Reviews – Prometheus Blog

Review: Harry Turtledove’s Between the Rivers offers historical perspective on long-establish elements of emerging freedom and civilization

Harry Turtledove’s Between the Rivers, one of this year’s Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees, is suited to libertarian audiences in somewhat the same way as Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle: It neither portrays a free society, nor proposes a path to creating one, but offers a historical perspective on some of the long established elements of freedom as of their first appearance.

Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle novel The System of the World, the 2005 Prometheus Best Novel winner, is subtle about its fantastic elements (the presence of Enoch Root, also a character in Cryptonomicon, set centuries later, and the strange isotope of gold); Turtledove’s much less so, with active gods monitoring their human worships and wandering about the countryside.

So Stephenson can be read as a secret history, but Turtledove has to be taken as a historical fantasy. But Turtledove makes his historical parallels obvious, in the very title of his book: “Between the Rivers” literally translates the Greek name “Mesopotamia” for the land that was once Sumer, and later Babylonia, and is now Iraq.

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Review: James Blish’s The Star Dwellers dramatizes core concepts of consent, contract and deal-making that make peace and freedom possible

By Michael Grossberg

Fizzy with ideas and brimming with American idealism, James Blish was widely recognized during the Golden Age of science fiction as a major writer.

One of his best novels, in my view, is The Star Dwellers, first published in 1961 and now nominated for the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.

Relatively short at 128 pages in the Avon Books paperback and clearly written as a so-called “SF juvenile” yet still rich with insights, Blish’s novel revolves around a fraught “second contact” between humans and an ancient, extremely advanced alien species.

Highlighted at the story’s center are the closely linked concepts of consent and contract – two of the most fundamental ideas at the foundation of both libertarianism and classical liberalism.

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Why leading libertarian, economist and novelist David Friedman admires the science fiction of Karl K. Gallagher  

By Michael Grossberg

Leading libertarian thinker and economist David D. Friedman counts himself a fan of science-fiction writer Karl K. Gallagher.

David Friedman (Photo provided by Friedman)

In a fascinating question and answer session at the end of the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony, Friedman singled out just a few science fiction authors for praise – including Vernor Vinge, Robert Heinlein, C.J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold and Gallagher.

Karl K. Gallagher (2024 photo courtesy of Gallagher)

Gallagher’s novels are “well-written and interesting,” said Friedman, himself a Prometheus-nominated fantasy novelist.

Friedman, nominated for Harald, also has written Salamander, which he views as his favorite and best-written novel, and Brothers, a sequel to Harald.

Continue reading Why leading libertarian, economist and novelist David Friedman admires the science fiction of Karl K. Gallagher  

Review: Harry Turtledove’s Prometheus-nominated Powerless critiques communism and blind obedience to authority

By Max More

Powerless, one of six novels nominated so far for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, is the first novel I have read by Harry Turtledove. I chose to read it because of its anti-authoritarian message.

The structure and function of this alternate reality – in which communism has taken over the United States (and apparently much or all of the world) – seemed familiar and frighteningly plausible to me based on my study of the years under Lenin and Stalin.

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Sequels, part 11: Unlike literary sequels, movie sequels and genre films don’t get as much respect at the Oscars, but that may be changing 

By Michael Grossberg

Movie sequels seem to be more common and more popular than ever in the 21st century, often dominating at the box office. Yet, they just don’t get as much respect or awards recognition as literary sequels.

Far fewer sequels have won Academy Awards than have been recognized by science fiction and fantasy’s Hugo and Prometheus awards.

Just consider how few movie sequels have won the Oscar for Best Picture compared to how often sequel novels win a top SF/fantasy award.

Within the 46-year history of the Prometheus Awards, 194 of the 505 novels nominated within the Best Novel category have been sequels – and 11 have gone on to win.

Meanwhile, as recently reported here, nine sequel novels have won the Best Novel category in the 72-year history of the Hugo Awards, voted by members of the World Science Fiction Society and presented annually at the Worldcon.

