erspert@athena.mit.edu (Ellen R. Spertus) (03/09/88)
As someone sympathetic to objectivism (small-o only) and other individualist
philsophies/politics, I have been collecting fiction, mostly science-fiction,
which are either about libertarianism or have allusions. I'm listing the
books I know of here and would love to hear from other people. Any replies
sent to me will be summarized and posted. I would also like to see a list
of Prometheus Award winners, if anyone has one.
Most famous is Robert Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, which has a
revolution on the moon which parallels the American revolution (i.e. is
libertarian). One character is asked if he is a Randite, and another is
called their John Galt.
L. Neil Smith has written a series of books (of varying quality) about an
alternate universe whose history diverged shortly after the American
Revolution, with the result being that this America lived up to the ideals
of the revolution. The first and best book in the series is _The Probability
Broach_, with hilarious allusions and caricatures. There are about six
other books in the series.
F. Paul Wilson wrote my favorite book on this list, _An Enemy of the State_,
recently out of print, about an anarchist revolution. Of all the books here,
it is the closest to being truly philosophical. Among other things, Wilson
shows the difference between nihilists and (individualist) anarchists. Very
good reading. The mentor of the hero is named Adrynna! I'll leave you that
one to figure out yourself :-). Wilson has written two other science fiction
books that I know of: _Healer_ and _Wheels Within Wheels_ which are not as
blatantly individualist but still pretty good. I've read one of his many
horror books, which contains an allusion to Rand near the beginning. (A
doctor states that if a socialist medical law passes, he'll "shrug".)
F. Neil Shulman, the final member in the libertarian-authors-with-first-
initial-and-four-letter-middle-name clique, has written _Alongside Night_
and Prometheus Award winning _The Rainbow Cadenza_. _Alongside Night_ is
a short light book set in an America in the not too distant future. It
is fun to read but the writing isn't great. The writing and characterization
are a lot better in _Alongside Night_, which is set in the more distant
future.
James Hogan wrote Prometheus Award winning _Voyage from Yesteryear_ and
_Code of the Lifemaker_. Neither have any explicit references to
libertarianism or objectivism, but both are individualist. My favorite
is _Code of the Lifemaker_ whose characters include a (fake) psychic
and a debunker obviously based on The Amazing Randi. Both books are
a little slow until the two differing groups meet, so skimming is
excusable (recommended?).
Ellen
If you have trouble with netmail, snail address is:
Ellen Spertus/Goodale 503/3 Ames Street/Cambridge, MA 02139joel@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (joel s. kollin) (03/09/88)
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin. A very good book that gives insight on how an anarchist civilization might work - or might not. Read it. Especially good to compare with Atlas Shrugged. joel
teri@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Teri LaRue) (03/10/88)
In article <3582@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> erspert@athena.mit.edu (Ellen R. Spertus) writes: > >Most famous is Robert Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, which has a >revolution on the moon which parallels the American revolution (i.e. is >libertarian). One character is asked if he is a Randite, and another is >called their John Galt. > > > Ellen > Perhaps the solution is to get the polititions(sp?) and actors out of politics. Robert Heinlein for president. He may not always be right, but at least he has a sense of humour. -Teri -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inspite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart. -Ann Frank ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Opinions expressed do not reflect those of my employer, my friends, myself, or anyone else for that matter] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
josh@topaz.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) (03/11/88)
There are two short stories that are must reading on any individualist's list: Lipidleggin' by the same F Paul Wilson (this can be found in The Survival of Freedom edited by Pournelle) and And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell (I don't know offhand where this can be found, check classic anthologies) --JoSH
eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (03/12/88)
