As part of the LFS’ ongoing Appreciation series of review-essays explaining how each Prometheus Award-winner fits the distinctive dual focus of our award on both liberty and literary quality and why it deserved to win, here is an Appreciation of 2026 Special Award winner Storm-Dragon by Dave Freer.
Storm-Dragon, the first work to receive a Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction, is an entertaining tale embodying golden-age themes of initiative, imagination, curiosity, courage, resilience and resistance.
Fun to read, Dave Freer’s 2025 adventure novel offers much the same appeal as classic “juveniles” by Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.
The story revolves around a boy who adopts an unusual pet on Vann’s World, an ocean-dominated planet with a fledgling human colony facing dangers alien and human.
Editor’s note: Dave Freer won the first Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction for his novel Storm-Dragon, published by Raconteur Press. Speaking from his home in Tasmania, Australia, Freer delivered this acceptance speech Aug. 16, 2026, via Zoom during the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony.
“Reading is vital – to civilization, to liberty, to everything we wish for our species, especially for our young.” – Dave Freer
By Dave Freer
Author Dave Freer at his home desk in Tasmania Photo courtesy of author
Good afternoon everybody. For me that is actually ‘good predawn’ because it is 3 AM here. Like many authors I’ve kept a notebook next to the bedside so I could, on waking, hastily write down the gifts of the muse that sorted themselves into brilliance while I slept.
Unfortunately, the morning usually revealed gems like: ‘Orglvard at speed, with minchins and porgies.’ which I am sure meant something at the time, and was quite brilliant. I hope I am a little more awake than that, but I am not betting on it. I plead forgiveness in advance.
Firstly: Thank you all for awarding the Special Prometheus prize for Young Adult Literature to my book Storm-Dragon.
I am delighted to accept it. It’s flattering for me, but that is really rather beside the point. The real delight is that the Prometheus – an award which is a reliable indicator ‘you will love the book’ has put its mark on a YA SF-novel.
Travis Corcoran, a guest speaker at the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony, was introduced by LFS President William H. Stoddard with these words:
“The Best Novel and Hall of Fame awards are given annually. But the LFS also gives Special Awards, not every year, but when there’s a deserving recipient. A few years ago, we established the category of Special Awards for Young Adult Fiction. This year, for the first time, we’re giving such an award.
“To present this award, we have invited Travis Corcoran to speak. Corcoran received our Best Novel award in 2018 and 2019 for the two volumes of his Aristillus series, The Powers of the Earth and Causes of Separation; this year he has published a new novel, Red State Mars. He currently serves as a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. We look forward to hearing what he has to say about young adult fiction and about this year’s honoree.”
There’s a strange thing about systems – they have state, and often state comes in two or more types, which trade off against each other.
Pendulums have both kinetic energy and potential energy. When a pendulum is dead still, it’s at its highest altitude, and when it’s moving rapidly, it’s at its lowest. Social phenomena can also have state that’s traded back and forth – hobbies and subcultures often reach their absolute peak at exactly the point when growth has fallen to zero. …but there’s no law of conservation of energy in subcultures – a hobby can lose both size and energy at the same time!
Ham radio, bowling leagues – many hobbies have suffered from losing both “altitude” and “speed” at the same time. Deadly in an airplane as a private pilot, and equally deadly to a subculture. …deadly in a subculture like science fiction, generally, or libertarian science fiction, more specifically.
George Orwell is one of only a handful of Prometheus-winning writers to remain world famous and widely read for more than one work of fiction.
Author Hans Christian Andersen (Creative Commons license)
Meanwhile, the Prometheus Hall of Fame classic that is perhaps best known around the world is Hans Christian Anderson’s fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
George Orwell. (Creative Commons license)
Perhaps still most widely acclaimed for his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell is also frequently referenced and quoted for his satirical parable Animal Farm. (Forget the poorly reviewed 2026 animated film version, which substitutes a trendy and misguided anti-corporate ideology for Orwell’s explicit anti-communist theme.)
