Awards like the Hugo and the Nebula, which have been around for longer than the median person has been alive, are the exception. Science fiction is full of awards that were given out for a few years and then, for one reason or another, fell into shadows. Founding something is much easier than maintaining and perpetuating it.
The Prometheus Award is an interesting case. Founded by L. Neil Smith in 1979, the panel selected F. Paul Wilson’s Wheels Within Wheels as its inaugural winner. Then silence fell. 1980 and 1981 went by. It seemed that the first Prometheus Award would be the last. In 1982, the Libertarian Futurist Society took up the job of administering the award, and the Prometheus was given once more, to Smith’s The Probability Broach. Since then, the award has been granted once per year (with the notable exception of 1985, when no book was deemed worthy of the prize). Four decades is an impressive achievement.
The complete list of winners to date can be found below:
1979 — F. Paul Wilson, Wheels Within Wheels
1982 — L. Neil Smith, The Probability Broach
1983 — James P. Hogan, Voyage from Yesteryear
1984 — J. Neil Schulman, The Rainbow Cadenza
1985 — No Winner (“None of the Above”)
1986 — Victor Milan, Cybernetic Samurai
1987 — Vernor Vinge, Marooned in Realtime
1988 — Victor Koman, The Jehovah Contract
1989 — Brad Linaweaver, Moon of Ice
1990 — Victor Koman, Solomon’s Knife
1991 — Michael Flynn, In the Country of the Blind
1992 — Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn, Fallen Angels
1993 — James P. Hogan, The Multiplex Man
1994 — L. Neil Smith, Pallas
1995 — Poul Anderson, The Stars are also Fire
1996 — Ken MacLeod, The Star Fraction
1997 — Victor Koman, Kings of the High Frontier
1998 — Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal
1999 — John Varley, The Golden Globe
2000 — Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky
2001 — L. Neil Smith, The Forge of the Elders
2002 — Donald Kingsbury, Psychohistorical Crisis
2003 — Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
2004 — F. Paul Wilson, Sims
2005 — Neal Stephenson, The System of the World
2006 — Ken MacLeod, Learning the World
2007 — Charles Stross, Glasshouse
2008 — Harry Turtledove, The Gladiator;
Jo Walton, Ha’penny
2009 — Cory Doctorow, Little Brother
2010 — Dani and Eytan Kollin, The Unincorporated Man
2011 — Sarah Hoyt, Darkship Thieves
2012 — Delia Sherman, The Freedom Maze;
Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
2013 — Cory Doctorow, Pirate Cinema
2014 — Cory Doctorow, Homeland;
Ramez Naam, Nexus
2015 — Daniel Suarez, Influx
2016 — Neal Stephenson, Seveneves
2017 — Johanna Sinisalo, The Core of the Sun
2018 — Travis Corcoran, The Powers of the Earth
To quote the Libertarian Futurist Society’s standard press release:
For four decades, the Prometheus Awards have recognized outstanding works of science fiction and fantasy that dramatize the perennial conflict between Liberty and Power, favor private social cooperation over legalized coercion, expose abuses and excesses of obtrusive or oppressive government, critique or satirize authoritarian ideas, or champion individual rights and freedoms as the mutually respectful foundation for peace, prosperity, progress, justice, tolerance and civilization itself.
The current process is an interesting mixture of popular award (all members of the Society can nominate works for any category) and juried (committees for each category use ranked ballots to produce the finalist slate). The results are as remarkable as the award’s longevity. One might expect an award voted on and administered by people of a very specific political tendency to reflect that political tendency. Sometimes that’s true of the Prometheus Award, particularly in the early days. Quite often, however, the LFS ranges far outside the borders of conventional American libertarian thought—thus the presence of Stross, Doctorow, and MacLeod on the winners’ lists, as well as equally diverse selections on the nominee lists.
On April 6th, the LFS announced this year’s list of finalists. As listed on the official press release*, they include:
Causes of Separation, by Travis Corcoran (Morlock Publishing). In this sequel to The Powers of the Earth, the 2018 Prometheus winner for Best Novel, the renegade lunar colonists of Aristillus fight for independence and a free economy against an Earth-based invasion that seeks to impose authoritarian rule and expropriate their wealth, while the colonists struggle not to adopt taxation or emergency war powers. The panoramic narrative encompasses artificial intelligence, uplifted dogs, combat robots, sleeper cells and open-source software while depicting the complex struggle on the declining Earth and besieged Moon from many perspectives.
