Reading tips: How to enhance your participation during the Prometheus Awards’ peak voting season


By Michael Grossberg

Without a commitment to reading, the Prometheus Awards couldn’t have been sustained for 46 years. That commitment is about to be put to the test, once again.

To assist Prometheus voters, we offer below a few tips to enhance your reading habits amid life’s busy home and work demands.

This is a timely moment to offer such encouragement. After a considerable degree of reading, discussion and related efforts by the LFS’ two awards-finalist-judging committees over the past half year or more, we are now on the verge of entering the final stage of judging the Prometheus Awards.

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Review: Alastair Reynolds’ Machine Vendetta blends space opera and a police procedural with kaleidoscopic world-building that explores liberty and diversity


By Michael Grossberg

A hidden threat to humanity’s independence and very existence energizes Machine Vendetta, one of 11 2024 novels nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Both an epic space opera and a detective-driven murder mystery, the Orbit US novel by British author Alastair Reynolds is of additional interest to freedom-loving SF fans because of the intriguing implications of its quasi-libertarian world-building.

A deft SF police procedural with a twisty plot and credible characters who have legitimate reasons to mistrust central authorities, Machine Vendetta gradually expands into a wider drama about a desperate struggle to preserve humanity’s freedom.

Continue reading Review: Alastair Reynolds’ Machine Vendetta blends space opera and a police procedural with kaleidoscopic world-building that explores liberty and diversity


Storm-Dragon: Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer publishes new action-adventure-SF novel in Heinlein-juvenile tradition

By Michael Grossberg

An illustration in Dave Freer’s novel Storm-Dragon (Image provided by author

Prometheus winner Dave Freer has a new novel coming out soon.

Storm-Dragon, to be published April 11, 2025, by Raconteur Press, is a relatively short novel (with illustrations) geared toward a young-adult audience – and especially targeted at boys and teenagers.

“It is my attempt at writing a Heinlein “Juvie” – a book aimed specifically at teen boys (not their scene) to get them interested in sf,” Freer said in an email from his home base Down Under in the Australian state of Tasmania.

Continue reading Storm-Dragon: Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer publishes new action-adventure-SF novel in Heinlein-juvenile tradition

Best Novel finalist review: Danny King’s Cancelled envisions true-believer excesses of a dystopian New Britannia

By Steve Gaalema and Michael Grossberg

Oh, what a brave new world Danny King charts in Cancelled – now a Best Novel finalist.

Framed initially as a visionary utopia that fully embraces love, inclusion, social justice, and a triumphant institutionalization of progressive-left politics maybe not that far beyond current norms, this New Britannia initially might seem appealing.

Yet, cracks inevitably appear in the facade, as hidden realities are revealed in this gripping SF-enhanced dystopian fable, one of 11 2024 novels nominated for the next Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Continue reading Best Novel finalist review: Danny King’s Cancelled envisions true-believer excesses of a dystopian New Britannia

Forster, Bradbury, Heinlein, Le Guin, Vonnegut stories ranked among the 26 best SF stories by New Scientist


By Michael Grossberg

Several Prometheus-recognized authors are included on New Scientist’s intriguing list of the 26 best science fiction/fantasy stories of all time.

Ray Bradbury (Creative Commons license)

E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” is the only story on the magazine’s list previously inducted into the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Prometheus Hall of Fame. Yet, several other enduring and Prometheus-winning authors have classic stories on the magazine’s list – just not the ones our award has recognized.

Among them: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Ursula K. Le Guin and Kurt Vonnegut.

It’s interesting to see which of their stories are recognized by the magazine, and why.

Continue reading Forster, Bradbury, Heinlein, Le Guin, Vonnegut stories ranked among the 26 best SF stories by New Scientist


Review: Stuart Turton’s The Last Murder at the End of the World offers post-apocalyptic mystery about dangers of absolute power and misconceived utopianism

By Michael Grossberg and Charlie Morrison

A genre-smashing, bestselling and award-winning novelist, Stuart Turton is widely hailed for his speculative tales of mystery, imagination and human complexity.

The Last Murder at the End of the World, one of 11 Prometheus Best Novel nominees from 2024 and the first work by Turton recognized by our awards, offers the satisfactions of several types of works in one strange but compelling hybrid.

It’s an ingenious murder mystery, an imaginative work of science fiction/fantasy, a suspenseful story of survival, a cautionary dystopian tale, a haunting memory piece and a gripping drama.

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Best Novel finalist review: Lionel Shriver’s Mania offers cautionary tale about an alternate America denying differences in intelligence


By Michael Grossberg

Lionel Shriver, arguably the world’s greatest living libertarian novelist, has found another timely subject worthy of her illuminating insight and piercing wit.

Living up to her iconoclastic reputation, the British-American novelist finds satirical, intensely dramatic and gut-wrenchingly personal dimensions to bring to life in Mania.

The cautionary fable depicts a slightly different but recognizable contemporary world where good intentions have gone terribly astray.

Set in the recent past and present but in a wryly revealing alternate history, Mania portrays an America taken over by a new ideology: the Mental Parity movement.

Warning: Any resemblances to any cultlike trends or movements of today or just yesterday are purely intentional.

Continue reading Best Novel finalist review: Lionel Shriver’s Mania offers cautionary tale about an alternate America denying differences in intelligence


David Friedman: Why isn’t one of the leading libertarian theorists better known as a fantasy novelist?


By Michael Grossberg

Most economists, legal experts, academics and libertarian theorists focus on the real world, not fantasy or science fiction.

Yet, David Friedman, the free-market economist, retired professor, physicist and legal scholar who’s written a variety of wide-ranging nonfiction books and textbooks, is also a lifelong science fiction fan and acclaimed fantasy author.

Friedman, who recently agreed to speak as a presenter in August at the 45th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony, probably should be better known – and more widely read – as a fantasy novelist within the broad and overlapping circles of SF/fantasy fans and Libertarian Futurist Society members.

Continue reading David Friedman: Why isn’t one of the leading libertarian theorists better known as a fantasy novelist?


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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A guide before voting: Our reviews of this year’s four Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists

By Michael Grossberg

For the convenience of LFS members and a guide to this year’s Prometheus Awards, the Prometheus Blog has now posted reviews of all four of the 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, are invited to read (or reread) our reviews of the 2025 finalists: Poul Anderson’s novel Orion Shall Rise, Rudyard Kipling’s story “As Easy as A.B.C.,” the Rush song “The Trees” and Charles Stross’ novel Singularity Sky.

Other science fiction and fantasy fans, outside the LFS, also may wish to check out the reviews to appreciate these works and to better understand how they fit the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Awards on both quality and liberty.

Continue reading A guide before voting: Our reviews of this year’s four Prometheus Hall of Fame finalists