Author: Anders Monsen (Page 79 of 83)

With the fears of avian bird flu starting to reach critical mass in some blogs and publications, I think public health will become a huge topic of interest and probable area of government intervention in the year to come.

Ann Benson has written three sf/mystery/historical novels that deal with biology, plagues, government reaction to mass disease. In one novel Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged receives favorable mention, as does Galt’s Gultch, the libertarian El Dorado where refugees from that novel flee the state. Thief of Souls, from 2003 is the most recent, but her two other novels, The Plague Tales and Burning Road are equally worthy, and should be read in that order.

SF Site interviewed Ann Benson back in 1997. As evidence of the web’s evanescent nature, her own web page appears down, and the plague tales web site that she created seems defunct, too.

An update on Tim Minear’s project to adapt Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress mentions a second version of the script has been delivered to producers. This quote from Minear is quite illuminating:

“This is about a revolution. It’s big and it has a lot of really complex political ideas. It’s hard in that respect. How do you personalize this? There’s a lot of talking in the book – theoretical talking about Libertarian ideals and political structure and that sort of thing – how do you take that and make it immediate and dramatic and emotional? How do you say that stuff through scenes and action, as opposed to characters sitting around and having a conversation? That’s difficult.

“The other thing is to make sure the powers that be in Hollywood don’t force you to turn it into some Marxist screed on socialism, when Heinlein was a Libertarian and it’s about free-market capitalism. You want to try and not make it about an evil corporation. That’s the trick.”

Let’s hope he manages to deliver a great picture that retains the best of this novel, translated to the very different medium of film.

Victor Milan annonced on his site today his new novel. It’s a series novel — Outlanders — published under house name or nom de plume James Axler.

Update – The novel apparently was published in July, but I missed the previous post in Milan’s Forum pages.

And another libertarian review of Firefly that cites another negative review. It looks like the anti-Firefly-for-political-reasons enjoy Star Trek and the Federation of Planets a lot more than the individualist world view of Mal’s crowd.

Someone is not happy with the libertarian elements of Firefly.

The LFS has posted more details on the 2005 Prometheus Award winners.

Another writer notices the elements of freedom in Firefly. Some great comments, as well, and a link to a story that Tim Minear, the probable root of libertarian ideas in Firefly, is adapting Robert Heinlein’s novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

At the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, the Libertarian Futurist Society announced the 2005 Prometheus Award winners. Best novel went to Neal Stephenson’s The System of the World and the Hall of Fame Award went to A.E. van Vogt’s The Weapon Shops of Isher. Special awards were given to The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel, written by L. Neil Smith and illustrated by Scott Bieser, and to two anthologies edited by Mark Tier and Martin H. Greenberg, Give Me Liberty and Visions of Liberty.

Via Wally Conger’s blog, an image of the second most anticipated sf movie this year, Aeon Flux. I watched all the MTV episodes year ago, and Charlize Theron does look superb.

The second installment of the Serenity comic book came out this week (8/4/05). I picked up the Jo Chen cover edition today, featuring Book. Sadly, the Jo Chen cover, featuring an elfish Kaylee was sold out. The story appears to fill in space between the last TV episode and the forthcoming movie. Page count is small, only 22 total pages per comic featuring panels with Serenity action, so this is barely enough to whet one’s appetite while waiting for the movie.