The Libertarian Futurist Society has selected four finalists for the 2022 Hall of Fame Award.

• Citizen of the Galaxy, a 1957 novel by Robert Heinlein, and arguably the best of his “juveniles,” that strongly dramatizes an anti-slavery theme while exploring the meaning of freedom and defending the right to use force in self-defense. The epic, wide-ranging, planet-hopping saga revolves about a young man’s coming of age amid repeated displacement into new societies and situations (including one intriguing libertarian group of Free Traders) in a rich and complex interstellar future.
• That Hideous Strength, a 1945 novel by C.S. Lewis (Book 3 of his Space Trilogy), revolves around a sociologist and his wife who discover a totalitarian conspiracy and diabolical powers scheming to take control of humanity, in the guise of a progressive-left, Nazi-like organization working for a centrally planned pseudo-scientific society literally hell-bent to control all human life.
• Circus World, a 1981 collection of linked stories by Barry B. Longyear that imagines how Earth’s circus troupes have evolved on a far-distant planet into a circus- and magic-defined culture without a government but with strongly individualistic, voluntary and cooperative social norms and only One Law, designed to make it nearly impossible to impose government regulations or other legislation, that helps the planet’s citizens peacefully cooperate in resistance against coercive human invasion and statist tyranny.
• “The Trees,” a 1978 fantasy-themed song with pointed lyrics by Rush (released on the Canadian rock group’s album Hemispheres), concisely and poetically presents a fable of envy, revolution, and coercive egalitarianism that threatens the survival and individuality of different kinds of trees that make up a forest with a “noble law” that keeps the trees “equal by hatchet, axe and saw.”

In addition to these nominees, the Prometheus Hall of Fame Finalist Judging Committee considered four other works: The Winter of the World, a 1975 novel by Poul Anderson; “It’s a Good Life,” a 1953 story by Jerome Bixby; Exiles, Volume 1: The Ruins of Ambrai, a 1994 novel by Melanie Rawn; and “The Measure of a Man,” the Feb. 13, 1989 TV episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, with screenplay by Melinda Snodgress.

The final vote will take place in mid-2022. All Libertarian Futurist Society members are eligible to vote. The award will be presented at a major science fiction convention.

First presented in 1979 (for Best Novel) and presented annually since 1982, the Prometheus Awards have recognized “outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, favor private social cooperation over legalized 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. 

More information about the LFS is available at www.lfs.org, and the Prometheus blog (lfs.org/blog/).