Category: Robert Heinlein

Special Award Appreciation: Dave Freer’s Prometheus-winning Storm-Dragon offers Young Adult adventure of curiosity, courage, resistance and resilience


As part of the LFS’ ongoing Appreciation series of review-essays explaining how each Prometheus Award-winner fits the distinctive dual focus of our award on both liberty and literary quality and why it deserved to win, here is an Appreciation of 2026 Special Award winner Storm-Dragon by Dave Freer.

By Michael Grossberg

Storm-Dragon, the first work to receive a Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction, is an entertaining tale embodying golden-age themes of initiative, imagination, curiosity, courage, resilience and resistance.

Fun to read, Dave Freer’s 2025 adventure novel offers much the same appeal as classic “juveniles” by Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.

The story revolves around a boy who adopts an unusual pet on Vann’s World, an ocean-dominated planet with a fledgling human colony facing dangers alien and human.

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The 46th Prometheus Awards: Cato scholar Ilya Somin’s keynote speech (Part 2) on Heinlein, Star Trek, dystopias, technological optimism, SF/fantasy in popular culture and why it’s the most libertarian genre


Libertarian scholar Ilya Somin Photo: Creative Commons license)

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of the keynote speech that Cato Institute scholar and law professor Ilya Somin, a lifelong SF/fantasy fan, gave when he presented the 2026 Prometheus Hall of Fame award.  His speech, a highlight of the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony in August, explores libertarian currents in SF/fantasy.

By Ilya Somin

There are, of course, many other libertarian themes in prominent science fiction and fantasy works. I do not have time to go over them all. I’ll just mention a few.

Robert Heinlein, as most of you, like we know, was one of the founding fathers of modern American science fiction, and he of course, was consciously libertarian, his ideology.

The same thing is true of a number of other very prominent science fiction writers like L. Neil Smith, Larry Niven, and David Brin, though obviously for example Brin has a very different strain of libertarianism than Heinlein.

Continue reading The 46th Prometheus Awards: Cato scholar Ilya Somin’s keynote speech (Part 2) on Heinlein, Star Trek, dystopias, technological optimism, SF/fantasy in popular culture and why it’s the most libertarian genre


Heinlein remembered at the LA Worldcon

By Michael Grossberg

Grand Master Robert Heinlein was remembered during LACon V, the recent World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles/Anaheim, California.

L-R: John Tilden, Marie Guthrie, Jason Aukerman, Robert James, Mike Sheffield at LACon V’s Heinlein panel (Photo courtesy of File 770 and Worldcon)

An “LA and Heinlein” panel discussion, highlighted in a File 770 post with this picture, included speakers from academia and the Heinlein Society.

“RAH has been gone for decades but he was still very much alive in the “L.A. and Heinlein” panel… It was an interesting hour of being walked through the Los Angeles years of Heinlein’s life and hearing about how he was an Influence for some of the then-fledgling writers there,” Rich Lynch wrote in his brief report.

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The 46th Prometheus Awards: Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon acceptance speech about reaching and inspiring young readers



Editor’s note: Dave Freer won the first Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction for his novel Storm-Dragon, published by Raconteur Press. Speaking from his home in Tasmania, Australia, Freer delivered this acceptance speech Aug. 16, 2026, via Zoom during the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony.

“Reading is vital – to civilization, to liberty, to everything we wish for our species, especially for our young.” – Dave Freer

By Dave Freer

Author Dave Freer at his home desk in Tasmania Photo courtesy of author

Good afternoon everybody. For me that is actually ‘good predawn’ because it is 3 AM here. Like many authors I’ve kept a notebook next to the bedside so I could, on waking, hastily write down the gifts of the muse that sorted themselves into brilliance while I slept.

Unfortunately, the morning usually revealed gems like: ‘Orglvard at speed, with minchins and porgies.’  which I am sure meant something at the time, and was quite brilliant. I hope I am a little more awake than that, but I am not betting on it. I plead forgiveness in advance.

