FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 14, 2026

2026 PROMETHEUS AWARD FINALISTS CHOSEN FOR BEST NOVEL

Works by Dave Freer, Karl K. Gallagher, Sarah Hoyt, J. Kenton Pierce and Harry Turtledove selected as finalists

The Libertarian Futurist Society, a nonprofit all-volunteer international organization of liberty-loving science fiction/fantasy fans, has announced five finalists for the Best Novel category of the Prometheus Awards.

Here are the Best Novel finalists in brief, in alphabetical order by author: 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); and Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.) Full-length reviews of each Best Novel finalist, explaining how each fits the distinctive focus of the Prometheus Awards, have been (or soon will be) posted on the Prometheus Blog. Meanwhile, here are capsule descriptions of all five finalists:

• Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press): The Young Adult science fiction novel centers on a boy who saves and adopts an intelligent alien pet on an ocean-dominated colony planet with dangers both alien and human. In the spirit of Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky and Alan Dean Foster’s Flinx novels, the story centers on Skut and Podge, two resourceful middle-school boys from refugee families. As they make friends in their new home, the boys confront class bullies and repressive teachers, cope with mob behavior and navigate the ocean’s tricky shores. In the process, they interact and communicate more with their orphaned young “dragon,” an electrosensitive six-limbed alien creature who may be more intelligent and formidable than it appears. Aimed primarily at ages 8 to 18 and avoiding explicit ideology, the novel gradually expands to include parents, administrators and other adults enmeshed in the colony town’s increasingly corrupt politics, which threatens livelihoods through onerous regulations, taxes and property confiscations. Ultimately, a violent invasion from human raiders threatens the colonists’ broader rights. With a strong career background in fishing and oceanography, Freer focuses more on the plausible ecology and boy-centered adventures than the politics of this plausible frontier planet, while allowing his live-and-let-live, peace and freedom themes to emerge naturally.
• War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press): Finding ways to come to mutual agreements through diplomacy and trading rather than coercion is a central theme in Book 7 of Gallagher’s frequent-Prometheus-finalist Fall of the Censor series. Following the liberation of dozens of worlds from the Censorate oppression, newly appointed ambassador Wynny Landry strives to prevent the rebellion from falling apart. Her task: convincing their governments to cooperate and forge trade deals for excess missiles despite differing cultures, interests and pressures. The novel centers on problems arising on Fiera, which formed a world government following the Censorite attack and atomic-bombing of 16 cities. So many state-commanded resources were put into defense and so much manpower lost to conscription that Fiera’s economy is failing. Meanwhile local politics keeps warships nearby, preventing them from supporting the alliance’s interplanetary defense. The story reminds us that even good and democratic societies can falter when politics, taxation, conscription and pork-barrel politics undermine their freedom, strength and adaptability. Among the libertarian themes: war as the health of the state, how governments can slide into despotism, the evils of slavery, the dysfunction of pork-barrel politics, and how censorship only makes people lust for forbidden fruit.
• No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press): The three-volume novel blends science fiction, fantasy, suspense, mystery, romance, adventure, political intrigue and a plausible “alien” biology in a universe where sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. In an interstellar future with settled human planets of widely differing societies, a freedom-favoring federation sends an ambassador to certify the final stages of induction of a previously lost colony. The first-contact story eventually focuses on a hidden world where the population has been genetically shaped to make everyone hermaphroditic. Both epic and intimate, with chapters alternating in perspective between the young human ambassador and an archmage, the novel becomes a love story about found family amidst a wider conspiracy threatening the federation’s commitment to equal liberty. Ultimately, in a multi-layered work launching her Chronicles of Elly series, Hoyt gradually weaves in a variety of libertarian themes while offering a radically different take on gender and sexuality than Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Among them: the virtues and benefits of cooperation, individualism, private property, tolerance, equal justice and individual choice, providing a stark contrast with the evils of aggression, tyranny, slavery and discrimination against sexual minorities.
• A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press): The science fiction saga, which launches the author’s Tales From the Long Night series, illuminates the ethics and efficacy of free trade and self-defense as a proper foundation for civilization. The novel is set on a colony planet where humans in towns and homesteading communities are struggling to recover centuries after a catastrophic attack and volcanic cataclysm that set back and severely limits their use of advanced technology. At the story’s heart is Shai, a young homesteader facing harsh frontier conditions, corrupt Townie politics, dangerous native species, and sinister forces amidst still-functional A.I.-powered orbiting war machines. Pierce celebrates the self-reliance and resilience of self-regulating frontier communities that survive and evolve based on the hard-won realities of voluntarism, mutual respect and cooperation. But this is also a cautionary tale about the deceptive idealism of a command-and-control ideology and the perennial tendency towards abuse of power, reflected in the Townies’ push for higher taxation, fiat money and indoctrinating state takeover of education. Narrating from her wry but hopeful perspective, Shai becomes a leader in her community’s struggles to defend their freedom, preserve their heritage and restore their world.
• Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (Caezick SF & Fantasy): Inspired by Vaclav Havel’s classic essay “Power of the Powerless,” this alternate history is set decades ago in a communist America where small moments of defiance or quiet resistance to governmental repression have unexpectedly big consequences. Set in the western United States dominated by a Soviet-Union-fostered socialist tyranny, the novel begins with one shopkeeper’s impulsive and fed-up act of taking down from his grocery storefront window a required propaganda poster expressing solidarity with the state revolution. In a dystopian society demanding utter submission and insistent on propping up its legitimacy, that simple act has a ripple effect on the shopkeeper, his wife and two children, and the wider world. Focusing on small acts of decency and honesty, the realistic yet inspiring story reveals how communism smothers the human spirit, denies reality, censors news, imposes lies and undercuts everyday life even when it doesn’t rise to the level of genocide or outright totalitarianism but strives to embody Czechoslovakia’s 1968 vision of "socialism with a human face.” Mirroring the psychological and political distress of many today for speaking the truth, Powerless is timely in reflecting the challenges in societies that claim to uphold freedom but suppress facts to enforce conformity.

