Harry Turtledove – Prometheus Blog

Capsule reviews of all five Best Novel finalists – with no spoilers! 

The 2026 Prometheus Best Novel finalists have been announced – and Libertarian Futurist Society members are reading them, with the ultimate verdict and winners to be selected by July 4 on the final ballot.

To spark thought and discussion, raise the visibility of these works and the award and hopefully serve as a helpful guide, the Prometheus Blog is publishing thoughtful, in-depth reviews by Prometheus judges of each finalist. Some LFS members may wish to read them right away; others may prefer to wait until they’ve finished a finalist before reading the review.

Meanwhile, to whet your appetite to read each finalist and vote in the final stage of the Prometheus Awards, here are roughly equal 200-word capsule descriptions of each finalist.

And we’ve striven to avoid revealing any spoilers, so it’s safe to read them now!

Continue reading Capsule reviews of all five Best Novel finalists – with no spoilers! 

Former winners, finalists compete with newcomer as Prometheus Best Novel finalists 

By Michael Grossberg

Three former Prometheus winners, a frequent Best Novel finalist and a first-time nominee are competing to win this year’s Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

J. Kenton Pierce (Photo courtesy of Raconteur Press)

The Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee, drawn from the LFS membership, has selected five 2025 novels as 2026 finalists from 14 nominated works. The Best Novel finalists, listed in alphabetical order by author, are Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press); War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press); No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press); A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press); and Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)

Pierce was nominated for the first time for a Prometheus Award, so his inclusion as a Best Novel finalist is particularly impressive in a year that many judges feel has been a superior one for freedom-themed SF/fantasy.

Continue reading Former winners, finalists compete with newcomer as Prometheus Best Novel finalists 

New generation of writers dominates this year’s 14 Prometheus nominations for Best Novel 

By Michael Grossberg

Libertarian Futurist Society members have nominated 14 novels for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel. Of those, nine nominees were written by authors nominated for the first time for a Prometheus Award.

With so many authors new to our awards, the Prometheus Awards may be entering a more hopeful period in which a new generation is writing science fiction, fantasy and other fantastical works informed by a clear awareness of the dangers of tyranny and the benefits of freedom.

The “new” Prometheus-recognized writers include Max Harms, Andrew Knighton, John C. A. Manley, Ewan Morrison, Laura Montgomery, Ray Nayler, J. Kenton Pierce and David A. Price.

Nominated again are three Prometheus-winning authors – Dave Freer (Cloud-Castles), Sarah Hoyt (Darkship Thieves) and Harry Turtledove (The Gladiator) – and one writer, Karl K. Gallagher, whose works often have become Best Novel finalists. In addition, writer R.H. Snow has been nominated several times for Best Novel.

Continue reading New generation of writers dominates this year’s 14 Prometheus nominations for Best Novel 

The Prometheus Awards and the Forry award for lifetime achievement: Cherryh, Anderson, Heinlein, Pratchett, Ellison among 13 authors recognized by both 

By Michael Grossberg

Just as the Prometheus Awards overlaps to some extent with the Hugo and Nebula wards in terms of the works and writers recognized, our list of Prometheus-winning writers overlaps with the Forry Awards.

C.J. Cherryh, who co-wrote the 2020 Prometheus Best Novel winner (Alliance Rising) with her partner Jane S. Fancher, is the 13th Prometheus winner to also be recognized in the Forry awards.

Cherryh recently won the 2025 Forrest J Ackerman Award for Lifetime Achievement given by the members of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. (See our previous post about Cherryh’s latest honor.)

It’s interesting to see what writers have been recognized by both the LASFS, the world’s oldest continuously active science fiction and fantasy club, and the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), established in 1982 to sustain the Prometheus Awards.

Such broad cross-recognition should be another reminder of just how embedded libertarian and anti-authoritarian ideas and values are within our popular culture – and have been, for generations, even amid various socio-economic developments and political trends, both positive and negative.

So if Cherryh is the 13th Prometheus winner to be recognized with a Forry award, who else is on that illustrious cross-checked list?

Continue reading The Prometheus Awards and the Forry award for lifetime achievement: Cherryh, Anderson, Heinlein, Pratchett, Ellison among 13 authors recognized by both 

Last call for Prometheus Best Novel nominations: With the mid-February nominating deadline approaching, 13 2025 novels have been nominated so far 

By Michael Grossberg

With the annual nominations deadline for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel now less than a month away, Libertarian Futurist Society members are encouraged to bring to our attention any eligible candidates they’ve come across.

This is a reminder and last call for nominations for the oldest category of the awards, now 47 years old.

So far, 13 2025 novels have been nominated by LFS members, somewhat less than average for Best Novel, with Feb. 15 the deadline for LFS members to nominate eligible and worthy works.

The current and interim list includes works by three authors who have previously won Prometheus Awards: Dave Freer (Cloud-Castles), Sarah Hoyt (Darkship Thieves) and Harry Turtledove (The Gladiator.)

This year’s interim slate of nominees also includes the latest novel in Karl K. Gallagher’s Fall of the Censor series, which includes quite a few novels recognized as Best Novel finalists.

But it’s also nice to see nominated works by authors who’ve never previously been recognized in our awards. So far this year, more than half of the novels were written by first-time nominees: Max Harms, Andrew Knighton, John C. A. Manley, Ewan Morrison, Laura Montgomery, Ray Nayler and J. Kenton Pierce.

