Folks, we are excited and tremendously pleased to announce A Kiss For Damocles by our own J. Kenton Pierce has been nominated by Libertarian Futurist Society members as a candidate for the 2026 Prometheus Award.
Typically, only around a dozen books are nominated for the Prometheus Award. For Pierce’s first novel to even be nominated is a tribute to his incredible story-telling skills.
For those of you just joining us, A Kiss for Damocles is the first book in Pierce’s “Tales of the Long Night” universe. Set in a universe where brutal interstellar war has ravaged worlds, this series of interconnected books and short stories covers the life of Shaifennen Roehe. A young homesteader who is doing her best to survive, Shai is the right girl in the right place to serve as a catalyst in her world’s— and eventually, her civilization’s—restoration.
The next book in his series is Warlord of Greenline Town, which tells the story of militia captain Ravati Aziz. Shai’s sometimes foil, Ravati finds herself in a position where she must stand against a rising darkness as both new and ancient threats array themselves against the people of Greenline Town.
If you’ve enjoyed A Kiss for Damocles and are looking for some more tales of Hesperides colony to fill your reading time while you wait for Warlord of Greenline Town, you can find many of Pierce’s short stories here:
“Remember the Avalon” - Space Marines 3
“Pride and Peppers - Space Cowboys 3
“A Mother’s Pyre” - Or All Will Burn
“El Banquero del Diablo” - Back Alley Angles and Badlands Devils
“Bravado and Beans” - Coffee Adventures
“Cheatin’” - Or All Will Burn: At All Costs
“Daughters of Valor” - Alien Family Values
“Shimmy’s Crew” - Steam Rising
“Lt. Spurgle and This Thing of Ours” - What! You Again?
“The Greenline Gambit” – Back Alley Angles and Badlands Devils
Most of the awards out in the Old Trad Pub World have been sadly demonstrated to be both phony and degenerate now. No-one is sure anymore which are true, which are not, even for the ones that are (not even Mr. Benjamin's). [1] Yet awards for great and good work are good things in themselves, and your work and that of your authors deserves such. So when true merit gets the nod, it reclaims another corner of our SFnal heritage.
Congratulations! Well done!
[1] I believe that's the point of it, myself.
Without giving away spoilers, I have read all of Pierce's unpublished novels in-the-rough and they are as good or better than his first. Am proud to know the man and to have dined with him at a deli near Pittsburgh. The man can put a dent in a deli like I can. No mean feat. Huzzah!