Best of the blog 2024, part three: Reviews of Naomi Kritzer’s controversial Liberty’s Daughter, Wil McCarthy’s first-contact sequel Beggar’s Sky, Sandra Newman’s Orwell-inspired Julia, and Salman Rushdie’s liberal/libertarian novel Victory City


By Michael Grossberg

While most reviews published on the Prometheus blog tend to focus on our Best Novel or Best Classic Fiction finalists or winners, other works deserve attention, too.

As time permits, and when nominated (or nominatable) works capture our attention and stimulate both enjoyment and further thoughts, we strive to bring it to the attention of Libertarian Futurist Society members and the wider public by writing about it – hopefully, in ways that make it clear how the work is relevant to Prometheus Award themes.

Here are excerpts from four such novels of note that we reviewed in 2024 – and that continue to deserve recognition and wide readership:

Continue reading Best of the blog 2024, part three: Reviews of Naomi Kritzer’s controversial Liberty’s Daughter, Wil McCarthy’s first-contact sequel Beggar’s Sky, Sandra Newman’s Orwell-inspired Julia, and Salman Rushdie’s liberal/libertarian novel Victory City


Review: Salman Rushdie’s Victory City affirms the virtues of liberty, trade and tolerance in a mythological historical fantasy about the cycles of civilization

By Michael Grossberg

Salman Rushdie, the courageous author acclaimed worldwide for both his fiction and personal courage in affirming libertarian values from artistic freedom and freedom of speech/press to the right of dissent, has written a wise and haunting novel in Victory City.


Rushdie’s historical fantasy – a Best Novel nominee for the next Prometheus Award – makes a poignant and powerful case for liberty as a key ingredient in the constellation of value and virtues that support human flourishing and the never-to-be-taken-for-granted rise of civilization.

Continue reading Review: Salman Rushdie’s Victory City affirms the virtues of liberty, trade and tolerance in a mythological historical fantasy about the cycles of civilization

Salman Rushdie’s Victory City, C.T. Rwizi’s House of Gold and R.H. Snow’s Trail of Travail: Guide to the 2024 Best Novel nominees, Part 4

By Michael Grossberg

* A mythologized historical fable of the cyclic struggle for civilization by a world-renowned British-born Indian-American novelist.

* An Afrofuturist science-fiction story of oligarchy and resistance by an African-born and American-raised writer.

* And the latest sequel in a post-apocalyptic dystopian wild-west Texas saga of genetic manipulation and individualistic resilience by a Texas writer.

Those are just three of 17 wide-ranging sf/fantasy novels published in 2023 and nominated for the next Prometheus Award – a sample of the remarkable variety in subjects, themes, genres and styles possible in stories that explore in different ways pro-liberty, anti-tyranny, anti-slavery or other anti-authoritarian themes.

Here is Part 4 of the Prometheus Blog guide to the Best Novel nominees, with capsule descriptions to whet your appetite for Salman Rushdie’s Victory City, C.T. Rwizi’s House of Gold and R.H. Snow’s Trail of Travail.

Continue reading Salman Rushdie’s Victory City, C.T. Rwizi’s House of Gold and R.H. Snow’s Trail of Travail: Guide to the 2024 Best Novel nominees, Part 4

17 works of science fiction, fantasy and dystopian literature are nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel

Libertarian Futurist Society members have made 17 nominations for the Best Novel category of the next Prometheus Award.

Of the authors whose works are nominated, a majority are being recognized for the first time by the LFS and the Prometheus Awards.

Ten novelists are being recognized for the first time with Prometheus nominations. Listed in alphabetical order, those authors are Stephen Albrecht, Devon Eriksen, Howard Andrew Jones, Naomi Kritzer, Paul Lynch, Sandra Newman, Salman Rushdie, C. T. Rwizi, Fenton Wood and Alan Zimm.

Continue reading 17 works of science fiction, fantasy and dystopian literature are nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel

British publisher backtracks, “saves” Roald Dahl’s uncut classics (but don’t breathe sighs of relief just yet)

By Michael Grossberg

Good news for lovers of liberty, culture and artistic integrity: Matilda, The Witches, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Roald Dahl’s other children’s classics will continue to be published and reprinted in their original uncensored forms.

That sudden and welcome reversal (see our previous blog post) is thanks to a remarkably wide range of principled and thoughtful responses from across the political spectrum objecting to the plans by the late great Dahl’s cowardly and conformist British publisher to bowdlerize his bestselling children’s classics in doctored reprints.

Continue reading British publisher backtracks, “saves” Roald Dahl’s uncut classics (but don’t breathe sighs of relief just yet)

Politics undermines the purpose of art, according to an insightful American Purpose essay (but let’s agree to disagree over Atlas Shrugged)

By Michael Grossberg
Libertarian futurists dream of unleashing the potential of every person to flourish, cooperate, innovate, progress, profit and pursue their happiness in peace and freedom – both here on earth, and perhaps eventually, beyond.

Yet, the politicization of society and increasingly, of our culture and arts, threatens that goal – and in the long run, undermines civility and could destroy civilization itself if this disturbing trend approaches authoritarian extremes.

American Purpose magazine logo

In a thought-provoking article “Enslaving Art to Politics,” published recently in American Purpose magazine, writer Daniel Ross Goodman argues persuasively against the “politicization of literature.”

His essay should interest Libertarian Futurist Society members, even when Goodman makes some points about particular works and artists that we might respectfully disagree with.

“The best novelists, like all great artists, are not narrow-minded agenda-driven partisans but adventurers in the unbounded universe of the human imagination, who, through their fictions, help us better perceive vital truths about ourselves and our reality,” Goodman wrote in late September in the online magazine.

Continue reading Politics undermines the purpose of art, according to an insightful American Purpose essay (but let’s agree to disagree over Atlas Shrugged)