Kingdom of the Wicked by Helen Dale (Ligature Pty Limited), including Order: Book One and Rules: Book Two. The author, a legal scholar, creates a world inspired by comparative law, rather as Middle-Earth was inspired by comparative linguistics. In an alternative Roman Empire, an early scientific revolution and expanding free markets led to industrialization, the abolition of slavery, increasing wealth, and modernity—and to clashes with more traditional societies. In one such clash, a Jewish preacher, Yeshua ben Yusuf, is arrested and tried on charges of terrorism in a narrative that makes ingenious use of the Gospels to reach an unexpected outcome.
State Tectonics, by Malka Older (Tor.com Publishing). This story explores questions of governance and legitimacy in a future world shaped by technology-driven “infomocracy” and subdivided into centenals—separate micro-democracies, each an electoral district with a population of 100,000 or less. A multitude of political parties vie for control of each centenal, as well as global supermajority status in a problematic system where access to approved news is ensured by Information, which also oversees elections. In this third novel in Older’s Centenal Cycle, various parties struggle not only over election outcomes, but also whether Information’s monopoly will and should continue.
The Fractal Man, by J. Neil Schulman (Steve Heller Publishing). The Prometheus-winning author (The Rainbow Cadenza, Alongside Night) offers a fanciful and semi-autobiographical adventure comedy about the “lives he never lived,” set in multiple alternate realities where people and cats can fly but dogs can’t, which in one world casts him as a battlefield general in a war between totalitarians and anarchists. The space-opera-redefined-as-timelines-opera romp, full of anarcho-capitalist scenarios, also celebrates the early history of the libertarian movement and some of its early pioneers, such as Samuel Edward Konkin III.
The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing) (including All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy). The tightly linked series of four fast-paced novellas charts the emergence of humanity, empathy, self-awareness and free will in an android, whose origins are partly biological and partly cybernetic. The android, who guiltily dubs themself “Murderbot” because of their past acts of violence while enslaved, fights for their independence but also is motivated to save lives by growing awareness of the value of human life and human rights in an interstellar future of social cooperation through free markets driven by contracts, insurance-bond penalties, and competing corporations.
This list is, I think, a reminder of just why following this particular award can be rewarding for readers of all stripes. Probably not every work above will be to your taste, but certainly some will be.
[*Editor’s note: The list’s descriptions have been slightly edited for clarity/correctness.]
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is surprisingly flammable.
Wait, how is 1979 40 years ago? That means it is as far from now as 1939 was from 1979. That cannot be right.
It’s worse for those of us in families with long generations. My grandfather’s birth year is half between today and George Washington’s preteen years.
Oh goodie. A list of Politically Correct Right Wing books. Based on the founders writing I k ow i can ignore everything on it.
3: Not so. As I say, the finalists and winners are not necessarily what you expect. Note, for example, Stross, Doctorow and MacLeod.
@3 ah, what?
It was a running joke on rec.arts.sf.written (which was like social media but with functional threading) that the typical Prometheus winner was “Scottish socialist”. It might seem logical that a society of American libertarians would pick nothing but books about the need for a gold standard and tirades against using government money to divert planet-killing asteroids but nope, the LFS goes well outside their expected borders
Sincere thanks to the editor for correcting the original press release’s misgendering of Murderbot.
@2 – President John Tyler would like to have a word with you.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-two-of-president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-alive/
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1980 has to be what, ten years ago? Fifteen tops? It’s not like I work with very nearly adult people born the year M!ssundaztood topped the charts.
@8: I think John Tyler was a member of the Howard Families.
PS Looks like I’ve read 15 of these.
@3:
The existence of Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch as a winner single-handedly invalidates your assumption here. There’s some very good fiction on that list. Vinge’s A Deepness In The Sky comes to mind immediately as well, having also won the Hugo for its year.
There’s some dreck — Fallen Angels, for example — and some stuff that’s only saved from being dreck by being absolutely pedal-to-the-floor *nuts* — looking at you, Probability Broach — but I wouldn’t dismiss the whole thing out of hand. You’ll be missing out on good stuff if you do.
Ready Player One is fluff, right? And Seveneves has some questionable stuff about epigenetics. (Not to mention some weird shit against digital storage…)
Many of these are not rigorous books. So what’s the selection process? A bit random?
Ill admit to a bit of hyperbole there. Still, any list with Fallen Angels on it deserves a bit of side eye.
