Tag: Best Novel finalist

Review: Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon offers Heinleinesque Young Adult tale of discovery, self-reliance and courage against abuses of power


By Michael Grossberg

Storm-Dragon, a 2026 Prometheus Best Novel finalist, offers an entertaining tale embodying golden-age SF themes of initiative, imagination, resilience and self-reliance.

Dave Freer’s Young Adult novel appeals to adults, too — especially those of us who grew up reading YA novels by Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.

The novel revolves around a boy who adopts an intelligent-alien pet on Vann’s World, an ocean-dominated planet with a small human colony facing dangers alien and human, visible and hidden.

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Review: Karl K. Gallagher’s War by Other Means explores tensions between fighting to preserve freedom and giving up freedom to fight more effectively

By William H. Stoddard

War by Other Means, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist, is the seventh volume in Karl K. Gallagher’s future history series Fall of the Censor. After several volumes focused on military conflict, War by Other Means changes its focus to diplomatic relations among the worlds fighting against the Censorate. 

In doing so, it brings Wynny Landry, the wife of Marcus Landry, the protagonist of several previous books, as a new protagonist, in the role of the ambassador from her native planet, Corwynt.

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C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher’s Alliance Rising, Alliance Unbound and Hinder Stars trilogy: How our Best Novel finalists are receiving broader attention (Part Four)


By Michael Grossberg

C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher won the 2020 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Alliance Rising, the first novel in their projected Hinder Stars trilogy dramatizing the early years of interstellar merchants forging a peaceful free-trading alliance within Cherryh’s Hugo-winning larger Alliance-Union series.

Left to right: Jane S. Fancher and C.J. Cherryh (File photo)

Now Alliance Unbound, Cherryh and Fancher’s sequel to Alliance Rising, is competing for another Prometheus Award as one of five 2025 Best Novel finalists.

As Libertarian Futurist Society members enter the final weeks of reading and voting to  to determine the 2025 Prometheus winners for Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (the Prometheus Hall of Fame), it’s notable and illuminating – and hopefully helpful – to report on how each of this year’s Best Novel finalists has been sparking discussions and interviews and gaining recognition within the broader culture.

Certainly, Cherryh and Fancher, life and writing partners, have received significant and wide attention over the years in interviews and podcasts.

Part Four of our ongoing Prometheus Blog series highlighting the influence and impact of this year’s Best Novel finalists offers representative excerpts and links to several of the most interesting interviews of these co-authors, including insights into the novels in their Hinder Stars trilogy.

Continue reading C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher’s Alliance Rising, Alliance Unbound and Hinder Stars trilogy: How our Best Novel finalists are receiving broader attention (Part Four)


Beggar’s Sky and Will McCarthy’s projected Sky tetralogy: How our Best Novel finalists and authors are receiving broader cultural attention (Part Three)

By Michael Grossberg

Wil McCarthy has been receiving broad attention for the tetralogy launched with Rich Man’s Sky, the 2022 Prometheus Best Novel winner.

Beggar’s Sky, one of five 2025 Best Novel finalists, is the third novel in his exciting science fiction/mystery series and the direct sequel to Poor Man’s Sky.


With Prometheus Awards voting in its final weeks before the July 4 deadline, it’s worth highlighting how each of the authors of this year’s Best Novel finalists have been receiving broader cultural attention in interviews, podcasts and rave reviews.

In Part three of our ongoing series, we highlight and provide links to four interviews that McCarthy has done about his complex series, which projects the twists and turns in the industrial development and colonization of our solar system primarily through the private efforts of four billionaires.

Perhaps the most interesting and timely of McCarthy’s interviews was the one he did with Paul Semel after the publication of Beggar’s Sky.

Continue reading Beggar’s Sky and Will McCarthy’s projected Sky tetralogy: How our Best Novel finalists and authors are receiving broader cultural attention (Part Three)

Danny King’s Cancelled: How our Best Novel finalists are receiving broader attention (Part Two
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By Michael Grossberg

Buoyed by the Prometheus Award recognition for his novel Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, British author Danny King is receiving international attention.

As the voting period enters its last three weeks to determine the winners of the next Prometheus awards, it’s worth highlighting how King’s novel and other of this year’s Best Novel finalists have been gaining recognition and sparking discussions in the broader culture. That includes Lionel Shriver’s Mania (the focus of the previous Prometheus blog post in this series.) 

British writer Danny King (Creative Commons license)

King recently was interviewed in Australia on the Liberty Itch Podcast.

During the wide-ranging interview, King discussed the anti-authoritarian and libertarian themes of Cancelled, what inspired him to make the central character of his “utopian/dystopian” tale a “woke” lesbian woman, and the unexpected difficulty he had getting his latest novel published.