In article <3582@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Ellen R. Spertus writes: >James Hogan wrote Prometheus Award winning _Voyage from Yesteryear_ and >_Code of the Lifemaker_. Neither have any explicit references to >libertarianism or objectivism, but both are individualist. Ah. Obviously you haven't yet read Hogan's _Voyage_From_Yesteryear_, which is explicitly anarcho-individualist. I also recommend Vernor Vinge's work; most notably _The_Peace_War_, _Marooned_In_Realtime_, and the bridge novelette _The_Ungoverned_Lands_ (recently reissued in the excellent _True_Names_And_ Other_Dangers anthology); all three are explicitly anarcho-libertarian. I also recommend Marc Stiegler's _David's_Sling_, not explicitly libertarian but very interesting for its suggestions on how information-age decentralist thinking can beat industrial-age statism (though he never uses the latter label). -- Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews) UUCP: {{seismo,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax,sdcrdcf!burdvax,vu-vlsi}!snark!eric Post: 22 South Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
vohra@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Pavan Vohra) (03/12/88)
In article <Mar.10.16.37.13.1988.10189@topaz.rutgers.edu> josh@topaz.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) writes: >And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell >(I don't know offhand where this can be found, check classic >anthologies) > >--JoSH Try _Science Fiction Hall of Fame_. -- --- Pavan Vohra {..hplabs|ames|ihnp4|decwrl}!amdahl!vohra Amdahl Corporation Sunnyvale, CA 94086-3470 ---
erspert@athena.mit.edu (Ellen R. Spertus) (04/01/88)
Several weeks ago, I posted a message describing a number of
individiualist science fiction books, and asked for titles that other
people had read. Below is my original message and the replies I
received. Thanks to everyone who replied. If anyone has more titles,
I'd love to hear of them. In response to someone who asked, I'm just
creating the list for fun. I'm not planning on publishing any
bibliography or analysis.
================
As someone sympathetic to objectivism (small-o only) and other individualist
philsophies/politics, I have been collecting fiction, mostly science-fiction,
which are either about libertarianism or have allusions. I'm listing the
books I know of here and would love to hear from other people. Any replies
sent to me will be summarized and posted. I would also like to see a list
of Prometheus Award winners, if anyone has one.
Most famous is Robert Heinlein's _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, which has a
revolution on the moon which parallels the American revolution (i.e. is
libertarian). One character is asked if he is a Randite, and another is
called their John Galt.
L. Neil Smith has written a series of books (of varying quality) about an
alternate universe whose history diverged shortly after the American
Revolution, with the result being that this America lived up to the ideals
of the revolution. The first and best book in the series is _The Probability
Broach_, with hilarious allusions and caricatures. There are about six
other books in the series.
F. Paul Wilson wrote my favorite book on this list, _An Enemy of the State_,
recently out of print, about an anarchist revolution. Of all the books here,
it is the closest to being truly philosophical. Among other things, Wilson
shows the difference between nihilists and (individualist) anarchists. Very
good reading. The mentor of the hero is named Adrynna! I'll leave you that
one to figure out yourself :-). Wilson has written two other science fiction
books that I know of: _Healer_ and _Wheels Within Wheels_ which are not as
blatantly individualist but still pretty good. I've read one of his many
horror books, which contains an allusion to Rand near the beginning. (A
doctor states that if a socialist medical law passes, he'll "shrug".)
F. Neil Shulman, the final member in the libertarian-authors-with-first-
initial-and-four-letter-middle-name clique, has written _Alongside Night_
and Prometheus Award winning _The Rainbow Cadenza_. _Alongside Night_ is
a short light book set in an America in the not too distant future. It
is fun to read but the writing isn't great. The writing and characterization
are a lot better in _Alongside Night_, which is set in the more distant
future.
James Hogan wrote Prometheus Award winning _Voyage from Yesteryear_ and
_Code of the Lifemaker_. Neither have any explicit references to
libertarianism or objectivism, but both are individualist. My favorite
is _Code of the Lifemaker_ whose characters include a (fake) psychic
and a debunker obviously based on The Amazing Randi. Both books are
a little slow until the two differing groups meet, so skimming is
excusable (recommended?).
Ellen
If you have trouble with netmail, snail address is:
Ellen Spertus/Goodale 503/3 Ames Street/Cambridge, MA 02139
================
From: mok@pawl.rpi.edu
If you're interested in politics, libertarianism or the like you should
try almost ANYTHING by Mack Reynolds. I don't remember many of the titles off
the top of my head (he wrote a LOT and I haven't read most of them), but they
are all good and almost all politically inspired.
