We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Celebrating R.A. Heinlein “My word, I’m not even a hundred yet.” The last line of Robert A. Heinlein’s masterpiece – arguably his finest book – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Much has been written about the science fiction maestro. Well, a lot is going to be said and written about the man at the upcoming conference to mark the centenary of his birth. The guest-list is pretty damn impressive, including one of America’s hot science fiction talents, John Scalzi. It seems sadly ironic that Heinlein, a man who wrote memorably about longevity and characters like Lazarus Long, is not still with us.
But his ideas and wonderful stories most decidedly are.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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TANSTAAFL – There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
(Robert A Heinlin)
If you like Henlein, you should read Michael Z. Williamson. Freehold and The Weapon are based in the libertarian planet of Graine. Both books ends with war with the United Nations of Earth. Delirious joy.
Here there are some on line chapters:
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416508945/1416508945.htm?blurb
I dunno, I read old mans war and liked it. Interesting concept. I plan to read the next two books in the series when they are in paperback.
I prefer Gaiman and Stephenson so far, They have more interesting imaginations to me.
But will await further Scalzi books if they sound interesting, and change my opinion if I like them.
So far as RAH goes, few will ever match his imagination matched with real-world technical knowledge of how things work.
And some of the quotes fromhis works are priceless. As noted above, TANSTAAFL, not to mention ‘an armed society is a polite society’.
Plus, I am in full concurrance with his opinions on cats.
Plus, I am in full concurrance with his opinions on cats.
…and orchids.
My favourite was Time enough for love
You don’t see his books in the high street any more though. (& not just because he no longer writes…)
I don’t know whether Robert Le Fevre was my favorite libertarian of the twentieth century, but as Brian Clough used to say, he certainly comes close to being in the top one.
And to discover recently that Robert Heinlein based Professor La Paz, in the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, squarely upon Le Fevre, his near neighbour in Colorado, was a very pleasant surprise, making me respect this superb author even more than I had previously.
But who is the new Heinlein? I’m a big Neal Stephenson fan but is there someone else I should be reading? I’m still recovering from the enormity of completing the Baroque Series, but as a life-long insomniac in regular need of 2am fiction to get me through the night, I’d be glad to hear more recommendations in addition to those authors already named above?
Starship Trooper was emasculated in the movie.
I would love to see a realistic movie of that and The Moon.
Heinlein was the master. I will check out Scalzi but I really enjoy John Varley as well in this genre.
Another favourite:
I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
Robert was on the Board of Directors of the L5 Society so I crossed paths with he and Virginia many times over the years.
If you ever met Virginia, you know where characters like Granny Stone came from!
I gotta admit it, Prof de la Paz was my original mentor and the inspiration of my political views.
And that was a few decades ago now.
Jack, I can strongly recommend John Varley, particularly Steel Beach.
I also read the Baroque Trilogy. The character Jack Shaftoe is outstandingly done although I found some of the plotting around the issue of coinage and forgery to be almost too complex at times. But I loved the way he draw out the character of folk like Eliza, a spy for the English, etc. A sort of female James Bond who bonked for Britain!
Thanks, Mr P. Amazon.co.uk have been alerted! $-)
On the Baroque trilogy, I am simply overwhelmed by the amount of research Neal Stephenson must have done to complete the cycle. A favourite lunchtime habit of mine is now to discover all of the streets and locations mentioned in the books, with the Ludgate Hill area particularly rich in “Baroquian” locations.
Though I think I must also be the dumbest Stephenson fan around, because it wasn’t until the middle of Cryptonomicon that I realised what lay at the root of Baroque Cycle, though of course that would be telling to any future readers.
One also wonders whether a thorough-going reading of Uncle Murray Rothbard also helped Mr Stephenson with some of the more interesting economic aspects of this enormous work, particularly the silver and Damascus steel production markets and the growth of the London and Amsterdam financial markets.
Well, there’s perhaps just too much to say about the books. I can only recommend that if anyone out there has failed to get round to it yet, they should get onto the Baroque Cycle immediately.
It ain’t no Isaac Asimov.
I’m more of an Asimov man myself, but I do love Heinlein’s “The Door Into Summer”.
When I was a teenager (before teenagers were invented) the top 3 SF writers were Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. I read them all avidly but Henlein was my favourite and still is. I’m still a keen SF fan but none today can touch the old masters. I had hopes of Larry Niven, but sadly his output is just too erratic in terms of quality.
Notable perhaps that top libertarian Alberto Mingardi came to libertarianism thought this book(Link).
Starship Trooper was emasculated in the movie.
A brilliant and sadly misunderstood film. Perhaps not true to the book, but certainly far more intelligent and subtle than many seem to think.
Patrick Bateman on Starship Troopers:
Doogie Howser in SS garb as a military genius is ‘intelligent’? Are you high?
Science fiction seems to have a greater concentration of libertarians than other genres, so tell me, is science fiction a natural home for libertarians? Or is this greater concentration a direct result of the influence of old Robert Anson?
Bear in mind the previous dominance of H.G. Wells, a noted Fabian.
Chris,
Libertarians are indeed overrepresented in Sci-Fi. You might want to read A Political History of SF for an elaboration of this subject.
