Leading libertarian thinker and fantasy author David Friedman to speak at the 45th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony


By Michael Grossberg

David Friedman (Creative Commons license)

David Friedman, the influential economist, legal scholar, libertarian theorist and novelist, has graciously agreed to speak and present a category at this year’s 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony.

Friedman is best known for his academic scholarship and for The Machinery of Freedom, his pioneering libertarian classic. With an empirical focus on the practical solutions to many social problems that private markets can address optimally, and far better than governments, Friedman’s nonfiction book had a major impact on the early libertarian movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

Yet, Friedman is also a science fiction fan and a novelist who has written three fantasy novels, apt and additional reasons the Libertarian Futurist Society board of directors invited him to speak and present the Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction at our 2025 Prometheus Awards ceremony.

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War, centralization, good intentions gone wrong: Poul Anderson’s “No Truce with Kings,” the 2010 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner

Here is the Prometheus Blog Appreciation for Poul Anderson’s story, “No Truce with Kings,” the 2010 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction.

By William H. Stoddard

In David Friedman’s first book, the libertarian classic The Machinery of Freedom, the first entry in the bibliography describes Poul Anderson’s “No Truce with Kings”: “A libertarian novelette that plays fair. The bad guys are good guys too. But wrong.”

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Smart self-defense in anarcho-capitalist society: Vernor Vinge’s “The Ungoverned,” the 2004 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner

Here’s the Prometheus Blog appreciation of Vernor Vinge’s story “The Ungoverned,” the 2004 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction.

By Michael Grossberg

“The Ungoverned” is one of the rare sf stories to portray a plausible and fully libertarian society. Moreover, Vernor Vinge does so with intelligence, subtlety, vision and enjoyable narrative twists.

Set in the ungoverned lands of a recovering future Kansas after a social collapse, Vernor Vinge’s 1985 novella focuses on what happens when New Mexico’s statist government tries to invade anarchist-libertarian Kansas with unexpected results.

Continue reading Smart self-defense in anarcho-capitalist society: Vernor Vinge’s “The Ungoverned,” the 2004 Prometheus Hall of Fame winner