Editor’s note: LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg, who chairs the Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee, presented the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel to J. Kenton Pierce for A Kiss for Damocles. This is the first in a series of posts celebrating the 46th Prometheus Awards ceremony, with separate articles devoted to each Aug. 16 speech by winners and presenters.
Since the Prometheus Award was first presented in 1979, 47 books have won Best Novel. Today, we will honor a 48th.
One of the oldest fan-based sf/fantasy awards after the Hugos and Nebulas, the Prometheus Awards are distinctive in their dual focus on both liberty and literary quality. While quite a few Prometheus-winning works have also won Hugo and Nebula awards, only the Libertarian Futurist Society annually recognizes fantastical fiction that consistently champions respect for human rights – even for that smallest oppressed minority, the individual.
Of the more than 100 novels, novellas, stories and other media that have won a Prometheus Award in all categories over the past 47 years, many dramatize the perennial tensions between Liberty and Power – reflecting the wise words of the 19th-century classical liberal Lord Acton that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Other winning works explore the many ways that cooperation — including through free markets — offers voluntary, ethical and practical alternatives to coercion, especially the institutionalized coercion of the unlimited State.
Some works depict dystopian futures that expose the authoritarian extremes of Left or Right, while others imagine better and free-er futures.
In weaving such libertarian themes into compelling narratives, this year’s Best Novel finalists seem especially impressive to me, and according to an informal consensus of Best Novel judges and other LFS members.
I want to thank my fellow judges volunteering to serve on the Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee for their dedication. They considered more than four dozen candidates identified by LFS members, of which 14 novels were judged good enough to merit nomination.
Our committee spent months reading and debating the nominees to select the slate of finalists for the wider membership’s final vote to determine the winner.
As I read this year’s finalists, their stories frequently reminded me of an insight by Pulitzer-winning historians Will and Ariel Durant, who wrote the bestselling 11-volume work The Story of Civilization:
“Civilization begins with the first voluntary act and ends with the last.”
Here are the 2026 Best Novel finalists:
Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press)
War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press)
No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press)
A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press)
Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)
And the winner is A Kiss for Damocles.
Launching Pierce’s Tales From the Long Night series, the novel revolves around Shai, a young female homesteader on a colony planet, as she and her frontier community confront harsh post-apocalyptic conditions, corrupt Townie politics, and orbiting AI weapons that prevent surface use of advanced technology.
A Kiss for Damocles offers a cautionary tale about the deceptive rhetoric of a command-and-control ideology, reflected in the Townies’ push to extend their rule over homesteaders through higher taxes, fiat money and state takeover of education to indoctrinate children.
But Pierce also deepens our appreciation for the self-reliance and resilience of frontier communities as free women and men forge hard-won progress in overcoming adversity.
Above all, A Kiss for Damocles offers a realistic vision of free trade and self-defense as the best foundation for building — or rebuilding — civilization.
Remarkably, Pierce has won a Prometheus for his first novel – against stiff competition from the other finalists, all written by respected past Best Novel winners.
Congrats, Mr. Pierce!
We’re thrilled to present you with your first Prometheus award.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Michael Grossberg, who co-founded the Libertarian Futurist Society in 1982 to sustain the Prometheus Awards, is an award-winning journalist with a half-century career as a theater critic, film critic, feature writer and arts reporter. He retired from The Columbus Dispatch in 2023. Michael serves on the LFS board as Secretary and chairs the Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee.
A Houston native who attended Rice University and Goddard College and has two degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, Grossberg has lived since 1985 in Columbus, Ohio.
He organized LFScon and LFScon II, the organization’s first conventions, both held as part of Marcon, Columbus’ annual SF/fantasy convention.
Grossberg has written for Reason, Libertarian Review and Private Practice magazines and contributed essays to five books, including annual editions of the Burns Mantle theater reference book and an essay afterword to the paperback edition of J. Neil Schulman’s Prometheus-winning novel The Rainbow Cadenza.
Michael has been married since 2023 to Dick Engdahl. Their family includes Buddy, a six-year-old German Shepherd who keeps nudging his nose under Michael’s arms when he’s trying to type on his computer.
ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of the 106 works that have won a Prometheus since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
