![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/promotheus-award-desktop-cover.jpeg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>Members typically keep their rankings private, while the LFS vote-counting committee maintains strict confidentiality about the results, aside from the announcement of the winners. Today, though, on the verge of the midnight July 4 voting deadline, one LFS member chose to post a YouTube video explaining his rankings.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s the latest yeoman effort by novelist John C.A. Manley, who throughout this past awards-finalist season has repeatedly helped raise the visibility of the Prometheus Awards by posting YouTube discussions of award finalists and by reviewing each Best Novel finalist on his BlazingPineCones website.<\/p>\n
\u201cHelp promote the fiction you want to see in the world,\u201d Manley said in his email today to BlazingPineCones subscribers.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s an apt statement, which helps illuminates his (and our) vision of why the Prometheus Awards is important and clarifies why Manley has invested so much time and energy this year in highlighting our award.
\n<\/b>
\nSo how did Manley, himself a Prometheus Best Novel nominee for All the Humans Are Sleeping<\/i>, rank the five Best Novel finalists?
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\nMANLEY\u2019S SUSPENSEFUL COUNTDOWN<\/b><\/p>\n
To find out, what his short video on YouTube<\/a>, Rumble<\/a>, BitChute<\/a>, Instagram<\/a> and X<\/a>. To enhance the suspense, Manley begins by revealing his fifth-ranked choice first, moving up in succession to discussions of his fourth-ranked, third-ranked and second-ranked choices before revealing which finalist is his favorite.<\/p>\n As a reminder, here are the Best Novel finalists in brief, in alphabetical order by author: Storm-Dragon<\/a>,<\/i> by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press); War by Other Means<\/a>, <\/i>by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press); No Man\u2019s Land,<\/i><\/a> by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press); A Kiss for Damocles<\/a>,<\/i> by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press); and Powerless<\/a>,<\/i> by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)<\/p>\n Which of the finalists is Manley\u2019s favorite?<\/p>\n And which novel will win this year\u2019s Prometheus Award for Best Novel?<\/p>\n To answer the first question, watch Manley\u2019s video.<\/p>\n To find out the answer to the second question, stay tuned to the Prometheus blog and the LFS website, where this year\u2019s awards news should be posted within the next week.<\/p>\n BELIEF VERSUS IDEOLOGY IN TURTLEDOVE\u2019S POWERLESS<\/b><\/p>\n In the two-minute video, they explore \u201cBelief Versus Ideology in Harry Turtledove\u2019s Alternate History.”<\/p>\n Set James Corbett and I discuss just that \u2014 as part of a review of Harry Turtledove’s novel, Powerless (an alternative history in which the United States of America has become a collection of Soviet-ruled communist nations)…<\/p>\n \u201cIdeology doesn\u2019t specifically refer to beliefs. It refers to a group belief system,\u201d Manley said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with having your own beliefs\u2026 but the thing is, the problem is that no one in this society is allowed to have their own beliefs, or allowed to report that they have their own beliefs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Inspired by Vaclav Havel\u2019s classic essay \u201cPower of the Powerless,\u201d Turtledove sets his novel decades ago in a communist America where small moments of defiance or quiet resistance to governmental repression have unexpectedly big consequences.<\/p>\n Set in the western United States dominated by a Soviet-Union-fostered socialist tyranny, the novel begins with one shopkeeper\u2019s impulsive and fed-up act of taking down from his grocery storefront window a required propaganda poster expressing solidarity with the state revolution.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have to take on the beliefs of what (Vaclav) Havel called a sacralized religion\u2026 rather than their own opinions about reality,\u201d Manley said.<\/p>\n Kudos to Manley (and to Corbett) for devoting so many videos, podcast discussions and reviews to this year\u2019s Best Novel finalists.<\/p>\n If every LFS member had similar means to discuss and promote our awards on videos and blogs as Manley has done, the Prometheus Awards might well be even more widely known and better understood.<\/p>\n ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS<\/b><\/p>\n *\u00a0Join us!<\/b> To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, \u00a0join<\/a> the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.<\/p>\n * Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/b>For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced \u00a0Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0on 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\u2019 distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.<\/p>\n *\u00a0Watch 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\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/a><\/p>\n * Read \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/a> an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/i>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n * Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Michael Grossberg How do Libertarian Futurist Society members rank the Best Novel finalists as they fill out the final Prometheus Awards ballot? Members typically keep their rankings private, while the LFS vote-counting committee maintains strict confidentiality about the results, aside from the announcement of the winners. Today, though, on the verge of the midnight … Continue reading Voting for the Prometheus Awards: How one LFS member ranked his Best Novel ballot (revealed on a YouTube video) on the verge of tonight\u2019s July 4 deadline\u2028<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,1585],"tags":[414,2888,2719,46,2889,2624],"class_list":["post-11094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-award-standards","category-fiction-in-the-news","tag-best-novel-finalists","tag-manley","tag-powerless","tag-prometheus-awards","tag-turtledove","tag-voting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-2SW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11094"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11099,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11094\/revisions\/11099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n<\/b>For each finalist, Manley picks the book off his living-room shelf and shows its cover as he begins discussing its merits. His discussions are frank, detailing what he loved (and didn\u2019t love) about each novel.<\/p>\n<\/a>Meanwhile, in a previously posted video, Manley discusses an interesting aspect of Powerless <\/i><\/a>on The Corbett Report with James Corbett.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n