Category: L. Neil Smith

The best of the blog: Highlights of 2025, from two probing series to an unusually moving and stimulating 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony

By Michael Grossberg

As we look back at what was published on the Prometheus Blog over the past year, it’s hard to pick the very best articles and reports to highlight.

Among our more sustained efforts, we launched an awards-standards series, with essays by William Stoddard and Eric Raymond exploring the criteria for Prometheus nominations, and devoted an 11-part series to analyzing the pros and cons of the increasing popularity of sequels in pop culture and in our awards.

Novelist Michael Flynn at an sf convention several decades ago (File photo)

Yet in this final of three “Best of the Blog” posts highlighting some of our best work of 2025, reporting on our 45th awards ceremony may rank highest.

For the first time in the history of the Prometheus Awards, the Best Novel winner was recognized posthumously. While we continue to mourn the passing of Michael Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, this year’s well-deserved award for his final novel In the Belly of the Whale paved the way for one of our most emotional and inspirational acceptance speeches.

Continue reading The best of the blog: Highlights of 2025, from two probing series to an unusually moving and stimulating 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony

How Arc Manor Books, CAEZIK SF & Fantasy and Phoenix Pick support Prometheus-winning authors, including this year’s Best Novel winner

By Michael Grossberg

Besides the late great Michael Flynn, Arc Manor Books has published quite a few other Prometheus-winning authors – including Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, L. Neil Smith, Harry Turtledove and Jack Williamson.

Two of Arc Manor’s major imprints are CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, launched in 2020 with a “new” previously unpublished novel by Robert A. Heinlein, and Phoenix Pick, which reprints classic SF and Fantasy “from the ashes” of other publishing houses, with some new titles.

Thus, the Maryland-based small-press, created by Shahid Mahmud in 2006 to utilize the exciting new emerging technologies being developed in the publishing marketplace, should be better known, especially by Libertarian Futurist Society members and other freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.

Continue reading How Arc Manor Books, CAEZIK SF & Fantasy and Phoenix Pick support Prometheus-winning authors, including this year’s Best Novel winner

What leading libertarian theorist and novelist David Friedman thinks of Lois McMaster Bujold, L. Neil Smith, J. Neil Schulman, Robert Heinlein and other Prometheus-winning authors


By Michael Grossberg

David Friedman (Creative Commons license)

David Friedman, a guest presenter at the 45th Prometheus Awards show, is a regular reader of science fiction and fantasy – and the prominent economist and leading libertarian theorist has been influenced in his thinking by several Prometheus-winning authors.

So it’s interesting to hear Friedman’s views on a variety of sf/fantasy writers, which he shared in response to questions at the end of the Aug. 30, 2025, awards ceremony.

In addition to Poul Anderson (the 2025 Hall of Fame winner for Orion Shall Rise), Robert Heinlein, Jerry Pournelle and Vernor Vinge (Prometheus-winning writers that Friedman discussed during his main speech), Friedman offered comments and insights on the novels of Prometheus winners Lois McMaster Bujold, L. Neil Smith, J. Neil Schulman, C.J. Cherryh (highlighted in a previous blog), Heinlein and other sf/fantasy writers.

Continue reading What leading libertarian theorist and novelist David Friedman thinks of Lois McMaster Bujold, L. Neil Smith, J. Neil Schulman, Robert Heinlein and other Prometheus-winning authors


Sequels, part 8: More Best Novel winners (not sequels) by L. Neil Smith and Ramez Naam that inspired sequels


By Michael Grossberg

Quite a few Prometheus Award Best Novel winners, while not sequels themselves, have inspired subsequent novels that have received further Prometheus recognition.

L. Neil Smith in the 1980s (Creative Commons license)

Such winners by Sarah Hoyt (Darkship Thieves), Victor Milan (The Cybernetic Samurai) and Dani and Eytan Kollins (The Unincorporated Man) were examined in the previous post of this ongoing series about sequels.

Ramez Naam (Creative Commons license)

Let’s turn our attention here to Prometheus-winning works by Ramez Naam and L. Neil Smith. Both authors were inspired to write more than one follow-up novel to their initial Prometheus-winning novels.

While Naam framed one complex story for his near-future Nexus trilogy, Smith conceived a variety of zestful and rambunctious stories all linked within his alternate-universe North American Confederacy series.

