Category: Essays

Celebrating the 45th Prometheus Awards: Economist and novelist David Friedman on Anderson, Heinlein, Vinge and how science fiction influenced the development of his ideas



David D. Friedman added excitement and intellectual stimulation as the guest presenter at the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony.

David Friedman (Photo provided by Friedman)

A leading libertarian theorist (The Machinery of Freedom), economist (Price Theory: An Intermediate Text) and law-and-economics professor (Law’s Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters), David is also a Prometheus-nominated sf/fantasy novelist (Harald, Salamander, Brothers).

Friedman presented the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction during the Aug. 30 ceremony. Here is the text of his speech, which followed an introduction by LFS President William (Bill) Stoddard.

By David D. Friedman

Bill mentioned my friend Vernor Vinge, who is in part responsible for my writing my second novel.

I described to him my idea for that and for the alternative, a sequel to my first novel (Harald, a 2007 Prometheus Best Novel nominee). He thought Salamander would more interesting, so I wrote it. He was right.

I thought I’d start by saying a little about what I’ve learned relevant to libertarianism from science fiction.

As some of you may know, Vernor’s story “The Ungoverned” (inducted in 1994 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame) is about a stateless society, modeled on my ideas, being invaded by an adjacent state.

Seeing that society through the eyes of a novelist rather than an economist showed me things about it that would not have occurred to me….

Continue reading Celebrating the 45th Prometheus Awards: Economist and novelist David Friedman on Anderson, Heinlein, Vinge and how science fiction influenced the development of his ideas



In their own ways, the 2025 Best Novel finalists embody the dramatic potential of novels with epic scope


By Michael Grossberg

One aspect of fantastical fiction that can make it especially vivid and dramatic is when authors create an imaginative story with epic scope.

A work of fiction that offers such a vast and even cosmic perspective can enhance that distinctive sense of wonder that has defined some of the best science fiction or fantasy.

Each of this year’s Prometheus Best Novel finalists benefits in some ways from aspiring to and achieving great scope.

Continue reading In their own ways, the 2025 Best Novel finalists embody the dramatic potential of novels with epic scope


Ares: An overlooked sequel to L. Neil Smith’s Prometheus-winning Pallas


By Michael Grossberg

Did you know that a third novel belatedly has been published in the late Prometheus-winning writer L. Neil Smith’s “Ngu Family Saga” series?

The Libertarian Futurist Society recognized the first two novels in that series – Pallas and Ceres – but we didn’t become aware of the third novel, Ares, until recently.

Each of the three novels is set primarily on a different asteroid or dwarf planet in our solar system, but linked together by continuing central characters drawn from the Ngu family of pioneering solar-system settlers.

Continue reading Ares: An overlooked sequel to L. Neil Smith’s Prometheus-winning Pallas


Sequels, part 4: While few sequels surpass their originals, three Prometheus Best Novel winners by Doctorow, Walton and Stephenson offer rich rewards

By Michael Grossberg

Let’s face it: Most sequels don’t measure up to the originals. Yet, when they meet – or surpass – expectations while offering further satisfactions in their own right, sequels deserve recognition.

While quite a large number of sequel novels have been nominated for a Prometheus Award over the past 46 years, only a fraction have gone on to become Best Novel finalists. Even fewer have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel – by my count, 10 novels, all worth reading or rereading.

That’s especially impressive, since most novels fall short in various ways, reflecting the iron law of mediocrity. As the great SF short-story writer Theodore Sturgeon put it, in what came to be called Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.”

Beyond the general requirements of solid storytelling, strong characters, propulsive plots and believable settings that apply to all literature, writing a sequel poses additional challenges – especially in finding and delivering the tricky balance between the fondly familiar and the excitingly fresh.

Fans of the original work tend to expect more in a sequel – more of the same pleasures they had in reading the first book, in part. Yet, whether they realize it consciously or not, fans also yearn to broaden their reading experience with new dimensions of narrative, character, setting, world-building and themes.

If you’re a lifelong SF/fantasy fan like me, you want a good novel or sequel to expand your imagination and deepen the intensity of your identification, empathy and emotion while reading it. This blog post will describe three sequel novels by Prometheus-winning writers that in my view fulfill such hopes.

Continue reading Sequels, part 4: While few sequels surpass their originals, three Prometheus Best Novel winners by Doctorow, Walton and Stephenson offer rich rewards

Sequels, part 3: Many have been nominated, but only a select few have won a Prometheus award for Best Novel


By Michael Grossberg

How often are sequels nominated for Best Novel? And of those, how many go on to become Best Novel finalists? Or winners?

A lot, actually – and more than I initially recalled.

