Author: Michael Grossberg

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.

Review: Sarah Hoyt’s No Man’s Land develops rich tapestry blending SF/fantasy tropes to imagine “first contact” with vast cultural, political and gender differences


By Michael Grossberg

Sarah Hoyt has always been a wonderful storyteller who frequently crosses genre boundaries with engrossing results.

With No Man’s Land, nominated for this year’s Prometheus Award for Best Novel, Hoyt has outdone herself.

Blending the tropes and appeal of science fiction and fantasy, Hoyt weaves many enticing elements into the three-volume novel. Her two deftly entwined stories encompass space opera, mystery, romance, adventure, suspense, intrigue and politics in a vivid “first contact” saga leavened with humor and humanity.

Continue reading Review: Sarah Hoyt’s No Man’s Land develops rich tapestry blending SF/fantasy tropes to imagine “first contact” with vast cultural, political and gender differences


Review: J. Kenton Pierce’s lively A Kiss for Damocles dramatizes how markets, evolving customs and laws help a post-apocalyptic colony recover without centralized authority


By William H. Stoddard

J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles is a compellingly readable work of science fiction. It offers its readers an inherently dramatic situation: The struggle to survive and rebuild civilization in the aftermath of an apocalyptic war.

To add tension, remnants of the other side still linger, in the form of orbital systems waiting to strike down any resurgence of advanced technology.

Continue reading Review: J. Kenton Pierce’s lively A Kiss for Damocles dramatizes how markets, evolving customs and laws help a post-apocalyptic colony recover without centralized authority


Jo Walton on Poul Anderson: One Prometheus winner recommends another


By Michael Grossberg

It’s great to see one widely respected sf/fantasy author in praise of another. Especially when such praise reminds us of the talents and achievements of a truly grand master of sf/fantasy who has passed but is far from forgotten.

Jo Walton tips her hat to the late great Poul Anderson in her monthly book-review column for Reactor magazine.

Walton, who won her own Prometheus Award for Ha’penny, singled out the multiple-Prometheus-winning Anderson on her recommended-reading shortlist for All One Universe, his 1996 short-story anthology.

“This collection of stories and essays is just delightful—great thought-provoking stories, and mostly interesting essays, and I loved it,” Walton writes.

Continue reading Jo Walton on Poul Anderson: One Prometheus winner recommends another


“And the nominees are…” NOT the same thing as finalists! (How the Oscars differ from the Hugo and Prometheus awards, and why it matters)

By Michael Grossberg

“And the nominees are…”

Those words are familiar to just about everyone in America, since people frequently repeat them at several of the biggest annual televised awards ceremonies.

Especially at the Academy Awards, informally known as the Oscars – and still the premier annual American awards show in arts and entertainment despite its recent decline.

Yet I’d argue that such an iconic phrase is often misleading. Worse, it can lead to confusion and misperceptions about other awards – including our own.

The Prometheus Awards use the term “nominees” quite differently than the Oscars do.

What the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which sponsors and presents the Academy Awards, dubs “nominees” is actually what the Prometheus awards quite properly refers to as finalists.

That may seem like mere semantics, or a minor disagreement over labeling, but it’s an important distinction with significant differences.

In fact, finalists attain a higher level of recognition than nominees – and thus deserve greater respect and their own distinct name.

Continue reading “And the nominees are…” NOT the same thing as finalists! (How the Oscars differ from the Hugo and Prometheus awards, and why it matters)

It’s no ‘Mystery’ why libertarian author Steve Burgauer often writes science fiction 


By Michael Grossberg

Libertarian Steve Burgauer has written a dozen novels.

Libertarian SF novelist Steven Burgauer (Photo courtesy of author)

Although Burgauer writes historical and adventure novels, too – including his recently released The Mystery of the Broken Gargoyle – much of his work falls within the genre of science fiction.

Among his SF novels: The Railguns of Luna, Skullcap, The Grandfather Paradox, A More Perfect Union, Moonbeam and The Fornax Drive.

How was Burguauer first attracted to science fiction?

What makes him keep writing it?

And how does he relate such speculative fiction to the future, to progress and to liberty?

Continue reading It’s no ‘Mystery’ why libertarian author Steve Burgauer often writes science fiction 


“I am not a number. I am a free man!” – Remembering Patrick McGoohan: who conceived, co-wrote and starred in The Prisoner, a TV series ahead of its time


By Michael Grossberg

Today, March 19, is the birthday of Patrick McGoohan.