So what are the novels by these authors that have been nominated so far?

Continue reading Last call for Prometheus Best Novel nominations: With the mid-February nominating deadline approaching, 13 2025 novels have been nominated so far 

The best of the blog: Our 2025 reviews of Prometheus winners, finalists and more 

Some of the most important, impactful and lasting articles posted on the Prometheus Blog this year were reviews.

Of the 120 posts published here in 2025, more than 10 percent were reviews – perhaps most notably, the latest review-essays in our ongoing Appreciation series devoted to honoring each year’s Prometheus Awards winners for Best Novel and the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

That may seem like a relatively small percentage of our posts, but it actually represents a major sustained effort – in terms of both time and thought – by Prometheus judges and other Libertarian Futurist Society members.

Certainly, it takes time and careful attention to write, edit, illustrate and publish the many posts focusing on awards news, LFS progress reports, author’s updates, essays, features and trend pieces about the influence of Prometheus-winning works and their authors on today’s culture and politics.

Yet it generally takes substantially more effort, insight and creativity to write thoughtful reviews of the most significant fiction nominated each year for a Prometheus Award.

Here are the most noteworthy reviews we published in 2025, along with convenient links allowing you to read or reread any that spark your curiosity or interest:

Continue reading The best of the blog: Our 2025 reviews of Prometheus winners, finalists and more 

Review: Harry Turtledove’s Between the Rivers offers historical perspective on long-establish elements of emerging freedom and civilization

By William H. Stoddard

Harry Turtledove’s Between the Rivers, one of this year’s Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees, is suited to libertarian audiences in somewhat the same way as Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle: It neither portrays a free society, nor proposes a path to creating one, but offers a historical perspective on some of the long established elements of freedom as of their first appearance.

Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle novel The System of the World, the 2005 Prometheus Best Novel winner, is subtle about its fantastic elements (the presence of Enoch Root, also a character in Cryptonomicon, set centuries later, and the strange isotope of gold); Turtledove’s much less so, with active gods monitoring their human worships and wandering about the countryside.

So Stephenson can be read as a secret history, but Turtledove has to be taken as a historical fantasy. But Turtledove makes his historical parallels obvious, in the very title of his book: “Between the Rivers” literally translates the Greek name “Mesopotamia” for the land that was once Sumer, and later Babylonia, and is now Iraq.

Continue reading Review: Harry Turtledove’s Between the Rivers offers historical perspective on long-establish elements of emerging freedom and civilization

CAEZIK SF & Fantasy’s “Ninja Loot” book sale: Discounts on Michael Flynn, Harry Turtledove, other Prometheus-winning authors – and five free ebooks

CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, which has published quite a few Prometheus-winning authors and this year’s Best Novel winner, is having a book sale.

Quite a few titles have been discounted, and five of the ebooks are now free, for a limited time, in the so-called Ninja Loot Sale of the Maryland-based small press.

CAEZIK and Arc Manor publisher Shahid Mahmud also reports that his company has just added new titles from such science fiction and fantasy greats as Harry Turtledove, Mercedes Lackey, Katharine Kerr, Jim. C. Hines, Joan Slonczewski and more.

The sale includes Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale, the 2025 Prometheus Best Novel winner, and Turtledove’s Powerless, among eight 2025 novels nominated so far for the next Best Novel award.

FREE EBOOKS

Plus, “somewhere in the sale, we have hidden 5 completely free ebooks,” Mahmud said.

I searched through the listings – not that hard, actually, and it didn’t take long at all – and discovered that the free ebooks include Captive Dreams, an anthology of Flynn’s stories and novellas.

Check out the sale here.

ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS AND THE LFS

* 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.

Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.

Review: Harry Turtledove’s Prometheus-nominated Powerless critiques communism and blind obedience to authority

By Max More

Powerless, one of six novels nominated so far for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, is the first novel I have read by Harry Turtledove. I chose to read it because of its anti-authoritarian message.

The structure and function of this alternate reality – in which communism has taken over the United States (and apparently much or all of the world) – seemed familiar and frighteningly plausible to me based on my study of the years under Lenin and Stalin.

Continue reading Review: Harry Turtledove’s Prometheus-nominated Powerless critiques communism and blind obedience to authority

Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees for Best Classic Fiction include novels by Blish, Dick, Huxley, Lewis, Roberts, Stross and Turtledove, a Pohl short story and Straczynski’s Babylon 5 

By Michael Grossberg

James Blish in the 1950s (Creative Commons license)

Works by James Blish, Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley, C.S. Lewis, Frederik Pohl, Adam Roberts, J. Michael Straczynski, Charles Stross and Harry Turtledove have been nominated for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.

Aldous Huxley (Creative Commons license)

A majority of this year’s Hall of Fame nominees are appearing on the short list for the first time – a promising sign that this category for time-honored classic fiction remains full of notable and lasting works worth recognizing.

The oldest nominee on the list is Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World, with the second-oldest C.S. Lewis’ 1945 novel That Hideous Strength.

While Lewis’ cautionary sf novel has been nominated before and previously has ranked as a Best Classic Fiction finalist, Huxley’s dystopian classic has never before been nominated for the Prometheus Award – and is arguably overdue.

Continue reading Prometheus Hall of Fame nominees for Best Classic Fiction include novels by Blish, Dick, Huxley, Lewis, Roberts, Stross and Turtledove, a Pohl short story and Straczynski’s Babylon 5 