I normally shy away from historical novels. Having been trained as a professional historian, I have often found that my knowledge of actual history interferes with my enjoyment of the book. But Gore Vidal's Burr is an impressive exception.

Aaron Burr was a colorful, enigmatic, and ubiquitous figure in American history. After serving with distinction as an officer during the American Revolution, he became a potent force in New York politics. He was instrumental in the Republican campaign against the Federalist State, tying with Thomas Jefferson in the electoral college for President during the election of 1800. Beginning with his term as Jefferson's first Vice-president, however, he quickly slid into political disgrace. First he killed his rival, Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton, in a duel, and then he organized the infamous Burr Conspiracy. Historians are still uncertain what this alleged conspiracy was about, but Jefferson had Burr tried for treason. Acquitted, Burr fled to Europe into voluntary exile for four years. There he became close friends with the English liberal philosopher, Jeremy Bentham. He returned to the United States in 1812, and resumed his New York law practice, which he continued until his death in late 1836, at the age of eighty. Although never again active in politics. Burr retained some influence among Jacksonian Democrats. Indeed, it was plausibly rumored that Martin Van Buren. President Jackson's Vice-President and then successor, was Burr's illegitimate son.

Burr's long life requires any biographer to be familiar withes lot of history. The possibilities for error are vast. Luckily, Vidal's knowledge matches that of the best academic historians. He displays not only historical breadth, successfully spanning disparate periods, but also historical depth, getting correct even minute daily details. He is equally at home with the frontier backwater that was Washington, D.C. during the Jeffersonian period and the teeming boom town that was New York City during the Jacksonian period. Add to this his astonishing skill at integrating documented quotations into the novel's conversations. Vidal accurately captures the detail and the flavor of America's past.

Even more unique than the author's accuracy is his political interpretation. His libertarian instincts pervade the entire novel. Escaping the popular reverence for the early U.S. government and its leaders, Vidal exposes the politicians of this era in American history as thieves and scoundrels. For example, Vidal's fictional portrait of General George Washington as a military incompetent, who craved sycophantic devotion and who ruthlessly eliminated all potential rivals, is nearly identical to the factual portrait in volume four of Murray Rothbard's Conceived In Liberty. Vidal's interpretation of the American Revolution leans too heavily toward that of the progressive historians, but that is a minor quibble.

Libertarians may find Vidal unduly harsh on Jefferson. Vidal even admits the fact in his Afterward, explaining that be wrote from Burr's perspective. But however unbalanced the final appraisal of Jefferson, the novel is always harsh for the right reasons—that is, for Jefferson's inconsistency on civil liberties and his betrayal of libertarian principles. In general, I know of no work that more forcefully brings home the corruption and hypocrisy of early American politics.

I have said nothing about Vidal's skills as a novelist. After all, those are well known. The resulting package is an entertaining introduction to early American history, and one that is informed by Libertarian insights.

Several months ago, Brad Linaweaver sent me part of a "Doctor Who" fanzine, Terminus Times. Published in Atlanta, this publication was featuring a continuing series on "My Favorite Doctor Who" in this, the April 1985, issue.

Brad's contribution on the matter was titled "The Doctor as Revolutionist" and though I don't have room to reprint the whole article, here are a few quotes for those who don't yet appreciate the good Doctor.

"The Robert Holmes script shares similarities with many others, including 'Genesis.' Once again, the Doctor finds himself at odds with a dictatorship; once again, the bad guys undermine themselves by following the same old suicidal course: interfering with the Doctor. But The Sunmakers stands out from the main body of Doctor Who because of its unabashed political stance: it is, quite simply, a call to anarchy."

"At the conclusion of this particular adventure, a lot more has changed than the removal of a few bad guys. The Establishment has been completely destroyed. What's more, nobody is discussing an alternative form of administration to replace the old order. Nor does our hero promote any form of the State. He simply tells the people he has freed to work it out for them.

"The Sunmakers is one of those occasions when an endorsement of revolution has appeared on television in the guise of entertainment and a 'children's program' at that. For something this subversive elsewhere in science fiction, one would have to turn to Heinlein's juv, the self-consciously adult TV series, The Prisoner, and a few other beacons in the void. (Interestingly enough, in an earlier episode, 'The Android Invasion' the Doctor was referred to as a libertarian."

