Big Head Press  L. Neil Smith's Number 571, May 23, 2010  "The
old order is clearly dying and a bright, raucous, energetic new
disorder being born as we watch."  Previous Previous Table of
Contents Contents Next Next  Pallases in the Air by L. Neil
Smith  Bookmark and Share  Attribute to The Libertarian
Enterprise  From Ayn Rand's Anthem and Atlas Shrugged to Robert
Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, science fiction is the
literature of libertarianism. That's because science fiction is
this civilization's only remaining literature of ideas.
Everything else—including the murder mystery genre Rand
recommended, but which now seems to be the exclusive property of
feminists, or at least of females—is rightly, tightly, rooted in
the obsolete views and values of a collectivist establishment.
Something like twenty years ago, I started writing a novel that
was intended, among other things, to help my readers—and me,
too—to imagine what it must have been like to have a part in the
taming and settlement a new fro