Of the 50 works of fantastic fiction that have now been inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, Orwell’s classics and Andersen’s evocative fable rank high among the most notable and enduring.
And that’s why they are frequently referenced in contemporary intellectual debates and commentary – and will continue to be relevant for generations.
Dave Freer’s novel Storm-Dragon will be the first work to receive a Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction Aug. 16 at the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony. Yet, it’s far from the only example of Young Adult Fiction to be recognized in the awards’ history.
By my latest count – and including this year’s three winners – 111 works of fantastical fiction have been named as winners of a Prometheus Award since 1979. Of those works, 14 fall clearly into the Young Adult realm or are deemed accessible enough to appeal to younger readers.
Those works should be of great interest to younger readers, roughly anyone between the ages of eight and 18.
They also should spark the curiosity of parents, grandparents, teachers and other adults seeking good pro-freedom SF/fantasy to share or gift.
So which Prometheus Award winners do fit the parameters of Young Adult Fiction?
One would reasonably expect any writer who becomes an awards finalist to feel disappointed if they don’t win – even in a year with especially strong competition.
Dave Freer with his 2023 Prometheus Awards Best Novel plaque for Cloud-Castles (Photo courtesy of Freer)
Thus, it seemed a bit strange to learn that Dave Freer was relieved that he didn’t win the Best Novel category this year.
Freer won his first Prometheus Award for Best Novel in 2023 for Cloud-Castles. So why wouldn’t he want to win a second forStorm-Dragon, his 2026 Best Novel finalist?
“I was actually a little worried that STORM-DRAGON would win the Prometheus,” Freer told his publisher Raconteur Press in a special awards-news update on their Substack column.
The Libertarian Futurist Society will present its first Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction to Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon.
Several years ago, the LFS Board of Directors unanimously approved this new awards category in recognition of the crucial connection between literacy and liberty and the vital importance of writing fiction, including fantastical fiction, that attracts and engages young people.
Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer, will receive the Special Award Aug. 16, 2026, at the 46th annual Prometheus Awards, along with the previously announced 2026 winners in the two annual categories for Best Novel (J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles) and the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction (Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.)
For me as a boy, The Star Dwellers was revelatory.
An idealistic drama about a fraught “second contact” between Earth humans and ancient aliens, James Blish’s 1961 novel sparked my thinking about ethics, economics and politics.
I couldn’t have imagined at the time what reading yet another Young Adult science fiction novel would lead me to, but ultimately The Star Dwellers paved the way for me to develop into a full-fledged libertarian by the early 1970s.
“People come to libertarianism through fiction. They come through Ayn Rand… Robert Heinlein…. L. Neil Smith.”
– Libertarian feminist author Wendy McElroy at the 2000 Prometheus Awards ceremony
For quite a few libertarians, “It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand.” Or Robert Heinlein. Or other freedom-loving science fiction writers.
James Blish in the 1960s (Creative Commons license)
For me, though, my introduction to libertarian and classical-liberal ideas and ideals began earlier – at least in part – with James Blish.
Specifically, Blish’s The Star Dwellers.
When I read Blish’s 1961 novel as a pre-teen in the early 1960s, I came to understand for the first time key insights about voluntary consent and mutual exchange for profit as the best foundation for peace and progress.
Now a finalist for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction, The Star Dwellers is a young-adult-oriented science fiction novel that revolves around a fraught “second contact” between star-faring humans and an ancient, advanced alien species.
Two-time Prometheus Awards-winning author Travis Corcoran, a passionate believer in encouraging younger generations to read, is writing several Young Adult novels that promise to be published in 2026.
Two will be part of Corcoran’s Aristillus series, set in our solar system’s future and launched with his two Prometheus-winning novelsThe Powers of the Earth and Causes of Separation.
Tentatively set for publication this fall by Morlock Publishing, Corcoran’s two Aristillus YA novels are The Aristillus Engineering Club and the Journey to the Center of Mars and The Aristillus Engineering Club Around Mars in 80 Sols.
