Liberty and Culture Vol. 23, No. 1 Fall, 2004 Report from the 2004 Prometheus Award celebration Reviews: Neal Stephenson, Clive Cussler, Michael Gear, Firefly, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Brunner. Prometheus Volume 23, Number 1, 2004 From the President (and Interim Editor) By Chris Hibbert The newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society I continue to be pleased with the want to continue for quite some time. progress and stability the LFS is show- Yet another sign of stability is that the Editor ing. We did have a problem getting the board of directors, first elected in 2001, Chris Hibbert newsletter published over the last six has gone through a complete cycle. We months, missing one issue and send- started out with three groups of direc- Managing Editor ing another only via email. As part of tors elected to one-, two- and three-year Anders Monsen transitioning to a new editor, I agreed terms, and now each group has cycled to edit this issue, with assistance from through and been elected to a new three Contributors various people (see the credits in the year term, in the process replacing two Jorge Codina sidebar on page 2). retiring board members with new leaders Michael Grossberg In parallel, we sent out a call for from within the organization. Fred Moulton volunteers, and as a result, I’m pleased Our newest new board member is William H. Stoddard to announce that past Editor Anders Jorge Codina, a longtime libertarian Monsen (he edited the newsletter from activist who has run for public office, 1994 through 1998) has agreed to return and who has been a member of the LFS Letters and Submissions: and edit the newsletter again. for more than five years. Jorge lives in Anders Monsen As he said in his opening message Costa Rica, but the Internet makes it 501 Abiso Ave to me, one of the reason he stepped easy to stay in touch. He replaced Tod San Antonio, TX 78209 down five years ago was all the other Casasent, who stepped down from the [email protected] tasks he had to handle for most of his board, but will continue as webmaster tenure. The list of responsibilities he had for the lfs.org web site. Welcome Jorge, Subscriptions & Advertisements then includes a substantial proportion and thanks to Tod. Libertarian Futurist Society of the volunteer positions that are now With that, I’ll get out of the way, and 650 Castro St. Suite 120-433 handled by separate people: member- let you read the rest of this issue. We Mountain View, CA 94041 ship coordinator, finances, webmaster, have reviews of new and old fiction in [email protected] contacting publishers, arranging awards book and DVD form, a report on the 2004 ceremonies, and conducting ballots for WorldCon and our awards ceremonies, Basic Membership: $25/yr. ($30 int'l) the awards. Since Anders will be able to as well as a remembrance for a too-soon Full Membership: $50/yr. focus on the newsletter, he should find departed LFS member. Expect more Sponsors: $100/yr. the position to stay enjoyable over the and better in the next issue from our Benefactors: $200/yr. long term, and we can hope that he will new editor. Subscriptions: $20/yr. ($25 int'l) All memberships include one-year subscriptions to Prometheus, and are tax-deductible. LFS Officers and Board of Directors Classified ads: 50 cents/word, 10 percent off for multiple insertions. Officers Display ad rates available. All checks Board President — Chris Hibbert payable to the Libertarian Futurist Vice President — William H. Stoddard Society Treasurer — Fred Moulton Secretary — Michael Grossberg Prometheus © 2005 the Libertarian Director — Victoria Varga Futurist Society. The LFS retains a Assistant Director — Fran van Cleave non-exclusive license to republish accepted articles on its Web site; all other rights revert to the contributor. Board of Directors (with years that terms end) Letters and reviews are welcome. 2005 — Michael Grossberg, Fred Moulton, Bruce Sommer Bylined articles are strictly the 2006 — Chris Hibbert, Lynn Maners, Joseph Martino opinion of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the 2007 — William H. Stoddard, Victoria Varga, Jorge Codina LFS members. Page 2 Volume 23, Number 1, 2004 Prometheus Eliza’s as a spy, financial manipulator, leaves more of the questions about Root eviews and eventually duchess. All this in fact unanswered, but gives enough informa- is backstory; the third volume moves tion to make his fantastic qualities clear, R forward again to show England, many building up the implications of his ap- years later, as shaped by their various parent immortality. The Confusion actions. It also picks up Waterhouse’s Beyond that, this is a novel that ap- By Neal Stephenson story, and his involvement with New- plies some of the key methods of science William Morrow, 2004: $27.95 ton, Leibnitz, and 18th-century English fictional writing to an earlier era in