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Two of Arc Manor’s major imprints are CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, launched in 2020 with a “new” previously unpublished novel by Robert A. Heinlein, and Phoenix Pick, which reprints classic SF and Fantasy “from the ashes” of other publishing houses, with some new titles.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.
E.M. Forster isn’t the only Prometheus-recognized author on New Scientist’s intriguing list of the 26 best science fiction/fantasy stories of all time.
Kurt Vonnegut in 1972 (Creative Commons license)
Although Forster’s “The Machine Stop” is the only story on the list specifically inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, as described in a recent Prometheus blog post, several other enduring authors have stories on the magazine’s list – just not the ones our award has recognized.
Ursula K. Le Guin (Creative Commons license)
Among those writers: 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.
Did you know that Young Adult novels are eligible for a Special Prometheus Award?
In the broad realm of fantastical fiction, Young-Adult or YA novels have had and continue to have a special and honored place.
Just recall how much of the Golden Age of modern SF was YA books for teenagers or so-called “juvenile fiction” for children or middle-grade readers, including many of Robert Heinlein’s early bestsellers, such as Citizen of the Galaxy or Red Planet, both inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
That’s a key reason why the Libertarian Futurist Society decided several years ago to set up a process to begin recognizing eligible and worthy YA novels with a Special Prometheus Award – and why we invite our members, as well as publishers and authors, to bring eligible YA works to our attention.
Throughout the 46-year history of the Prometheus Award, 505 novels have been nominated for Best Novel.
That’s a surprisingly large number, at least to me – and a cumulative total that I don’t believe has been calculated and reported before, or at least not in many years.
Yet, when I counted them up recently, I was even more surprised by the number of Best Novel nominees that turn out to be sequels. (Quite a few were hard to identify as sequels, by the way, until I researched each title – with some so obscure, and not immediately recognizable as sequels when nominated and read by Prometheus judges and LFS members, because many work fine as stand-alone stories without any obvious indications of previous works.)
Can you guess how many Best Novel nominees have been sequels?
How did Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress give leading libertarian thinker David Friedman the radical idea that society can develop just laws and functional legal systems without government?
What life events, travels, famous scientists and space projects helped shape the late Poul Anderson’s 1983 novel Orion Shall Rise, the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner?
How did the late Michael Flynn’s childhood lead him to become an award-winning science fiction writer?
Why does Flynn’s CAEZIK SF & Fantasy publisher view him as one of the most underestimated sf writers of his generation?
What Prometheus-winning sf/fantasy authors rank high among Friedman’s favorites – and why?
To find out, watch the recorded YouTube video of the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony:
Libertarian Futurist Society president William H. Stoddard emceed the 45th Prometheus Awards and introduced the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction, which was presented by libertarian luminary and Prometheus-nominated fantasy novelist David Friedman.
LFS President William H. Stoddard (Photo by Carol Stoddard)
The August 30, 2025 awards ceremony, presented live via Zoom on August 30, 2025, was recorded and later posted on Youtube. Here is the text of Stoddard’s speech:
The Prometheus Hall of Fame award was established in 1983.
Initially we gave it to two classic works of libertarian science fiction each year. Our first two winners were virtually inevitable choices: Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the book that established libertarian science fiction as a recognized genre, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the fictional treatment of libertarian ideas that brought large numbers of people into what became the libertarian movement.
The next year’s award went to two classic dystopias, George Orwell’s 1984and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
Since then we’ve settled down to one winner a year, and opened the award not merely to novels but to work in any narrative or dramatic form. Such works become eligible 20 years after their original publication.
To present this year’s award, we have the honor of having David Friedman as a guest speaker.
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….
Imagine human colonies on the moon, restless and on the precipice of a revolution against increasingly intrusive Earth authorities.
Robert Heinlein famously imagined such a scenario in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of his four Hugo Awardwinning novels and one of the first two works inducted in 1983 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
So did Travis Corcoran, the only author to win back-to-back Prometheus awards for Best Novel for The Powers of the Earth (in 2018) and its sequel Causes of Separation (in 2019.)
Yet, the lunar-revolution scenario mentioned above also describes Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three, James Bacon’s 2022 SF novel.
It’s an old cliche: Men prefer science fiction; women prefer fantasy. (Of course, that’s a half-truth at best: After all, many men enjoy fantasy, and many women, science fiction.)
Left to right: The planets Mars, Earth and Venus (File photo)
Yet, if men are mostly from Mars and women are mostly from Venus, how is today’s publishing world appealing to both?
Not very well, Kristin McTiernan argues on her Fictional Influencewebsite and blog.
When McTiernan posted a video about the absence of contemporary men’s fiction, it went viral.
“I struck a nerve that resonated far beyond my usual audience,” McTiernan wrote on her Fictional Influence website.
“The comment section flooded with responses from men who felt invisible in today’s publishing landscape – readers hungry for stories that spoke to their experiences (from their perspective) without apology.”
Winning literary awards and receiving rave reviews can boost the careers of novelists, by raising their visibility and enhancing their reputation. That’s sadly no longer fully possible for the late great Michael Flynn.
Michael Flynn, a three-time Prometheus Best Novel winner (Creative Commons license)
Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, recently was announced in an LFS press release as the 2025 winner of the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for In the Belly of the Whale.
His epic social novel, a sobering drama about challenges and conflicts among the crew on a vast colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to settle Tau Ceti, was the last novel Flynn wrote before his death.
Published in 2024 by CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, Flynn’s novel has garnered some attention – especially an extraordinary review in Locus magazine (excerpted below) that amounts to a mea culpa for previously overlooking and underestimating Flynn.
Yet, both during his five-decade writing career and after his passing, Flynn has not garnered as much attention and appreciation from other critics and mainstream publications as I think the author and his last book deserve.
Shahid Mahmud, CAEZIK founder-publisher and a huge enthusiast for Flynn’s fiction, agrees. Mahmud tells me that he considers Flynn one of the most underestimated science fiction writers of his generation.
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.