Fourteen 2025 novels were nominated by LFS members for this year's award. Other Best Novel nominees, listed in alphabetical order by author: Red Heart, by Max Harms; Forged for Destiny and Forged for Prophecy, by Andrew Knighton; All the Humans Are Sleeping, by John C.A. Manley; For Emma, by Ewan Morrison; Planting Life: Shut the Kingdom, by Laura Montgomery; Where the Axe is Buried, by Ray Nayler; The Underachiever, by David A. Price; and Caballeros del Camino, by R.H. Snow.

The Best Novel winner will receive an engraved plaque with a one-ounce gold coin. An online Prometheus awards ceremony, open to the public, is tentatively planned for mid-August. Science fiction fan and author Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and the B. Kenneth Simon Chair in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, will be this year’s keynote speaker and celebrity guest presenter. The date of the ceremony will be announced in mid July once the winners are known for both annual categories, including the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.

The Prometheus Award, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), was established and first presented in 1979, making it one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently given in sf.

The Prometheus Hall of Fame category for Best Classic Fiction, launched in 1983, is presented annually with the Best Novel category. This year’s Hall of Fame finalists are The Star Dwellers, a 1961 novel by James Blish; Brave New World, a 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley; That Hideous Strength, a 1945 novel by C.S. Lewis; Salt, a 2000 novel by Adam Roberts; and Singularity Sky, a 2003 novel by Charles Stross.

The Prometheus Awards recognize outstanding works of speculative or fantastical fiction (including science fiction and fantasy) that dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, favor voluntarism and cooperation over institutionalized coercion, expose the abuses and excesses of coercive government, and/or critique or satirize authoritarian systems, ideologies and assumptions.

Above all, the Prometheus Awards strive to recognize speculative fiction that champions individual rights, based on the moral/legal principle of non-aggression, as the ethical and practical foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, mutual respect, civility and civilization itself.

