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.
Imagine human colonies on the moon, restless and on the precipice of a revolution against increasingly intrusive Earth authorities.
Robert Heinlein famously imagined such a scenario in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of his four Hugo Awardwinning novels and one of the first two works inducted in 1983 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
So did Travis Corcoran, the only author to win back-to-back Prometheus awards for Best Novel for The Powers of the Earth (in 2018) and its sequel Causes of Separation (in 2019.)
Yet, the lunar-revolution scenario mentioned above also describes Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three, James Bacon’s 2022 SF novel.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Day Before the Revolution has been highlighted and recommended by Reactor Magazine among “five SF stories in which hope survives.”
The story, available in the Le Guin short-story collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, should be of interested to LFS members and other freedom-loving SF/fantasy fans because it’s considered a sequel to Le Guin’s classic novel The Dispossessed, an early Prometheus Hall of Fame winner.
“Science fiction has the power to remind us that hope is valuable, and necessary,” James Davis Nicoll wrote in the Reactor column.
That insight, and sentiment, rings true to Prometheus Awards voters and fans. After all, our award in part aims to recognize worthy works of speculative fiction that in many cases do remind us that even amid troubled times and authoritarian societies, better and freer futures remain possible.
Many bestsellers or award-winning books or plays or movies or record albums tend to fade over the years, but a few manage to pass the test of time.
In that latter category is Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1974 novel The Dispossessed, inducted in 1993 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
Recently honored on its 50th anniversary with a Harper’s 50th Anniversary Edition, Le Guin’s novel contrasts two alleged utopian worlds.
One human-settled planet is anarchist (but without property rights and with mob rule and group think); the other is mostly capitalist (but with recurrent wars and extremes of wealth and poverty.)
It’s understandable and legitimate when a novelist promotes their own work. After all, most do – and in our highly competitive and decentralized era of print and digital publishing and self-publishing, any author would be foolish not to invest significant time and energy beyond their daily writing to raise their visibility.
So it’s all the more impressive when a Prometheus-winning novelist, responding to a routine query to find out if any of their novels in the works might fit our award’s distinctive focus, brings up on her own the work of an up-and-coming novelist previously unknown to us.
Sarah Hoyt (File photo)
That’s what Sarah Hoyt did recently in bringing Holly Chism and her latest novel to our attention.
Writer Holly Chism (Creative Commons license)
“Holly Chism is one of the great, unappreciated authors of our generation. Her work reminds me a lot of Clifford Simak’s,” Hoyt said.
Hoyt, a four-time Prometheus Best Novel finalist and the 2011 Best Novel winner for Darkship Thieves, has recommended in particular Chism’s novel Light Up the Night.
It’s an old cliche: Men prefer science fiction; women prefer fantasy. (Of course, that’s a half-truth at best: After all, many men enjoy fantasy, and many women, science fiction.)
Left to right: The planets Mars, Earth and Venus (File photo)
Yet, if men are mostly from Mars and women are mostly from Venus, how is today’s publishing world appealing to both?
Not very well, Kristin McTiernan argues on her Fictional Influencewebsite and blog.
When McTiernan posted a video about the absence of contemporary men’s fiction, it went viral.
“I struck a nerve that resonated far beyond my usual audience,” McTiernan wrote on her Fictional Influence website.
“The comment section flooded with responses from men who felt invisible in today’s publishing landscape – readers hungry for stories that spoke to their experiences (from their perspective) without apology.”
Ark Press,a new publisher, aims to offer science fiction and other genre fiction that appeals to fans of “authentic storytelling.” “We’re done with boring, heavy-handed fiction that lectures instead of entertains,” said Tony Daniel, editor-in-chief of Ark Press.
“Our goal is to bring back fiction worth reading—stories that ignite the imagination, celebrate the human spirit, and reflect the values and experiences of everyday Americans.”
“Whether it’s gripping adventure tales, hard-hitting thrillers, thought-provoking sci-fi, crime, and mystery, or heartfelt stories of triumph and resilience, Ark Press aims to deliver works that inspire, entertain, and connect with readers across the country, not just the coasts,” Daniel said.
Among the first works to be published by Ark Press, in 2026, are contracted but as-yet-unannounced novels by Prometheus winner Travis Corcoran and Prometheus nominee Larry Correia.
Valued Libertarian Futurist Society member and former Prometheus Awards judge Jeff Schulman has died.
Jeff Schulman (Photo courtesy of family)
Schulman, who died unexpectedly July 18, 2025, served for years as a judge on the Prometheus Best Novel judging committee, which reads and evaluates a wide variety of candidates and nominees to select the annual slate of Best Novel finalists.
Known for his kindness, brilliance, creativity and openness to new ideas and new technology, Jeff had a passion for liberty, for the advancement of civilization and for the Libertarian Futurist Society.
Winning literary awards and receiving rave reviews can boost the careers of novelists, by raising their visibility and enhancing their reputation. That’s sadly no longer fully possible for the late great Michael Flynn.
Michael Flynn, a three-time Prometheus Best Novel winner (Creative Commons license)
Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, recently was announced in an LFS press release as the 2025 winner of the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for In the Belly of the Whale.
His epic social novel, a sobering drama about challenges and conflicts among the crew on a vast colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to settle Tau Ceti, was the last novel Flynn wrote before his death.
Published in 2024 by CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, Flynn’s novel has garnered some attention – especially an extraordinary review in Locus magazine (excerpted below) that amounts to a mea culpa for previously overlooking and underestimating Flynn.
Yet, both during his five-decade writing career and after his passing, Flynn has not garnered as much attention and appreciation from other critics and mainstream publications as I think the author and his last book deserve.
Shahid Mahmud, CAEZIK founder-publisher and a huge enthusiast for Flynn’s fiction, agrees. Mahmud tells me that he considers Flynn one of the most underestimated science fiction writers of his generation.
Orion Shall Rise, a 1983 novel by Poul Anderson, has won the 2025 Best Classic Fiction award and will be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
Poul Anderson (Creative Commons license)
Published by Timescape and first nominated for the Prometheus Award in 1984, when it became a Best Novel finalist, Orion Shall Rise explores the corruptions and temptations of power and how a free society might survive and thrive after a post-nuclear-war apocalypse on a largely depopulated Earth.
For the first time in Prometheus Awards history, our annual Best Novel award has gone to a posthumous work.
Novelist Michael Flynn at an sf convention several decades ago (File photo)
Michael Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, was able to finish writing In the Belly of the Whale before his passing.
CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, a strong supporter of Flynn’s work, published Flynn’s last novel in 2024.
The epic science fiction novel, a suspenseful and insightful exploration of the complex challenges, conflicts and threats to liberty aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti, has now won the 2025 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Robert Heinlein famously imagined such a scenario in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of his four Hugo Awardwinning novels and one of the first two works inducted in 1983 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
So did Travis Corcoran, the only author to win back-to-back Prometheus awards for Best Novel for The Powers of the Earth (in 2018) and its sequel Causes of Separation (in 2019.)