Firstly: Thank you all for awarding the Special Prometheus prize for Young Adult Literature to my book Storm-Dragon.

I am delighted to accept it. It’s flattering for me, but that is really rather beside the point. The real delight is that the Prometheus – an award which is a reliable indicator ‘you will love the book’ has put its mark on a YA SF-novel.

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The 46th Prometheus Awards: J. Kenton Pierce discusses good characters, conflicts and restrictions on liberty in his Best Novel acceptance speech for A Kiss for Damocles 


Editor’s note: J. Kenton Pierce, who won the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for A Kiss for Damocles, delivered his acceptance speech Aug. 16, 2026, during the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony.

By J. Kenton Pierce

I am deeply grateful for this tremendous honor.  Giving a speech wasn’t a problem I imagined having, considering that A Kiss for Damocles was up against books by people who’ve written some of my favorite stories.

I’m no deep political or philosophical thinker.  I’m just a character-driven reader, so I lean in on crafting characters I’d enjoy spending time with. 

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The first Special Award for Young Adult Fiction isn’t actually the first Prometheus Award to recognize Young Adult works


By Michael Grossberg

Dave Freer’s novel Storm-Dragon will be the first work to receive a Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction Aug. 16 at the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony. Yet, it’s far from the only example of Young Adult Fiction to be recognized in the awards’ history.

By my latest count – and including this year’s three winners – 111 works of fantastical fiction have been named as winners of a Prometheus Award since 1979. Of those works, 14 fall clearly into the Young Adult realm or are deemed accessible enough to appeal to younger readers.

Those works should be of great interest to younger readers, roughly anyone between the ages of eight and 18.

They also should spark the curiosity of parents, grandparents, teachers and other adults seeking good pro-freedom SF/fantasy to share or gift.

So which Prometheus Award winners do fit the parameters of Young Adult Fiction?

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Brave New World: Huxley’s 1932 dystopian classic ranks among the oldest works to win the Prometheus Hall of Fame award


By Michael Grossberg

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is one of the oldest works to win the  Prometheus Award for Best Classic Fiction.

Published in 1932 by Chatto & Windus, Aldous Huxley’s pioneering dystopian novel has become so well-known around the world that its title has become an emblematic catchphrase signaling the dangers of authoritarianism.

Brave New World is the third-oldest work and the second-oldest novel to be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame. (The roughly hourlong Zoom ceremony, open to the public, is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Sunday Aug. 16 (Eastern time), with the Zoom link posted a week or so ahead on the Prometheus Blog.)

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“Fly Me to the Moon” – The Smithsonian museum highlights the power of science fiction in sparking advances in air and space



By Michael Grossberg

On a recent visit to the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., I was delighted to discover some recognition of the work of a Prometheus-winning author. And not just any author, but the Golden Age Grand Master who has received more Prometheus Awards than anyone else: Robert A. Heinlein.

Destination Moon, a 1950 Technicolor feature film co-written by Heinlein, is highlighted in the Destination Moon gallery (Gallery 206) at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

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The rewards of patience: The Prometheus Hall of Fame’s track record of recognition and frequent renominations

By Michael Grossberg

Patience can be a virtue – especially when it comes to nominations for the Prometheus Hall of Fame.

Not all works that become Hall of Fame finalists or winners do so in the first year that they are nominated. But that’s never a permanent obstacle to recognition, because in this annual Prometheus category, Libertarian Futurist Society members benefit from the luxury of time.

If at first a work is overlooked or doesn’t rank high enough to become a finalist, it can be nominated and renominated in future years.

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Review: J. Kenton Pierce’s lively A Kiss for Damocles dramatizes how markets, evolving customs and laws help a post-apocalyptic colony recover without centralized authority


By William H. Stoddard

J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles is a compellingly readable work of science fiction. It offers its readers an inherently dramatic situation: The struggle to survive and rebuild civilization in the aftermath of an apocalyptic war.

To add tension, remnants of the other side still linger, in the form of orbital systems waiting to strike down any resurgence of advanced technology.

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