Patrick McGoohan as Number 6 in The Prisoner (Creative Commons license)

It’s a timely opportunity to remember and pay tribute to McGoohan, an iconoclastic talent who excelled as an actor, director, producer, screenwriter and creator of one of the most unusual, provocative, genre-smashing and influential TV series in history.

I’m referring, of course, to The Prisoner, inducted in 2002 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

McGoohan (1928-2009) achieved a great deal on screen in his long and well-respected career. But The Prisoner in retrospect may be his crowning and most lasting achievement.

Yet, when McGoohan conceived, wrote and starred in the short-lived series, no one quite knew how to categorize it or what to make of it.

Continue reading “I am not a number. I am a free man!” – Remembering Patrick McGoohan: who conceived, co-wrote and starred in The Prisoner, a TV series ahead of its time


Ilya Somin: The Cato Institute scholar, law professor and SF/fantasy fan will present the Hall of fame award at our 2026 ceremony


By Michael Grossberg

Ilya Somin will be the guest presenter and keynote speaker at the Libertarian Futurist Society’s 2026 Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Ilya Somin (File photo)

A professor of Law at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, a leading libertarian think tank, Somin has written several books reflecting his research and expertise on constitutional law, property law, democratic theory, federalism, and migration rights.

Just as relevant to our upcoming August 2026 awards ceremony – which will be hosted on Zoom and open to the public – Somin is a long-time fan of science fiction and fantasy – which he plans to focus on in his speech presenting the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

Continue reading Ilya Somin: The Cato Institute scholar, law professor and SF/fantasy fan will present the Hall of fame award at our 2026 ceremony


Discovering libertarianism through fiction, part 2: How James Blish, Ayn Rand and other writers sparked my intellectual evolution


By Michael Grossberg

For me as a boy, The Star Dwellers was revelatory.

An idealistic drama about a fraught “second contact” between Earth humans and ancient aliens, James Blish’s 1961 novel sparked my thinking about ethics, economics and politics.

I couldn’t have imagined at the time what reading yet another Young Adult science fiction novel would lead me to, but ultimately The Star Dwellers paved the way for me to develop into a full-fledged libertarian by the early 1970s.

Continue reading Discovering libertarianism through fiction, part 2: How James Blish, Ayn Rand and other writers sparked my intellectual evolution


Discovering libertarian ideas through fiction: It usually begins with Rand and Heinlein – but in my unusual case, it was James Blish’s The Star Dwellers


“People come to libertarianism through fiction. They come through Ayn Rand… Robert Heinlein…. L. Neil Smith.”
– Libertarian feminist author Wendy McElroy at the 2000 Prometheus Awards ceremony

By Michael Grossberg

For quite a few libertarians, “It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand.” Or Robert Heinlein. Or other freedom-loving science fiction writers.

James Blish in the 1960s (Creative Commons license)

For me, though, my introduction to libertarian and classical-liberal ideas and ideals began earlier – at least in part – with James Blish.

Specifically, Blish’s The Star Dwellers.

When I read Blish’s 1961 novel as a pre-teen in the early 1960s, I came to understand for the first time key insights about voluntary consent and mutual exchange for profit as the best foundation for peace and progress.

Now a finalist for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction, The Star Dwellers is a young-adult-oriented science fiction novel that revolves around a fraught “second contact” between star-faring humans and an ancient, advanced alien species.

Continue reading Discovering libertarian ideas through fiction: It usually begins with Rand and Heinlein – but in my unusual case, it was James Blish’s The Star Dwellers


Review: Ray Nayler’s Where the Axe is Buried offers realistic cautionary tale about AIs, oppression and resistance

By Michael Grossberg

Today, it seems like nearly everyone is caught up in either utopian dreams or dystopian nightmares about AI. It feels like it’s almost gotten to the point where you can’t pick up a science fiction story or watch SF on the large or small screens without coming across exaggerated scenarios projecting humanity’s highest hopes or worst fears about what may be coming in artificial intelligence.

Where the Axe is Buried, one of 14 works nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, takes a more intelligent, balanced, nuanced and realistic view of such possibilities.

Where all too often such AI-themed novels uncritically embrace one extreme or the other, Ray Nayler’s post-apocalyptic utopian/dystopian tale probes both scenarios from an anti-authoritarian, very human and humane perspective. His novel is notable for finding both extremes lacking from the standpoints of community, common decency and personal liberty.

In a gripping but sobering narrative highlighting libertarian themes of resistance to tyranny and human endurance under oppression, Nayler ultimately rejects such wishful social engineering as an unattractive prescription for suffering and stagnation.

Continue reading Review: Ray Nayler’s Where the Axe is Buried offers realistic cautionary tale about AIs, oppression and resistance