The most difficult issue that libertarians have to face is defense against invaders. My favorite libertarian defense story is Vernor Vinge's novelette, "The Ungoverned", published in Baen Books Far Frontiers III. A close second is James Hogan's Voyage From Yesteryear.

Both these stories were important because they presented a view of how societies without governments could defend themselves, but they were set in different circumstances and time than ours. David's Sling performs the equally important function of addressing the transitional defense of today and the near future from a liberty oriented perspective. Marc Stiegler understands the bureaucratic mess of today's military establishment. His novel is the story of a group of individuals dedicated to reason that fight the defense establishment so that they can invent cheap, commercially based, information age weapons of defense.

The weapons he describes use expert systems to guide unmanned battlefield systems to knock out the enemy's leaders and command and control systems. These elegant weapons conspire alone to make the book well worth the read.

The theme of the novel is Information Age vs. Industrial Age, and the author smoothly integrates Information Age and rational thinking throughout the book.

Stiegler also incorporates the idea of decision duels where truth is sought through a structured public forum. This idea has been pushed by Arthur Kantrowitz and Eric Drexler, and it is encouraging to see it in fiction.

I had some quibbles with the book. The protagonists belonged to an institute which was predominantly pro-reason, but sometimes the members' cult-like style rubbed me the wrong way. The institute also invented a completely unnecessary and dangerous concept called "superrational" which was defined as risking your life to improve the long term well being of the society you live in. The concept of rationality is enough, because it is rational in some circumstances to risk one's life for the values one cherishes.

Characterization was not the strong point of the book. One character that was not believable to me was the daughter of the protagonist, who went to work straight out of college for some one who was totally opposed to her values just so she could watch him up close.

Overall though David's Sling measures up to the standards of the Prometheus Award. It deserves a good hard look because it shows a way out of today's toughest problems to a world where peace and liberty have a much greater chance. It promotes a culture of rationality and reason; it lambastes the existing military complex for all the right reasons, and it is an absorbing story.