Tag: Lionel Shriver

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


Lionel Shriver’s Mania: How our Best Novel finalists are receiving broader cultural attention (Part One)

By Michael Grossberg

As voting enters its final weeks to determine the winners of the next Prometheus awards, it’s worth highlighting how several of this year’s Best Novel finalists have been gaining recognition and sparking discussions in the broader culture.

That includes Lionel Shriver’s Mania, Danny King’s Cancelled, Wil McCarthy’s Beggar’s Sky, C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher’s Alliance Unbound, Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale, based on interviews, podcasts and publications we’ve come across. (If you become aware of columns, podcasts, interviews or other media coverage of any of our Best Novel finalists, or for that matter, our Hall of Fame finalists, please let us know as soon as possible!)

Author Lionel Shriver (Creative Commons License)

Mania, in particular, has sparked both timely commentary and podcasts, including an interesting interview with Shriver and a Substack column drawing parallels between Mania and today’s cultural-political trends.

Dutch-American writer and courageous dissident Ayaan Hirsi Ali invited Shriver, an international best-selling author, to join her on a podcast for a lengthy interview – with some relevant excerpts quoted below.

Meanwhile, on Holly’s Substack column, Holly “Mathnerd” has written a column titled “The Sound of One Window Shifting” about “the moment a satirical novel I read and enjoyed last year stopped feeling like fiction.”

That novel, of course, is Shriver’s Mania – whose satirical and cautionary themes are highlighted in the Prometheus blog review.

Continue reading Lionel Shriver’s Mania: How our Best Novel finalists are receiving broader cultural attention (Part One)

In their own ways, the 2025 Best Novel finalists embody the dramatic potential of novels with epic scope


By Michael Grossberg

One aspect of fantastical fiction that can make it especially vivid and dramatic is when authors create an imaginative story with epic scope.

A work of fiction that offers such a vast and even cosmic perspective can enhance that distinctive sense of wonder that has defined some of the best science fiction or fantasy.

Each of this year’s Prometheus Best Novel finalists benefits in some ways from aspiring to and achieving great scope.

Continue reading In their own ways, the 2025 Best Novel finalists embody the dramatic potential of novels with epic scope


The Best Novel finalists range from exciting visions of humanity’s challenging possible futures in space to cautionary dystopian tales on Earth

By Michael Grossberg

This year’s five Prometheus Best Novel finalists plausibly imagine everything from dystopian Earth scenarios sparked by authoritarian true-believer cults to more positive but challenging interstellar futures for humanity.

C.J. Cherryh, left, and Jane Fancher (Photo courtesy of Jane Fancher)

Works published in 2024 by C.J. Cherryh & Jane S. Fancher, Michael Flynn, Danny King, Wil McCarthy and Lionel Shriver will be competing for the 45th Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn (File photo)

First presented in 1979, the Prometheus Awards have recognized hundreds of authors and a dizzying variety of works. This year’s slate of finalists embrace the old and the new.

Of these authors, British writer Danny King is new to our award, being recognized for the first time as a Best Novel finalist.

British writer Danny King (Creative Commons license)

Lionel Shriver, a Portugal-based American writer who’s lived in Nairobi, Bangkok, Belfast and London, is being recognized for the third time as a Best Novel finalist.

Author Lionel Shriver in 2006 Photo: Walnut Whippet, Creative Commons license

Wil McCarthy, and writing partners Cherryh and Fancher, each previously won a Prometheus Award, while Flynn (1947-2023) is a two-time previous Best Novel winner being recognized posthumously for what may be his last work.

Novelist Wil McCarthy (Photo courtesy of Baen Books)

In brief, here are this year’s Best Novel finalists, in alphabetical order by author:
* Alliance Unbound, by C.J Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher (DAW)
* In the Belly of the Whale, by Michael Flynn (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy)
* Cancelled: The Shape of Things to Come, by Danny King (Annie Mosse Press)
* Beggar’s Sky, by Wil McCarthy (Baen Books)
* Mania, by Lionel Shriver (HarperCollins Publishers)

Continue reading The Best Novel finalists range from exciting visions of humanity’s challenging possible futures in space to cautionary dystopian tales on Earth

Best Novel finalist review: Danny King’s Cancelled envisions true-believer excesses of a dystopian New Britannia

By Steve Gaalema and Michael Grossberg

Oh, what a brave new world Danny King charts in Cancelled – now a Best Novel finalist.

Framed initially as a visionary utopia that fully embraces love, inclusion, social justice, and a triumphant institutionalization of progressive-left politics maybe not that far beyond current norms, this New Britannia initially might seem appealing.

Yet, cracks inevitably appear in the facade, as hidden realities are revealed in this gripping SF-enhanced dystopian fable, one of 11 2024 novels nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Continue reading Best Novel finalist review: Danny King’s Cancelled envisions true-believer excesses of a dystopian New Britannia

Best Novel finalist review: Lionel Shriver’s Mania offers cautionary tale about an alternate America denying differences in intelligence


By Michael Grossberg

Lionel Shriver, arguably the world’s greatest living libertarian novelist, has found another timely subject worthy of her illuminating insight and piercing wit.