All LFS members have the right to nominate eligible works for all categories of the Prometheus Awards, while publishers and authors are welcome to submit potentially eligible works for consideration using the guidelines linked from the LFS website’s main page.

A judging committee, drawn from the membership and chaired by LFS co-founder Michael Grossberg, selects the Prometheus Award finalists for Best Novel from members’ nominations. Following the selection of finalists, all LFS upper-level members (Full members, Sponsors and Benefactors) have the right to vote on the Best Novel finalist slate to choose the annual winner.

Membership in the Libertarian Futurist Society is open to any freedom-loving science fiction/fantasy fan interested in how speculative or fantastical fiction can enhance an appreciation of the value of liberty and broaden public recognition of the dangers and evils of tyranny and the abuses more prevalent under the State’s centralized and coercive powers.

For a full list of past Prometheus Award winners in all categories, visit our site. For reviews and commentary on these finalists and other works of interest to the LFS, visit the Prometheus blog. For more information, contact LFS Publicity Chair Chris Hibbert (publicity@lfs.org).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Dec. 10, 2025

2026 PROMETHEUS HALL OF FAME AWARD FINALISTS ANNOUNCED

FIVE NOVELS BY BLISH, HUXLEY, LEWIS, ROBERTS AND STROSS HONORED

The Libertarian Futurist Society has selected finalists for the 2026 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.

This year's five finalists – first published between 1932 and 2003 - are 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).

Here are capsule descriptions of each work, listed in alphabetical order by author:

• The Star Dwellers, a 1961 novel (Faber and Faber; Avon Books) by James Blish, revolves around a fraught potential conflict between humans and an ancient species of energy beings born inside stars. A young space cadet serving on a small scout starship finds himself alone and at a pivotal moment, prompting him to forge a friendship with one of the youngest Angels. Their efforts at communication and bargaining result in a deal that opens the door to wider negotiations toward a historic treaty of cooperation and peaceful co-existence. Powerfully but simply dramatizing how voluntary exchanges and free trade benefit both parties, Blish’s idealistic SF juvenile novel illuminates the virtues of consent and contract—two of the most fundamental ideas at the foundation of both libertarianism and classical liberalism—as the civilized alternatives to conflict and war.

  Brave New World, a 1932 novel (Chatto & Windus) by Aldous Huxley, is a dystopian classic offering a still-timely cautionary tale of collectivist soft tyranny under seemingly benevolent world government and technocratic central planning. Critiquing his era’s rise of collectivism and Progressive infatuation with the racist pseudo-science of eugenics, Huxley warned about behavioral/biochemical conditioning, propaganda, censorship and manipulation of artificial wombs limiting intelligence and initiative to create and control different castes. At a time when the intellectual and artistic elite saw most forms of authoritarian collectivism as the inevitable and positive wave of the future, Huxley foresaw the dark side of utopia. The novel explicitly dramatizes how such trends deny individuality, liberty, reason, passion, romantic love, the family, history, literature (including Shakespeare, which inspired the novel’s title) and other things that enrich distinctly human life.

  That Hideous Strength, a 1945 novel (Scribner) by C. S. Lewis, is the climax of the Christian libertarian’s Space Trilogy. Set mostly on Earth, Lewis’ dystopian and metaphysical vision dramatizes warring ideologies of good and evil, freedom and tyranny. The story revolves around a sociologist and his wife who discover a totalitarian conspiracy and diabolical powers scheming to control humanity in the guise of a progressive-left, Nazi-like organization working for a centrally planned pseudo-scientific society literally hell-bent to seize power. Evoking a police state in the takeover of a local village and warning about the dangers of bureaucracy, Lewis seems most prophetic today in his cautions about the therapeutic state and rising ideology of scientism (science not as the value-free pursuit of truth, but as elitist justification for social control).

