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The Libertarian Futurist Society is a non-profit group founded in 1982 and dedicated to recognizing and promoting libertarian science fiction. It stemmed from the initial 1979 Prometheus Award and has been granting annual Best Novel and Hall of Fame awards since its founding. The Society has also granted Special Awards and issued a Young Adult Honor Roll. From 1982 to 2015 it published a quarterly newsletter, Prometheus, including reviews of books as well as science fiction in films and other media. The Prometheus Blog was started in May 2017 to deliver the reviews and news in a timelier and modern fashion.

Notable Groups

  • Prometheus Awards - Annual awards (Best Novel, Hall of Fame) granted by the Libertarian Futurist Society
Science Fiction

Awards Granted

1979 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Wheels Within Wheels
1982 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Probability Broach
1983 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Voyage from Yesteryear
1983 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Atlas Shrugged
Related Topic: Ayn Rand
1983 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Related Topic: Robert A. Heinlein
1984 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Rainbow Cadenza
Related Topic: J. Neil Schulman
1984 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Fahrenheit 451
1984 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Nineteen Eighty-Four
Related Topic: George Orwell
1985 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Trader to the Stars
1986 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Cybernetic Samurai
1986 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Related Topic: Robert Anton Wilson
1987 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Marooned in Realtime
1987 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Anthem
Related Topic: Ayn Rand
1987 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Stranger in a Strange Land
Related Topic: Robert A. Heinlein
1988 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Jehovah Contract
1989 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Moon of Ice
1989 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Alongside Night
Related Topic: J. Neil Schulman
1990 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Solomon's Knife
1990 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Healer
1991 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For In the Country of the Blind
1991 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For An Enemy of the State
1992 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Fallen Angels
1993 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Multiplex Man
1994 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Pallas
1995 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Stars are also Fire
1995 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Star Fox
1996 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Star Fraction
1996 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Red Planet
Related Topic: Robert A. Heinlein
1997 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Kings of the High Frontier
1997 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Methuselah's Children
Related Topic: Robert A. Heinlein
1998 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Stone Canal
1998 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Time Enough for Love
Related Topic: Robert A. Heinlein
1998 Special Prometheus Award
For Free Space (anthology)
1999 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Golden Globe
2000 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For A Deepness in the Sky
2000 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Emperor's New Clothes
2001 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For The Forge of the Elders
2001 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Survival of Freedom
2001 Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement
2002 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Prisoner
Related Topic: Patrick McGoohan
2003 Best Novel Prometheus Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Night Watch
2003 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Requiem
Related Topic: Robert A. Heinlein
2004 Prometheus Best Novel Award, Prometheus Best Novel Award
For Sims
2004 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Ungoverned
2009 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For The Lord of the Rings
Related Topic: J. R. R. Tolkien
2011 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
For Animal Farm
Related Topic: George Orwell
2014 Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement
2015 Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement
2016 Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement
Prometheus Best Novel Award
Award created in 1979 by L. Neil Smith to honor libertarian fiction, since 1982 awarded by the Libertarian Futurist Society for the best libertarian novel of the year
Founded in 1982, the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) revived the Prometheus Award, sponsoring an annual prize for Best Novel, starting in 1982 ... The prize for the awards is a gold coin, as a symbol of free trade and free minds, mounted on an engraved plaque.
Related Topic: Prometheus Awards
Prometheus Hall of Fame Award
Award given since 1983 by the Libertarian Futurist Society to honor classic libertarian fiction
Founded in 1982, the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) revived the Prometheus Award ... adding in 1983 a second annual category for Best Classic Fiction (the Prometheus Hall of Fame). The prize for the awards is a gold coin, as a symbol of free trade and free minds, mounted on an engraved plaque.
Related Topic: Prometheus Awards

Websites

LFS.org - Libertarian Futurist Society
Sections include: newsletter archive, press releases and Prometheus awards (including nominees, finalists and winners)
The Libertarian Futurist Society was founded in 1982 to recognize and promote libertarian science fiction. The LFS is a tax-exempt nonprofit group with an international membership of libertarians and freedom-loving science fiction fans who believe cultural change is as vital as political change in achieving freedom. After all, imagination is the first step in envisioning a free future — and the peace, prosperity and progress that can take humankind to the stars.

Articles

Robert Anton Wilson, by Jeff Riggenbach, 15 Aug 2011
Biographical essay, including a lengthy digression on the thought of Ralph Borsodi, founder of the publisher of a magazine co-edited by Wilson in the early 1960's; transcript of "The Libertarian Tradition" podcast of 4 Aug 2011
Illuminatus! won the Libertarian Futurist Society's Hall of Fame Award in 1986. This award has also been won over the years by such works as Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Anthem, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four and Animal Farm, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, ... Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Winning the Hall of Fame Award amounts to a kind of official recognition: this work is a true classic of libertarian science fiction or fantasy.
The Society That Will Help You Bolster Your Libertarian Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading List, by Amy H. Sturgis, LearnLiberty.org, 2 Aug 2016
Introduction to the Libertarian Futurist Society, the Prometheus and brief descriptions of the 2016 Best Novel and Hall of Fame winners and a 2016 Special Award
Do you dream of a free future? Are you looking for challenging speculative fiction that wrestles with big ideas? Are you interested in how such fiction "can promote an appreciation of the value of liberty as the prerequisite for cooperation, peace, prosperity and a just society"? If you answered yes to these questions, you should check out the Libertarian Futurist Society. Now is the perfect time to get to know the Libertarian Futurist Society, because summer is award season. Every year the LFS sponsors the Prometheus Awards.
Related Topic: Prometheus Awards
Vonnegut, Heinlein, Kipling, and Others Battle It Out for a Libertarian Award, by Jesse Walker, 17 Jan 2017
Discusses the Libertarian Futurist Society Hall of Fame awards and lists the 2017 finalists with brief descriptions of each
The Libertarian Futurist Society has announced its finalists for this year's Hall of Fame award. This is one of two prizes the group gives out annually: The Prometheus Award honors the best libertarian-themed novel of the past year, while the Hall of Fame Award goes to libertarian fiction that first appeared at least half a decade ago. The focus is on science fiction—hence that word "Futurist"—but non-sf works are occasionally added to the mix. (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Fountainhead have both been nominated for the Hall of Fame in the past, and in 2000 that prize went to Hans Christian Anderson's "The Emperor's New Clothes.")
Related Topic: Robert A. Heinlein

Publications

Prometheus
Quarterly newsletter, 1982-2005 and 2010-present
First published in 1982, the newsletter of the LFS, Prometheus, is devoted to libertarian science fiction and speculative fiction. The content includes book and movie reviews, interviews with libertarian sf writers (including L. Neil Smith, Vernor Vinge, Brad Linaweaver, and James P. Hogan), articles on libertarian sf, essays by libertarian authors, cutting edge news about authors and books, and updates on the annual Prometheus Award.