Category: Reviews

A guide before voting: Our reviews of this year’s four Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists

By Michael Grossberg

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.

Continue reading A guide before voting: Our reviews of this year’s four Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists

Hall of Fame finalist review: Rudyard Kipling’s heterotopia “As Easy as A.B.C.” offers critique of lynching, racial prejudice, mob rule

By William H. Stoddard

As an epigraph for his novel Glory Road, Robert Heinlein quoted a passage from Bernard Shaw’s play Caesar and Cleopatra, which included the following memorable line:

. . . he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

These lines captured, for me, what I have come to feel is one of the great pleasures of science fiction: stories set in worlds whose customs are different from those of our own time, or as I like to call them, heterotopias—neither “good places” nor “bad places” but “other places,” where customs other than ours are followed and indeed taken for granted.

Such visions implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, invite us to adopt the heterotopian perspective and look back on our own lives and our own world as if we inhabited some nearly unimaginable alien realm. The literary critic Darko Suvin coined the phrase cognitive estrangement for this experience.

One of the first works of fiction that made me feel this effect was one of Rudyard Kipling’s “airship utopia” stories, “As Easy as A.B.C.” – now one of four classic works selected as finalists for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction.

Continue reading Hall of Fame finalist review: Rudyard Kipling’s heterotopia “As Easy as A.B.C.” offers critique of lynching, racial prejudice, mob rule

Best Novel finalist review: Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale offers sobering drama about un-libertarian aspects of multi-generation colony-ship voyages

By Michael Grossberg

In the Belly of the Whale, the ambitious final and posthumous novel by two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn, explores the complex lives, work, challenges and conflicts aboard a large colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to Tau Ceti.

The epic multifaceted 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 rewarded with Flynn’s highly plausible and intricate world-building and wise grasp of human nature.

In the Belly of the Whale – one of 11 2024 novels nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel – builds dramatic intensity coupled with rich and even revelatory insights that freshen this seemingly familiar SF subgenre while raising deeper questions than most SF writers, scientists or space-colonization enthusiasts have considered about the prospects and costs of such generations-long voyages.

Continue reading Best Novel finalist review: Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale offers sobering drama about un-libertarian aspects of multi-generation colony-ship voyages

Best of the blog 2024, part three: Reviews of Naomi Kritzer’s controversial Liberty’s Daughter, Wil McCarthy’s first-contact sequel Beggar’s Sky, Sandra Newman’s Orwell-inspired Julia, and Salman Rushdie’s liberal/libertarian novel Victory City


By Michael Grossberg

While most reviews published on the Prometheus blog tend to focus on our Best Novel or Best Classic Fiction finalists or winners, other works deserve attention, too.

As time permits, and when nominated (or nominatable) works capture our attention and stimulate both enjoyment and further thoughts, we strive to bring it to the attention of Libertarian Futurist Society members and the wider public by writing about it – hopefully, in ways that make it clear how the work is relevant to Prometheus Award themes.

Here are excerpts from four such novels of note that we reviewed in 2024 – and that continue to deserve recognition and wide readership:

Continue reading Best of the blog 2024, part three: Reviews of Naomi Kritzer’s controversial Liberty’s Daughter, Wil McCarthy’s first-contact sequel Beggar’s Sky, Sandra Newman’s Orwell-inspired Julia, and Salman Rushdie’s liberal/libertarian novel Victory City


Best of the blog 2024, part two: Reviews of Mackey Chandler, Devon Eriksen, Dave Freer, Gordon Hanka and Howard Andrew Jones

By Michael Grossberg

By the end of 2024, just a few days from now, the Prometheus Blog will have posted a record number of articles, essays, reviews, updates and news.

For the first time since the blog began seven years ago, Libertarian Futurist Society members and Prometheus judges wrote, edited and published 100 posts, or an average of roughly one article every three and a half days.

That’s a notable increase over the previous year, which also reached a new high of 77 articles, up from 67 in 2022 and 59 in 2021.

Of this past year’s 100 articles, more than one-fourth (28) were full-length or capsule reviews, often but not always of Prometheus Award nominees and finalists.

