fiction

So it looks like a recently published spy thriller, Assassin of Secrets,¹ was largely plagiarized by the “author” from quite a few other novels — some post-Fleming Bond novels and others.

Now, when someone like myself says he is against intellectual “property,” as an illegitimate government grant of monopoly privilege over something that cannot be owned (i.e., ideas), the responses are fairly predictable.

A common one is “Well, then what’s to stop me from copying your novel, changing the name on it, and selling it as my own?”

Well, your customers could sue you for fraud, for one thing. No need for copyright to make that possible.

For another, in the Internet age, you run a very high risk of being found out and ruining your reputation.

In this case, fans of James Bond novels discovered the plagiarism first. As you can imagine, fans can be mighty protective of their favorite books and authors. Try to rip one off and some fan is bound to spot it, and soon they’ll all be royally pissed.

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1. A rather cheesy title, no? ↩

I recently read The Churchill Memorandum, by English libertarian Sean Gabb. I devoured most of it on a transatlantic flight, and finished the last bit on terra firma. I tend to like thrillers (some favorite authors include Nelson DeMille and, of late, Cherie Priest, author of Bloodshot); alternate history (e.g., Harry Turtledove, Brad Linaweaver’s Moon of Ice, L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach); and books with libertarian themes or influences (L. Neil Smith, Ayn Rand, Henry Hazlitt, Brad Linaweaver, Victor Koman, J. Neil Schulman). So it’s no surprise I enjoyed The Churchill Memorandum, which is very well written and which combines all three features (full disclosure: Gabb is a friend).

The novel is set in 1959, in an alternate history in which Hitler died in a car accident in 1939, thus averting WWII and changing the course of history. Gabb’s libertarian influences — he’s the head of the UK Libertarian Alliance — as well as his deep historical knowledge, are evident throughout the book. The novel depicts amazing technological progress — some of it rivaling or exceeding 2011 levels — in 1959, since WWII did not occur to sap away the economic strength and entrepreneurial innovations of tens of millions of individuals who would otherwise have been eviscerated in state war. So in 1959 there are magnetic bullet trains, home energy generators, and many other seemingly fantastic innovations.

The story follows the adventures of one Anthony Markham, a Churchill historian who, on a trip to the now-fascist police-state and isolationist America to research the Churchill archives at Harvard, stumbles across an explosive document that purports to document secret pacts that changed the course of American and world history. This leads to an intriguing geopolitical thriller informed by the author’s libertarian views. It is told in first person point of view (POV), my personal favorite for thrillers (and other novels) since it forces the narrator to show not tell, and not to omnisciently cheat and reveal details the protagonist would not know. Gabb’s ambivalent and somewhat bipolar English attitude towards America — at once a great power and friend of England, and a schizophrenic and dangerous destroyer of the ancient European order and institutions — is present throughout; and as a skeptic of the American mythos myself, I really enjoyed this foreign perspective. (Gabb recently presented a talk on “The Case Against the American War of Independence.”)

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With the recent release of the first part of the film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged (see Matthew’s review), the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) — via LearnLiberty.org — brings us this interview with Professor Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, on how Ayn Rand fits into the classical liberal tradition.

In this video, Prof. Burns explains three classical liberal themes in Ayn Rand’s masterpiece Atlas Shrugged: individualism, suspicion of centralized power, and free markets. These themes come to life through the novel’s plot and characters and give the reader an opportunity to imagine a world where entrepreneurship has been stifled by regulations and where liberty has been traded for security. Burns ends by reviving Rand’s critical question: do you want to live in this kind of world?

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If you enjoy dystopian fiction, and dystopias often provide great fodder for libertarians, be sure to keep an eye on Tor.com this week.

From the announcement:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” —Nineteen Eighty-Four

Over sixty years later, 1984 has come and gone, but Orwell’s unsettling vision of the future continues to resonate throughout our culture, along with so many other great dystopian works of the last century, from Fahrenheit 451 toThe Hunger Games, Metropolis to Blade Runner, Harrison Bergeron to The Handmaid’s Tale…the list goes on and on and so, on this bright, not-so-cold day in April, we’re pleased to announce a weeklong celebration of a subgenre which has continually challenged the comfortable boundaries of our imaginations.

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1. From io9 comes this story of a supermodel brainwashed to work for the CIA:
   

   In the movie Salt, Angelina Jolie plays a double-agent who is mind-controlled by scary remnants of the USSR secret service. And in real life, the 1940s bombshell Candy Jones was apparently brainwashed with drugs and used as a CIA covert operative. At least, according to testimony that Jones gave while under hypnosis, after her husband realized that she was acting strangely and seemed to have a split personality. Several years ago, the Fortean Times described what Jones reported while hypnotized: More »

2. To critics of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged who sneeringly intone that her plot and villains are unrealistic, John Stossel observes:
   

   Joe Biden Railroad

   It’s amazing how modern politics resembles scenes of Ayn Rand’s best-seller Atlas Shrugged.

   Like the one in which a high-ranking government official pumps millions of dollars into a failing railroad company. The grateful railroad CEO rewards the government official by renovating his hometown train station and naming it after the government official. The renovation costs $5,700,000 more than expected.

   Then comes the ribbon cutting ceremony. The CEO gets on one of his trains to go to the ceremony, but it breaks down. No surprise there: One out of every four trains his company runs is late [pdf]. The CEO, chuckling at the irony, abandons the train and takes a car to the ceremony.

   Unfortunately, that wasn’t a scene in Atlas Shrugged. It happened this weekend.

   The government official is Joe Biden.

   By the way,  the first of three Atlas Shrugged movies opens next month, appropriately on April 15th.
   

Do you know of any other examples?