By Michael Grossberg
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.
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.
The first human beings to journey into deep space since 1972 might be on their way as early as today.
The first flight of America’s ambitious Artemis mission aims to lift off in early March for the first crewed mission around the Moon since the Apollo era. Initially scheduled for February, Artemis 2 might take off on its next window in early April if the mission can’t make any of five potential launch dates March 6-9 or March 11.
“NASA does not expect to be able to land astronauts on the moon before 2027, at the earliest. Realistically, it’s unlikely that such an undertaking would occur before 2028. But the Artemis II mission is no perfunctory exercise. This will be a difficult and dangerous mission, and it’s a precursor to America’s eventual return to our nightly neighbor — this time, to stay,” columnist Noah Rothman wrote in an insightful National Review article about the prospects of the upcoming mission.
Size matters – or at least it can make a big difference, in helping a novel to achieve greater dramatic impact in its scope, depth, narrative complexity and emotional power.
Quite a few longer novels have been recognized by the Prometheus Awards over the past 47 years, whether as nominees, finalists or winners – from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged to the recent nomination of Sarah Hoyt’s three-volume No Mans Land for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
The three classic and epic works by Tolkien, Stephenson and Rand rank No. 1, 2 and 3 in page length in the history of the Prometheus Awards – as detailed in previous Prometheus Blog articles about the three bestselling winners and No Man’s Land.
So what are all the Prometheus-recognized novels and their ranks in page lengths on our top-12 list?
Of the many novels that have won a Prometheus Award over the past 47 years and are still widely read today, a notable few have done so with the help of their longer length and epic scale.
From J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, size does matter in literature.
Or at least size can significantly enhance a novel, if the writers are experts and at the top of their game. If well-structured, well-paced and compelling enough to sustain the reader’s interest, longer novels can attract and retain the reader’s interest even through hundreds of pages.
Does size matter?
The question arises in fiction when authors conceive novels that are noticeably bigger in word count and longer in page length than usual.
In theory, a bigger novel makes possible a larger canvas, allowing for an epic scope, a more complex narrative, richer world-building, more full-bodied characters, greater subtleties and depths.
Whether or not ambitious authors fulfill that potential and achieve their literary goals when writing bigger novels varies, of course. So does whether readers will find it rewarding to invest the extra time needed to read such magnum opuses.
Such questions are interesting and timely to ponder now that Sarah Hoyt’s No Man’s Land has been nominated for the Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Libertarian Futurist Society members have nominated 14 novels for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel. Of those, nine nominees were written by authors nominated for the first time for a Prometheus Award.
With so many authors new to our awards, the Prometheus Awards may be entering a more hopeful period in which a new generation is writing science fiction, fantasy and other fantastical works informed by a clear awareness of the dangers of tyranny and the benefits of freedom.
The “new” Prometheus-recognized writers include Max Harms, Andrew Knighton, John C. A. Manley, Ewan Morrison, Laura Montgomery, Ray Nayler, J. Kenton Pierce and David A. Price.
Nominated again are three Prometheus-winning authors – Dave Freer (Cloud-Castles), Sarah Hoyt (Darkship Thieves) and Harry Turtledove (The Gladiator) – and one writer, Karl K. Gallagher, whose works often have become Best Novel finalists. In addition, writer R.H. Snow has been nominated several times for Best Novel.
One of the many Prometheus-winning works that continues to be widely read and referenced in popular culture for its enduring dramatic power and themes is Fahrenheit 451.
Inducted in 1984 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, Ray Bradbury’s civil-libertarian, anti-censorship and pro-reading novel envisions a dystopian future in which “firemen” burn books and literacy is suppressed, along with any memory of great literature.
While many find the novel relevant to our era, in which both free speech and the reading of books often seem threatened or in decline, few go as far as investigative reporter and media critic Matt Taibbi or as fervently.
By Michael Grossberg
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 novels The 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.
Just as the Prometheus Awards overlaps to some extent with the Hugo and Nebula wards in terms of the works and writers recognized, our list of Prometheus-winning writers overlaps with the Forry Awards.
C.J. Cherryh, who co-wrote the 2020 Prometheus Best Novel winner (Alliance Rising) with her partner Jane S. Fancher, is the 13th Prometheus winner to also be recognized in the Forry awards.
Cherryh recently won the 2025 Forrest J Ackerman Award for Lifetime Achievement given by the members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. (See our previous post about Cherryh’s latest honor.)
It’s interesting to see what writers have been recognized by both the LASFS, the world’s oldest continuously active science fiction and fantasy club, and the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), established in 1982 to sustain the Prometheus Awards.
Such broad cross-recognition should be another reminder of just how embedded libertarian and anti-authoritarian ideas and values are within our popular culture – and have been, for generations, even amid various socio-economic developments and political trends, both positive and negative.
So if Cherryh is the 13th Prometheus winner to be recognized with a Forry award, who else is on that illustrious cross-checked list?
