Author: Anders Monsen (Page 64 of 90)

L. Neil Smith has a long essay about the travails his novel Forge of the Elders went through in order to get published in full. Ther book is still in print, and can be ordered through online retailers or your local bookstore, and Smith hints at free goodies ahead when the current stock sells out. And if you haven’t check out his work in progress at Big Head Press, I highly recommend the time and effort.

This month is crunch time for getting out the next issue of the print newsletter of the LFS – Prometheus. I’ve been busy reading several long novels and trying to wrie reviews, and I’m happy to say I have several contributions from other individuals already. If you are interested in submitting material for this libertarian sf newsletter, please contact me – editor@lfs.org. Blogging for the next three weeks probably will be very light while I wrap up the issue. Tentative (link free)table of contents includes the following:

Contents:
* Prometheus Award Finalists – a listing of the finalists for the
2007 Prometheus Awards for best novel and classic work of fiction.

In Memoriam
Jesse Walker on Robert Anton Wilson (reprinted from Reason Online)
Brad Linaweaver on Chuck Hammill (possible)

Book reviews
Spider Robinson & Robert A. Heinlein, Variable Star
Elizabeth Moon, Command Decision
John Varley, Red Lightning
Charles Stross, Glasshouse
Orson Scott Card, Empire
Sherri Tepper, Six Moon Dance
Carol Emshwiller, The Mount
Ken MacLeod, Giant Lizards from Another Star
Jack Vance, The Jack Vance Treasury
Jack Vance, Emphyrio
Justina Robson, Mappa Mundi
Mike Resnick, Starship: Pirate
Adam Roberts, Gradisil
T.H. White, The Book of Merlyn

Film reviews
Sophie Scholl (possible)
F.Paul Wilson’s Others (possible)

Other
Brief essay on Clark Ashton Smith’s individualism

Whoa! The Lamviin land in Texas.

I kept looking for this article from the front page of reason Magazine for many months, but to no avail. I knew I should have tried Google instead. The essay originally appeared in the print edition a little over a year ago, and covers two writers who have written interesting books dealing with liberty, aimed at a younger audience. Lois Lowry and Margaret Peterson Haddix have written two distinct series of books that mainstream readers might not have seen. Young Adult literature is all the rage these days. After the reign of Harry Potter comes to an end this summer, other writers will try to step in and fill the void. In the meantime, here are some great books already in place, waiting to be read.

I am not very familiar with NIN beyond a couple of songs from more than a decade ago, but I found an interesting link to a site linking to some viral marketing for a possible future album, including a “resistance” site.

James Nicoll asks this almost rhetorical question in a forum, with a bevy of replies, some from people familiar with the Prometheus Awards, some from individuals hostile to libertarian ideas. Nicoll, no friend of libertarians, closes with this question:

I understand why SF is increasingly not an American genre but Libertarian SF seems ideally suited to the US. Why, then, is the Prometheus Award going to people who aren’t libertarians (left or right) and not American?

The debate makes interesting reading. There are many points I could try to rebut, such as the statement that the Prometheus Award is marginal (why, then, do winners of this award seek to state “Winner of the Prometheus Award” on their novels, or other writers when writing about winners often mention how many Prometheus Awards that writer has won? Among other points, of course.)

Over at Sci Fi Weekly, Nick Gevers has a long interview with John C. Wright, author of (among others) The Golden Age trilogy, two Everness books (so far), and the recently completed Orphans of Chaos trilogy.

Here’s an interview with novelist Scott Nicholson, who apparently describes himself as a libertarian writer. However, in the response to this question, he demurrs, stating:

“Well, libertarianism just plain won’t work in the human world. It would only work if we each lived alone, in a vacuum, where our actions didn’t affect other people. But we live in communities that are bubbles inside larger communities. And I also diverge from the traditional party line: for example, while I favor the legalization of most drugs, I don’t favor unlimited access to guns. The government’s role could be much smaller in our lives, but it also can do good things. Libertarians are mostly out on the extreme fringes of both major U.S. political parties, and if you really press them on their beliefs, a mass of contradictions emerges. So I don’t articulate that so much in my fiction.”

And, in the other corner, we have Claire Wolfe, who does seeks some solitude in her life, stating something quite the opposite in a blog entry:

“So many things can bind us to a place. Family. Work. Inertia. Fear. History. Money is a big factor, considering leaving the country. But the ties can be so intricate, so multi-layered, so difficult to convey to anyone who isn’t walking that mile in one’s own moccasins. Being part of a community like this one — where people help each other so freely and with such enthusiasm — is a little miracle (especially for people like me who grew up rootless and unattached to the places we lived and the people who lived there). So I speculate often about getting out of this going-to-hell country. Then I think I’d have to be mad to leave a place like this, a place that embodies the essence of real, old-fashioned community, a place that is what America was at its best and ought to be again.”

Judge for yourself. Libertarianism: an atomistic impossibility, or the true spirit of a voluntary community?