War by Other Means, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist, is the seventh volume in Karl K. Gallagher’s future history series Fall of the Censor. After several volumes focused on military conflict, War by Other Means changes its focus to diplomatic relations among the worlds fighting against the Censorate.
In doing so, it brings Wynny Landry, the wife of Marcus Landry, the protagonist of several previous books, as a new protagonist, in the role of the ambassador from her native planet, Corwynt.
The 2026 Prometheus Best Novel finalists have been announced – and Libertarian Futurist Society members are reading them, with the ultimate verdict and winners to be selected by July 4 on the final ballot.
To spark thought and discussion, raise the visibility of these works and the award and hopefully serve as a helpful guide, the Prometheus Blog is publishing thoughtful, in-depth reviews by Prometheus judges of each finalist. Some LFS members may wish to read them right away; others may prefer to wait until they’ve finished a finalist before reading the review.
Meanwhile, to whet your appetite to read each finalist and vote in the final stage of the Prometheus Awards, here are roughly equal 200-word capsule descriptions of each finalist.
And we’ve striven to avoid revealing any spoilers, so it’s safe to read them now!
Continue reading Capsule reviews of all five Best Novel finalists – with no spoilers!
Three former Prometheus winners, a frequent Best Novel finalist and a first-time nominee are competing to win this year’s Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
The Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee, drawn from the LFS membership, has selected five 2025 novels as 2026 finalists from 14 nominated works. The Best Novel finalists, listed in alphabetical order by author, are Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press); War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press); No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press); A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press); and Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)
Pierce was nominated for the first time for a Prometheus Award, so his inclusion as a Best Novel finalist is particularly impressive in a year that many judges feel has been a superior one for freedom-themed SF/fantasy.
Continue reading Former winners, finalists compete with newcomer as Prometheus Best Novel finalists
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.
By Michael Grossberg
Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon, one of 14 works nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, has been receiving some nice reviews from readers.
One of the most appreciative reviews has come from science-fiction novelist John C.A. Manley, himself nominated in the same Prometheus category this year for All the Humans Are Sleeping. Exploring issues of consent, freedom and technocracy, Manley’s dystopian SF novel focuses on a man who refuses to enter a virtual reality simulation prepared for survivors of a nuclear apocalypse.
To put it mildly, Manley’s nominated novel is quite different from Freer’s Young-Adult-oriented nominee.
“Imagine Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn appearing in Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon, add a little of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and you’ve got Storm-Dragon by Dave Freer,” Manley writes.
Titled “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (but with Big Spaceships and a Small Dragon),” Manley’s review begins with a confession: He’s not “a big fan” of young adult fiction – and he offers several of the best-known examples to prove it.
“But Storm-Dragon had my son and me hooked by chapter two,” Manley writes.
David Bowie is remembered as one of the past half-century’s greatest singer-songwriters.
Perhaps less well known was the extraordinary intelligence and eclectic literacy of Bowie, who died at 69 in 2016. He read widely, broadening his understanding and appreciation of the world and humanity, at its best and worst.
The Bowie Book Club has preserved a list of Bowie’s top-100 books that he read and ranked highest during his lifetime as major influences on his thinking, creativity and development of artistic tastes.
Among them are two Prometheus Hall of Fame winners for Best Classic Fiction: George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, inducted in 1984, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, inducted in 2008.
Kudos to Johanna Sinisalo, most familiar to readers of this blog as winner of the 2017 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Sinisalo, widely hailed as one of Finland’s leading novelists, has been recognized as a finalist in Finland’s top science fiction award.
The Helsinki Science Fiction Society has announced 2026 finalists for its Tähtivaeltaja (“Star Rover”) Award for the best science fiction book published in Finland in the previous year.
Vernor Vinge wrote serious science fiction; Terry Pratchett wrote fantasy with a strong comical and satirical focus.
Although each writer won more than one Prometheus Award for works that wove in libertarian and anti-authoritarian insights and themes, few of us tend to think of these two late great authors in the same breath, or any close to the same fiction or genre category.
While surely their respective fan bases overlap to some extent, even the hardest-core Pratchett and Vinge fans probably wouldn’t imagine that much else might link them – especially Fans of Vernor Vinge and Terry Pratchett, even if that fan base overlaps, probably don’t think of both authors together.
Yet, they had a strong connection in fiction, with one author favorably mentioning and imagining the future work of the other in a novel.
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.
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.