Living up to her iconoclastic reputation, the British-American novelist finds satirical, intensely dramatic and gut-wrenchingly personal dimensions to bring to life in Mania.

The cautionary fable depicts a slightly different but recognizable contemporary world where good intentions have gone terribly astray.

Set in the recent past and present but in a wryly revealing alternate history, Mania portrays an America taken over by a new ideology: the Mental Parity movement.

Warning: Any resemblances to any cultlike trends or movements of today or just yesterday are purely intentional.

Continue reading Best Novel finalist review: Lionel Shriver’s Mania offers cautionary tale about an alternate America denying differences in intelligence


A diverse slate of firsts and lasts: 11 Prometheus Best Novel nominees offer SF and fantasy, drama, mystery and satirical cautionary tales

By Michael Grossberg

Eleven 2024 novels have been nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Writer Howard Andrew Jones (Photo courtesy of Baen Books)

Broadly embracing many forms of speculative fiction including science fiction, fantasy, dystopian cautionary tales and near-future political-tech thrillers, the diverse slate offers a wide variety and blends of genres, styles and themes – from the serious to the darkly satirical.

Two-time Prometheus winner Michael Flynn (Creative Commons license)

Most poignantly, this will be the last time that two authors are nominated for Best Novel because they’ve sadly passed away: Michael Flynn and Howard Andrew Jones.

Flynn, a two-time Prometheus winner for Best Novel, died in 2023 at 75.

Jones, a Best Novel finalist last year, died in January 2025 at 56.

Continue reading A diverse slate of firsts and lasts: 11 Prometheus Best Novel nominees offer SF and fantasy, drama, mystery and satirical cautionary tales

Author’s update: HarperCollins has published Mania, two-time Best Novel finalist Lionel Shriver’s alternate-history novel critiquing radical egalitarianism

By Michael Grossberg

Maverick bestselling novelist Lionel Shriver is at it again, skewering popular shibboleths of elite culture and critiquing false ideologies through her imaginative and insightful fiction.

Author Lionel Shriver in 2006 Photo: Walnut Whippet, Creative Commons license

Shriver, recognized twice over the past decade as a Prometheus Best Novel finalist, has written Mania, a new 286-page alternate-history novel published April 9 by HarperCollins Publishers.

The publisher’s description highlights a theme that seems promising from the perspective of the Prometheus Awards:

“With echoes of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, told in Lionel Shriver’s inimitable and iconoclastic voice, Mania is a sharp, acerbic, and ruthlessly funny book about the road to a delusional, self-destructive egalitarianism that our society is already on.”

Continue reading Author’s update: HarperCollins has published Mania, two-time Best Novel finalist Lionel Shriver’s alternate-history novel critiquing radical egalitarianism

SF under assault, but ripe for rebirth: Two-time Prometheus winner Travis Corcoran’s 2022 awards-ceremony speech on the value of libertarian science fiction

The Libertarian Futurist Society invited two-time Prometheus winner Travis Corcoran to discuss the importance of libertarian science fiction in his speech as presenter of the 2022 Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Sf novelist Travis Corcoran (Photo courtesy of author)

Here Is the text of Corcoran’s speech, delivered on Aug. 13 as part of the Zoom awards ceremony, marking the 40th anniversary of the LFS.

(Corcoran presented the Best Novel award to Wil McCarthy for Rich Man’s Sky; the Hall of Fame award went to Robert Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy,)

 

By Travis Corcoran

The state of written science fiction in 2022 is a bit like the state of western civilization: under assault from all sides, hollowed out, a pale shadow of what it once was.

The soldiers who once defended our grand city have been defeated.

There are invaders inside the gates, cavorting, aping their betters,and desecrating the ancient and sacred temples.

The great bazaars are empty and only a few small peddlers haunt the windy streets.

Most of the citizens who built the city, stone by stone, have been either felled by old age or have wandered away.  A few still act as if nothing has changed, but without the support of the great publishers and the cheers of the crowd, the performance rings hollow.

Continue reading SF under assault, but ripe for rebirth: Two-time Prometheus winner Travis Corcoran’s 2022 awards-ceremony speech on the value of libertarian science fiction

Meet the author: Lionel Shriver, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist for Should We Stay Or Should We Go

Maverick American-British writer Lionel Shriver has been recognized – again – in the Prometheus Awards.

Author Lionel Shriver (Creative Commons License)

First nominated in 2017 for The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, which went on to become a Best Novel finalist, Shriver has been recognized as one of five 2022 Best Novel finalists for her novel Should We Stay Or Should We Go.

Continue reading Meet the author: Lionel Shriver, a Prometheus Best Novel finalist for Should We Stay Or Should We Go