My understanding it that all of the members of the LFS nominate works, a committee for each category goes through the stacks and stacks of nominees to remove the ineligible ones, then produce a list of finalists from the eligible works. All members vote to determine the Hall of Fame winner and Special Award (if any), while full members vote on Best Novel. So some elements of whatever the specific term is for a popular award that (like the Hugos) requires a membership, and some elements of juried award.
Their process is fairly transparent although if there’s an online database of nominees it must be restricted to members.
13: I understand where you’re coming from but it’s not quite correct. The Hall of Fame list is as surprising as the Best Novel list:
2018 — Jack Williamson, “With Folded Hands …”
2017 — Robert Heinlein, “Coventry”
2016 — Donald M. Kingsbury, Courtship Rite
2015 — Harlan Ellison, ‘Repent Harlequin!’, Said the Ticktockman
2014 — Lois McMaster Bujold, Falling Free
2013 — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
2012 — E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops
2011 — George Orwell, Animal Farm
2010 — Poul Anderson, No Truce with Kings
2009 — J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
2008 — Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
2007 — Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here;Vernor Vinge, True Names
2006 — Alan Moore (writing) and David Lloyd (art), V for Vendetta
2005 — A. E. van Vogt, The Weapon Shops of Isher
2004 — Vernor Vinge, The Ungoverned
2003 — Robert Heinlein, Requiem
2002 — Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner
2001 — Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr editors, The Survival of Freedom
2000 — Hans Christian Anderson, The Emperor’s New Clothes
1999 — H. Beam Piper and John McGuire, A Planet for Texans aka Lone Star Planet
1998 — Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
1997 — Robert Heinlein, Methuselah’s Children
1996 — Robert Heinlein, Red Planet
1995 — Poul Anderson, The Star Fox
1994 — Yevnegi Zamiatin, We
1993 — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
1992 — Ira Levin, This Perfect Day
1991 — F. Paul Wilson, An Enemy of the State
1990 — F. Paul Wilson, Healer
1989 — J. Neil Schulman, Alongside Night
1988 — Alfred Bester, The Stars my Destination
1987 — Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land;Ayn Rand, Anthem
1986 — Cyril Kornbluth, The Syndic; Robert Anton Wilson/Robert Shea, Illuminatus!
1985 — Poul Anderson Trader to the Stars; Eric Frank Russell, The Great Explosion
1984 — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four; Ray Bradbury Farenheit 451
1983 — Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The Hall of Fame should really include Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants. After all, it’s an honest projection of the sort of world we’d have if American right-libertarian ideals were put in action.
Not a world rife with liberty for anyone much, true.
I love that Piper is in the Hall of Fame
This Perfect Day does not get the run it deserves usually, imho
Congratulations of Mr. Nicoll for his just announced Hugo nomination for Best Fan Writer.
As James notes, there are quite a few books on the list that anyone might enjoy. I particularly like “Ha’penny” by Jo Walton, an amazing book that deserves wider recognition. I’m very proud we gave it a Prometheus. And the Turtledove it tied with, “Gladiator,” also is really good.
I have to look more into this award. I’ve heard of it, but I didn’t know much about this until now. Thank you for sharing this article with us.
@14 said
The list of winners http://lfs.org/awards.shtml includes a link to the complete list of nominees and finalists: http://lfs.org/novel_nominees.shtml. Notice that the winners list also lists the Hall of Fame and Special Awards, with a link to the list including nominees.
Anybody who thinks Harlan Ellison qualifies as politically-correct or right-wing has obviously never read Harlan.
@3
L. Neil Smith, did trend to be too heavy on lecture, and The Probability Broach is by no means the best of his work, in my view, but speaking as someone decidedly left of center, i found him interesting back in the 1970s and early 80s. But many of the works on this list are by no means cookie-cutter political tracts. For example:
James P. Hogan, Voyage from Yesteryear — This is perhaps a little too doctrinaire, and a little too twee. I still give it shelf room, however, and its worth a read.
Vernor Vinge, Marooned in Realtime definitely libertarian, but not particularly right-wing, and not as much into specifically and narrowly political issues as “The Ungoverned” whoch preceded it in this sort-of series.
Poul Anderson, The Stars are also Fire politically focused, yes, but not at all doctrinaire libertarian. Anderson does tend to the right, but always in an original way.
Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky a very complex novel, whose political POV is not at all celar, just as its narrative PoV is not clear, or ratehr is layers and self-reflective. The villians are very evil and have one of the more crepy tools of represion I ahve ever encountered, but they ARE villians, and the bits about the dangers of pervasive law enforcement are I think well judged.
Charles Stross, Glasshouse. Interesting and complex, as stross generally is.
Harry Turtledove, The Gladiator; — the alternate world is soemthignn of a UD right list of horrors, but the actual story is not a political tract.
Jo Walton, Ha’penny I liked this the best of the “Small change” series (aka “Still life with Fascists”) as a novel in which the Nazis won WWII and the resulting world is quite horrid, it can hardly be called a right-wing work, nor indeed a particularly American work. But it does celebrate individual liberty and dignity against tyranny.
There are more examples in the “Hall of Fame” winners, but I won’t go on.
@22. David: You have any thoughts on Seveneves? Particularly the section after the time jump. I’m thinking of the bits about restricting digital data storage and the cave dwellers who emerge unchanged after 5000 years underground. They are basically the same as the religious gun worshippers from his present day novel Reamde.
@23 I haven’t read either Seveneves or Reamde.so i can’t usefully comment.
The left-wingnut and right-wingnut ideas of what libertarians are like have basically no contact with actual libertarians, who generally just see large armed gangs as scary monsters regardless of ideology, and want you to stop aiding and abetting those gangs. Giving large armed gangs omniscient surveillance seems like an even worse idea than giving them arms that non-gang-members don’t have, thus Deepness in the Sky being a perfect candidate for a Prometheus.
As for Seveneves, the astrophysics is nonsense, planets in collision act more like fluids than crisp solids, orbits are 3-dimensional not 2-dimensional as Stephenson imagines, the station-keeping, fuel-wasting pod spaceships are maybe the dumbest survival strategy I’ve ever read in thousands of apocalyptic books, everyone forgetting that sperm donors are a thing is awful convenient for the one woman with a DNA recombinator and a will to recreate James Tiptree, Jr stories, and the genetics in the fantasy novel it turns into are so wrong they make Cordwainer Smith look like Greg Egan. No sir, I didn’t like it. I’m not sure why anyone voted for this, it has nothing to do with personal liberty.
Reamde is a perfectly good novella if you delete all the superspy romance chapters, which have basically nothing to do with the main plot. It’s a pity that Stephenson hasn’t had an editor since the ’90s.
mdhughes@25: My experience with actual libertarians at the ground level is much like yours, with the exception that many, perhaps most, of them are in vocally in favor of large armed gangs organized as businesses. I like rank-and-file libertarians nonetheless. It’s not like any ideology is perfectly satisfactory. They genuinely do believe in personal liberty, and they are typically as anti-war as they come. Both those things mean a lot to me.
@1,
I graduated from high school in 1979, so clearly, it’s not 40 years ago.
@25: Reamde had a neat science fiction notion – that in a virtual world, people might align themselves not by “species” or arbitrary designations of “good” and “evil” but rather by aesthetic preferences. I was a bit annoyed that the plot of the book didn’t go into that more – that turned out just to be an obstacle in the way of the adventure plot.
@28. Andu: The virtual world in Reamde ended up just being filler. I play MMOs and was mildly interested in where it might go, especially after the much better immersion in Snow Crash, but it completely fizzled.
@25. mdhughes: “I’m not sure why anyone voted for this, it has nothing to do with personal liberty.”
Maybe it had to do with the character who evolves within her own lifetime, not just once, but twice. She literally gets the designation of “3.0” added to her name. This is not how evolution works.
As far as editing, it’s the reason I bailed on Anathema, albeit after reading 400 pages. Not sure what the ideal point to bail is – 100 pages? – if a novel isn’t working for you, especially one given to excess as Stephenson’s usually are.
Btw, doesn’t really matter to anyone but me, but my girlfriend and I saw him outside a theater near the Renton, WA airport one time. (At least it looked like him.) He was kinda loitering and people-watching. Later he ended up at a gyro shop where we had lunch. He somehow didn’t seem approachable.
