I’ve got some ideas about what would happen after the end of Atlas Shrugged. I could just describe the basic plot here for you. I could say, “I think that after the world economy crashes and the governments collapse, the heroes emerge and help to rebuild. Dagny and Galt have a child, who ends up being a Randian Kwisatz Haderach, named Sarah. Then they get divorced when Dagny cheats on Galt with Eddie Willers. Sarah ends up running for President of a scaled back federal government. And there are lots of interesting sub-plots, such as [x, y, z].”
I could use this technique to highlight how some of Rand’s ideas were flawed, in my view, or builds on or extends them into other areas.
But I thought actually writing it up in novel-form might be a different way to present these ideas. So I spent the last four years on this. The novel is a doozy — 450 pages of great literature. My friends who’ve seen it think it’s amazing.
But I could not publish it. Rand’s estate would surely sue me for copyright infringement.
[continue reading…]
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Melancholy Elephants, a Hugo Award winner from 1983, is the kind of story you get when a talented craftsmen, after some genuine contemplation on a topic, has come up with a unique perspective on an issue, discovered something worth thinking about. For the libertarian, it has the added attraction of advocating freedom of artistic expression, as well as a frank depiction of government corruption. Though Spider Robinson’s short work fizzles at the end, it’s engaging and thought-provoking and ultimately worth your time.
Despite the mildly disappointing ending, I cannot find fault with the beginning. Even the title is exactly what a title should be: odd enough to be intriguing while encapsulating what the story is about, but this becomes obvious only afterwards. It gives away nothing of the tale at the outset.
The short story format affords an author little time to grab his reader’s attention; Spider Robinson does it in the first paragraph. The main character, Dorothy Martin, has such a bizarre reaction to a situation she is subjected to that any impulse to put the story down evaporates, rather like what a startle does to the impulse to yawn.
[continue reading…]
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