set on a post-apocalyptic future Earth.
Orion Shall Rise takes placeroughly 500 years in our future, and brings together characters from the principal powers on the planet: the Domain, controlling much ofwestern Europe by means of a huge aerostat, Skyholm, that has survived since the nuclear wars hundreds of years previously; the Maurai Federation, a coalition of Pacific Islanders centered in New Zealand; and the Northwest Union and its powerful Lodges in thePacific Northwest of North America.
