Steve Trinward Steve Trinward is "Soul Proprietor" of Trinwords.Com (wordsmithing and editing services) and a contributing editor for Rational Review. CLICK HERE FOR RATIONAL REVIEW NEWS DIGEST SUPPORT OUR
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FROM MY
FILES Here is another bit of work, in this case written in this century (according to the file-date, it was completed and sent for publication … on August 28, 2001 … Hmm, think maybe it got lost in the shuffle somehow?) Since I never received a response from the libertarian science fiction newsletter to which it was submitted … I guess I can safely run it now… And for anybody who needs another good reason to pick up a copy of this fine work (who knows, perhaps it will be as prescient as most of Neil's OTHER works have been both before and since… or does anyone want to explain the plot line of "The American Zone" … completed sometime before this piece was written?) I hope I've shown the true value of this remarkable piece of … er, "political science fiction" BUY A COPY … and READ it! - SAT Smith & Zelman offer a vision of “Hope” Review by Steve Trinward “How would you feel if you no longer feared you government?” That provocative question is just the subtitle of the latest collaboration between noted novelist L. Neil Smith and Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership founder and president Aaron Zelman. What follows inside the cover is a visionary scenario about what it would be like if a true libertarian somehow suddenly became the President of the United States, even within the current political context. It is a tale of intrigue, romance, self-defense, hardcore Bill of Rights enforcement and provocative political and social statements and issues. Alexander Hope is a 50ish ex-businessman, whose high-tech innovations helped launch the information revolution. After the death of his loving wife and partner, he passes his empire on to his only daughter, and semi-retires to a small Colorado town, taking up a second career as a history professor in a local private college. Unable to sit still for long, he pens a book, “Looking Forward,” intended as a pro-liberty spin on Edward Bellamy’s backward-looking socialist screed. It becomes a best-seller, at least among thinking people. (Excerpts from this treatise, which will be quite familiar to Smith fans, appear as header-quotes in each chapter of “Hope.”) Discuss this
article at The year is now 2008. Several of Hope’s students, conspiring with others in the libertarian movement, put his name into the race for the Free Libertarian Party of America’s presidential nomination. Through a series of events which have led some to call this a “fairy tale” this comes to pass. Through yet another run of good fortune and just plain politics-as-usual, Alexander Hope WINS the Presidency. After a moment of breathing-space, punctuated by the expected run of assassination attempts and other battles, Hope takes office and thereupon begins to dismantle the Leviathan of the feral gummint, to the delight of all freedom-lovers and the horror of the autocrats, lobbyists and other leeches. That’s the overall story, but what lies beneath it is a rich motherlode of political and philosophical theory, salted in with a shaker, not a pourspout. At times the book is faintly reminiscent of an Ayn Rand novel, where pro-liberty polemic and speechmaking is intermixed with action and plot-development. However, given that the story is about the rise of a candidate to the United States’ Presidency, a few speeches and fireside chats are certainly appropriate. Also, unlike Rand’s work, Smith and Zelman had internal self-editors at work; the speeches are straightforward, low on rhetorical padding and non-repetitive. The only idea that shows up in multiple places is the promotion of jury nullification, which President Hope acknowledges at the close of each of his speeches, as the overriding issue that makes all the rest either possible or futile. As a result instead of “Atlas Shrugged” and its 1200-page girth, “Hope” checks in at a much more manageable 425. Above all, this book delivers on its title. It offers “Hope”: … For those who see the “boxes” (ballot, jury, soap and cartridge) being rapidly reduced to the last one, or two at most. The platform and program of strict Bill of Rights Enforcement, starting on Day One of his administration, is one that any patriot or other liberty activist would embrace wholeheartedly. … For those who think there is just no chance of regaining our true liberties, and the best solution is to meekly submit to the indignities inflicted by the tyrants, so they don’t single you out as scapegoats for the “disaffected few.” These are the folks who sit idly by while things like Mount Carmel, Ruby Ridge, Elian Gonzalez, the many horrors of the War on Drugs … and the more recent actions in Idaho and Oregon (both involving the theft of children from their loving parents) all continue around them, getting closer to their own homes each day. Alexander Hope’s successful campaign strikes back at those jackbooted thugs and makes it stick! … For those who feel that the Libertarian Party has become its own worst enemy, by trying to become a part of the system, instead of opposing it at every turn. Even despite direct opposition from the “gradualist” elements of his own Party, Alex stands firm on pushing for REAL progress in restoring America’s liberty. He also does so in a systematic and orderly fashion, which discomfits only those whose entire reason for being depends on the nanny-state’s continuance, while encouraging the freed former tax-slaves to share their largesse with those in need around them - voluntarily, not because they’ll go to prison if they do not. Those who are up on the ways of the political world will find special delight in this book; the vast preponderance of the characters are based, either loosely or perfectly, on existing real people; most of the establishment politicians, are all but identified by either their caricatures or their actualities. Libertarian Party activists will also recognize many of the major characters: almost all of the principals are tributes, often thinly disguised; other portrayals, not always so flattering, need only a little imagination (and perhaps a flair for anagrams?) to identify their antecedents. (However, as we all know, “THIS NOVEL IS A WORK OF FICTION. Any resemblance between real characters and institutions and those depicted herein is purely coincidental.”) Meanwhile, “Hope” is a very well-crafted and exciting novel - one, which promotes page-turning, late-night reading into the wee hours and even an eagerness to RE-read it soon thereafter. This reviewer started the book the first time after a long day, at about 1 in the morning, with the plan of reading a chapter or two over each of the next few nights; the book didn’t close until it was finished, at about 7:30 that next morning. Reports from colleagues and associates in the liberty movement have been about the same; almost nobody has been able to put it down unfinished… One SMALL problem with the first printing: There are a number of typos (more than 15 this writer found) in the pages; none of these destroy the meaning, but they were a bit hard to overlook. The next printing should be cleaner, since the publisher (Mazel Freedom Press, Zelman’s own imprint) has been notified of these and they are being corrected. A pass through the “spell checker” before printing would have caught all but one or two of these. In summary, this book should be a definite consideration for the next Prometheus Awards. If it gets the kind of widespread distribution it truly deserves, there might yet be “Hope” for the people of America. |
