Prometheus Award finalists named

The Libertarian Futurist Society named five finalists on April 14 for its 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel. (lfs.org) The shortlist is Storm-Dragon by Dave Freer, War by Other Means by Karl K. Gallagher, No Man’s Land by Sarah Hoyt, A Kiss for Damocles by J. Kenton Pierce, and Powerless by Harry Turtledove. (lfs.org) The Prometheus Awards are the Libertarian Futurist Society’s annual prizes for speculative fiction that centers liberty, with one award for a new novel and another Hall of Fame prize for older work. The group describes itself as a nonprofit, all-volunteer international organization of science fiction and fantasy fans. (lfs.org 1) (lfs.org 2) The Best Novel finalists announced this week all come from books published in 2025, following the award’s usual pattern of honoring the previous year’s fiction. Last year’s Best Novel winner was Michael Flynn’s In the Belly of the Whale. (lfs.org) (worldswithoutend.com) The society’s release framed each finalist around conflicts with coercive power. It said Freer’s Storm-Dragon follows refugee boys on a colony world facing “onerous regulations, taxes and property confiscations,” while Gallagher’s War by Other Means centers diplomacy and trade after worlds break from an oppressive regime. (lfs.org) The same release said Hoyt’s No Man’s Land imagines a future North America where men and women live under separate governments, Pierce’s A Kiss for Damocles follows a young pilot caught in interstellar politics, and Turtledove’s Powerless explores what happens when a world loses electricity and centralized control weakens. (lfs.org) The award has been running since 1979 and has been presented annually since 1982, making it one of the longer-running genre prizes outside the Hugo and Nebula awards. Winners receive a gold coin and a plaque. (worldswithoutend.com) The Libertarian Futurist Society has already announced the five finalists for its separate 2026 Hall of Fame award: The Star Dwellers by James Blish, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis, Salt by Adam Roberts, and Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. (lfs.org) All Libertarian Futurist Society members are eligible to vote on the finalists, and last year the group said the Prometheus Award ceremony was tentatively planned for mid-August. This year’s winner will be the next test of how a small, ideologically defined award keeps marking out its place in science fiction’s larger awards calendar. (locusmag.com) (worldswithoutend.com)