By Michael Grossberg
ONE Special Prometheus Award — the first for Young Adult Fiction.
TWO exciting guest speakers — leading libertarian thinker Ilya Somin, who will give the keynote speech on libertarian currents in SF/fantasy; and two-time Prometheus Best Novel winner Travis Corcoran (The Powers of the Earth, Causes of Separation), who will discuss the vital importance of Young Adult Fiction to encourage and inspire new generations of readers.
THREE Prometheus Awards — more than the usual annual two for Best Novel and the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
By the numbers alone, this Sunday’s 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony will be pretty special – with more awards and far more interesting and inspiring speakers (10) than is typical at our annual awards ceremonies.
You can watch the roughly hourlong awards show, which is open to the public, by using this Zoom link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87824388418?pwd=CsoznF4wtlLNTYvEotlIpVJkCoGb9I.1
Please log in at 1 p.m. Sunday Aug. 16 Eastern time.
That’s 10 a.m. Pacific time, 11 a.m. Mountain time and 12 noon Central time – or 13 hours later in Tasmania, Australia, where Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer (Cloud-Castles) will be logging in from to accept the Special Award for his young-adult SF novel Storm-Dragon.
Here is more about the lineup of interesting and inspiring speakers:
ILYA SOMIN AND LIBERTARIAN SCIENCE FICTION
* Ilya Somin, who’s written about libertarianism and science fiction for the Prometheus quarterly, is a George Mason University law professor, the Cato Institute’s B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies, and author (Oxford University Press’ Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom; Stanford University Press’ Why Smaller Government is Smarter).
At the end of his keynote speech, Somin will present the Prometheus Hall of Fame category.
ALDOUS HUXLEY AND BRAVE NEW WORLD
* Three people will accept the Prometheus award for Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – the 50th work to be inducted into our Hall of Fame since 1983: Jack Miles and Huxley’s grandchildren, Tessa and Trev Huxley.
A Pulitzer-winning writer-editor (God: A Biography, a 1996 Pulitzer winner, and The Norton Anthology of World Religions) Miles is co-trustee of the Aldous and Laura Huxley Literary Estate.
They will discuss Huxley’s legacy, his bestselling dystopian novel and its relevance to our era – and perhaps share a personal story or two.
Published in 1932, Brave New World offers a still-timely cautionary tale of collectivist soft tyranny under seemingly benevolent world government and technocratic central planning.
Implicitly critiquing his era’s rise of collectivism and Progressive infatuation with the racist pseudo-science of eugenics, Huxley warned about behavioral/biochemical conditioning, propaganda, censorship and manipulation of artificial wombs limiting intelligence and initiative to create and control different castes – all denying crucial aspects of humanity and individual liberty, and all enforced by an authoritarian elite rationalizing their tyranny for the greater good.
J. KENTON PIERCE AND A KISS FOR DAMOCLES
* J. Kenton Pierce will accept the Best Novel award for A Kiss for Damocles. LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg, who chairs the Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee, will present the award.
Pierce’s science fiction saga, published by Raconteur Press and launching his Tales From the Long Night series, illuminates the ethics and efficacy of free trade, and voluntary cooperation as the best foundation for building or rebuilding civilization.
The novel celebrates the self-reliance and resilience of self-regulating frontier communities that survive and evolve based on the hard-won and practical realities of voluntarism, earned mutual respect and self-defense. But A Kiss for Damocles is also a cautionary tale about the deceptive idealism of a command-and-control ideology and the perennial tendency towards abuse of power.
DAVE FREER AND STORM-DRAGON
* Dave Freer, who won his first Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 2021 for Cloud-Castles, will accept the first Special Award for Young Adult Fiction for Storm-Dragon from two-time Best Novel winner Travis Corcoran.
The science fiction novel centers on a boy who saves and adopts an orphaned alien pet on an ocean-dominated colony planet with dangers both alien and human.
The resourceful middle-school boy and his new friend, a refugee from another planet, confront class bullies and repressive teachers, cope with mob behavior and navigate the ocean’s tricky shores.
Aimed primarily at ages 8 to 18 and avoiding explicit ideology, the novel gradually expands to include parents, administrators and other adults enmeshed in the colony town’s increasingly corrupt politics, which threatens livelihoods through onerous regulations, taxes and property confiscations. Ultimately, a violent invasion from human raiders threatens the colonists’ broader rights.
With a strong career background in fishing and oceanography, Freer focuses more on the plausible ecology and boy-centered adventures than the politics of this plausible frontier planet, while allowing his live-and-let-live, peace and freedom themes to emerge naturally.
IAN MCMURTRIE AND RACONTEUR PRESS
Raconteur Press, a fledgling small-press publisher based in Texas, achieved something remarkable and virtually unprecedented in the 47-year history of the Prometheus awards.
Raconteur published two of the three 2026 Prometheus winners – J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles and Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon.
Following Freer’s acceptance speech, co-publisher Ian McMurtrie will say a few words about the award and the type of fiction that Raconteur Press considers vital to publish.
WILLIAM H. STODDARD AND AWARDS JUDGING
LFS President William H. Stoddard, who chairs the Prometheus Hall of Fame Judging Committee, will emcee the awards show.
The Libertarian Futurist Society’s two judging committees, drawn from volunteer members, select the finalists in each of the two annual Prometheus categories from the wider list of nominated works. All LFS members have the right to nominate works for both annual award categories (Best Novel and the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction) as well as occasional special awards.
Once the finalists are announced, LFS members have the opportunity to read the finalists in each category and rank them on the final ballot (by July 4, the traditional annual voting deadline) choosing the annual winners.
Each winner receives a plaque with a gold coin.
ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards, honor outstanding freedom-loving fantastical fiction and find fellowship with other fans, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and 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, dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in 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. This page includes links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each winning work since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both liberty and literary quality.
* Watch videos of the annual Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant elements of libertarian themes and insights in the evolution of the modern SF/fantasy genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for updates, comments, and links to Prometheus Blog posts.
