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.

Prometheus Best Novel finalist David Brin to receive the Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference


By Michael Grossberg

Acclaimed science fiction writer David Brin will receive the National Space Society’s Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award.

Novelist David Brin (ISDC, Creative Commons license)

Brin, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist and two-time Prometheus nominee, expressed his libertarian/liberal views about how the world should be and is evolving toward greater freedom in “Confessions of a Cheerful Libertarian,” published in the former Prometheus quarterly.

According to a report in File 770, Brin will receive the coveted Clarke Memorial Award for “his pivotal writing in sci-fi and futurism.”

Continue reading Prometheus Best Novel finalist David Brin to receive the Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference


“What is a Hater?” – Economist David Henderson applies Orwell’s 1984 insights about how authoritarians abuse language to discount criticism and demonize others


By Michael Grossberg

One of the most chilling and distasteful aspects of the totalitarian dictatorship that George Orwell envisioned in Nineteen Eighty-Four was the “two-minute hate.”
Fuelled by State propaganda demonizing dissidents and alleged enemies, and reflecting the mob psychology of true believers manipulated by power-hungry rulers, the “two-minute hate” is the type of Reign of Terror phenomenon that no sane and decent person would wish to be part of – or be victimized by – in real life.

Yet, increasingly in American and European politics and culture, extreme partisans of Left and Right indulge in hateful rhetoric while ironically accusing others of “hate” – even when a bit of introspection and understanding of human behavior might reveal fewer people than one might think are actually motivated by that dark emotion.

Referencing Orwell and his Prometheus Hall of Fame-winning classic Nineteen Eighty-Four, libertarian economist David Henderson identifies the disturbing trend of using and abusing language to demonize anyone who holds differing views.

Continue reading “What is a Hater?” – Economist David Henderson applies Orwell’s 1984 insights about how authoritarians abuse language to discount criticism and demonize others


“Tired of Giving Lies a Helping Hand” – A review of Harry Turtledove’s Best Novel finalist Powerless


By John C.A. Manley


Charlie Simpkins is no philosopher. He’s just another “comrade” in the West Coast People’s Democratic Republic, operating a vegetable shop in Los Angeles. He smokes the government-issued Progress cigarettes, he drinks the rationed rotgut at the local class-four tavern and, generally, lives a life of silent compliance.

Until, one day, the government asks him to put up a communist propaganda poster, with the words “WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!” Instead of taping it to the window of his shop, he tosses it in the garbage.

That’s how Harry Turtledove’s Powerless opens: With one man finally saying no, even though the consequences could easily involve time breaking rocks in a concentration camp.

Continue reading “Tired of Giving Lies a Helping Hand” – A review of Harry Turtledove’s Best Novel finalist Powerless


How many Prometheus winners have reached the screen? More than you might realize!


By Michael Grossberg

Of the 104 works of fiction that have won a Prometheus Award, 15 have been adapted into movies (sometimes more than once.)

Plus, two other Prometheus winners were conceived for and originated on screen – one as a feature film and the other as a TV series.

Thus, 17 Prometheus winners can be seen on the large or small screens.

That represents about 15 percent of all the Prometheus-winning works recognized since the award was first presented in 1979.  Not a bad quotient, perhaps, but it certainly would be nice to see more of our recognized novels and stories raise their visibility and thereby find larger audiences.

So which works have reached the screen?

Just for fun or out of curiosity, before reading further, why not visit the Prometheus Awards page listing all the past winners and see how many you can recall that have had film or TV adaptations?

Hint: There’s more than you realize!

Continue reading How many Prometheus winners have reached the screen? More than you might realize!


Orwell’s Animal Farm falls disappointingly short in new animated film version that distorts its anti-authoritarian themes


By Michael Grossberg

When it comes to film versions of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the third time’s not the charm.

With visionary director-actor Andy Serkis at the helm of the recently released animated film version of Orwell’s classic anti-authoritarian fable and a host of great actors doing the voices of the farm animals, I’d hoped for the best for Animal Farm, inducted in 2011 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.

Seth Rogen, Gaten Matarazzo, Glenn Close, Woody Harrelson, Kieran Culkin, Steve Buscemi, Kathleen Turner, Laverne Cox and Jim Parsons are among the actors voicing the animal characters in the story about pigs consolidating control on a farm in a movement for equality that is systematically corrupted.

