I remember seeing once a bumper sticker begging God, deliver me from your followers. I guess the same could be said about libertarian fiction writers.
A few of them, like Vernor Vinge, manage to subtly convey a feeling of what libertarianism is like and why it may be better, with superb novels and shows in which libertarian philosophy takes a back seat to good, enjoyable fiction.
Others… well, others are a lot more like L. Neil Smith.
A good friend of mine, who is also a libertarian, lent me Pallas - and even though I rarely leave a book unfinished, I wasn’t able to get more than 10% into it. Descriptions were the literary equivalent of 3-day-old Papa John’s and characters were nothing but sock puppets used to either regurgitate the author’s view, pat on the head others that come to the same conclusions, or condemn the cardboard villain of the book. Apparently he doesn’t understand that if you present the morally corrupt villain as someone that does everything from landgrabbing and mind control to raping underage girls, you just give ammo to the people opposing libertarianism - you open up the possibility of someone saying that socialist system failed because of a corrupt leader - you just have to put a good guy in charge. In the process, he forgets about Sol Steins’ maxim that the purpose of fiction is to convey emotions.
Not propaganda.
I remember thinking that characters couldn’t be flatter if they were drawn on a page, and guess what? On the latest version of The Probability Broach they actually are.
Lucky for me, I guess, since wading through it is a lot easier when you don’t have to suffer through most of Smith’s descriptions. How does thou bore me? Let me count the ways…
- Good guy, will-be libertarian called Win
- Horribly scarred bad guy
- Good girl called Jenny Noble
- Homeland security’s logo as an iron first gripping a bloody blade
- And finally, proto-Nazi Manfred Landgraf von Richthofen as a final villain
At which stage, even if a name like Landgraf von Richthofen (Red Baron or not) for someone that would expropriate other people’s lands and rights doesn’t make you wonder if this was written by George Lucas, and Evilus Maleficus is going to walk through the door any time now, I’d like to point out that by Goodwin’s Law we’ve already lost.
As with Pallas, characters are nothing but propaganda conduits, channeling Smith’s philosophy. As with Pallas, plot is nothing but a scarecrow, there only for show - and probably to stop the book from becoming My dinner with Lt. Bear. And as with Pallas, I’m left totally non-plussed by it.
Books like these only preach to the converted, creating an echo chamber where everyone who already agrees with you tell you what good points you make. If you turn the government into nothing but a poorly drawn charicature, others will be left thinking this could never happen here, my government’s employees don’t dress up like COBRA thugs.
Don’t just give them the iron fist on a horribly scarred nastie. Show them the velvet glove worn over it by a homely-looking bird-flipping cowboy-and-everyman-impersonating millionaire, and they may begin to get it.
Peace War this ain’t.
I agree with your thesis, but L. Neil Smith is a relatively benign guy (and not really a follower of Rand too much.) He’s just a poor author.
So many “objectivists” are dogmatic non-thinkers that I really cannot comprehend it– since objectivism is about using judgement, and recognizing that two people in two different situations can correctly come to different conclusions.
By the way, do you think that germans are inherently evil? Or do you think germans just had too much faith in their government, and that’s what allowed the Nazis to take control? Goodwins law says that any time you talk about nazi’s you’re wrong, and thus goodwins law assumes that nazi germany is something that can never happen again, an abberation, and is only relevant to the irrational.
But it is not something that could never happen again.
I’ve never seen goodwins law applied appropriately– when someone was off the deep end.
But I see it applied all the time by holocaust denyers who want to claim that it could never happen here. Please don’t promote its use.
To summarize, I think goodwins law is essentially saying that socialism is always good and if you point to an evil socialist system, you’re irrational.
Don,
Goodwin’s law actually makes no judgement about nazi germany at all, nor does it promotes socialism. It just points out that, at some point of a discussion that has nothing to do with fascism or national socialism, one party will equate the others with the nazis, and that by doing so they’ve lost the discussion.
Why? Goodwin seems to see it as the equivalent of name-calling, and if you have to resort to name-calling, it means that you’ve run out of arguments. Hence, you’ve lost the discussion (regardless if you were right or wrong).
As I see it, not using Nazi as an easily-flung epithet
As for why Nazi Germany arose, that’s a much longer discussion. Allow me some time to phrase my thoughts properly, when I’m off work.