Yet, in the 97 years that the Academy Awards have been presented, only two movie sequels have won Best Picture: The Godfather Part II and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Intriguingly, both movies were key parts of the only trilogies or series to have three films nominated for Best Picture, perhaps partly reflecting the stature and impact of the overall effort.

And perhaps coincidentally, both movies dramatize libertarian and classical-liberal themes about the temptations and abuses of power.

Continue reading Sequels, part 11: Unlike literary sequels, movie sequels and genre films don’t get as much respect at the Oscars, but that may be changing 

Review: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World offers still-timely dystopian vision of a collectivist “soft tyranny” denying individuality, history, culture and art 

By Michael Grossberg

Aldous Huxley (Creative Commons license)

British writer-philosopher Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) is best remembered today for writing one of the earliest and most emblematic works of dystopian literature.

His 1932 novel Brave New World continues to be a bestseller and is universally recognized as a modern classic. For example, the Modern Library ranked it number 5 on its list of the 100 Best Novels in English of the 20th century.

Not all dystopian works fit the distinctive focus of the Prometheus Award, but Brave New World more than qualifies – and that’s why I’ve nominated it for the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

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Masterful social-scientific world-building in clash of cultures, including a libertarian society: An appreciation of Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise, the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner 

By William H. Stoddard

One of the things Poul Anderson was known for throughout his literary career was world-building. Much of this was planetary design, based on the natural sciences, in which he started out with stellar type, planetary mass, orbital radius, and elemental abundances and worked out the geology, meteorology, and biology of a world.

Poul Anderson (Creative Commons license)

Anderson was certainly one of the masters of this, up there with Hal Clement and Vernor Vinge. But he put equal effort into social scientific worldbuilding, creating economies, polities, and cultures, and developing plots for his stories from the conflicts they gave rise to. Orion Shall Rise, winner of the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, is a nearly pure example of social scientific world-building, set not in a distant solar system but on a future Earth.

Continue reading Masterful social-scientific world-building in clash of cultures, including a libertarian society: An appreciation of Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise, the 2025 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner 

An epic social novel about conflicts and threats to liberty on a multi-generation interstellar colony ship: An Appreciation of Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale, the 2025 Best Novel winner

By Michael Grossberg

In the Belly of the Whale, the 2025 Prometheus winner for Best Novel, was Michael Flynn’s last, posthumous novel and one of his richest and most resonant.

Exploring the complex lives, jobs, relationships, challenges and conflicts aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti, the epic 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 amply rewarded with Flynn’s plausible and intricate world-building, deep insights into social psychology and wise grasp of human nature.

In the Belly of the Whale, Flynn’s 14th and final novel, builds dramatic intensity coupled with rich and revelatory insights that freshen this seemingly familiar SF subgenre of the long colony-ship voyage. Flynn raises deeper questions than most SF writers, scientists or space-colonization enthusiasts have considered about the prospects and costs of such generations-long voyages.

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A libertarian lunar revolution in the making in James Bacon’s novel Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three. 

By Michael Grossberg

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.

Continue reading A libertarian lunar revolution in the making in James Bacon’s novel Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three. 

The Day Before the Revolution: Ursula K. Le Guin story, a prequel to her Prometheus-winning The Dispossessed, recommended by Reactor Magazine 

By Michael Grossberg

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Day Before the Revolution has been highlighted and recommended by Reactor Magazine among “five SF stories in which hope survives.”

The story, available in the Le Guin short-story collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, should be of interested to LFS members and other freedom-loving SF/fantasy fans because it’s considered a sequel to Le Guin’s classic novel The Dispossessed, an early Prometheus Hall of Fame winner.

“Science fiction has the power to remind us that hope is valuable, and necessary,” James Davis Nicoll wrote in the Reactor column.

That insight, and sentiment, rings true to Prometheus Awards voters and fans. After all, our award in part aims to recognize worthy works of speculative fiction that in many cases do remind us that even amid troubled times and authoritarian societies, better and freer futures remain possible.

Continue reading The Day Before the Revolution: Ursula K. Le Guin story, a prequel to her Prometheus-winning The Dispossessed, recommended by Reactor Magazine 