Not wanting to wait for the Spring ‘08 Prometheus, I sought out part two of the Terry Goodkind interview. But first, these observations on part one:

So Mr. Goodkind doesn’t like to be labeled a “fantasy” writer? PUH-LEEZE! Ask the late Robert Jordan. Ask George R. R. Martin. Mr. Goodkind has made a lucrative career for himself as a “fantasy” writer, as have Jordan and Martin. And isn’t ALL fiction “fantasy?”

Mr. Goodkind was “completely unaware” of his award nominations? Are not authors notified by award committees on whether or not they are nominated? Doesn’t Mr. Goodkind have an agent who tells him these things? This, plus his saying he doesn’t care about awards is pretentious rubbish, IMHO. I suppose I should believe Roger Clemens when he says that he “doesn’t give a rat’s ass” about being in the Hall Of Fame. Right…

As for part two, I’m sorry to see that Mr. Goodkind embraces the static fundamentalist cult of Leonard Peikoff-style Objectivism rather than the dynamic, reality-based, common-sense David Kelley style. Perhaps he is unaware of the Objectivist Center.

All this said, I have never read any of Mr. Goodkind’s novels. I will give Wizard’s First Rule a try. Hopefully, it will not be Atlas Shrugged in a “Dungeons-And-Dragons” setting…

— Michael Serafin

Michael,

I wholeheartedly agree with your criticisms of Goodkind. By the way, I’ve read the first few books of the series and skimmed Naked Empire. While Goodkind is a decent writer, he’s not on the level of Jordan and especially not on the level of Martin. The series has both its good points and its bad points. As for the Objectivism, the series doesn’t start out overtly Objectivist but becomes increasingly so over the course of the series. Richard becomes increasingly preachy as the series progresses. In Naked Empire, Goodkind even has Richard regurgitate (badly) Rand’s clever indictment of Kant (we’re blind because we have eyes, etc.).

— Geoffrey Allan Plauché

Editor Responds:

The two comments above regarding Terry Goodkind appeared on the LFS email list, and I’m glad that the reprinting of the Goodkind interview spurred some debate about the content. I’ve only started one of his novels and perhaps it caught me at a bad time; getting into a long series near the end rarely works. Still, it’s not often one finds a best-selling fantasy writer speaking as frankly about Ayn Rand and her influence on his books as Goodkind. Rand may have disliked libertarianism (and I am no Randian), but her influence in terms of fiction and philosophy is undeniable.

— Anders Monsen

Nice review of [S. M. Stirling's] The Sunrise Lands. I loved the review since I'm following this series avidly. For William Stoddard: the lyrics of the marching song of the Boise soldiers may be from Macaulay, but both as a filker and as someone raised as a minister's daughter, I'll tell you right now the tune is “Lead On, Oh King Eternal.” I should ask the Stirling list if that was on purpose.

At any rate, I directed the Stirling list to this excellent review.

And as a companion piece to David Friedman's article on Kipling, I direct everyone's attention to the tapes and CDs of science fiction folk singer and lifelong libertarian Leslie Fish, whose rousing tunes bring old Rudyard vividly alive.

— Patricia (Pat) Mathews

I just joined the mailing list (after joining LFS as my main Christmas present from my wife) and I'm a bit surprised there's so little interest in the British SF writer Iain M. Banks, who I think is one of the greatest SF writers in the world. He's also often political in his writings. True, he's hardly a libertarian (of course, neither are the other giants of Scottish SF, Ken MacLeod and Charles Stross) but he takes political ideas seriously and explores topics I would think libertarians would be interested in. Excession for example is a very good space opera and takes up the topic of noninterventionism. The Algebraist deals with political repression (in more than one way.) He has a new one just out, Matter, and naturally I am hoping it will be very good.

A new Neal Stephenson novel is coming out in September, Anathem, and it's being described as a science fiction novel set in the future on another planet

This is big news for me, as Cryptonomicon is maybe my favorite novel of the past 15-20 years. I wish it had won a Prometheus Award.

— Thomas E. Jackson