These quotes may be enough to give you an idea of how libertarian Dr. Who can be, but aren't enough to demonstrate bow funny this episode/book is. For instance, the Doctor: his fellow traveller, and a "native" are standing on a roof overlooking a great city, and suddenly a great hooting noise terrifies the native. "The Gatherer!" ("The Taxman!") he shrieks, and they all run for safety. "But why did we run?" asks the Doctor. "Perhaps everyone runs from this Tax Gatherer," replies his friend Leela, and such is the case.

I haven't even seen this episode myself—I'm just taking the word of several Whonicks (or whatever they call themselves) after reading the novelized version. I understand that there is one difference between the novel and the TV episode. When Who and his friends finally throw the evil despot off the roof they feel badly about it in the book, but on the TV they don't feel guilty for a minute. An interesting difference. There's a funny, bright essay in the back of the March 17th Time magazine about what to do with dictators. Instead of handing them over to the families of their victims, as they deserve, put them all on one tropical island, and let them bore each other mad at cocktail parties as they try to seduce each other's wives, or just throw them off the nearest skyscraper like in Dr. Who.

Let me say upfront that the reason for this review at this time is to drum up some interest in Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang so that it will have a fighting chance for the Hall of Fame Award—for which I'm nominating it, of course.

Let me also point out right off the bat that Gang is not science fiction, as most Prometheus and Hall of Fame nominees have been, nor is it particularly libertarian, futurist or societal. What it is is downright anarchist. What it is is Ned Ludd sabotage—ecotage, the gang might call it—against the abuses of high-tech.

And it's beautiful.

But let's get specific. The gang consists of four people—A.K. Sarvis, an Albuquerque doctor who destroys billboards in his spare time; Bonnie Abbzug, who is Doc Sarvis' medical secretary and sometime lover; Seldom Seen Smith, a jack Mormon with three wives and a precarious living running tourists down the Colorado River rapids; and the more-or-less hero of the story, George Washington Heyduke, a crazed Vietnam vet who provides the know-how, the muscle and the sheer drive to keep the gang functioning. And the function? To stop—or at least slow down—the rape of the great southwest desert by the developers and exploiters and vacationers (yes!) who thoughtlessly grind away at the defenseless wilderness.

For specifics, the gang soon moves from simple stuff like billboard burning and fence cutting to industrial strength sabotage—disabling heavy equipment, destroying a railroad bridge and the automated train crossing it, and a heroic but doomed attempt to take out three highway bridges in one night. And their ultimate goal—destruction of the mammoth Glen Canyon Dam, behind which the huge Lake Powell has drowned and destroyed vast areas of irreplaceable canyon lands in northern Arizona and southern Utah.

All right, I'm prejudiced—I grew up in northern Arizona and have lived in Albuquerque for the past 15 years, and this stuff strikes home to me. Like Abbey, I was around when Glen Canyon Dam was being built, and I know the country and the people. I share his outrage at what was/is happening and his rebellion against the mindless "regress" it represented.

But prejudice aside (I hope), The Monkey Wrench Gang is really something special. It may not make you cry (as it did me). but it will surely make you laugh for Abbey is an excellent writer who can twist you every which way but indifferent—and he makes a powerful case for resisting the way things are supposed to be. Even if you don't know the canyon-lands from diddle-squat, I find it hard to believe that you could read this novel and not have a real gut-wrenching sympathy for this Gang and what they're trying to do.

But we're futurists, right. That means we have to sacrifice the southwest (and the rest of the eco-world) to achieve the colonization of space, right. Hell no!

Most of the energy and resources —the coal and uranium and strategic metals—that are ripped from the heart of the southwest (and the world) don't go toward the reasonable tradeoff of ecology vs. progress, they go to conspicuous consumption, neon signs, mind-numbing TV, war games, cruising, acid rains and those goddamned aluminum beer cans that George Heyduke tosses so contemptuously out the window.

We'd damned well better find some way to have both our high tech dream and the real world ecosystem that spawned us, or both the ideal and the real are likely to come tumbling down. We need the wilderness more than it needs us.

Edward Abbey would probably disagree. He'd probably say to hell with space travel—let's blow up Glen Canyon Dam and go live in the woods. I sympathize but I think we can have our wilderness and space colonies too, if we play our cards right. Meanwhile, The Monkey Wrench Gang deserves a very high place in anarcho-libertarian thought and I hope you'll seek out a copy and vote it into the Hall of Fame soon.

I only wish I'd read it ten years ago, as I should have.