By Michael Grossberg
For me as a boy, The Star Dwellers was revelatory.
An idealistic drama about a fraught “second contact” between Earth humans and ancient aliens, James Blish’s 1961 novel sparked my thinking about ethics, economics and politics.
I couldn’t have imagined at the time what reading yet another Young Adult science fiction novel would lead me to, but ultimately The Star Dwellers paved the way for me to develop into a full-fledged libertarian by the early 1970s.
“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.
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.
As a guide to the Prometheus Awards and for the convenience of Libertarian Futurist Society members, the Prometheus Blog has once again published full-length and in-depth reviews of all of this year’s Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists for Best Classic Fiction.
Libertarian Futurist Society members, who have the right to vote to select the annual Best Classic Fiction winner from the finalists, are invited to read our reviews of the five novels selected as 2026 finalists – hopefully, to whet your appetite to read each finalist and vote in this year’s Prometheus Awards.
First published between 1932 and 2003, the five finalists were written by James Blish (The Star Dwellers), C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), Adam Roberts (Salt) and Charles Stross (Singularity Sky).
Other SF/fantasy fans and other libertarians, outside the LFS, also are invited to check out the reviews to better understand how they fit the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Awards on both quality and liberty.
Fresh titles dominate this year’s slate of just-announced finalists for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.
This year’s five finalists – first published between 1932 and 2003 – include novels by James Blish (The Star Dwellers), C.S. Lewis (That Hideous Strength), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World), Adam Roberts (Salt) and Charles Stross (Singularity Sky).
Blish and Roberts are first-time Hall of Fame nominees, while this is the first time that Huxley’s classic dystopian novel has been recognized as a finalist.
Blish, a Hugo-winning author widely admired in the 1950s and 1960s during the peak of the so-called Golden Age of modern sf, has never before been nominated for the Prometheus Award – perhaps in retrospect a major omission that at last has been corrected.
Although Huxley’s classic dystopian novel was nominated during the first decade of our awards in the 1980s, this is the first nomination for Brave New World in roughly four decades.
Fizzy with ideas and brimming with American idealism, James Blish was widely recognized during the Golden Age of science fiction as a major writer.
One of his best novels, in my view, is The Star Dwellers, first published in 1961 and now nominated for the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.
Relatively short at 128 pages in the Avon Books paperback and clearly written as a so-called “SF juvenile” yet still rich with insights, Blish’s novel revolves around a fraught “second contact” between humans and an ancient, extremely advanced alien species.
Highlighted at the story’s center are the closely linked concepts of consent and contract – two of the most fundamental ideas at the foundation of both libertarianism and classical liberalism.
