By Michael Grossberg
Travis Corcoran, a two-time Prometheus-winning novelist, will present the first Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction.
Corcoran was invited to speak because he’s a passionate believer in encouraging younger generations to read – and convinced that writing good young-adult SF/fantasy can help young readers better envision more positive futures – including a future of freedom.
Corcoran will discuss the vital importance of young-adult fiction in his speech presenting that occasional category at the 46th Prometheus Awards. The roughly hourlong ceremony, open to the public via Zoom and with Ilya Somin as the keynote speaker, is set to start at 1 p.m. (Eastern time) Sunday Aug. 16.
Corcoran has praised YA fiction for its potential to offer positive portraits of young people as capable, rational and independent-minded individuals. Such characters can be admirable role models for the young, in Corcoran’s view, because they tend to be better suited for living in, and sustaining, the dynamic live-and-let-live interactions of free societies.
CORCORAN’S FICTION
Corcoran, a New Hampshire resident, is the first author (and still the only author) to win the Prometheus Award for Best Novel in two consecutive years.
He won in 2018 for The Powers of the Earth and in 2019 for its direct sequel Causes of Separation. Both novels are part of his ongoing Aristillus series set in the future on Earth and the Moon.
When he discusses in his awards-ceremony speech the importance of writing SF/fantasy targeted at young-adult readers, Corcoran will be drawing from his own experience – and setting an example for other writers.
Corcoran has started writing several Young Adult novels, with at least one scheduled for published within the next year by Morlock Publishing.
Two of the novels will extend his Aristillus series. The titles: The Aristillus Engineering Club and the Journey to the Center of Mars and The Aristillus Engineering Club Around Mars in 80 Sols.
Meanwhile, in May, Ark Press, a new SF publisher, published Corcoran’s first adult science fiction novel in years: Red State Mars.
Billed as “a sweeping epic of Mars’s fight for freedom—an unforgettable saga of war, family, and civilization on the red frontier,” Red State Mars is one of four 2026 novels that have been nominated so far for next year’s Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
FREER WILL ACCEPT THE SPECIAL AWARD “IN PERSON”
As previously announced, Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer, will receive the Special Award.
Corcoran will be able to present the award directly to Freer. Freer, Based on Flinders Island in the rural Lughrata region of Tasmania, Australia, Freer has confirmed that he will accept his award “in person” (via Zoom) from his home.
It will be the 13th Special Award that the Libertarian Futurist Society will present since the first in 1998 went to the first explicitly libertarian SF anthology Free Space.
While Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (the Prometheus Hall of Fame) are annual awards, each with a slate of finalists selected by LFS members serving as Prometheus judges, Special Awards are occasional – and only given when a particular work or individual that falls outside our two annual categories is especially deserving of recognition.
As such, the first Special Award for Young Adult Fiction – a new subcategory approved unanimously by the LFS Board of Directors several years ago – is notable.
So is the broad scope of this new Special Award. While Freer’s novel is the first recipient of the Special Award for Young Adult Fiction, this new category is not limited to novels.
Partly because younger readers often find shorter works more accessible, this Special Award is open as well to freedom-themed SF/fantasy stories, novellas and YA anthologies.
In fact, the scope of this Special award is as broad as the wide range of dramatic or narrative works of fiction that can be nominated for the Prometheus Hall of Fame. That includes prose fiction of all kind, as well as stage plays, film, television, other video, graphic novels, song lyrics, or epic or narrative verse.
As with all categories of the Prometheus Award, eligible works must explore themes relevant to libertarian ideas and ideals and must be science fiction, fantasy, or related fantastical and speculative genres.
All LFS members have the right to nominate eligible works for all Prometheus Awards categories. Nominations for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award will be accepted until Sept. 30, 2026, and for the next Best Novel award until Feb. 15, 2027. Special Awards can be suggested or nominated throughout the year, but should be brought to the attention of LFS leaders and Prometheus Awards judges as soon as possible.
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.
