By Michael Grossberg
Sarah Hoyt views No Man’s Land, nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, as the epic story that she was born to write.
So what took her so long? The three-part novel required much of Hoyt’s life to gestate, mature and blossom – and therein lies another epic story.
“It’s been with me since I was 14,” Hoyt told me in an email interview.
Set in an interstellar future where humanity colonized many planets but also lost touch with some for centuries or millennia, the three-part 2025 novel blends tropes of science fiction and fantasy in intriguing ways.
ELEMENTS OF SF AND FANTASY
That combination of SF and apparent fantasy sets up its own additional dimensions of mystery and suspense. How can common elements of both SF and fantasy exist within the same fictional universe? The tagline of the novel hints at an explanation: “Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.”
Alternating at first with seemingly separate stories set on different planets in Hoyt’s far-flung tale, No Man’s Land gradually reveals on one distant and long-separated planet a complex society of human hermaphrodites, raising several tantalizing questions about their origin, biology, sex and child-raising practices.
A PLANET OF HERMAPHRODITES
As a young girl, Hoyt got the idea of writing her own science-fiction novel about hermaphrodites after reading Ursula K. Le Guin’s acclaimed novel The Left Hand of Darkness, one of the first books in the genre of feminist science fiction and often described as the most famous examination of androgyny and gender in science fiction.
Reading Le Guin’s novel, though, Hoyt grew skeptical of some of its assumptions about science, biology, gender and sex.
“I didn’t think that anything hermaphrodite has ever been cooperative or communal (Though on Earth it’s only fish and non-mammals. But they tend to be more violent/individual than same level life forces),” Hoyt said.
“And the idea annoyed me so much — as well as the enormous costs of “Switching” biologically, that I decided I MUST write a counter.”
THE WORLDS OF NO MAN’S LAND
Here’s how No Man’s Land is described on Amazon:
“On a lost colony world, mad geneticists thought they could eliminate inequality by making everyone hermaphrodite. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Now technology indistinguishable from magic courses through the veins of the inhabitants, making their barbaric civilization survivable — and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Kayel Hayden, Viscount Webson, Envoy of the Star Empire — Skip to his friends — has just crash-landed through a time-space rift into the middle of it all.
Dodging assassins and plummeting from high windows was just the beginning. With a desperate king and an archmagician as his only allies, Scipio must outrun death itself while battling beasts, traitors, and infiltrators bent on finishing what the founders started: total destruction.
“Two worlds. One chance. No time to lose.”
AN AWARD-WINNING AND PROLIFIC WRITER
Today, Hoyt is an accomplished and award-winning veteran sf/fantasy author, with more than 40 books published in science fiction, fantasy, mystery and historical fiction.
Winner of the 2018 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel for Uncharted, co-authored with Kevin J. Anderson, Hoyt won the 2011 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Darkship Thieves.
Her Darkship series includes the direct sequels Darkship Renegades, a 2013 Prometheus Best Novel finalist; A Few Good Men, a 2014 Best Novel finalist; Through Fire, a 2017 Best Novel nominee; and Darkship Revenge, a 2018 Best Novel finalist. Her short stories have appeared in Analog, Asimov’s, Weird Tales, and anthologies from DAW and Baen
HOW HOYT DEVELOPED HER WRITING SKILLS
But as a 14-year-old inexperienced writer, back in the 1970s, Hoyt quickly realized that she didn’t have the skills or knowledge to write No Man’s Land.
“Of course I couldn’t, but it’s what started me writing fiction,” Hoyt said.
About four decades ago, Hoyt wrote her first version of what became No Man’s Land. “But it was more like an extended outline,” she said.
Making the project even more daunting is that Hoyt, born and raised in Portugal, wasn’t fluent yet in English.
“I wrote a version of this in English 40 years ago. But it was more like an extended outline. So I had to learn to write novels. In English,” she said.
A PUBLISHER’S REJECTION
Once Hoyt had several stories and novels under her belt, she wrote a new outline and sample of what became No Man’s Land in the early 1990s and submitted it to a publisher.
“It got a personal rejection… saying if I was willing to change pronouns to “she” they’d consider it,” Hoyt said.
She refused.
“I refused to because a) female pronouns bring visuals of breasts and that was wrong in my head, and b) I KNEW the establishment by then and knew the entire thing would get distorted by the publisher pushing me into a female power feminist narrative, which, again, was not what I was doing with the book.”
Thus, the novel remained unwritten until about two years ago.
A FRESH START
“And so it sat at the back of my head… until two years ago when I realized I was (then) sixty one and a cousin died at 63. And I didn’t want to die with my first world unwritten. (The d*mn thing grew a culture, and people.),” Hoyt said.
“Also, frankly, I was burned out and almost at the point of quitting fiction. So, first I’d write this. I’m very glad I did. Among other things, it seems to have cured the burnout.”
That may be an understatement. Hoyt now appears to be on a roll.
No Man’s Land, billed as Volume 1 in her Chronicles of Lost Elly, already has a sequel that Hoyt is writing: Orphans of the Stars. If all goes well, she hopes to finish and publish it by the fall of 2026.
A FINAL CALL FOR NOMINATIONS – AND SUBMISSIONS
Note: Hoyt’s No Man’s Land is one of 10 2025 novels nominated so far for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
LFS members may formally nominate eligible novels for this category of the awards until the nominating deadline of Feb. 15, 2026. Even if not sure whether novels are eligible for nomination or deserve a nomination, LFS members are encouraged to let us know about it as soon as possible.
In addition, publishers and authors are encouraged to submit eligible works for consideration by Prometheus judges as soon as possible, preferably at least a month or two before publication but no later than January, in order to allow time for judges to obtain, read and consider them for potential nomination.
For more about how to submit or nominate a work for the Prometheus Awards, read our recently updated submission guidelines letter.
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 more than 100 past winners 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.
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