The only problem I have with Mack Reynolds is that a fair number of
his books are set in one of 3 different worlds all of which have a oppressive
government or other serious problems and he writes the books at different
intervals in their history. You get to see these world slowly, but steadily
going from bad to worse... At least I have had the satisfaction of seeing
things finally STARTING to look up in one of these worlds, but it gets REALLY
depressing when you know that the future of the world you're reading about is
even worse than the present.
================
From: joel@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU
The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin. A very good book that gives
insight on how an anarchist civilization might work - or might not.
Read it. Especially good to compare with Atlas Shrugged.
================
>From: josh@topaz.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall)
There are two short stories that are must reading on any
individualist's list:
Lipidleggin' by the same F Paul Wilson
(this can be found in The Survival of Freedom edited by Pournelle)
and
And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell
(I don't know offhand where this can be found, check classic
anthologies)
================
>From: vohra@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Pavan Vohra)
In article <Mar.10.16.37.13.1988.10189@topaz.rutgers.edu> josh@topaz.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell
>(I don't know offhand where this can be found, check classic
>anthologies)
>
>--JoSH
Try _Science Fiction Hall of Fame_.
================
From: "Not prince Hamlet . . ." <mcb@oddjob.uchicago.edu>
One obvious collection would be the Discordian stuff. This is very strange
material, but a lot of it has to do with individualism. The two classics that
I know of are the Illuminatus trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robin?
Shea, and the Principia Discordia.
The Principia isn't really fiction, but Illuminatus is, and a number of
Wilson's other books (Schroedinger's cat, the Illuminati papers, etc) come
somewhere in between.
================
From: lve@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (Lucien Van Elsen)
Saw your posting on the net - all my favorites too, plus a few I
hadn't heard of. I stumbled across another interesting story with a
liberatian bent just a couple weeks ago - The Ungoverned by Vernor
Vinge. It's about a post-nuclear America that is "ungoverned" -
everything is done by contracts. The story isn't the best, but it has
an interesting background.
================
From: andreag@Psych.Stanford.EDU (Andrea Gallagher)
Don't forget Vernor Vinge, who's _The_Peace_War_ is based in a
semi-anarchistic society (eventually), and his _True_Names_ has a
short story (forget the title) about a statist nation attacking
an anarchist area. Well written, too.
================
From: John.Wenn@GANDALF.CS.CMU.EDU
The Prometheus Award Winners that I know about (I haven't heard about the 1986
hall of fame entries one way or the other) are:
Prometheus Award [October]
1979 "Wheels Within Wheels" by F. Paul Wilson
1980 "The Probability Broach" By L. Neil Smith
1981 <None>
1982 <None>
1983 "Voyage to Yesteryear" by James Hogan
Hall of Fame: "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein
"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand
1984 "The Rainbow Cadenza" by J. Neil Schulman
Hall of Fame: "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
"1984" by George Orwell
1985 <None>
Hall of Fame: "Trader to the Stars" by Poul Anderson
"The Great Exposition" by Eric Frank Russell
1986 "The Cybernetic Samurai" by Victor Milan
1987 "Marooned in Real Time" by Vernor Vinge
Hall of Fame: "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein
"Anthem" by Ayn Rand
================
From: dougf@tybalt.caltech.edu (Douglas J. Freyburger)
Poul Anderson is a libertarian who has included his philosophy
into much of his writing. His main future-history line with
the Poleseotechnic League, Nickolas van Rijn, the Terran
Empire and Dominic Flandry is filled with it. The Poleseotechnic
League is a libertarian co-op of industrial space-faring companies
(that breaks up eventually as all libertarian systems historically
have so far).
================
From: Brad Templeton <brad%looking.uucp@RELAY.CS.NET>
I'm surprised you didn't list one of the most widely known works, namely
the Illuminatus Trilogy, by Wilson & Shea. It's still in print.
If you haven't read Vernor Vinge, in particular "the Ungoverned" and
"The Peace War", you'll want to check that out.
================
From: esunix!loosemor@cs.utah.edu (Sandra Loosemore)
Here are a few that I know about:
"The Girl Who Owned a City", by O.T. Nelson. This is a book for children
ages 10-12 or thereabouts. It is definitely Objectivist propaganda.
Any of Kay Nolte Smith's books. Her first, "The Watcher", won an Edgar
award for best mystery novel of the year, and the others are just as good.
