SCIENCE FICTION FOR LIBERTARIANS: I'm rereading The Golden Age before I check out Phoenix Exultant, so I'm looking for reviews of the latter and I run across this interview with John Wright, the author, which is goofy in parts (it's an e-mail interview which allows Wright to write the way I imagine Dr. Smith from Lost In Space would) and I see this:

You have also missed the most important reference in my novel: I am writing in imitation of, and as a rebuke to, Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon. My subtitle "Romance of the Far Future" was meant to echo his subtitle, which (if memory serves me) was "A Romance of the Near and Far Future".

As much as I admire him, Mr. Stapledon and I are philosophical foes. At the zenith of his human evolution, his Eighteenth Human Race on Neptune has a communist utopia with no private property; at the zenith of my human evolution, my Seventh Mental Structure is a libertarian utopia with no public property. His Neptunians are wiped out when the sun increases radiation output; my Helion re-engineers the internal plasma structure of the sun to control the radiation output.

It's a really cool book, reminding me of Bester in its density of ideas--though in that interview Wright says he has no debt to Bester but instead to Jack Vance, who I've never read. There's a certain artificiality to it, but hey, we live in artificial times, as do the characters in the book. But to the nth degree, this being science fiction (where you can carry ideas to the nth degree). And he's not an axe-grinder either; this isn't like if Bob Heinlein turned libertarian or something. (What was he, anyway? Did he ever say? I've always heard the terms "fascist" and "crypto-fascist" in relation to him, but I could be listening to the wrong people.) But check it out if you've got the libertarian leanings and you're a science fiction fan. If you're not an SF fan, you'll just be baffled.

I dug this part from the interview (and, again, to enjoy this interview you have to forgive Wright his over-the-top erudition--not in this part, but in the interview generally) where he was answering something about why all his characters were named for myths:

Greek myths are heroic, noble and tragic; but the American Dream is heroic, comical, and uplifting. Americans are a people in whom overweening ambition is rewarded, not punished. The Wright Brothers did not have their wings melt when they flew too high. Perhaps their wings were more soundly built than those of Icarus. I am certainly writing for those who believe in the American Dream.