Neal Stephenson: a reader’s trajectory
Snow Crash: lent to me, read it avidly
Diamond Age: saw it in the shops, snapped it up, read it till it fell apart
Cryptonomicon: Bought on sight, ditto
The Baroque Cycle: pre-ordered through local bookshop, awaited impatiently, enjoyed immensely, regular re-reads
Anathem: pre-ordered, enjoyed, occasional re-reads
REAMDE: bought on release, enjoyed
Seveneves: bought on release, read once, gave away to charity shop
D.O.D.O: bought in paperback, read, noted resemblance to inferior Tim Powers novel, gave away to charity shop, recommended to friends that they ignore it
Fall, or, Dodge in Hell: will probably get it from the library if it’s in
Subsequent untitled Stephenson book: probably ignored
@30 You should go back and pick up The Big U (Julian Jaynes and dystopian university politics), Zodiac (eco-terrorism for fun), and Interface and Cobweb (political brain-hacking, co-written with his uncle, political historian). They’re not Snow Crash, but they’re fun, smart, and edited down to the Good Parts edition.
I never finished Baroque Cycle, that’s where the editor vanished mysteriously.
Since we’re talking Stephenson, I would like to say that Interface is a fascinating political thriller about a candidate who is extraordinarily tuned into public reactions, which is quite relevant in today’s political and media environment.
@31
The Big U was the first Stephenson novel I ever read, back in the mid-80s. I had just begun graduate school at another Big U (not like the one in the book, thank God) and, while there were no parallels with my situation at the time, I still enjoyed it a lot. I suppose the sense of dislocation in a foreign country had something to do with this.
Zodiac was worth hunting for as well.
@30. ajay: I’m on a similar track as you, though I haven’t read DODO and don’t plan to. I’ll probably give Fall a shot.
I find the Hall of Fame list –and also the list of nominees–interesting for their political diversity, in that they include works by writers who were definitely on the left (Orwell, Le Guin), including Jack London’s The Iron Heel, an early dystopia which was emphatically anti-capitalist. Whatever one thinks of libertarianism (however defined) in general, and the Libertarian Futurist Society in particular, their approach seems far from dogmatic or sectarian.
Lord of the F@@@@@#$%ing Rings is in the Libertarian SF Hall of Fame?
* <Glyph of my head exploding>
BWAHAHAHAHA!
Why is The Lord of the Rings trilogy a favorite among libertarians?
Or to rephrase that, why is LOTR a favorite that fits the Prometheus Awards Hall of Fame – beyond the facts of its epic structure, great characterizations, involving story, mythic world-building, terrific imagination, enormous humanity and moral affirmation of the importance of affirming good and fighting against evil?
Well, a good hint comes from the great (often-misquoted) statement by Lord Acton, the 1800s British Catholic liberal historian (in a century when “liberal” meant something far closer to 21st century libertarianism than 20th century interventionist welfare/warfare-state corporate liberalism”), famously wrote that “Power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.”
(Most modern misquotes leave out the words “tends to” – which Acton, both as a 19th-century liberal favoring liberty and as a Catholic embracing free will – put in there to acknowledge that good and evil are choices, even when power-lust (a far greater threat to humanity than mere lust or greed or even perhaps stupidity) can enormously tempting and corrupting (as it is so powerfully dramatized to be in a certain fantasy trilogy.)
Do you begin to see why LOTR won the Hall of Fame for its anti-authoritarian and core classical-liberal/libertarian themes?
Think of that Ring.
That Ring of Power.
That One Ring to rule them all…
In my opinion, that Ring of Power is one of greatest examples of a profound and effective use of mythic literary symbolism, which happens to sus up Acton’s insight pretty vividly.
The dangers of centralized and institutionalized political power – i.e. the unlimited power of government to compel the use of force in “enforcement” of laws – should be paramount in the minds of anyone who doesn’t want see a Holocaust or a Gulag Archipelago or a World War II or Lenin/Stalin/Hitler concentration camps or any form of totalitarianism or tyranny inflicted on millions of innocent people ever again.
Sadly, most of human history underscores the truth that “evil” is not just a quality of some of Those People Over There (in that other tribe) – but something we can discern the outlines of, in potential and in embryo, by looking in The Mirror. (See Jung.)
In other words, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
And while we all (or almost all, aside from amoral psychopaths and totalitarian zealots) have good intentions and want a better world, good intentions are not enough. We actually have to think clearly, identify causality in the real world and work hard to avoid repeating the tragic lessons of human history – such as what seems to inevitably occur when State power is concentrated and unchecked.
That’s why libertarians champion a universalist view of human rights and liberties.
@37. Michael: interesting mini-essay.
“That’s why libertarians champion a universalist view of human rights and liberties.”
