Storm-Dragon: Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer publishes new action-adventure-SF novel in Heinlein-juvenile tradition

By Michael Grossberg

An illustration in Dave Freer’s novel Storm-Dragon (Image provided by author

Prometheus winner Dave Freer has a new novel coming out soon.

Storm-Dragon, to be published April 11, 2025, by Raconteur Press, is a relatively short novel (with illustrations) geared toward a young-adult audience – and especially targeted at boys and teenagers.

“It is my attempt at writing a Heinlein “Juvie” – a book aimed specifically at teen boys (not their scene) to get them interested in sf,” Freer said in an email from his home base Down Under in the Australian state of Tasmania.

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A Study in Subtexts: Freedom, slavery and control in Prometheus winner Lois McMaster Bujold’s Sharing Knife series

“What Bujold has done is to come up with a concept of an aristocratic society that isn’t based on coercion — and from a libertarian perspective, that’s an interesting and novel theme.”

By William H. Stoddard

After bringing the Vorkosigan series (including Prometheus Hall of Fame winner Falling Free) to an apparent conclusion, Lois McMaster Bujold turned to fantasy in two series: the loosely connected World of the Five Gods novels, and the Sharing Knife series, an actual tetralogy.

Lois McMaster Bujold (Photo by Kyle Cassidy; Creative Commons license)

Both are set in invented worlds, where real-world political issues don’t arise, sparing the reader the sort of heavy-handed allegory that J.R.R. Tolkien famously objected to.

No book in either series was ever considered for a Prometheus Award. Indeed, the Sharing Knife series started out as a love story, seemingly reflected Bujold’s acknowledged fondness for authors such as Georgette Heyer. But having read it several times since its publication, I’ve come to feel that it has less obvious depths, some of which are potentially of interest to members of the Libertarian Futurist Society.

Continue reading A Study in Subtexts: Freedom, slavery and control in Prometheus winner Lois McMaster Bujold’s Sharing Knife series