While most reviews published on the Prometheus blog tend to focus on our Best Novel or Best Classic Fiction finalists or winners, other works deserve attention, too.
As time permits, and when nominated (or nominatable) works capture our attention and stimulate both enjoyment and further thoughts, we strive to bring it to the attention of Libertarian Futurist Society members and the wider public by writing about it – hopefully, in ways that make it clear how the work is relevant to Prometheus Award themes.
Here are excerpts from four such novels of note that we reviewed in 2024 – and that continue to deserve recognition and wide readership:
“Salman Rushdie’s historical fantasy makes a poignant and powerful case for liberty as a key ingredient in the constellation of value and virtues that support human flourishing and the never-to-be-taken-for-granted rise of civilization.
Rueful in its ideals, but also often cynical and realistic about human nature, Victory City fictionalizes and dramatizes the rise and fall of medieval-Indian empires – and with their fall, the mournful collapse of the emerging modern-liberal/libertarian order of free international trade, peace, tolerance, sexual equality/diversity and religious liberty.
Weaving mythological and supernatural elements into his well-researched tapestry of 1500s-1600s Indian and Asian history, Rushdie employs his modernist style of self-awareness and narrative ambiguity to explore the impermanence of peace and freedom and celebrate the temporary Renaissance-style eras that are the glorious fruits of liberty.
Gradually, I came to understand Rushdie’s novel as a libertarian tragedy – mostly subtle and implicit, but occasionally explicit in its language and values – about the difficulty of sustaining civilization and liberty amid recurring cycles of war and peace, love and hate, progress and reaction, tolerance and witch hunts, given the baser and perennial aspects of human nature, especially the blind lust for power.

Through Rushdie’s saga fictionalizing many aspects of medieval and India history with his distinctive style of magical realism, readers of all religions, ideologies and beliefs can’t help but learn about the deep and intrinsic connections among liberty, equal rights, peace, trade, women’s rights, and respect for different religious beliefs.
As Rushdie cumulatively dramatizes, though never in a dogmatic way, such crucial aspects of the modern and cosmopolitan liberal/libertarian order have emerged in fits and starts, yet remain perennially under threat from human irrationality, stupidity, venality and power-lust.
Such a pessimistic view of history may be hard to reconcile with many libertarians’ fondest hopes about achieving full freedom in the 21st century, but Rushdie’s bittersweet and picaresque saga offers powerful lessons for our troubled and darkening time.
Most admirably, throughout his novel Rushdie consistently shows that freedom is vastly preferable to tyranny – yet always remains in danger of being undermined, taken for granted or actively destroyed by foolish and egotistical rulers – an all-too faithful reflection of world history.
Enjoyable and surprising to read in its scope and variety of stories and characters but never dogmatic or ideological, Victory City implicitly explores recurring questions about society, government, politics and human nature.
Several are close to our libertarian hearts: Why does tyranny arise so often? Why do civilizations rise and fall? What are the factors in social collapse? Why do so many people get resigned to tyranny and war? Why does tyranny recur even after people come to appreciate eras imbued with the benefits of liberty, civility, tolerance and peace?”
Here’s an excerpt from Rick Triplett’s review of Wil McCarthy’s Beggar’s Sky, a sequel to McCarthy’s Rich Man’s Sky, our 2022 Best Novel winner.
“Notably, McCarthy illuminates and explores the characters’ personal qualities and especially how these people handle ‘power.’ By power I mean economic: their resources and productive capabilities. This helps readers distinguish it from political power, which is control via the use of force.
McCarthy’s novel frequently mentions the “four Horsemen” (as in the Biblical apocalypse), who are the apogees of power at that time. These four are Renz, Orlov, and Killian supplemented – as best as I can tell – by The Cartel (gangsters with high tech and low morals).
This distinction in kinds of power is jarring to most people on the “left,” but is important when you consider the advantage to clear thinking it makes possible. The four horsemen are trillionaires, which paints them as not just suspect but dangerous to humanity in the common view.
But very much as in Rich Man’s Sky, McCarthy portrays three that are quite admirable, seeking only to achieve, discover, and produce; and one (The Cartel) which has no compunction about killing and coercing. This is the sort of food for thought that can be quite constructive in today’s socio-political-cultural environment.”
SANDRA NEWMAN’S JULIA
George Orwell’s 1984, an early inductee into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, may be one of the wisest, greatest cautionary tales of the 20th century.
