Libertas

Pulpless.com; 305 pages; $14.95 at Amazon.com/$6.99 Kindle/Free PDF

Winner of the 1989 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award

J. Neil Schulman (born April 16, 1953) “The United States government — both the executive and legislative branches, aided by the courts, have stolen the entire premise — and a lot of the plot — of my novel!”

I like science fiction, but don’t read as much as I’d like. I was pleased to find out that there’s a strong theme of libertarianism in science fiction, and in fact the Libertarian Futurist Society presents their annual Prometheus Award for best novel and their Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for best classic literary work on liberty.

Long before I knew I was a libertarian, I had read these winners of the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award: Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress (1983) and Stranger In A Strange Land (1987), George Orwell’s 1984 (1984), and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings (2009). Who knows, perhaps they played a part in my libertarian leanings. Later, after I realized I was more libertarian than conservative, I read F. Paul Wilson’s An Enemy Of The State, the 1991 the Prometheus Hall of Fame winner.

I don’t know how I stumbled on Alongside Night, but I’m glad I did. Imagine reading a book about America in the not too distant future (next month to ten years from now) of hyperinflation, Texas seceding, secrete prison camps, the police state, cell phones, cyber-security problems, excessive taxes, and an underground economy written thirty some years ago. It’s a story of two teenagers on the run, one, the son of a Nobel Prize winner in Economics, but it’s also an introduction to Samuel Edward Konkin III’s political philosophy of Agorism and counter-economics.

Samuel Edward Konkin III ( (July 8, 1947 - February 23, 2004) "The basic principle which leads a libertarian from statism to his free society is the same which the founders of libertarianism used to discover the theory itself. That principle is consistency."

With the exception of the video phones in the hotel rooms, and that’s not too far of a stretch, the technology was present day. It didn’t seem like a science fiction novel because it was so close to today’s circumstances. The technology was so natural to today that I didn’t think about it until after finishing it. Unfortunately, the economic and political events didn’t seem that far off either. Elliot Vreeland, aka Joe, and his friend, Lor, both hiding from the State, meet each other at the Agora, the underground market. This is Schulman’s introduction to Agorism, the political philosophy of Samuel Edward Konkin III, aka SEK3.

The book is fun and fast paced, and I read it straight through, something I don’t often do. Of the books I’ve read, the closest to it in philosophy is An Enemy Of The State. That book takes place far into the future, but the two both deal with economic issues and how the Market eventually overwhelms the State.

Don’t let the economic themes dissuade you from reading these two books. They’re both fun and both authors make the economics fascinating as well. The 30th edition, or at least the PDF version I read, also had links about Konkin and Agorism and essays written since the book was first published.

Recommended:

An Agorist Primer by Samuel Edward Konkin III

New Libertarian Manifesto by Samuel Edward Konkin III

Alongside Night by J. Neil Schulman

An Enemy of the State by F. Paul Wilson

The PDF versions can be found on my library page.