J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles, the 2026 Prometheus Best Novel winner, is receiving rave reviews. Even from novelists whose works Pierce beat to win his first Prometheus award.
The latest raves come from Laura Montgomery, herself nominated in 2026 for Planting Life: Shut the Kingdom.
“I read Damocles to vote on and absolutely loved it. I’m now closing on the end of the third book in the (Tales of the Long Night) series and will clearly have to figure out where these rumored short stories can be found,” Montgomery wrote on her website.
“Everyone is recommending A Kiss for Damocles, and you should definitely read it. It’s awesome and just won the Prometheus.”
By Michael Grossberg Looking for an imaginative and allusive novel to add to your summer reading list?
Poul Anderson in his youth (File photo)
Consider reading Poul Anderson, the first writer to receive a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement. Anderson (1926-2001) has won seven Prometheus Awards, several posthumously. Yet the freedom-themed novels and stories that have received such recognition are only a small fraction of Anderson’s rich and wide-ranging ouevre.
A seven-time Hugo winner, three-time Nebula award winner and Grand Master (a title bestowed in 1998 by his peers in the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1998), Anderson wrote first-rate fantasy as well as science fiction.
A Midsummer Tempest, one of his best fantasy novels, recently has received a tribute in File 770, a leading online publication covering the SF/fantasy field.
“This is one of the lighter, funnier and confectionary of Anderson’s oeuvre. Some of his work can be fraught with doom, dark destiny and a vision of fighting against fate bravely but in vain. A Midsummer Tempest is the exception that proves the rule,” Paul Weimer writes in a highly appreciative review of Anderson’s 1974 novel for File 770’s occasional Memory Lane column.
The V for Vendetta graphic novel – inducted in 2006 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame – has been on my “Why haven’t I read this yet?” reading list for many years.
Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd in 1989, its fame doubled with James McTeigue’s 2005 film adaptation, written and produced by the Wachowkis and starring Hugo Weaving.
For the last two decades, V’s smiling mask has been haunting me, asking why I have not yet read this classic of pro-liberty fiction. Well, last month, I finally read it while narrating the artwork to my blind son, Jonah (forcing me to translate every sneer, smile and shadow into words). Despite the story’s numerous flaws — which oddly enough almost enhance its philosophical flair — I feel it’s a five-star work of art.
As a guide to Prometheus Awards voting, the Prometheus Blog has once again published full-length and in-depth reviews of each of this year’s five Best Novel finalists.
Whether Libertarian Futurist Society members read the reviews (which do contain a few spoilers) before, during or after reading the finalists themselves, the reviews are designed to illuminate and raise the visibility of each novel.
Other SF/fantasy fans and other libertarians, outside the LFS, also are invited to check out the reviews to better understand how they fit the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Awards on both quality and liberty.
Charlie Simpkins is no philosopher. He’s just another “comrade” in the West Coast People’s Democratic Republic, operating a vegetable shop in Los Angeles. He smokes the government-issued Progress cigarettes, he drinks the rationed rotgut at the local class-four tavern and, generally, lives a life of silent compliance.
Until, one day, the government asks him to put up a communist propaganda poster, with the words “WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!” Instead of taping it to the window of his shop, he tosses it in the garbage.
That’s how Harry Turtledove’s Powerless opens: With one man finally saying no, even though the consequences could easily involve time breaking rocks in a concentration camp.
Storm-Dragon, a 2026 Prometheus Best Novel finalist, offers an entertaining tale embodying golden-age SF themes of initiative, imagination, resilience and self-reliance.
Dave Freer’s Young Adult novel appeals to adults, too — especially those of us who grew up reading YA novels by Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.
The novelrevolves arounda boy who adopts an intelligent-alien pet on Vann’s World, an ocean-dominated planet with a small human colony facing dangers alien and human, visible and hidden.
A good number of Prometheus-winning works have been adapted into graphic novels, from Ayn Rand’s Anthem and L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach to the TV series The Prisoner.
One I discovered recently is Brave New World: A Graphic Novel – which is timely to mention here because Aldous Huxley’s novel is one of this year’s Best Classic Fiction finalists for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award.
Fred Fordham adapted and illustrated Huxley’s dystopian cautionary tale into a 240-page graphic novel, published in 2022 by Harper.
The Guardian described the graphic novel as “brilliant” in its review.
War by Other Means, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist, is the seventh volume in Karl K. Gallagher’s future history series Fall of the Censor. After several volumes focused on military conflict, War by Other Means changes its focus to diplomatic relations among the worlds fighting against the Censorate.
In doing so, it brings Wynny Landry, the wife of Marcus Landry, the protagonist of several previous books, as a new protagonist, in the role of the ambassador from her native planet, Corwynt.
The 2026 Prometheus Best Novel finalists have been announced – and Libertarian Futurist Society members are reading them, with the ultimate verdict and winners to be selected by July 4 on the final ballot.
To spark thought and discussion, raise the visibility of these works and the award and hopefully serve as a helpful guide, the Prometheus Blog is publishing thoughtful, in-depth reviews by Prometheus judges of each finalist. Some LFS members may wish to read them right away; others may prefer to wait until they’ve finished a finalist before reading the review.
Meanwhile, to whet your appetite to read each finalist and vote in the final stage of the Prometheus Awards, here are roughly equal 200-word capsule descriptions of each finalist.
And we’ve striven to avoid revealing any spoilers, so it’s safe to read them now!
Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon, one of 14 works nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, has been receiving some nice reviews from readers.
One of the most appreciative reviews has come from science-fiction novelist John C.A. Manley, himself nominated in the same Prometheus category this year for All the Humans Are Sleeping. Exploring issues of consent, freedom and technocracy,Manley’s dystopian SF novel focuses on a man who refuses to enter a virtual reality simulation prepared for survivors of a nuclear apocalypse.
Left to right: Jonah Manley and his father, author John C.A. Manley with a favorite book (Image from Manley’s blog)
To put it mildly, Manley’s nominated novel is quite different from Freer’s Young-Adult-oriented nominee.
“Imagine Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn appearing in Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon, add a little of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and you’ve got Storm-Dragon by Dave Freer,” Manley writes.
Titled “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (but with Big Spaceships and a Small Dragon),” Manley’s review begins with a confession: He’s not “a big fan” of young adult fiction – and he offers several of the best-known examples to prove it.
“But Storm-Dragon had my son and me hooked by chapter two,” Manley writes.
The latest raves come from Laura Montgomery, herself nominated in 2026 for Planting Life: Shut the Kingdom.
