A memorial site has been set up for L. Neil Smith, the libertarian science fiction writer who died August. 27. Relatives, friends and fans are posting photos and links. The above is Bobby Campbell's illustration for the article on Smith I wrote for New Trajectories 2; Bobby gave me permission to post it at the memorial site.
I've been reading the articles in New Trajectories 2, the zine Bobby Campbell put together for Maybe Day on July 23. (It's not too late to download your copy.)
My contribution to the zine was an article on Robert Anton Wilson's influence on the science fiction writer L. Neil Smith, 75, a Colorado writer who has written dozens of novels. I wrote to El Neil, as he's known to his friends and fans, and sent a copy of the article and a link to download the zine and got a reply:
"Thank you very much! Bob was extremely important to me. I miss his presence every day.
El Neil"
I recently read L. Neil Smith's The Probability Broach. L. Neil Smith is a libertarian science fiction writer and The Probability Broach, his first novel, probably is still his best known. It is fast moving and enjoyable, and I liked it better than any other Smith novel I have read.
It's an alternate worlds novel and the plot concerns a Native American police detective in Denver who uses the device in the book's title to accidentally move to a different universe and a North America run on libertarian principles. There is a torrent of ideas and vivid descriptions, written in energetic prose.
The world that our hero finds himself in is known as the North American Confederacy -- not as in the Confederacy in the American South in our world, but as in the Articles of Confederation that initially governed the 13 states that revolted from England. In the alternate world, the Articles of Confederation are not superseded by the U.S. Constitution, the Whiskey Rebellion fails, and the North American government becomes less powerful as time passes. A sample of a graphic novel version is available online.
The books shows the obvious influence of Robert Heinlein but there are also clear references to Illuminatus!, another of Smith's influences. The bad guys in the novel, the "Hamiltonians," who want to take over the world and restore big government, use the eye in the pyramid as their symbol. And there are sentient talking dolphins in the book (along with sentience talking chimps and gorillas.)
The Wikipedia article on the book says, "The Probability Broach won the 1982 Prometheus Award, which L. Neil Smith himself had created, and which is awarded by the Libertarian Futurist Society." All of that is true, but it could be misunderstood; Smith gave the first award as a one-shot event. The LFS was founded to keep the award going. Smith has not been active in the LFS; he has won awards from the group but played no part in the deliberations.
See also my 2019 interview with ElNeil.
As the Libertarian Futurist Society puts more of its old newsletter contents online, more material connected to Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea is becoming available. Today, when I read an article from the very first issue of the newsletter, I discovered that Shea had been the presenter when L. Neil Smith received the award for Smith's first novel, The Probability Broach:
“And the winner is …” Opening the proverbial envelope with his Swiss Army knife, author Robert Shea of Illuminatus! fame awarded L. Nell Smith the second Prometheus award for his novel, The Probability Broach. The presentation was made at a special event held by the Libertarian Futurist Society at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, September 9 [in 1982].
The Prometheus award is a half ounce privately minted gold coin bearing the likeness of F.A. Hayek, one of the intellectual giants of libertarianism. The award was created to encourage and reward outstanding tibertarian fiction. The award was revived this year after a two-year hiatus dlue to money and organizational problems. Credit for its phoenix- like rise goes to Michael Grossberg, the Austin, Texas libertarian who put together a new set of backers and made the Prometheus Award part of an ambitious new Libertarian Futurist Society. The purpose of LFS, in Grossberg's words, is “to cross-pollinate the worlds of libertarianism and science fiction.”
What do the two have to do with each other? Robert Shea, in his speech presenting the award, eloquently expressed the connection:
“From the days when Sir Thomas Moore wrote Utopia and Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels science fiction has used imaginary societies both to show how our society could be improved and to lampoon what is wrong with it. Libertarians are often asked how their ideas would work in practice, and one of the best ways to answer that question is to present fictional models of libertarian societies. Libertarians need science fiction because the idea of maximizing freedom is still so new and strange in the world that there are few examptes in the real worlds past and present, of how a totally free society would works So libertarians have to turn to the worlds of the future and the imaginations. Libertarian writers also like to use their imagination to demonstrate what is likely to happen to our world if certaln authoritarian trends, some of which may seem harmless or beneficial today, are allowed to develop unchecked. The results of these uses of the imagination to explore libertarian themes have been some classic science fiction novels, such as Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Eric Frank Russell's The Great Explosion, C.M. Kornbluth's The Syndic, Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Ayn Rand's Anthem and Atlas Shrugged (which in my opinion is borderline science fiction), and Ira Levin's This Perfect Day.”
More here. (One of the finalists that year was Samuel R. Delany.) Thanks again to folks such as Chris Hibbert and Anders Monsen who have been making these articles available. You can also browse other articles.
