Mark your calendar: The45th Prometheus Awards has been confirmed for Saturday Aug. 30, with a leading libertarian thinker and novelist as a guest presenter.
The Zoom-led ceremony will run from 2 to 3 p.m. that Saturday (Eastern time) and will be open to all LFS members and the public. (The Zoom link is below.)
Among the speakers: leading libertarian thinker and fantasy novelist David D. Friedman, who will present the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction; Astrid Anderson Bear, daughter of the late sf/fantasy writer Poul Anderson, a frequent Prometheus Awards winner; CAEZIK SF & Fantasy publisher Shahid Mahmud; author Kevin Flynn, brother of the late sf novelist Michael Flynn, a three-time Prometheus winner; LFS President William H. Stoddard, and Libertarian Futurist Society co-founder Michael Grossberg.
Orion Shall Rise, a 1983 novel by Poul Anderson, has won the 2025 Best Classic Fiction award and will be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
Poul Anderson (Creative Commons license)
Published by Timescape and first nominated for the Prometheus Award in 1984, when it became a Best Novel finalist, Orion Shall Rise explores the corruptions and temptations of power and how a free society might survive and thrive after a post-nuclear-war apocalypse on a largely depopulated Earth.
For the first time in Prometheus Awards history, our annual Best Novel award has gone to a posthumous work.
Novelist Michael Flynn at an sf convention several decades ago (File photo)
Michael Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, was able to finish writing In the Belly of the Whale before his passing.
CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, a strong supporter of Flynn’s work, published Flynn’s last novel in 2024.
The epic science fiction novel, a suspenseful and insightful exploration of the complex challenges, conflicts and threats to liberty aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti, has now won the 2025 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
“Back in Homer’s day, people lived within an oral culture, then humans slowly developed a literate culture. Now we seem to be moving to a screen culture. Civilization was fun while it lasted.” – David Brooks
Both are admirable goals and crucial civilized values – and something to respect and remember as we celebrate Independence Day on July 4.
Both are difficult to achieve consistently and sustain over generations. And both, in my view, are deeply connected. In the long run, one may not be possible without the other.
Whether one studies history or philosophy, it becomes clear that the spread of literacy and the spread of liberty are deeply interwoven – and perhaps inextricably intertwined.
In the 21st century, when millions of people average three hours or more on their smartphones daily, most people claim they don’t have time to read. That’s a shame – and perhaps also a long-range problem for our civilization.
Certainly, reading is necessary to educate oneself in liberty and the liberal arts – and crucial to the Prometheus Awards.
While reading can be deeply rewarding, it’s also time-consuming, which is why the Libertarian Futurist Society wishes to express its gratitude to all of this past year’s LFS members and Prometheus Awards judges.
This year’s five Prometheus Best Novel finalists plausibly imagine everything from dystopian Earth scenarios sparked by authoritarian true-believer cults to more positive but challenging interstellar futures for humanity.
C.J. Cherryh, left, and Jane Fancher (Photo courtesy of Jane Fancher)
Works published in 2024 by C.J. Cherryh & Jane S. Fancher, Michael Flynn, Danny King, Wil McCarthy and Lionel Shriver will be competing for the 45th Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn (File photo)
First presented in 1979, the Prometheus Awards have recognized hundreds of authors and a dizzying variety of works. This year’s slate of finalists embrace the old and the new.
Of these authors, British writer Danny King is new to our award, being recognized for the first time as a Best Novel finalist.
British writer Danny King (Creative Commons license)
Lionel Shriver, a Portugal-based American writer who’s lived in Nairobi, Bangkok, Belfast and London, is being recognized for the third time as a Best Novel finalist.
Wil McCarthy, and writing partners Cherryh and Fancher, each previously won a Prometheus Award, while Flynn (1947-2023) is a two-time previous Best Novel winner being recognized posthumously for what may be his last work.
Novelist Wil McCarthy (Photo courtesy of Baen Books)
In brief, here are this year’s Best Novel finalists, in alphabetical order by author:
* Alliance Unbound, by C.J Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher (DAW)
* In the Belly of the Whale, by Michael Flynn (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy)
* Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, by Danny King (Annie Mosse Press)
* Beggar’s Sky, by Wil McCarthy (Baen Books)
* Mania, by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins Publishers)
David Friedman, the influential economist, legal scholar, libertarian theorist and novelist, has graciously agreed to speak and present a category at this year’s 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony.
Friedman is best known for his academic scholarship and for The Machinery of Freedom, his pioneering libertarian classic. With an empirical focus on the practical solutions to many social problems that private markets can address optimally, and far better than governments, Friedman’s nonfiction book had a major impact on the early libertarian movement in the 1970s and 1980s.
Yet, Friedman is also a science fiction fan and a novelist who has written three fantasy novels, apt and additional reasons the Libertarian Futurist Society board of directors invited him to speak and present the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction at our 2025 Prometheus Awards ceremony.
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.
Eleven 2024 novels have been nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Writer Howard Andrew Jones (Photo courtesy of Baen Books)
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.
Two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn (Creative Commons license)
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.
The four works selected as finalists for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award span almost a century.
Rudyard Kipling File photo
From a Rudyard Kipling story published in 1912 to a Charles Stross novel published in 2003, the 2024 slate of finalists reflects a broad range of different eras, themes and literary styles.
Charles Stross (Creative Commons license)
Of the four Hall of Fame finalists for Best Classic Fiction, two are novels, one a story and one a song – demonstrating the wide variety of narrative or dramatic forms eligible for consideration each year among works that were first published, performed, recorded or aired at least 20 years ago.
One work appears on the Hall of Fame shortlist for the first time: Stross’ Singularity Sky, previously a write-in candidate for Best Novel after its initial publication by Ace Books in 2003. (Because of the 20-year rule, the novel only became eligible this past year for Hall of Fame nomination.)
Of the 10 nominees for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, the two most recently published are novels – one a historical fantasy set at the dawn of civilization, and the other, a work of futuristic science fiction set among interstellar colonies.
Between the Rivers, by Harry Turtledove, was published in 1998 by TOR Books.
Singularity Sky, by Charles Stross, was published in 2003 by Ace Books.
Both authors are Prometheus Award winners for Best Novel, with Stross winning in 2007 for Glasshouse and Turtledove winning in 2008 for The Gladiator.