These aren't traditional whodunnit-type mysteries; they're more suspense
stories. She writes about marvelous characters and her books have a
distinctly feminist slant as well. Read "Requiem for a Soprano" after
you've read Barbara [Message accidentally cut]
================
From: "Michelle M. Gardner" <ACS1W%UHUPVM1.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
I read your request in SFLovers, and here's a couple of suggestions.
First of all, you should read Ayn Rand's "Anthem" which deals with personal
liberty v. the state. Awesome book.
Second, you might want to take a look at Christopher Stasheff's Warlock
books. They're highly entertaining and contain, for the most part, classic
church-state conflicts.
=================
From: wlinden@dasys1.UUCP (William Linden)
>And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell
>(I don't know offhand where this can be found, check classic
>anthologies)
This forms the last third of the novel THE GREAT EXPLOSION. I have lost my
copy, and would appreciate pointers to another. It was ignored,
outrageously, in Ballantine's reprints of Russell.
================
From: stephens@hpcupt1.HP.COM (Greg Stephens)
Thanks for the recommendation. I get a newsletter from a Liberterian/
Free Enterprise book club in NY (can't remember the name now) that
list a few SF books that they liked. The only one I have read is
Heinliens' _Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ which I liked.
I am curious if anyone has read and can recommend any of the other
books on their list (off the top of my head) they are:
Anderson, Poul _Orion Shall Rise_
Koman, Victor _The Jehovah Contract_
Smith, L. Neil _The Probability Broach_
================
>From: gls@odyssey.ATT.COM (g.l.sicherman)
Such a book is _The Eye in the Pyramid_ by R. Shea and R. A. Wilson. It's
s.f./fantasy. One of the characters, Atlanta Hope, has a big cult novel
called _Telemachus Sneezed,_--and a cult called "God's Lightning" to go
with it! They're both *very* individualistic books, maybe even too
individualistic for a novice like you. You might start with Van Vogt's
_The World of Null-A,_ in which the main character gets killed in the
middle, and a clone of him starts living the rest of the novel for him.
You can't get much more individualistic than that!
================
>From: eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond)
In article <3582@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> Ellen R. Spertus writes:
>James Hogan wrote Prometheus Award winning _Voyage from Yesteryear_ and
>_Code of the Lifemaker_. Neither have any explicit references to
>libertarianism or objectivism, but both are individualist.
Ah. Obviously you haven't yet read Hogan's _Voyage_From_Yesteryear_, which
is explicitly anarcho-individualist. I also recommend Vernor Vinge's work;
most notably _The_Peace_War_, _Marooned_In_Realtime_, and the bridge novelette
_The_Ungoverned_Lands_ (recently reissued in the excellent _True_Names_And_
Other_Dangers anthology); all three are explicitly anarcho-libertarian.
I also recommend Marc Stiegler's _David's_Sling_, not explicitly libertarian
but very interesting for its suggestions on how information-age decentralist
thinking can beat industrial-age statism (though he never uses the latter
label).
================
From: turpin@sally.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
A classic in this genre is "We", by Zamyatin. It ranks right up
there with "Brave New World" and "1984".
PS: Since you show some interest in objectivism, allow me to
recommend Barbara Branden's biography of Rand. Rand is a person
about whom it would be very easy for a biographer either to
adulate or mercilessly condemn. Branden does very well at
presenting her life without doing too much of either, though I
think her appraisal of Rand's significance in the epilogue is
biased by her closeness to her subject.
================
>From: gsmith@BOSCO.BERKELEY.EDU
In article <3362@dasys1.UUCP> wlinden@dasys1.UUCP (William Linden) writes:
>In article <Mar.10.16.37.13.1988.10189@topaz.rutgers.edu> josh@topaz.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall) writes:
>>And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell
>This forms the last third of the novel THE GREAT EXPLOSION. I have lost my
>copy, and would appreciate pointers to another. It was ignored,
>outrageously, in Ballantine's reprints of Russell.
I might add that Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear", which was
mentioned in a previous article, owes a great deal to Eric Frank
Russell's "And Then There Were None". Makes me wonder how
individual some individualists are.