In an ideal state, yes. But translated to politics as practiced, that usually translates to aligning with the right wing. There’s no way I would ever cross to the right of center on practically any issue. In other words, pure libertarians sometimes have their head in the clouds, or are very self-interested when they say they want government out of their business (see tech billionaires like Thiel).
More directly, LotR is explicitly making the point, from the very first page, that the ‘small’ people are just as important as anyone else, and it has a view of history where great events are determined by the individual actors amongst them and their decisions, not the grand sweep of social forces or what-have you. Those square very well with standard libertarian beliefs, even if it also requires you to overlook some ‘rightful king’ issues.
Plus, you know, it’s the Lord of the Rings. :p
EDB: On the matter of Tolkien getting the Hall of Fame award, I wrote about this at some length on our blog last August (http://lfs.org/blog/what-do-you-mean-libertarian/); The Lord of the Rings is a nearly perfect example of a book with a natural appeal for libertarians that perplexes nonlibertarians.
Sunspear: I’m fairly regularly puzzled by the way the term “right wing” is used. It seems to apply variously to people who believe in monarchy, established religion, landed aristocracy, and the glory of military adventures; to nationalists who favor collectivist ideas such as restrictions on trade and immigration; to classical liberals who favor constitutional government, free markets, and freedom of expression; and even to individualist anarchists who support outright abolition of government. I don’t see that these have much in common, or that a category that includes all of them aids in understanding.
My feeling is that the categories of “right” and “left” reflect what Nietzsche called the “faith in opposite values” and a sense of tribal loyalty. And it’s very common for libertarians to be people who question both categories. I think the LFS’s choices of finalists and winners for its awards over the years has tended to reflect this.
@40. William: You’re casting far too wide a net. Some of the things you mention are not even commonly linked with anything “right wing.” You can for example, include neoliberals, especially their free market capitalism, but politically they’ve been ensconced with the Democrats.
I mentioned the tech entrepreneurs who by and large want government to be hands off, they believe on principle, but ultimately isn’t much different from why big banks don’t want regulation.
Politically, I had in mind someone like Rand Paul, who has always aligned with the Republicans. There’s the usual joke that libertarians are liberals on social issues and conservatives on fiscal matters, which makes them of two minds about many things. In practice, it’s kind of a nebulous worldview, sometimes neither here, nor there. An ideology of freedom is find in isolation, but sometimes gets muddled when put in specific contexts and often ends up adopting conservative political positions.
I read the premise of Stephenson’s D.O.D.O., noted that Jodi Taylor did time travel, guns, and alcohol with a lot more verve and in far fewer pages (and I’m talking the entire series thus far), gave Stephenson’s book a shot anyway, and gave it up as a bad job in less than 50 pages.
“politically they’ve been ensconced with the Democrats”
Like Milton Friedman, Reagan, and Thatcher?
One problem is that almost no one calls themselves neoliberal, so it’s a label applied by others. These days, often applied by lefties to Democrats they don’t like, whether that makes any sense. You can support universal health care and increased minimum wage and more regulations and still get called ‘neoliberal’ for thinking we should make housing construction easier.
Tolkien’s ideal government seemed to be a monarchy or republic that barely did anything, so I can see some libertarian appeal there. The Shire is as minarchist as it gets.
Like most political labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ are slippery, but I see them most useful in terms of equality vs. inequality (especially inherited privilege.) In 1789, what we call classical liberalism was left, standing in opposition to monarchy and aristocracy and state church and guilds. Today the same policies are on the right, because we’ve gotten rid of all those, and inherited wealth is a main channel for how privilege inherits these days. The context has shifted left. In 1789 the left could want freedom to start a business and a sensible tax system while the right defended aristocratic privilege; in 2019 the left wants progressive taxation and free college while the right says it’s harmless to inherit tens of billions of dollars.
@43. Damien: Reaganism, Thatcherism, and related dogmas, shifted to the Democrats in the 90s, to people like the Clintons and the Davos crowd they ended up chumming with. The Democratic Leadership Council determined they were losing elections because they were not conservative enough, so they adopted policies, both economic and social, like increasing mass incarceration, that had previously been held by the political right. This shifted the entire political spectrum toward the right. Hence we have the rise of more authoritarian elements in the USA, that were prior considered fringe, moving into the mainstream. It’s happening in other countries as well.
This rightward drift may be course-corrected by the apparent rise of progressives and even those openly call themselves Democratic Socialists.
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