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.
LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD: “Very good”
Friedman singled out Lois McMaster Bujold as one of the best sf writers, who has a deep understanding of both politics and economics.
Bujold’s Falling Free – a Nebula-winning sf novel exploring free will, self-ownership, the rights of “manufactured beings” and the legal and ethical implications of human genetic engineer – was inducted in 2014 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
“I think Bujold is very good,” Friedman said.
L. NEIL SMITH: “A lot of fun” (with reservations)
Before asking Friedman a question about five-time Prometheus winner L. Neil Smith, LFS member Max More praised his pioneering book The Machinery of Freedom, which argues on pragmatic grounds for a fully free society and free markets under his empirical model of anarcho-capitalism as a functional and widely beneficial alternative to statism.
Friedman’s influential libertarian classic was only the second book on libertarianism that More had read at 17, he said, after Murray Rothbard (For a New Liberty, Conceived in Liberty, What Has Government Done to Our Money?, Power and Market, etc.)
More asked Friedman what he thought of the novels of L. Neil Smith, “who I find really is a lot of fun.”
For reference, Smith (1946-2021) won his first Prometheus award in 1982 for his libertarian-movement bestseller The Probability Broach.
Zestful and rambunctious in the Wild West spirit, Smith’s sci-fi multiverse adventure pits a near-future United States dominated by arrogant “Hamiltonian” statists against the anarcho-capitalists of a different timeline where American history developed in a drastically different and more libertarian direction.
Smith won his second Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Pallas in 1994 and his third Best Novel award in 2001 for The Forge of the Elders.
In 2005, Smith and artist-illustrator Scott Bieser received a Special Prometheus award for The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel.
And in 2016, Smith received a Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Friedman said while he’s only read the early novels of Smith, he had some issues with how they dramatized libertarian themes.
“I had serious reservations about The Probability Broach,” Friedman said.
“It seemed to me to be too one-sided, too much imaginary, a kind of story with everything going the way the libertarians wanted… I gather that his later books are better.”
J. NEIL SCHULMAN: A FRIEND AND FILMMAKER
Friedman also mentioned two-time Prometheus winner J. Neil Schulman (1953-2019), best known for Alongside Night (inducted in 1989 into the Hall of Fame) and The Rainbow Cadenza (the 1984 Best Novel winner.)
“Neil was a friend,” Friedman said, adding that he enjoyed playing a bit part in the independent-film version of Alongside Night that Schulman produced and directed.
The 2014 feature film, available on Amazon Video and Amazon Prime and as a Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack, starred Kevin Sorbo, Jake Busey, Tim Russ, Garrett Want, Mara Marini and Gary Graham.
“I played a fictionalized version of a character who was more or less based on my father (the Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman) accepting a Nobel Prize. It was a two-minute bit,” Friedman said.
“It was just a bit part, but it was fun to see how movies are made,” he said.
Friedman said that he’d never realized, for example, that the person doing the costumes for the movie is constantly thinking about the mood that’s appropriate and “what emotional effects any particular costume will get.”
He also was fascinated to see that movies are often shot out of order, in terms of their stories.
“Of course, they don’t record movies in sequential scenes. they don’t record them in order of the scenes, but in the order of the scenes with the same characters or maybe wearing the same clothes, for convenience.”
“I’m grateful to Neil for letting me participate in that.”
HEINLEIN, AND Friedman’s MYSTERY THEORY
Friedman, a fan of Robert Heinlein, mentioned that he’d met the bestselling Grand Master sf author once or twice.
A nine-time Prometheus Hall of Fame winner for Best Classic Fiction, Heinlein was recognized for his novels The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Strangers in a Strange Land, Red Planet, Methuselah’s Children, Time Enough for Love and Citizen of the Galaxy and for his stories “Requiem,” “Coventry” and “Free Men.”
“I was told that he rejected my theory that The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (one of the first two works inducted in 1983 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame) is actually a mystery novel,” Friedman said.
“… The mystery is who kills the computer. You’re supposed to be able to figure it out from internal evidence. But Neil Schulman told me that he checked with Heinlein and that wasn’t true.
“But it was a lovely theory, one I could expand on another occasion.”
NAOMI NOVIK: An “addictive” series
Friedman volunteered that he has “somewhat mixed” views of Naomi Novik, one of his current favorite fantasy novelists.
Perhaps Novik is best known for her bestselling Temeraire series, about a rare bond formed between a young man and a dragon, who together must battle in the Napoleonic wars.
The novels in Novik’s 9-book series include His Majesty’s Dragon (Book One), Throne of Jade (Book Two), Black Powder War (Book Three), Empire of Ivory (Book Four), Victory of Eagles (Book Five), Tongues of Serpents (Book Six), Crucible of Gold (Book Seven), Blood of Tyrants (Book Eight) and League of Dragons (Book Nine, the final volume in the series.)
“She’s an addictive writer, with one of the best series,” Friedman said, smiling, “but a writer who I have mixed feeling, issues and reservations about, I suppose, from being a libertarian.”
Any other writers Friedman likes?
“There are a number of good writers, but one result of being 80 years old is remembering them. Because of my memory, I sometimes block on names,” he said.
“So there are probably other authors that I’m forgetting.”
WATCH THE 45TH PROMETHEUS AWARDS CEREMONY
* Watch the full 45-minute video of the 45th Prometheus Awards ceremony, which was recorded, posted on YouTube and is available to see here.
ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS AND THE LFS
* 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 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 more than 100 past winners 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.
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