Category: Author Updates

Prometheus winner C.J. Cherryh recognized with the “Forry” lifetime achievement award

By Michael Grossberg

C.J. Cherryh in the 1990s (File photo)

Congratulations to C.J. Cherryh for her latest well-deserved honor.

Cherryh, who co-wrote the 2020 Prometheus Best Novel winner (Alliance Rising) with her partner Jane S. Fancher, is the winner of the 2025 Forrest J Ackerman Award for Lifetime Achievement given by the members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.

The Forry Award, as it’s known informally, is Cherryh’s fourth career honor, according to a news note in File 770, a leading publication covering the sf/fantasy field.  She was named a SFWA Grand Master in 2016 from the Science Fiction Writers Association, received the Skylark Award from the New England Science Fiction Association in 1988, and the Robert A. Heinlein Award from our friends in the Heinlein Society in 2021.

Continue reading Prometheus winner C.J. Cherryh recognized with the “Forry” lifetime achievement award

Power myths, clashing cultures and the necessity of freedom: The first Prometheus review of Poul Anderson’s “brilliant” Orion Shall Rise


By Michael Grossberg

With Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise inducted most recently into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, it’s interesting to look back on our initial review of the 1983 novel for its insights and first impressions.

Victoria Varga, the first LFS Director and editor of the print edition of Prometheus from 1983 to 1988, reviewed Anderson’s science fiction novel when it was first nominated for a Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Thanks in part to her positive review, Orion Shall Rise was selected by Libertarian Futurist Society members as a 1984 Best Novel finalist (the year that J. Neil Schulman’s The Rainbow Cadenza won our award.)

Most notably, Varga praised Anderson for doing “a brilliant job of creating mythologies, religious and secular, for his characters and their civilizations.”

Continue reading Power myths, clashing cultures and the necessity of freedom: The first Prometheus review of Poul Anderson’s “brilliant” Orion Shall Rise


Two-time Prometheus winner Travis Corcoran has a busy schedule of upcoming books, starting with his 2026 novel Red State Mars

By Michael Grossberg

This year should be a notable one for author Travis Corcoran.

The two-time Prometheus-winning author, who won for Best Novel in 2018 for The Powers of the Earth and again in 2019 for its sequel Causes of Separation, hasn’t published a major work of fiction in several years.

But that’s about to change.

One of the first novels published by Ark Press, a new SF publisher, will be Corcoran’s Red State Mars.

Scheduled for publication May 29, 2026, Red State Mars is billed as “a sweeping epic of Mars’s fight for freedom—an unforgettable saga of war, family, and civilization on the red frontier.”

Continue reading Two-time Prometheus winner Travis Corcoran has a busy schedule of upcoming books, starting with his 2026 novel Red State Mars

Happy birthday, Gregory Benford – one of the best hard-sf novelists, a Prometheus finalist (and a libertarian)


By Michael Grossberg

Sf writer Gregory Benford (File photo)

Today is Gregory Benford’s birthday.

Born Jan. 30, 1941, Benford is 85. We not only wish a happy birthday but also our best wishes for health and happiness to Benford, who suffered a stroke a few years ago.

Known for his hard science fiction informed by his career as an astrophysicist and physics professor, Benford is a Campbell and two-time Nebula winner and a Prometheus Best Novel finalist.

Continue reading Happy birthday, Gregory Benford – one of the best hard-sf novelists, a Prometheus finalist (and a libertarian)


Liberty, literacy and younger generations: Why Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer wrote Storm-Dragon, a Young Adult science fiction novel and current nominee

By Michael Grossberg

Prometheus-winning sf/fantasy author Dave Freer understands how liberty and literacy are intimately intertwined – a frequent theme explored here on the Prometheus Blog.

As Freer explains on the Mad Genius Club blog, his commitment to encouraging literacy and younger readers was a key motivation for him to write Storm-Dragon, a Young Adult science fiction novel that’s one of 10 2025 novels nominated so far for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

“We need young people reading,” Freer writes.

“It’s the one way you can future-proof your kids, because it is the one thing that will make them flexible enough to cope with whatever the future throws. It will give them advantages in learning – far more than schooling will,” he said.