Henning
Anyone read any of Dan Simmons Hyperion books? I’m not quite clear of his political leanings.. he’s definately no left leaning hippy — I find his books to be some of the most well thought out and well written in modern sci-fi.
Robert Heinlein was a great and good man. He did not to live for ever in a scientfic way – but I like to think that he is still seeing the world. I make no claim – it is just a “I like to think that….”
I would put in a word for his short stories (sometimes written for magazines). Track them down – there are lots of them (gathered together in various books) and they are all worth reading.
I think, perhaps, this is where Stephenson can claim that the Baroque Cycle is Science Fiction. Because in many ways, the New World of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was so far removed from the statist existence of most of us serfs back here in the Old World, that it may as well have been a different planet, across an ocean of water rather than an ocean of space.
And just as classical liberalism flourished in the American colonies, away from the dead cold hand of the British, French, and Spanish states, the next true age of classical liberalism could well be in the future when freedom-loving captains in ships of their own, cast off from planet Earth to escape the growing suffocation of the Wonworld state to discover New Worlds of their own out there in the stars. (Well OK, the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn to begin with, but outwards and onwards from there.)
Heinlein, I think, may well be proved right with the Moon. The early United States was an expensive, remote, and dangerous place well out of the reach of most European people, and heavily under the initial control of the state, especially when it came to the re-supply of civilised commodities; the Moon will be the same, at least to start with. It could therefore come to repeat the historical condition of classical liberal rebellion which marked the American colonial experience – I suppose that if the state manages to hang on to the two Lunar poles we’ll have to name the northern pole Canadistan and the southern pole, Mexistan, with the the free bit in the middle being called “The Disunited Territories”.
Let’s hope its Heinleinist adventurers avoid the mistake of being suckered into a Hamiltonian-style Lunar Constitution! 🙂
But even assuming the Wonworld state manages to keep the Moon, and even Mars, within its statist ambit, true freedom will almost certainly arise when a few brave independent adventurers and traders grow confident enough to break beyond these two obvious enclaves and cascade out into the Asteroid Belt and beyond.
Personally, I’ll be looking for a 4 mile wide nugget of gold, called “Jack’s Ketch”, and I’ll be staking my claim accordingly, in a ship named “Rothbard’s Revenge”. (Hopefully this rock will also be studded with diamonds – not that I’m a fantasist or anything!)
So yes, I think science fiction is a natural enclave for classical liberals/libertarians/anarcho-capitalists/SEK3 agorists because the American western frontier closed a long time ago, and the only place currently left for freedom is therefore off this planet.
Plus, I’m really sad.
Yes…Heinlein…to say that he was an influence on my life would be a profound understatement. I never met him, but I miss him, dearly.
I can hardly wait for the day when my children are old enough to start reading Heinlein.
Jack Maturin,
I think you’re wrong with the moon analogy. Independant merchant adventurers got going pretty quickly at least in the English/British zones. Also, the Atlantic was a long sail but the difference in technology and expertise required to cross it was quantitatve. Alas, with space you’ve got the Earth’s gravity well. That’s like asking a salmon to leap the Niagra Falls. We are not going to make a dream of space colonization come true unless we make a qualitative leap in technology. That looks like a space elevator to me right now and government are going to really want to control them. Possibly they might be under UN control! Arghhh! Oh and Al Queda will seriously wanna take it down. Scratch that then. OK, I reckon Alan Bond’s Skylon looks pretty hot but that’s never going to get funded. Shame it just looks so right*. Something like it’s variable-cycle RR Sabre engine might though.
Anyway, You wouldn’t like the Moon. I’ve heard it has bugger-all atmosphere. Although with 1/6 g I suspect the Lunar Olympics would be a sight to behold. Unlike the London Olympics I wouln’t be paying for them either. I would be in my stately pleasure dome at L4 or L5.
Skylon: http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/images_skylon.html
*I’m thinking of Kelly Johnson’s dictum that “If it looks right, it’ll fly right”. I would murder, in cold blood every man, woman and child on this blog and then burn their house down to own one! More seriously (perhaps) for spaceflight not involving atmsopheric travel shape doesn’t matter as much. The space-designers of the C23rd will be able to go wild!!!
Farmer in the sky was one of my favourite Heinlein books from way back (10 ish) My Uncle bought it for me. I have read it quite a few times over the years.
“The Rolling Stones” was another particular favourite along with “Tunnel in the Sky” and “Door into Summer”. I think I must have read most of his stuff.
It does seem to me that SF in it’s essence particularly appeals to people who, to some extent, tend to think in certain ways, similar ways to those with Libertarian leanings.
I read and enjoy Heinlein, one of my favourites was Job: A Comedy of Justice. I also like the Iain M Banks Science Fiction books, especially those set in the Culture Universe.
Later
Gengee
Stumbled onto this site while doing some research on Heinlein and was amazed that on this page, where asking “who is the next Heinlein” no one mentioned Spider Robinson, who was asked by R.A.H’s widow, Virginia, to complete one of her late husband’s unfinished manuscripts, “Variable Star”. Anyone reading any of Spider’s many books will instantly recognize Heinlein’s influence. Spider even took the cat from “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” and made him a major character in several of his more recent novels.