The podcast hails Cancelled as “the latest book of multi-award winning writer Danny King” and “a satirical novel set in a future world in which saying or thinking the wrong thing gets you cancelled from mainstream society.”

According to the description of that podcast (Episode 13), Liberty Itch writer Tom Volcanos ask Danny about “Cancelled, being cancelled, and writing in our brave new world where being cancelled is all too real,” according to the podcast description.

Continue reading Danny King’s Cancelled: How our Best Novel finalists are receiving broader attention (Part Two
)

Best Novel finalist review: Gordon Hanka’s provocative God’s Girlfriend explores coercion, consent, masculinity, femininity and basic instincts

By Eric S. Raymond and Michael Grossberg

Subversive and satirical, God’s Girlfriend challenges some of the deepest assumptions of today’s politics and culture.

One of five 2024 Prometheus Best Novel finalists, Gordon Hanka’s provocative sci-fi novel raises thorny questions about ethics, religion, coercion and consent, the nature of masculinity and femininity and the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The 540-page novel offers a taboo-shattering mixture of unorthodox libertarian provocations and Christian eschatology amid a life-or-death clash of two cultures: Earth humans and Wyrms, human refugees from another planet.

Subtitled “Sci-Fi that should not be published,” the novel blends SF and fantasy tropes from spaceships and advanced weaponry to the apparently supernatural, including Jesus’ Second Coming.

The story revolves around the rising tensions, conflicts and increasing likelihood of nuclear war between Earth governments, desperate to preserve their power, and the Wyrms, genetically modified to resist disease and political-psychological control.

As the failing nation-states of Earth threaten nuclear apocalypse to wipe out the Outback-style beachhead of the Wyrms in Australia, all hell breaks loose. So does heaven, with the Second Coming of God in the unexpectedly modern form of Joshua, who has his own notions of good and evil and shifting ideas about which side should survive.

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2024 Best Novel finalists include both science fiction and fantasy – and honor two writers for the first time

By Michael Grossberg

Two writers have been recognized for the first time within the Prometheus Awards’ 45-year history as Best Novel finalists. Three other Best Novel finalist authors have been recognized more than once before in that annual category – and one is a previous Prometheus winner.

Moreover, in a relatively rare occurrence for the Prometheus Awards, not all Best Novel finalists this year fall within the genre of science fiction; one happens to fit the fantasy genre.

Devon Eriksen, Karl K. Gallagher, Gordon Hanka, Howard Andrew Jones and Daniel Suarez have each written a 2023 novel that’s been selected by Prometheus judges as a 2024 Best Novel finalist.

Continue reading 2024 Best Novel finalists include both science fiction and fantasy – and honor two writers for the first time

A 2022 Prometheus Best Novel finalist heads to the silver screen

Prometheus Award winners or finalists don’t make it to the screen that often, so it’s promising news when another is reported to be on its way.

Director Taika Waititi (Creative Commons license)

Deadline.com recently reported that Oscar-winning film director Taika Waititi is is in talks to direct a film adaptation of Klara and the Sun, by Nobel-prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro.

Klara and the Sun, a poignant near-future fable about an A.I. robot tasked with caring for and befriending a human child, was one of five Best Novel finalists for the 2022 Prometheus Award.

Continue reading A 2022 Prometheus Best Novel finalist heads to the silver screen

Klara and the Sun: Ishiguro’s Best Novel finalist offers hauntingly ambiguous tragedy about unrecognized agency, awareness and rights

By Michael Grossberg

The sympathetic character at the center of Klara and the Sun is profoundly human in her caring, determination, curiosity, loyalty and observant intelligence.

And yet, Klara is an artificial being, an android branded and sold as an Artificial Friend in Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel, one of five 2022 Prometheus Best Novel finalists.

Set a generation or two into the future and strictly told from the highly limited point of view of Klara, the novel never fully answers the question of whether Klara has achieved full self-awareness (and thus should be treated as a person with rights.)

Yet, Ishiguro carefully drops enough clues and hints to make Klara and the Sun both a tantalizingly ambiguous mystery about the threshold of full consciousness and a haunting meta-libertarian parable about the foundations of rights and the tragedy that can occur when basic “humanity” and basic rights go unrecognized.

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Author update: Wil McCarthy writing sequels to Best Novel finalist Rich Man’s Sky

Rich Man’s Sky, one of five 2022 Best Novel finalists currently competing for the Prometheus Award, will have a sequel.

Actually, two!

Continue reading Author update: Wil McCarthy writing sequels to Best Novel finalist Rich Man’s Sky