Libertarian Futurist Society
The Libertarian Futurist Society (lfs.org), a nonprofit all-volunteer international organization of freedom-loving science fiction fans, has announced a Special Prometheus Award for 2026 - our first Special Award specifically presented for Young Adult Fiction.
The LFS Board of Directors unanimously approved this new awards category in recognition of the crucial connection between literacy and liberty and the vital importance of writing fiction, including fantastical fiction, that attracts and engages young people.
Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer, will receive the Special Award Aug. 16, 2026, at the 46th annual Prometheus Awards ceremony, along with the previously announced 2026 winners in the two annual categories for Best Novel (J. Kenton Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles) and the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction (Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.)
Storm-Dragon, published by Raconteur Press, 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 Robert Heinlein’s Red Planet and Farmer in the Sky and Alan Dean Foster’s Flinx novels, the story centers on two resourceful middle-school boys: Skut, a native of the planet, and Podge, part of a family of refugees who’ve arrived on a starship. As they make friends, 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.
Visit the Prometheus blog for a full review of Storm-Dragon that illuminates how it fits the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Award on quality and liberty.
This year’s recognition for Storm-Dragon marks the first Special Award presented by the LFS since 2017. But it’s not the first recognition for Dave Freer, who won the Prometheus for Best Novel in 2023 for Cloud-Castles.
While Storm-Dragon is the first work to receive a Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction, it’s not the only example of Young Adult Fiction to be recognized in the Prometheus Awards.
Five works that have won the Prometheus Award for Best Novel fall into the Young Adult Fiction category or have strong appeal and accessibility for younger readers: Homeland, by Cory Doctorow (the 2014 winner); The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman (2012); Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (2009); The Gladiator, by Harry Turtledove (2008); and Learning the World, by Ken MacLeod (2006.)
Four Young Adult Fiction works have been inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame: Alongside Night, by J. Neil Schulman (the 1989 winner); Red Planet, by Robert Heinlein (1996); “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” by Hans Christian Andersen (2000); and Citizen of the Galaxy, by Heinlein (2022). Plus, the novella Tower of Horses and the related filk song “The Horsetamer’s Daughter,” both by Leslie Fish and very accessible to young adult readers, received a 2014 Special Award.
Other Prometheus-winning works that may appeal to younger readers include Ayn Rand’s Anthem, a 1987 Hall of Fame winner; and George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the 2011 Hall of Fame winner.
All Young Adult Fiction works recognized at some level by the award are listed on a special page of the LFS website devoted to a Prometheus Award Young Adult Honor Roll.
Ten works have received Special Awards since this occasional category was first presented in 1998 to Free Space, the first explicitly libertarian science fiction anthology.
Also receiving Special Awards: two other SF anthologies (Give Me Liberty and Visions of Liberty), two films (Serenity and V for Vendetta), two graphic novels (Alex + Ada and The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel) and a webcomic (Freefall). All Special Award winners receive a plaque with a gold coin.
Unlike the two annual Prometheus awards for Best Novel and the Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction, Special Prometheus Awards are occasional. Such special awards focus on outstanding pro-liberty science fiction or fantasy in any narrative or dramatic form outside the parameters of our annual categories.
The 46th Prometheus awards will be presented online Sunday afternoon Aug. 16, 2026, in a zoom awards ceremony open to the public.
This year’s hourlong ceremony, tentatively scheduled for 2-3 p.m. Eastern time and emceed by LFS President William H. Stoddard, will feature two guest speakers:
Updates will be posted on the Prometheus Blog over the next several weeks about additional speakers and the ceremony line-up.
The Prometheus Award, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), was 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 in sf.
Among the wide array of Prometheus-winning writers: Hans Christian Anderson (“The Emperor’s New Clothes”), Poul Anderson (Trader to the Stars), Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451), Lois McMaster Bujold (Falling Free), Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange), C.J. Cherryh and Jane S. Fancher (Alliance Rising), Harlan Ellison (“Repent Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman”), E.M. Forster (“The Machine Stops”), Robert Heinlein (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress), Sarah Hoyt (Darkship Thieves), Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed), Sinclair Lewis (It Can’t Happen Here), Ken MacLeod (The Stone Canal), George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four), Terry Pratchett (Night Watch, The Truth), Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged), Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon), J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings), Kurt Vonnegut (“Harrison Bergeron”), Jo Walton (Ha’Penny) and F. Paul Wilson (An Enemy of the State.)
The Prometheus Awards recognize outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between liberty and power, favor cooperation over coercion, expose the abuses and excesses of coercive government, and/or critique or satirize authoritarian systems, ideologies and assumptions.
Above all, the 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 form linked from the LFS website’s main page at www.lfs.org
For more information, visit lfs.org or contact LFS Publicity Chair Chris Hibbert (publicity@lfs.org).
The Libertarian Futurist Society, a nonprofit all-volunteer international organization of freedom-loving science fiction fans, has announced Prometheus Award Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction winners.
The 46th annual Prometheus Awards will be presented online Sunday afternoon Aug. 16, 2026, in a zoom awards ceremony open to the public.
This year’s hourlong ceremony, tentatively scheduled for 2-3 p.m. Eastern time and emceed by LFS President William H. Stoddard, will feature a guest speaker: Lifelong science-fiction fan Ilya Somin (George Mason University law professor, Cato Institute scholar and author), who will present the Hall of Fame award.
Updates will be posted on the Prometheus Blog over the next several weeks about additional speakers and the ceremony line-up.
A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce, won the 2026 Prometheus award (for novels published in 2025).
The science fiction novel, published by Raconteur Press and launching Pierce’s Tales From the Long Night series, illuminates the ethics and efficacy of free trade and self-defense as a proper foundation for civilization.
Pierce’s novel is set on a remote 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 politicians, dangerous native species, and sinister forces amid 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 ideals of a command-and-control politics and the perennial tendency toward abuse of power, reflected in the Townies’ push for higher taxation, fiat money and state takeover of education to indoctrinate new generations.
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.
Visit the Prometheus blog for a full review of A Kiss for Damocles that illuminates how it fits the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Award on quality and liberty.
The other 2025 Best Novel finalists were 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); and Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)
Brave New World, a 1932 novel (Chatto & Windus) by Aldous Huxley, won the 2026 Best Classic Fiction award and will be inducted into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
This dystopian classic offers 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 scientism, 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, romantic love, the family, history, and literature (including Shakespeare, which inspired the novel’s title).
Visit the Prometheus blog for a full review of Brave New World that illuminates how it fits the distinctive dual focus of the Prometheus Award on quality and liberty.
The other Hall of Fame finalists were The Star Dwellers, a 1961 novel (Faber and Faber; Avon Books) by James Blish; That Hideous Strength, a 1945 novel (Scribner) by C.S. Lewis; Salt, a 2000 novel (Gollancz) by Adam Roberts; and Singularity Sky, a 2003 novel (Ace) by Charles Stross.
The Prometheus Awards, sponsored by the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), were 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 in sf.
For more than four decades, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between liberty and power, favor cooperation over 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 form linked from the LFS website’s main page at www.lfs.org
While the Best Novel category is limited to novels published in English for the first time during the previous calendar year, Hall of Fame nominees — which must have been published, performed, broadcast or released at least 20 years ago — may be in any narrative or dramatic form, including novels, novellas, stories, films, television series or episodes, plays, musicals, graphic novels, song lyrics, or narrative or dramatic verse.
The Best Novel winner receives a plaque with a gold coin, and the Hall of Fame winner, a plaque with a smaller gold coin.
For more information, visit lfs.org or contact LFS Publicity Chair Chris Hibbert (publicity@lfs.org).
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