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 novelrevolves arounda 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.
“People come to libertarianism through fiction. They come through Ayn Rand… Robert Heinlein…. L. Neil Smith.”
– Libertarian feminist author Wendy McElroy at the 2000 Prometheus Awards ceremony
For quite a few libertarians, “It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand.” Or Robert Heinlein. Or other freedom-loving science fiction writers.
James Blish in the 1960s (Creative Commons license)
For me, though, my introduction to libertarian and classical-liberal ideas and ideals began earlier – at least in part – with James Blish.
Specifically, Blish’s The Star Dwellers.
When I read Blish’s 1961 novel as a pre-teen in the early 1960s, I came to understand for the first time key insights about voluntary consent and mutual exchange for profit as the best foundation for peace and progress.
Now a finalist for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award for Best Classic Fiction, The Star Dwellers is a young-adult-oriented science fiction novel that revolves around a fraught “second contact” between star-faring humans and an ancient, advanced alien species.
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.
C.J. Cherryh (File photo)
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?
As we look back at what was published on the Prometheus Blog over the past year, it’s hard to pick the very best articles and reports to highlight.
Among our more sustained efforts, we launched an awards-standards series, with essays by William Stoddard and Eric Raymond exploring the criteria for Prometheus nominations, and devoted an 11-part series to analyzing the pros and cons of the increasing popularity of sequels in pop culture and in our awards.
Novelist Michael Flynn at an sf convention several decades ago (File photo)
Yet in this final of three “Best of the Blog” posts highlighting some of our best work of 2025, reporting on our 45th awards ceremony may rank highest.
For the first time in the history of the Prometheus Awards, the Best Novel winner was recognized posthumously. While we continue to mourn the passing of Michael Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, this year’s well-deserved award for his final novel In the Belly of the Whale paved the way for one of our most emotional and inspirational acceptance speeches.
Besides the late great Michael Flynn, Arc Manor Books has published quite a few other Prometheus-winning authors – including Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, L. Neil Smith, Harry Turtledove and Jack Williamson.
Two of Arc Manor’s major imprints are CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, launched in 2020 with a “new” previously unpublished novel by Robert A. Heinlein, and Phoenix Pick, which reprints classic SF and Fantasy “from the ashes” of other publishing houses, with some new titles.
Thus, the Maryland-based small-press, created by Shahid Mahmud in 2006 to utilize the exciting new emerging technologies being developed in the publishing marketplace, should be better known, especially by Libertarian Futurist Society members and other freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
E.M. Forster isn’t the only Prometheus-recognized author on New Scientist’s intriguing list of the 26 best science fiction/fantasy stories of all time.
Kurt Vonnegut in 1972 (Creative Commons license)
Although Forster’s “The Machine Stop” is the only story on the list specifically inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame, as described in a recent Prometheus blog post, several other enduring authors have stories on the magazine’s list – just not the ones our award has recognized.
Ursula K. Le Guin (Creative Commons license)
Among those writers: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin and Kurt Vonnegut.
It’s interesting to see which of their stories are recognized by the magazine, and why.
David Friedman, a guest presenter at the 45th Prometheus Awards show, is a regular reader of science fiction and fantasy – and the prominent economist and leading libertarian theorist has been influenced in his thinking by several Prometheus-winning authors.
So it’s interesting to hear Friedman’s views on a variety of sf/fantasy writers, which he shared in response to questions at the end of the Aug. 30, 2025, awards ceremony.
In addition to Poul Anderson (the 2025 Hall of Fame winner for Orion Shall Rise), Robert Heinlein, Jerry Pournelle and Vernor Vinge (Prometheus-winning writers that Friedman discussed during his main speech), Friedman offered comments and insights on the novels of Prometheus winners Lois McMaster Bujold, L. Neil Smith, J. Neil Schulman, C.J. Cherryh (highlighted in a previous blog), Heinlein and other sf/fantasy writers.
David D. Friedman added excitement and intellectual stimulation as the guest presenter at the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony.
David Friedman (Photo provided by Friedman)
A leading libertarian theorist (The Machinery of Freedom), economist (Price Theory: An Intermediate Text) and law-and-economics professor (Law’s Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters), David is also a Prometheus-nominated sf/fantasy novelist (Harald, Salamander, Brothers).
Friedman presented the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction during the Aug. 30 ceremony. Here is the text of his speech, which followed an introduction by LFS President William (Bill) Stoddard.
By David D. Friedman
Bill mentioned my friend Vernor Vinge, who is in part responsible for my writing my second novel.
I described to him my idea for that and for the alternative, a sequel to my first novel (Harald, a 2007 Prometheus Best Novel nominee). He thought Salamander would more interesting, so I wrote it. He was right.
I thought I’d start by saying a little about what I’ve learned relevant to libertarianism from science fiction.
As some of you may know, Vernor’s story “The Ungoverned” (inducted in 1994 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame) is about a stateless society, modeled on my ideas, being invaded by an adjacent state.
Seeing that society through the eyes of a novelist rather than an economist showed me things about it that would not have occurred to me….
Imagine human colonies on the moon, restless and on the precipice of a revolution against increasingly intrusive Earth authorities.
Robert Heinlein famously imagined such a scenario in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of his four Hugo Awardwinning novels and one of the first two works inducted in 1983 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.
So did Travis Corcoran, the only author to win back-to-back Prometheus awards for Best Novel for The Powers of the Earth (in 2018) and its sequel Causes of Separation (in 2019.)
Yet, the lunar-revolution scenario mentioned above also describes Dust Mites: The Siege of Airlock Three, James Bacon’s 2022 SF novel.
Winning literary awards and receiving rave reviews can boost the careers of novelists, by raising their visibility and enhancing their reputation. That’s sadly no longer fully possible for the late great Michael Flynn.
Michael Flynn, a three-time Prometheus Best Novel winner (Creative Commons license)
Flynn, who died in 2023 at 75, recently was announced in an LFS press release as the 2025 winner of the Prometheus Award for Best Novel for In the Belly of the Whale.
His epic social novel, a sobering drama about challenges and conflicts among the crew on a vast colony ship two centuries into a projected eight-century voyage to settle Tau Ceti, was the last novel Flynn wrote before his death.
Published in 2024 by CAEZIK SF & Fantasy, Flynn’s novel has garnered some attention – especially an extraordinary review in Locus magazine (excerpted below) that amounts to a mea culpa for previously overlooking and underestimating Flynn.
Yet, both during his five-decade writing career and after his passing, Flynn has not garnered as much attention and appreciation from other critics and mainstream publications as I think the author and his last book deserve.
Shahid Mahmud, CAEZIK founder-publisher and a huge enthusiast for Flynn’s fiction, agrees. Mahmud tells me that he considers Flynn one of the most underestimated science fiction writers of his generation.
Storm-Dragon, a 2026 Prometheus Best Novel finalist, offers an entertaining tale embodying golden-age SF themes of initiative, imagination, resilience and self-reliance.
