By Michael Grossberg
For me as a boy, The Star Dwellers was revelatory.
An idealistic drama about a fraught “second contact” between Earth humans and ancient aliens, James Blish’s 1961 novel sparked my thinking about ethics, economics and politics.
I couldn’t have imagined at the time what reading yet another Young Adult science fiction novel would lead me to, but ultimately The Star Dwellers paved the way for me to develop into a full-fledged libertarian by the early 1970s.
THE ETHOS OF FREE MARKETS
As described in a previous Prometheus Blog post, Blish’s inspiring novel incorporates a variety of libertarian ideas and ideals, especially key concepts of consent, contract, free trade and the beneficial results of voluntary exchange to mutual profit.
At that point in my life in the early 1960s, I had never been exposed – in books, in school, at the movies or watching television or in conversation – to almost anything positive about the ethics of capitalism.
While I was becoming aware of frequent views in popular American culture linking free or free-er enterprise with greater prosperity and progress, I don’t recall almost anyone suggesting that greedy, selfish, money-grubbing capitalism could possibly have an ethical justification or spiritual dimension. How
None of the writers, columnists or social leaders I was aware of ever framed free markets and economic freedom as being virtuous – or suggested a philosophical or historical connection between free trade and peace.
While a few framed capitalism as a practical necessity, virtually the only socioeconomic system that seemed to be framed as moral, and an ideal, was socialism, or communism or some other variant of collectivism.
The idea that capitalism could be social, rather than anti-social? Virtually unheard of – at least within my orbit growing up!
MY GRADUAL EVOLUTION INTO A LIBERTARIAN
Years later, when I began reading Ayn Rand in high school and college, especially Atlas Shrugged and her nonfiction anthology Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, I came across a more comprehensive and profound framework affirming a free society and free markets as both ethical and practical.
And when as a civil-libertarian and pro-Enlightenment liberal, I discovered philosopher John Hospers’ book Libertarianism: A Political Philosophy for Tomorrow and read it in 1973, I realized that my civil-liberties views were actually an inextricable part of both a free-market order and a more comprehensive political philosophy. One that, as I came to understand it, represents the best modern formulation of true liberalism and live-and-let-live pluralism.
But it was reading Blish’s The Star Dwellers that laid a solid foundation for the many books I later read on social philosophy and economics, starting with Henry Hazlitt’s introductory Economics in One Lesson and moving on to more sophisticated classics by Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick, Thomas Sowell, Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Milton Friedman and David Friedman.
THE SUBTLETIES OF A FREE SOCIAL ORDER
Reading Blish’s novel introduced me to basic ideas that I later recognized in all of the above thinkers.
One key aspect of modern libertarianism that is still poorly understood, though, is that it’s actually not one idea but a complex, subtle and sometimes counterintuitive set of ideas that are intricately interrelated.
Among them: individual rights, self-ownership, non-aggression, contract theory, defining and recognizing property rights as healthy boundaries, methodological individualism, privatization, deregulation and more.
Perhaps the most important but also the more complex and subtle libertarian idea is the insight developed over many centuries by Lao Tzu, Adam Smith and Hayek, among many other wise thinkers, of spontaneous order (the always-evolving and decentralized socio-economic behavior requiring coordination and constant adaptation that individuals and companies must make to survive and thrive in an ever-shifting and unknown future.)
By the way, that latter idea arises, along with an informed critique of the type of State-enforced central planning imagined by Isaac Asimov in his genre-defining Foundation trilogy, in Donald Kingsbury’s Courtship Rite, inducted in 2016 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.
Also, as Ludwig von Mises, Hayek and other Austrian-school economists have always affirmed and understood, economics and free-market economic theories are not based on greed or materialism or selfish behavior.
Rather, economics is based on a multifaceted recognition that people pursue their perceived interests (not necessarily their rational self-interest!) as material and spiritual beings seeking to enhance their lives – or broadly “profit” – on multiple levels and in a variety of ways that sometimes fall short, are misdirected or prove disappointing. (That’s part of the messy, imperfect realities of life, which entails the possibility of regret.)
At the same time, individualism is the most social of social philosophies. While socialism is actually anti-social because it favors institutionalized coercion in theory in a centralized State to achieve various alleged noble goals, individualism is fundamentally social because it supports voluntarism and genuine cooperation and community while respecting personal choice, moral autonomy and human dignity.
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS – AND VIRTUE, AND MEANING
Thus, free individuals in free or freer societies tend to become engaged not only in the pursuit of happiness but just as much in the pursuit of virtue, respect, meaning, status, love, security, knowledge, wisdom and many other things that cannot be reduced or equated to a desire for money. Above all, each of us yearn to matter, to make a difference, a positive difference, in our families, communities, countries and the world.