  Salt, a 2000 novel (Gallancz Limited) by Adam Roberts, dramatizes misunderstandings and growing conflicts between an anarchist community and its statist neighbor. Set on a harsh desert-like colony world, Robert’s impressive first novel contrasts radically different conceptions of liberty. Evoking Ursula K. Le Guin’s Prometheus-winning The Dispossessed in its depiction of alternative dystopian/utopian societies, Roberts’ cautionary science fiction story underscores how pro-freedom rhetoric can rationalize transgressions and how skewed ideals and good intentions can lead people astray. Told in alternating chapters by the two societies’ biased leaders, this libertarian tragedy poignantly reveals how cross-cultural misunderstandings can spark the horrors of war. Although each society is flawed and falls short of respecting the individual rights, self-ownership and non-aggression principles of modern libertarianism, Salt provokes fresh thinking about the true meaning of freedom.

  Singularity Sky, a 2003 novel (Ace Books) by Charles Stross, dramatizes the ethics and greater efficacy of freedom in an interstellar 25th century as new technologies trigger radical transformation - strikingly beginning with advanced aliens dropping cell phones from the sky to grant any and all wishes. Blending space opera with ingenious SF concepts (such as artificial intelligence, bioengineering, self-replicating information networks and time travel via faster-than-light starships), the kaleidoscopic saga explores the disruptive impact on humanity as various political-economic systems with varying degrees of freedom come into contact. Stross weaves in pro-liberty and anti-war insights as an observant man and woman, representing Earth’s more libertarian culture and anarcho-capitalist economy based on private contracts, interact with a repressive and reactionary colony, its secret police and its military fleet.

For full-length reviews of the finalists, which highlight how they fit the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Awards on both liberty and literary quality, visit the Prometheus Blog at lfs.org/blog/ So far, reviews have been posted of The Star Dwellers, Brave New World and Singularity Sky, with reviews planned by early 2026 for Salt and That Hideous Strength.

THE OTHER NOMINEES

In addition to the five finalists, the Prometheus Hall of Fame Finalist Judging Committee, chaired by LFS President William H. Stoddard, considered four other nominees: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a 1974 novel by Philip K. Dick; “The Kindly Isle,” a 1984 story by Frederik Pohl; Babylon 5, a 1994-1998 TV series created by writer-director J. Michael Straczynski; and Between the Rivers, a 1998 novel by Harry Turtledove.

The final vote will take place in mid-2026. All Libertarian Futurist Society members are eligible to vote. The award will be presented online, via Zoom and open to the general public, on a date to be announced (most likely on a weekend afternoon in mid- to late August.)

Eligible for nomination if first published, filmed, broadcast, staged or recorded at least 20 years ago, Hall of Fame nominees may be in any narrative or dramatic form, including stories or other prose fiction, stage plays, film, television, other video, graphic novels, song lyrics, or epic or narrative verse; they must explore themes relevant to libertarianism and must be science fiction, fantasy, or related fantastical and speculative genres.

THE FOCUS OF THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS

First presented in 1979 (for Best Novel) and presented annually since 1982, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of fantastical fiction that dramatize the perennial conflict between liberty and power, favor voluntary cooperation over legalized or criminal coercion, expose abuses and excesses of obtrusive government, critique or satirize authoritarian ideas, or champion individual rights and freedoms as the mutually respectful foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance, civility, and civilization itself.

The awards include gold coins and plaques for the winners for Best Novel, Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame), and occasional Special Awards.

The Prometheus Award is one of the most enduring awards after the Nebula and Hugo awards, and one of the oldest fan-based awards currently in sf.

HOW TO NOMINATE OR SUBMIT WORKS

Nominations for the next cycle of the Hall of Fame Award can be submitted to committee chair William H. Stoddard (halloffame@lfs.org) at any time up to Sept. 30, 2026. All LFS members have the right to nominate eligible works, while outside publishers and authors are welcome to informally submit eligible works for consideration by LFS members and judges.

The LFS welcomes new members who are interested in speculative fiction and the future of freedom. More information is available at our website, lfs.org and on the Prometheus blog.

For more information, visit lfs.org or contact LFS Publicity Chair Chris Hibbert (publicity@lfs.org).