By Michael Grossberg
It’s relatively rare for a Prometheus-winning work of pro-freedom science fiction or fantasy to be adapted into a movie or for television. But that happened this year, with the recent 2026 release of an animated film of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, inducted in 2011 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
While the misconceived third film version of Orwell’s anti-authoritarian and anti-communist classic fable proved disappointing, our hopes remain high for more Prometheus-winning novels or stories to be filmed – and some are already in the works.
Meanwhile, sparked by this year’s film release, I asked Libertarian Futurist Society members I work with as fellow Best Novel judges which Prometheus-winning works they’d like to see on screen.
Adam Tuchman’s top choice is The Probability Broach, L. Neil Smith’s alternate-history SF novel that won the 1982 Best Novel award.
L. NEIL SMITH’S THE PROBABILITY BROACH
“The Probability Broach got me into libertarianism,” said Tuchman, an LFS board member who also serves as a judge on the Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee.
The novel incorporates and contrasts both dystopian and utopian elements.
The story begins in an authoritarian near-future United States where the economy and technology have stagnated and society has decayed because of increasing government control by an arrogant federal bureaucracy and the intrusive Federal Security Police.
Here’s the novel’s triggering event, according to the publisher’s description:
“Denver detective Win Bear, on the trail of a murderer, discovers much more than a killer. He accidentally stumbles upon the probability broach, a portal to a myriad of worlds–some wildly different from, others disconcertingly similar to our own. Win finds himself transported to an alternate Earth where Congress is in Colorado, everyone carries a gun, there are gorillas in the Senate, and public services are controlled by private businesses.”
Besides the self-aware and talkative gorillas, Smith imagined intelligent and communicating dolphins evolved to achieve equal liberty and individual rights in the alternate history that Bear enters.
While the novel might have been nearly unfilmable in any convincing way in the 1980s when it was first published, the advance of special effects since then makes it possible to imagine the Probability Broach convincingly adapted to the screen.
“We have the SFX capability to do the apes and dolphins realistically,” Tuchman said.
In addition, Smith’s novel already has proven its visual appeal. Smith and artist/illustrator Scott Bieser adapted the novel into a vivid graphic novel, which received a Special Prometheus Award in 2005.
More broadly, a film version of The Probability Broach would bring to a wider public the libertarian vision of a fully free society, along with the progress and prosperity unleashed by the waves of invention and innovation and experiment that a free market unleashes.
According to the Prometheus Blog appreciation-essay of the 1982 Best Novel winner:
“In that other world, the detective discovers that American history developed in a drastically different and more libertarian direction: Public services are run (and run far better) by private businesses, “tax” and “draft” are curse words, poverty is virtually abolished and government barely exists, everyone is armed with a gun (while the rate of violence and crime remains amazingly low), and sapient gorillas have rights and are among the elected Senators of a Colorado-based Congress.”
With science fiction, including alternate-history stories, providing so much source material these days for films and TV series, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine that Smith’s libertarian-SF bestseller might reach the large or small screen in our own timeline.
And one might imagine, in the spirit of The Probability Broach, that the film exists in some alternate timeline – and that Smith is still alive in that world to see his work onscreen.
* Read the previous blog posts in this series about Prometheus winners on screen.
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.