Continue reading Sequels, part 8: More Best Novel winners (not sequels) by L. Neil Smith and Ramez Naam that inspired sequels


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


Remembering five-time Prometheus winner L. Neil Smith on his birthday


By Michael Grossberg

A zest for life, a sense of humor, a taste for rollicking adventure, curiosity, mystery, imagination, ingeniously varied aliens, heroic and villainous humans, a passion for justice, individual rights and other libertarian themes mark the novels and legacy of L. Neil Smith.

L. Neil Smith in the 1980s (Creative Commons license)

Smith was born May 12, 1946, and died at 75 in 2021 at his longtime home in Fort Collins, Colorado. Arguably one of the most significant libertarian novelists of the past generation or so, Neil was a writer that libertarian SF fans should remember (and consider rereading) on his birthday.

For one thing, Smith is one of only a handful of writers (most notably, along with Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Vernor Vinge and F. Paul Wilson) to win five Prometheus Awards – or more.

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Introducing the Prometheus Awards Collection for Libraries

By Michael Grossberg

One of the most exciting and promising Libertarian Futurist Society outreach projects in years is our new Prometheus Awards Collection for Libraries.

The ambitious project offers a carefully curated selection of Prometheus-winning novels to be donated and mailed to interested libraries across the country upon their request.

The set of brand-new books was chosen to expand the range and variety of notable and acclaimed science fiction on library shelves across the country – especially to aid smaller libraries, which may have more limited resources.

Continue reading Introducing the Prometheus Awards Collection for Libraries

Heinlein, Anderson, Tolkien, Orwell, Rand, Hoyt, Vinge, Stephenson, Bradbury and Wilson among popular Prometheus-winning authors added as convenient index links on our blog

What do Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, James P. Hogan, Sarah Hoyt, Victor Koman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken MacLeod, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, L. Neil Smith, Neal Stephenson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Vernor Vinge and F. Paul Wilson have in common?

Robert Heinlein in the 1980s (Photo courtesy of Heinlein Trust)

Some rank high among bestselling and even world famous authors; some are not quite as well known but still have sold millions of copies of their books, and a few are lesser-known writers who deserve a wider readership.

George Orwell. (Creative Commons license)

Yet they’re all writers who have written notable speculative fiction (generally science fiction and/or fantasy) that in different ways championed freedom-loving themes and exposed the evils of authoritarianism.

And all of the above have been recognized for such works by winning Prometheus Awards – some for Best Novel, some for Best Classic Fiction and several for both annual award categories.

Continue reading Heinlein, Anderson, Tolkien, Orwell, Rand, Hoyt, Vinge, Stephenson, Bradbury and Wilson among popular Prometheus-winning authors added as convenient index links on our blog

2024 Prometheus Awards: Best Novel presenter Victor Koman’s speech on mortality, the awards’ longevity, the diversification of publishing and the future of liberty


Victor Koman, a veteran libertarian SF writer, had the honor of presenting the Best Novel category Sunday at the 44th Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Prometheus-winning novelist Victor Koman in 2019 Photo courtesy of Koman

Who better to fulfill that role than Koman, one of very few writers to win as many as three Prometheus awards for Best Novel?

Here, for the record, is the transcript of Koman’s speech.

Continue reading 2024 Prometheus Awards: Best Novel presenter Victor Koman’s speech on mortality, the awards’ longevity, the diversification of publishing and the future of liberty


Who are the most nominated authors in Prometheus history? Here’s the top-ten list

 

Who are the most popular authors in Prometheus Awards history?

Prometheus, the light bringer (Creative Commons license)

One could answer that question in several different ways, such as looking at a bestselling writer’s number of books sold or in print – or more narrowly, in terms of our award, comparing the number of Prometheus Awards different writers have won over the decades in different categories. (The Prometheus Blog will explore the latter perspective in later postings.)

But let’s focus first on one parameter that roughly reflects the ongoing popularity and relevance of different sf/fantasy authors among LFS members over more than four decades: How many times an author has simply been nominated by LFS members for a Prometheus Award.

Without peeking at the next page or examining the track record of past winners on the LFS website’s Prometheus Awards page, how many of the Top Ten most popular authors can you guess?

Continue reading Who are the most nominated authors in Prometheus history? Here’s the top-ten list