In this ongoing Prometheus Blog analysis of the number of sequels that have won over 46 years in the Best Novel category, I discovered several surprising patterns.

The subject of sequels is timely, with four sequels of the 11 2024 novels nominated this year for Best Novel and two sequel novels going on to become Best Novel finalists.

That sounds like a lot, but it’s not anywhere close to a Prometheus Awards record.

Continue reading Sequels, part 3: Many have been nominated, but only a select few have won a Prometheus award for Best Novel


Sequels, part 2: How many have won a Prometheus Award? You might be surprised…


By Michael Grossberg

Just how many sequels have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel?

More than you might expect, as I recently discovered.

Continue reading Sequels, part 2: How many have won a Prometheus Award? You might be surprised…


Exploring the appeal and challenge of sequels with four Prometheus nominees: Machine Vendetta, Shadow of the Smoking Mountain and Best Novel finalists Alliance Unbound and Beggar’s Sky


By Michael Grossberg

Sequels are increasingly popular these days – especially within the fantastical or speculative genres of science fiction and fantasy.

Among this year’s recently announced five Prometheus Best Novel finalists are two sequels: Alliance Unbound and Beggar’s Sky.

Of the 11 2024 SF/fantasy novels nominated for this year’s 45th Best Novel award, four are sequels – including Shadow of the Smoking Mountain and Machine Vendetta.

Each sequel navigates a tricky balance between the fresh and the familiar.

Each can be enjoyed by newcomers as a stand-alone book. Yet, each is enriched by previous world-building and continuing characters that makes them rewarding for the author’s ongoing fans.

How each novel builds on its predecessors, or in some cases departs from them, varies in ways that help illuminate the appeal of sequels and their challenges.

Continue reading Exploring the appeal and challenge of sequels with four Prometheus nominees: Machine Vendetta, Shadow of the Smoking Mountain and Best Novel finalists Alliance Unbound and Beggar’s Sky


What a nomination means (and doesn’t mean) in the Prometheus Awards

By Michael Grossberg

When Libertarian Futurist Society members vote to select annual winners from the slate of Prometheus Awards finalists for Best Novel or the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, that really means something.

That’s because it’s the highest level of recognition possible by the LFS as a whole – and those two awards come with an engraved plaque and a gold coin prize.

Similarly, the annual slates of (typically four or five) finalists mean a lot, too. Achieving Prometheus finalist status can bring a worthy work or an emerging author to wider attention, not only by LFS members but the wider communities of SF/fantasy fans and libertarians.

Prometheus finalists are selected by hard-working LFS members appointed to the committees that judge each year’s Prometheus nominees in our two annual awards categories, with the wider LFS membership then having several months to consider and rank the finalists on the final ballot to choose the winners.

As such, and unlike a basic nomination, the slate of Prometheus finalists represents the first stamp of approval from the LFS itself as a nonprofit international association of freedom-loving SF/fantasy fans.

Continue reading What a nomination means (and doesn’t mean) in the Prometheus Awards

Why accurate language, objectivity (and Orwell) matter: Libertarian economist David Henderson aptly references 1984 in explaining common misperceptions about “privilege”


By Michael Grossberg

George Orwell’s emphasis on clarity of language and objective definitions, exemplified in his seminal essay on “Politics and the English Language,” remains worth emulating in 2025 and beyond.

When so many so-called public intellectuals, columnists, opinion leaders and even professional economists embrace popular fallacies and use misleading language, it’s harmful both to literacy and liberty.

How pleasing it is, then, when a nationally known economist not only uses words accurately, in opposition to common misconceptions, misinformation and ideological bias, but also demonstrates how well he understands and appreciates Orwell’s classic fiction.

Continue reading Why accurate language, objectivity (and Orwell) matter: Libertarian economist David Henderson aptly references 1984 in explaining common misperceptions about “privilege”


TANSTAAFL: Libertarian economist David Friedman examines an acronym popularized by Heinlein


By Michael Grossberg

TANSTAAFL!

Many libertarians and other freedom-loving SF fans know that term well. For those who don’t recall, it’s an acronym for “There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.”

The Grand Master SF writer Robert Heinlein did his share to popularize the acronym in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. His bestselling, Hugo-winning novel, about a libertarian revolution on the Moon, was one of the first works inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.

So did free-market economist and classical liberal Milton Friedman, who often quoted it over the years.

Both libertarians used the acronym to communicate the idea that nothing is truly free, and there’s always a cost to any decision.

But did the popular catchphrase inadvertently also spread a misunderstanding about economics?

Continue reading TANSTAAFL: Libertarian economist David Friedman examines an acronym popularized by Heinlein