Yet, Serkis’ long-in-gestation 2025 film, finally released in the U.S. in May 2026, has proved to be a major disappointment.

Continue reading Orwell’s Animal Farm falls disappointingly short in new animated film version that distorts its anti-authoritarian themes


Kurt Vonnegut’s Prometheus-winning “Harrison Bergeron” recognized for real-world relevance to “millionaires’ tax” debate


By Michael Grossberg

Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” is a cautionary and satirical tale warning about the imagined future excesses of radical egalitarianism and attacks on individualism and personal excellence carried to absurd and coercive extremes.

The classic story, inducted in 2019 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, suddenly seems as relevant as recent headlines about state and federal efforts to impose unprecedented confiscatory taxation on wealthier people.

Challenging the view that everything is or should become property of the State, NR Online writer Andrew Stuttaford invokes Vonnegut’s themes in a perceptive column.

Continue reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Prometheus-winning “Harrison Bergeron” recognized for real-world relevance to “millionaires’ tax” debate


Review: Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon offers Heinleinesque Young Adult tale of discovery, self-reliance and courage against abuses of power


By Michael Grossberg

Storm-Dragon, a 2026 Prometheus Best Novel finalist, offers an entertaining tale embodying golden-age SF themes of initiative, imagination, resilience and self-reliance.

Dave Freer’s Young Adult novel appeals to adults, too — especially those of us who grew up reading YA novels by Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.

The novel revolves around a boy who adopts an intelligent-alien pet on Vann’s World, an ocean-dominated planet with a small human colony facing dangers alien and human, visible and hidden.

Continue reading Review: Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon offers Heinleinesque Young Adult tale of discovery, self-reliance and courage against abuses of power


Aldous Huxley’s Prometheus Hall of Fame finalist Brave New World has inspired an acclaimed graphic novel


By Michael Grossberg

A good number of Prometheus-winning works have been adapted into graphic novels, from Ayn Rand’s Anthem and L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach to the TV series The Prisoner.

One I discovered recently is Brave New World: A Graphic Novel – which is timely to mention here because Aldous Huxley’s novel is one of this year’s Best Classic Fiction finalists for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award.

Fred Fordham adapted and illustrated Huxley’s dystopian cautionary tale into a 240-page graphic novel, published in 2022 by Harper.

The Guardian described the graphic novel as “brilliant” in its review.

Continue reading Aldous Huxley’s Prometheus Hall of Fame finalist Brave New World has inspired an acclaimed graphic novel


Robert Kroese launches Ransom’s Law, a five-novel SF series about corporate law in an interstellar future


By Michael Grossberg

Prometheus-nominated SF author Robert Kroese has launched an ambitious five-novel series about corporate law in an interstellar and entrepreneurial future.

Acceleration Clause, published April 29 in 255 pages by St. Culain Press, is the first book in Kroese’s Ransom’s Law series about a corporate lawyer struggling to find new footing after a career misstep as part of a spaceship repossession crew.

Kroese is of interest to Libertarian Futurist Society members because he was nominated for the Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 2022 for Titan: Mammon Book 1.

Continue reading Robert Kroese launches Ransom’s Law, a five-novel SF series about corporate law in an interstellar future


From Doctorow and Tchaikovsky to Nayler and Scalzi, Locus magazine’s finalists for Best Science Fiction of the year overlap with Prometheus judges’ readings of candidates, nominees and winning authors

By Michael Grossberg

Locus magazine has released its Locus Awards finalists for the past year’s best science fiction and fantasy – always a good list to consider for SF/fantasy fans, including LFS members.

There are some excellent novels on the Locus shortlists, based on my own wide readings this past year as a Prometheus Awards Best Novel judge – and as a lifelong SF/fantasy fan.

It’s also an interesting list to compare to the Prometheus Awards, not only in terms of potential overlaps with same-year nominees but also what novels and novelists both awards have recognized.

Continue reading From Doctorow and Tchaikovsky to Nayler and Scalzi, Locus magazine’s finalists for Best Science Fiction of the year overlap with Prometheus judges’ readings of candidates, nominees and winning authors