Prometheus-winning sf/fantasy author Dave Freer understands how liberty and literacy are intimately intertwined – a frequent theme explored here on the Prometheus Blog.
As Freer explains on the Mad Genius Club blog, his commitment to encouraging literacy and younger readers was a key motivation for him to write Storm-Dragon, a Young Adult science fiction novel that’s one of 10 2025 novels nominated so far for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
“We need young people reading,” Freer writes.
“It’s the one way you can future-proof your kids, because it is the one thing that will make them flexible enough to cope with whatever the future throws. It will give them advantages in learning – far more than schooling will,” he said.
These days, Freer believes that boys need encouragement to read even more than girls do.
“Boys, we know, have been considered expendable,” he said.
“It’s the sort of thing that those who can’t think beyond first-order consequences (if that far) think is a good idea. Unfortunately, I am a writer, and, if you’re going to do that even half-way competently you need to project your mind several orders beyond that and get the ramifications of actions, even the indirect ones, or your book starts to be ridiculous.”
“Even if you only have daughters, you do not want them growing up in a world where men do not read. Have you thought what else people get from reading? Second to none, the ability of words to be translated not just into images but into whole, complex worlds. Have you ever thought about what that does to the brain? You should.
Freer also believes young people should read fiction because it expands their vicarious experience of living, including the proverbial walking a mile in another man’s shoes.
“Reading puts the reader inside the heads of others. It teaches one to imagine the feelings and thought-processes of others. Do you want your daughter to end up with a partner to whom other people are something they have some chance of understanding, or not?”
Winner of the 2023 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Cloud-Castles, Freer wrote Storm-Dragon “with the intent of getting more boys reading and enjoying reading.”
Set on an ocean-dominated alien planet with hungry local wildlife and a besieged small human colony, Storm-Dragon follows the adventures of a young boy who forges a telepathic bond with a small alien creature as he faces school bullies and slowly becomes aware of a corrupt local government and other human threats.
Much like many of the Young Adult novels by Robert Heinlein or Andre Norton, Storm-Dragon is enjoyable for all ages but targeted for younger readers, especially boys.
Regarding his latest Prometheus nomination for Storm-Dragon, Freer commented: “If this pushes more young men to try it (reading science fiction), I’ve won.”
Beyond the individual benefits to young readers in education and vicarious experience, the spread of reading nearly universal literacy also has broad social, economic and political impacts. No wonder, since reading helps educate citizens citizen achieve and sustain liberty and self-government.
Those who love to read, as well as those who write, should recognize more consistently, as Freer has, the crucial importance of teaching new generations to read, to enjoy reading and to read regularly – something sadly becoming less common as a habit in today’s social-media-obsessed culture.
For further reading
Check out our many blog posts that explore the relationship of liberty and literacy.
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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.
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