Many novelists, including SF/fantasy writers, succeed by incorporating many aspects of that more mature understanding of the human spirit into their best stories – some of which, when they focus specifically on freedom, have duly become recognized among the 110 Prometheus Awards presented between 1979 and 2025.
Among other things, all this suggests that what Adam Smith famously described as “the simple system of natural liberty” in …The Wealth of Nations – his seminal 1776 book exploring the foundations of freedom and prosperity and why some civilizations rise while others fall -” isn’t anywhere as simple as either the knee-jerk market fundamentalists or anti-market ideologues imagine.
ACTUALLY, IT USUALLY DOESN’T BEGIN EASILY
Compared to the more-common pattern of people reading Ayn Rand or Robert Heinlein and becoming libertarians, as irreverently chronicled in Jerome Tuccille’s book It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand, my own intellectual evolution and personal path to libertarianism may be relatively unusual.
Yet, like other libertarians, that does suggest something we have in common: Few of us discovered the modern political philosophy easily or automatically.
After all, libertarianism wasn’t, and mostly still isn’t, taught in school. Or commonly visible on television or in movies (and when it is, it’s typically caricatured, oversimplified, demonized or otherwise distorted.)
And bona fide libertarian books almost never are assigned in classes, included on recommended reading lists, showcased in bookstores and libraries or ranked high on the New York Times bestseller lists (if ranked at all.)
So how were we supposed to discover it? For that matter, how does anyone ever learn about complex, subtle, intelligent and often counterintuitive ideas and policies when they challenge the status quo far more radically than more trendy totems of fashionable beliefs?
THE RARE LIBERTARIAN BREAKTHROUGHS
Yes, some books do break through – such as Rand’s Atlas Shrugged did in the late 1950s, Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress did in the mid-1960s and Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose book and 10-part TV documentary series did in the 1980s.
But those maverick bestsellers are far and few between. And by the way, has anything as impactful as those bestsellers appeared lately – within our current century?
What all this suggests isn’t very complimentary to the blind spots and biases of mainstream culture (although all of us have blind spots because of the inevitable division of knowledge, a key aspect of the division of labor), or in the more intellectual precincts of elite culture and academia.
Yet it sadly remains pertinent to the spread of our ideas: Beyond conventional Fourth of July rhetoric and our lip service to American-Revolutionary ideals, It usually requires a lot of reading to become a libertarian of any real knowledge, consistency and depth.
I’m fairly certain that if I wasn’t such an avid reader, throughout my lifetime, of both fiction and non-fiction, I would never have discovered libertarianism.
Far more than most movements and political philosophies, one has to read, and read regularly, across a wide spectrum – and just as important, think for yourself – to truly grasp the literature and politics of freedom.
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN FREEDOM AND SCIENCE FICTION
That’s why I think so many current libertarians developed their thinking in part through science fiction.
One can better appreciate the blessings of liberty from exposure to the salutary negative examples of dystopian literature (notably, Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm; Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Ira Levin’s lesser-known This Perfect Day, all Prometheus Hall of Fame winners).
But I think more libertarians developed their thinking in part from the more positive and inspiring visions of human possibility and human liberation depicted in the fiction of Rand, Heinlein, Poul Anderson and many of the more recent generations of writers who’ve won Prometheus Awards.
And yes, also James Blish, whose The Star Dwellers is one of five classic novels selected as finalists for the next Prometheus Hall of Fame award.
Suffice to say that for those understand that cooperation, consent and respect for other people’s rights are libertarian virtues necessary to sustain civility and civilization itself, Blish’s novel remains worth reading along with other libertarian SF classics – and especially worth sharing as a YA novel with younger readers.
A UNIQUE BOOK-DRIVEN POLITICAL MOVEMENT
As the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has recognized in its entry on libertarian science fiction: ”Uniquely among political movements, many of libertarianism’s most influential texts have been by SF writers… It seems likely that the influence of the (Libertarian SF) movement within sf will grow.”
As leading libertarian feminist Wendy McElroy observed when she helped present the 2000 Prometheus Awards at the 2000 Worldcon, people do come to libertarianism through fiction – especially via reading the novels of Rand, Heinlein and L. Neil Smith.
“When he established the Prometheus Awards, Smith was acknowledging the political contributions that fiction makes to libertarianism,” McElroy said.
“He recognized its importance and influence, namely that it fire the imagination, it fires the vision of man and woman, and it is absolutely essential to inspire people.”
ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