So when Orwell’s estate commissioned author Sandra Newman to write not a sequel but a companion piece reimagining from a feminist perspective this powerfully libertarian/liberal critique of any form of totalitarianism, whether of the Left or the Right, it was a major literary event.
Here’s an excerpt from the review:
“Given the acclaim and reputation that Orwell’s classic has attained and deserves, it would seem foolhardy for anyone to dare to write a sequel. After all, how could it possibly measure up?
Inventive and imaginative but also utterly real and convincing in its well-chosen details, Julia succeeds against the odds as a fresh yet darkly familiar companion to 1984. Not only does this companion piece expose the horrors of authoritarianism carried to an extreme, but it also explicitly underlines the virtues of freedom in making life livable.
By making the central character Julia (in Orwell’s 1984, the largely one-dimensional lover of bureaucrat Winston Smith), Newman’s novel adds a woman’s proto-feminist perspective with new insights enriching and deepening Orwell’s dystopian vision of Newspeak, Thought Police, Thoughtcrime, Two-Minutes Hate rallies, constant telescreen surveillance, ever-shrinking dictionaries, collectivist one-Party rule and Oceana’s dizzyingly endless and ever-changing War with Eurasia today and Eastasia tomorrow.
Newman’s nuanced retelling not only exposes the horrific evils and cruel excesses of tyranny but also reminds us of the resilience of many people even while everyday life is seemingly crushing them under the boots of dictators.
From the black markets that give the desperate food and other small comforts to the hidden relationships that sprout underfoot like stray flowers in barren wastelands, Newman finds the intrinsic connections among life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Like Orwell, Newman eloquently and chillingly dramatizes how unchecked dictatorship, reinforced with thought control, propaganda and Puritanical repression, always strives to stamp out any remnants of individuality.
Anything it can’t control or anything that might become a threat is anathema to authoritarian systems – from the individual and the family to love and the untamed currents of sexuality inside us all.”
NAOMI KRITZER’S LIBERTY’S DAUGHTER
Even when a speculative novel offers a serious critique of libertarianism, it can be worth a read by libertarians and freedom-loving SF/fantasy fans.
Especially when the author plays fair, revealing both the possibilities and pluses of liberty as well as its potential downsides.
Case in point: Naomi Kritzer’s Liberty’s Daughter, a 2024 Best Novel nominee that sparked thoughtful debate among Prometheus judges.
Here’s an excerpt from the review:
It’s nice to see more sf writers exploring various visions of a fully free future – even writers who aren’t avowed libertarians.
Well-written and well-paced, with believable characters, an interesting plot and setting and a controversial theme, Liberty’s Daughter explores the drawbacks and benefits of a constellation of linked seasteading communities, most set up with libertarian rationales.
Rather than portraying an outright dystopia, Kritzer dramatizes the higher levels of cooperation and resilience required to live and work within such a minimal-government or no-government framework.
Moreover, Kritzer recognizes that crime, deception and corruption sadly are predictable and inevitable in any human society. So the real issues and questions for her characters involve how they respond to such eventualities and address their society’s flaws.
At the center of the twisty story is a young libertarian-spirited heroine (one surprisingly similar to a Heinlein-juvenile protagonist, like the title characters in Friday or Podkayne of Mars).
Beck displays the decency, honesty and concern for justice of a young and conscientious individualist who strives against the odds to right some wrongs committed under duress or under abusive so-called “contract.”
Kritzer also dramatically compares her seasteading communities (such as minarchist-governed Min or anarchist Lib) with the highly regulated and paternalistic government of the United States – and finds all to have various pluses and minuses.
Liberty’s Daughter implicitly respects individual choice as a foundation of cooperation and civility. But Kritzer suggests that individual choice has its limits, too, especially when the choices are unethical and cross the libertarian boundary between consent and coercion.
Even if Kritzer may have started out to dramatize the defects she perceives in a libertarian society, her novel ends up showing that such bad behavior can be countered effectively – even in a society without government (or with an extremely limited government, as many libertarians advocate).
However the general public may react to this novel – and some might be surprised to learn that libertarians don’t approve of the bad behavior depicted, and don’t believe that it would arise in a lawful free society, at least anywhere close to such an extent – objective and open-minded readers of Liberty’s Daughter will recognize the story’s intriguing and persuasive examples of how voluntary private and social behavior can enforce norms even when laws are minimal or non-existent.”
Note: Also check out Part 1 and Part 2 of our end-of-year Best of the Blog series.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:
* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt), Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters. We understand that the arts and literature can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future – and in some ways can be even more powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.