Locus magazine has released its Locus Awards finalists for the past year’s best science fiction and fantasy – always a good list to consider for SF/fantasy fans, including LFS members.
There are some excellent novels on the Locus shortlists, based on my own wide readings this past year as a Prometheus Awards Best Novel judge – and as a lifelong SF/fantasy fan.
It’s also an interesting list to compare to the Prometheus Awards, not only in terms of potential overlaps with same-year nominees but also what novels and novelists both awards have recognized.
CORY DOCTOROW
For instance, the Locus shortlist for the year’s best science fiction novels includes three-time Prometheus winner Cory Doctorow (on Locus’s list for Picks & Shovels, a science-related historical novel that wasn’t eligible for our award), and recent Prometheus Best Novel nominees Adrian Tchaikovsky and Ray Nayler.
Doctorow has won Prometheus Best Novel awards for Little Brother in 2009, Pirate Cinema in 2013 and Homeland (a Little Brother sequel) in 2014. Picks & Shovels couldn’t be considered for a Prometheus Award because it’s not truly science fiction, in the strict sense that helps define our award, but is more of a historical novel about the early era of modern computers.
ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Tchaikovsky, nominated for a 2025 Prometheus Award for Alien Clay (Orbit Books), made the 2026 Locus finalist list with Shroud.
Both novels reflect Tchaikovsky’s ingenious talent for freshly imagining alien life based on the latest biology and physics. But Shroud lacks the anti-authoritarian themes that made Alien Clay appropriate for a Prometheus nomination, with its focus on oppression, resistance, censorship and free scientific inquiry at a prison colony on a planet rich with alien biology.
Nayler, nominated this past year for the 2026 Prometheus Award for Where the Axe is Buried (MCD), also made the Locus shortlist with that widely acclaimed dystopian novel.
Nayler’s AI-apocalyptic utopian/dystopian cautionary tale highlights libertarian themes of resistance to tyranny and human endurance under oppression, so it makes sense that it received some Prometheus recognition.
In fact, I found the gripping but sobering novel so thought-provoking, especially in its critique of how even well-intentioned politics can go terribly wrong, that it inspired me to write a review of it for the Prometheus Blog.
JOHN SCALZI
Also on the list: John Scalzi’s The Shattering Peace, Book 7 of his acclaimed Old Man’s War series.
As a fan of Scalzi (especially his Hugo-winning Red Shirts, but also several previous novels in his Old Man’s War series), I was eager to read the latest. And it proved rewarding, one of the best sf novels I read this past year – though its cynical-realist exploration of politics, war, bureaucracy and interspecies conflict didn’t turn out to have as much of a libertarian focus as I’d hoped from the Amazon description.
Here for the record is the Locus shortlist of Best Science Fiction finalists:
SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS
The Folded Sky, Elizabeth Bear (Saga; Gollancz)
Picks & Shovels, Cory Doctorow (Ad Astra; Tor)
Notes from a Regicide, Isaac Fellman (Tor)
When We Were Real, Daryl Gregory (Saga)
All That We See or Seem, Ken Liu (Saga; Ad Astra)
Where the Axe Is Buried, Ray Nayler (MCD; Weidenfel & Nicolson)
Slow Gods, Claire North (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)
The Shattering Peace, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK)
Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
Overall, I find it helpful to see what other awards and year-end “bests” lists rank as worthwhile – both for Prometheus-award-related reading and my own personal and broader reading. (After all, LFS members may care a lot about personal liberty, individual rights and justice, but like other science fiction and fantasy fans, we love a good story – whether within or outside the fantastical genres.)
And when other awards finalists overlap with our Prometheus finalists – which has happened quite a lot over the decades, to varying extents – that gives me hope that we’re not overlooking works worthy of recognition.
Coming up: A look at the Locus Best Fantasy finalists – including one SF/fantasy detective-mystery that many Best Novel judges enjoyed and discussed at length.
ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of the 106 works that have won a Prometheus since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