ISBN 0060523867 politics. And in the end, Stephenson history. It has fantastic inventions (the actually ties all these stories together in efforts of several key characters to build The System of the World a single conclusion. mechanical computers), amazing natural By Neal Stephenson For libertarians, this series has a great discoveries (a form of gold that weighs William Morrow, 2004: $27.95 deal of interest. One of its themes is the more than other gold), heroic explora- ISBN 0060523875 birth of the ideas that are now called tions (a circumnavigation of the world), Reviewed by William H. Stoddard libertarian, in an age when anything like heroic scientists (not only Waterhouse, libertarianism had scarcely been thought but Hooke, Leibnitz, and Newton), and With these two books, Neal Stephen- of. Stephenson shows the first people secret conspiracies to transform the son completes the Baroque Cycle, which to dream of one day making an end to world. It even has an imaginary coun- began in 2003 with Quicksilver. Effec- slavery, and the creation of a banking try, the British realm of Qwghlm, first tively, this is one gigantic novel, each system intended to prevent kings from presented in Cryptonomicon, inhabited of whose parts is on the scale of Atlas destroying the currency. One of the minor by people who speak a language with Shrugged or The Lord of the Rings. delights of the book is its unabashed sym- no known relatives, not even Basque. It Moreover, the entire Baroque Cycle pathy for whiggery. Many generations of uses all the familiar devices to show, not is, in effect, a prequel to Stephenson’s writers have romanticized the younger a future that might be, but a past that previous book, Cryptonomicon, which Stuart pretender, “Bonnie Prince Char- might have been. Except for the dates, explored the linkage between computa- lie” (for example, Victor Hugo’s The Man it has everything that a science fiction tion, cryptography, and international Who Laughs hints at Stuart sympathies reader could want—and a political and finance in two linked narratives, taking by having its hero turn out to be the lost historical theme that libertarians will place during World War II and several Lord Clancharlie), and by extension the find sympathetic. decades later. The Baroque Cycle takes Stuart cause; but in reality the Stuart the reader back several centuries, to cause was almost entirely reactionary, the century following the Restoration, favoring the Catholic church and landed to show the ancestors of the heroes of wealth. Stephenson’s heroes are Whig Forty Signs of Rain Cryptonomicon and their involvement sympathizers, and thus attached to By Kim Stanley Robinson with earlier forms of the same develop- the party where proto-libertarian ideas Bantam/Spectra, 2004: $25 ments. found a home. ISBN 0553803115 Structurally, this story has multiple Beyond this, the wider intellectual Reviewed by Michael Grossberg layers. It starts out with one of its major scope of this story is impressive. The sec- characters, Daniel Waterhouse, as an ond volume, for example, has an amaz- Global warming is coming. Run for old man in Massachusetts Bay Colony, ingly lucid explanation of Leibnitz’s your lives! But fans of Kim Stanley summoned back to England to mediate theories of pre-established harmony and Robinson might prefer to walk, not run, a quarrel between Newton and Leibnitz. how they fit into the rest of his ideas. The to pick up a copy of his leisurely latest Stephenson then takes the reader back third volume does the same for Newton’s novel. to Waterhouse’s youth and his involve- alchemical preoccupations, which took Forty Signs of Rain, the first of a ment with the Puritan revolution and him away from physics and mathematics projected global-warming trilogy, might the founding of the Royal Society. Then for so many years. qualify as “fiction about science,” as the story takes a sharp turn to introduce Are these books science fiction? The Robinson has suggested, but it’s not two other major characters, Jack Shafto, question came up during the choice satisfying science fiction. a mercenary soldier serving in Vienna, of finalists for last year’s Prometheus Robinson, a top-notch talent who and Eliza, an escaped slave from the Award. The fantastic elements in Quick- explores environmental theses in An- harem of the Turkish sultan. They fall silver did need to be looked for, but they tartica and the award-winning “Mars” in love, fall into misunderstandings, were there; for one thing, the viewpoint trilogy [Red Mars, Blue Mars, and Green and are parted. In the course of the character in the opening chapter was Mars—editor], clearly wants to grab second volume, Stephenson follows Enoch Root, who also appears as a major readers and shake them into awareness their separate careers—Jack’s as a sea- character in Cryptonomicon, during farer circumnavigating the globe, and World War II.