If you were nominated for a Prometheus Award for Best Novel, would you invite the world to watch you in the moment you found out whether your novel was selected among the finalists?
Novelist John C.A. Manley was willing to do that yesterday with his editor Peter Toccalino in an interesting and wide-ranging 40-minute video discussion of this year’s Best Novel nominees and finalists.
By Michael Grossberg
Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon, one of 14 works nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel, has been receiving some nice reviews from readers.
One of the most appreciative reviews has come from science-fiction novelist John C.A. Manley, himself nominated in the same Prometheus category this year for All the Humans Are Sleeping. Exploring issues of consent, freedom and technocracy, Manley’s dystopian SF novel focuses on a man who refuses to enter a virtual reality simulation prepared for survivors of a nuclear apocalypse.
To put it mildly, Manley’s nominated novel is quite different from Freer’s Young-Adult-oriented nominee.
“Imagine Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn appearing in Cressida Cowell’s How to Train Your Dragon, add a little of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and you’ve got Storm-Dragon by Dave Freer,” Manley writes.
Titled “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (but with Big Spaceships and a Small Dragon),” Manley’s review begins with a confession: He’s not “a big fan” of young adult fiction – and he offers several of the best-known examples to prove it.
“But Storm-Dragon had my son and me hooked by chapter two,” Manley writes.
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.
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?