Continue reading Liberty, literacy and younger generations: Why Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer wrote Storm-Dragon, a Young Adult science fiction novel and current nominee

Time travel and second chances: Sarah Hoyt’s new anthology includes a prequel story to her Prometheus-nominated No Man’s Land

By Michael Grossberg

Prometheus Award winner Sarah Hoyt has published an anthology about time travel and second chances.

Perhaps of greatest interest to LFS members, the six-story collection includes a prequel to Hoyt’s No Man’s Land, a current Best Novel nominee.

Six stories are included in Christmas In Time: Six Stories of Time Travel and Second Chances.

The No Man’s Land prequel is “What Child Is This,” which focuses on how a child’s accidental time-slip can save a man’s life and create the bonds of family love.

Continue reading Time travel and second chances: Sarah Hoyt’s new anthology includes a prequel story to her Prometheus-nominated No Man’s Land

Raconteur Press interviews J. Kenton Pierce, nominated for a Prometheus Best Novel award for A Kiss for Damocles

By Michael Grossberg

J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles, nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, offer space opera with young-adult appeal.

Pierce, nominated for the first time for a Prometheus Award, describes what inspired his novel and how it fits into his future history in an interview posted on the website of the book’s publisher, Raconteur Press.

Launching Pierce’s ambitious projected multi-book Tales of the Long Night saga, A Kiss for Damocles is set in a complex future where interstellar war has ravaged worlds and where the homesteaders on one planet are struggling to rebuild.

Continue reading Raconteur Press interviews J. Kenton Pierce, nominated for a Prometheus Best Novel award for A Kiss for Damocles

A happy 90th birthday, Robert Silverberg! (and why only one novel by this great libertarian sf writer has been nominated for the Prometheus Award)


By Michael Grossberg

Robert Silverberg at Worldcon 67. Creative Commons license

Revered science fiction writer Robert Silverberg celebrates a milestone today, Jan. 15, 2026.

He turns 90 today. So happy birthday, Mr. Silverberg!

That’s a long lifetime for any man, even in the 21st century, but its especially impressive and worth commemorating for Silverberg, one of the greatest and most prolific science fiction writers of the past century.

Continue reading A happy 90th birthday, Robert Silverberg! (and why only one novel by this great libertarian sf writer has been nominated for the Prometheus Award)


No Man’s Land: The epic novel that Prometheus winner Sarah Hoyt was born to write


By Michael Grossberg

Sarah Hoyt views No Man’s Land, nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, as the epic story that she was born to write.

So what took her so long? The three-part novel required much of Hoyt’s life to gestate, mature and blossom – and therein lies another epic story.

“It’s been with me since I was 14,” Hoyt told me in an email interview.

Set in an interstellar future where humanity colonized many planets but also lost touch with some for centuries or millennia, the three-part 2025 novel blends tropes of science fiction and fantasy in intriguing ways.

Continue reading No Man’s Land: The epic novel that Prometheus winner Sarah Hoyt was born to write


R.I.P., John Varley, a cutting-edge Heinleinesque sf writer and Prometheus winner

By Michael Grossberg

John Varley, winner of the 1999 Prometheus Award for Best Novel, is being remembered for his intelligent, imaginative, cutting-edge science fiction.

John Varley. Photo: Creative Commons license

Varley, who died in December at the age of 78 in Beaverton, Oregon, was “truly one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time,” wrote his fellow sf writer and friend David Brin in a tribute in the just-published January 2026 issue of Locus magazine.

An American science fiction writer (1947-2025), Varley often was Heinleinesque in his positive vision of human resilience and innovation and his ability to tell stories that blended adventure, suspense, believable characters, intelligent world-building and an epic sense of wonder.

In fact, Varley’s work often has been compared to frequent Prometheus winner Robert Heinlein, especially by the Canadian SF critic-author John Clute. So it made a lot of sense when Varley received the Robert A. Heinlein Award in 2009.

“He was fresh, he was complex, he understood the imaginative implications of transformative developments,” Clute wrote about Varley in his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

Continue reading R.I.P., John Varley, a cutting-edge Heinleinesque sf writer and Prometheus winner