From: tal691@huxley.anu.edu.au (Tonio Loewald)
Newsgroups: aus.sf
Subject: Re: A Recommendation (was Re: Isn't anyone READING anymore?)
Date: 31 Dec 92 06:24:50 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12

mwp@iconix.oz.au (Michael Paddon) writes:

>In <1992Dec18.063642.14667@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au> ghm@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au (Geoff Miller) writes:
>>I'm sure the detailed discussion of the latest ST:TNG episode
>>is interesting (although I usually skip it until I've had 
>>time to watch the programme on tape), but is that really all
>>there is to SF in Aus?  Come on, people  -  what happened to 
>>all the discussion of favourite authors, pulling plots apart
>>and so on?

>I'll bite.

>Just finished reading _The LaNague Chronicles_ by F. Paul Wilson.
>Paperback, October 1992, ISBN 0-671-72139-9.

>F. Paul Wilson is perhaps better known for his work in the horror genre
>(_The Keep_ especially), but he has been resposible for some top notch,
>if not well marketed, SF.

>_The LaNague Chronicles_ is a collection of two novels (_Enemy of the State_,
>and _Healer_) and a novella (_Wheels within Wheels_). All of these have
>seen previous publication, but I doubt that many people have seen them.
>While the entire book is extremely well written (as is usual for Wilson),
>I'm going to concentrate on _Enemy of the State_ in this article.

>Wilson states in the first sentence of the introduction:
>    "Galactic empires are a joke."
>His reasons are fundametally economic, with a good dash of individualist
>idealism thrown in for measure. _Enemy of the State_ is set within a
>democratic empire (ie. the emporer is elected for life), and it examines
>the true stability of such a system.

>The empire consists of colony worlds which have seceeded from Earth's
>control. Classic stuff. The twist is Peter LaNague, a man who intends
>to bring down the empire by purely economic means. Through the medium
>of this character, Wilson examines the dynamics of State, targeting
>inflationary monetary monopolies, the lack of a gold standard, the
>problems of having a majority of employment funded by the government,
>and other simpliar issues.

>Put simply, this is an eloquent Anarchocapitalist manifesto. It is a
>credit to Wilson, however, that the ideology never dominates the plot
>which is always well paced and absorbing. Neither does he try to force
>feed the ideas to the reader, he just puts forward cogent, logical
>arguments.

>The result is a novel which has immediate relevance to our own tottering
>government; a novel that presents an alternative to replacing one party of
>criminals with another.

>Not only that, but it's a good read.

>Michael


It's interesting to hear about economic science fiction.

Accepting the definition of economics as the study of allocations
of scarce resources (with a view to the efficient allocation of ...)
the question becomes: at a given level of technology, which are the
scarce resources?

Gordone Dickson asks AND ANSWERS this question (with debateable
correctness) in the Dorsai books, where the scarce commodity is
PEOPLE with given abilities. In Ursula Le Guin's Hainish novels
the scarce commodity is information (indeed, prior to the advent
of ansible ships, it is all that anyone can trade).

My problem with the thesis outlined here is that it makes
assumptions about the nature of the underlying economy of a
"galactic empire" -- or interstellar empire at any rate --
that are simply not valid.

Where is our gold standard? Why is our money still worth
something. Is this not intrinsically linked to military and
paramilitary power?

It sounds like an interesting, if potentially irritating, book.
Jack Vance's novel, The Gray Prince, discusses the underlying
fundamentals while retaining (as far as I can tell, not having
read the book which prompts this raving) fewer unconscious
assumptions.

By the way, I am reading AND I thoroughly recommend as gripping,
Shelby Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative". Sorry, I know it's
not science fiction, but then neither is ST:TNG.

Tonio Loewald

-- 
Tonio Loewald | tal691@huxley.anu.edu.au | Life is short. Be nice.
"You can lie/You can cry/For all the good it'll do you, you can
die/But when it's done/And the police come/And they lay you down
for dead/Just remember what I said" (Paul Simon-not the senator)
Newsgroups: aus.sf