Prometheus winner Dave Freer has a new novel coming out soon.
Storm-Dragon, to be published April 11, 2025, by Raconteur Press, is a relatively short novel (with illustrations) geared toward a young-adult audience – and especially targeted at boys and teenagers.
“It is my attempt at writing a Heinlein “Juvie” – a book aimed specifically at teen boys (not their scene) to get them interested in sf,” Freer said in an email from his home base Down Under in the Australian state of Tasmania.
Several Prometheus-recognized authors are included on New Scientist’s intriguing list of the 26 best science fiction/fantasy stories of all time.
E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” is the only story on the magazine’s list previously inducted into the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Hall of Fame. Yet, several other enduring and Prometheus-winning authors have classic stories on the magazine’s list – just not the ones our award has recognized.
Among them: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin and Kurt Vonnegut.
It’s interesting to see which of their stories are recognized by the magazine, and why.
Most economists, legal experts, academics and libertarian theorists focus on the real world, not fantasy or science fiction.
Yet, David Friedman, the free-market economist, retired professor, physicist and legal scholar who’s written a variety of wide-ranging nonfiction books and textbooks, is also a lifelong science fiction fan and acclaimed fantasy author.
Friedman, who recently agreed to speak as a presenter in August at the 45th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony, probably should be better known – and more widely read – as a fantasy novelist within the broad and overlapping circles of SF/fantasy fans and Libertarian Futurist Society members.
For the convenience of LFS members and a guide to this year’s Prometheus Awards, the Prometheus Blog has now posted reviews of all four of the year’s Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists for Best Classic Fiction.
Libertarian Futurist Society members, who have the right to vote to select the annual Best Classic Fiction winner, are invited to read (or reread) our reviews of the 2025 finalists: Poul Anderson’s novel Orion Shall Rise, Rudyard Kipling’s story “As Easy as A.B.C.,” the Rush song “The Trees” and Charles Stross’ novel Singularity Sky.
Other science fiction and fantasy fans, outside the LFS, also may wish to check out the reviews to appreciate these works and to better understand how they fit the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Awards on both quality and liberty.
If all goes as planned, a privately built spacecraft will land on the moon early Sunday March 2.
It’s the first in a series of exciting robotic missions to the moon in 2025, setting the stage for people to return to the moon for the first time since the first expeditions landed more than half a century ago.
The robotic lander, dubbed Blue Ghost, was created by Firefly Aerospace, a Texas-based company, and has been in orbit around the moon for about two weeks, preparing for its daring descent.
If only Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, L. Neil Smith, James Hogan, Michael Flynn, Vernor Vinge and other visionary Prometheus-winning authors could have lived to celebrate it!
In the Belly of the Whale, the ambitious final and posthumous novel by two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn, explores the complex lives, work, challenges and conflicts aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti.
The epic multifaceted 472-page novel takes some time to fully introduce its large cast of characters among 40,000 people who live in the hollowed-out asteroid ship dubbed The Whale. Yet, patience is rewarded with Flynn’s highly plausible and intricate world-building and wise grasp of human nature.
In the Belly of the Whale – one of 11 2024 novels nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel – builds dramatic intensity coupled with rich and even revelatory insights that freshen this seemingly familiar SF subgenre while raising deeper questions than most SF writers, scientists or space-colonization enthusiasts have considered about the prospects and costs of such generations-long voyages.
Daniel Suarez, last year’s Prometheus Best Novel winner for Critical Mass, has shared with his fans some exciting developments.
Among the big news: the launch of a series of separately published short stories; some progress with film and TV adaptations of his works; and an update on his next novel, due out in 2025 by Dutton.
However, it won’t be the novel many expect.
Meanwhile, Heir Apparent, the first story in the new series, has just been published.
Eleven 2024 novels have been nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Broadly embracing many forms of speculative fiction including science fiction, fantasy, dystopian cautionary tales and near-future political-tech thrillers, the diverse slate offers a wide variety and blends of genres, styles and themes – from the serious to the darkly satirical.
Most poignantly, this will be the last time that two authors are nominated for Best Novel because they’ve sadly passed away: Michael Flynn and Howard Andrew Jones.
Flynn, a two-time Prometheus winner for Best Novel, died in 2023 at 75.
Jones, a Best Novel finalist last year, died in January 2025 at 56.
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
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.