Looking back at a year rich with interesting, illuminating and just-plain entertaining reviews, here are excerpts from (and convenient links to) five of the best.

Continue reading Best of the blog 2024, part two: Reviews of Mackey Chandler, Devon Eriksen, Dave Freer, Gordon Hanka and Howard Andrew Jones

Best of the blog 2024: More reviews posted than ever, including of the year’s two Prometheus Award winners


By Michael Grossberg

For the first time, the Prometheus Blog was able to post timely reviews of all five Best Novel finalists and all four Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists for Best Classic Fiction this past year.

Thanks to all the LFS members and Prometheus judges who took the time and effort to write thoughtful, insightful and illuminating reviews, just as Libertarian Futurist Society members were seriously considering the merits of the nominees and finalists and reading and ranking their favorites to help choose the 2024 Prometheus Award winners.

This enormous effort and success fulfills a long-term goal for the Prometheus Blog, established in mid-2017 as a replacement for Prometheus, the LFS’ former printed quarterly.

Our purpose in soliciting more full-length, in-depth reviews of our awards winners and contenders was twofold:

* to increase the substantive content of the blog, for both our membership and our wider public readership,

* to further enhance our annual awards-judging process by offering members more food for thought as they read and ranked the 2024 Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction finalists.

Continue reading Best of the blog 2024: More reviews posted than ever, including of the year’s two Prometheus Award winners


Review: Mackey Chandler’s April Series tells a good SF story with themes of agency, emancipation and declarations of independence

 


By William H. Stoddard

Back in 2020, I encountered an online listing for a novel by Mackey Chandler with the provocative title Who Can Own the Stars?, twelfth in a series and a 2021 Prometheus Best Novel finalist.

After reading it, I went back to the original volume, April, and read it and, in succession, all the rest. Two further volumes have come out since then – Let Us Tell You Again and The Long View, respectively 2023 and 2024 Best Novel nominees. With each, I’ve reread the entire series.

Continue reading Review: Mackey Chandler’s April Series tells a good SF story with themes of agency, emancipation and declarations of independence

Hall of Fame finalist review: Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky offers cornucopia of cutting-edge SF and libertarian themes

By Michael Grossberg

Although published more than two decades ago, Singularity Sky (Ace Books, 2003) still feels fresh and brilliant in its cutting-edge SF and explicitly libertarian vision.

A strong write-in candidate for Best Novel in the year it was first published more than two decades ago, Singularity Sky has been nominated for the first time for the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

Fabulously inventive and sophisticated in its cornucopia of world-building, Stross’ widely acclaimed first novel successively introduces a wild variety of clashing cultures, divergent interests, hidden motives and compelling characters. Although some story elements might seem fanciful or within the realm of fantasy, all are ultimately rooted in plausible science fiction.

Continue reading Hall of Fame finalist review: Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky offers cornucopia of cutting-edge SF and libertarian themes

Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees, part 5: Capsule reviews of Turtledove’s Between the Rivers and Stross’ Singularity Sky


By Michael Grossberg

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.

Continue reading Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees, part 5: Capsule reviews of Turtledove’s Between the Rivers and Stross’ Singularity Sky


Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees, part 4: Capsule reviews of the Rush song “The Trees” and Anderson’s novel Orion Shall Rise


By Michael Grossberg

Unlike the annual Prometheus Award for Best Novel, the other annual Prometheus category for Best Classic Fiction is open to works being renominated.

Neal Peart, Rush drummer and songwriter of “The Trees.” Credit: Creative Commons

Of the 10 works of fiction nominated for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, three are returning nominees after reaching the level last year of Hall of Fame finalists.

One is the Rush fantasy-fable song “The Trees,” first recorded in 1978.

The other is Poul Anderson’s novel Orion Shall Rise, published in 1984.

Here, in the fourth part of the Prometheus Blog’s series about this year’s Hall of Fame nominees, are capsule review-descriptions of those two finalists.

Continue reading Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees, part 4: Capsule reviews of the Rush song “The Trees” and Anderson’s novel Orion Shall Rise