Here is part 4 of the Prometheus Blog interview with Rick Triplett, a lifelong science fiction fan, decades-long libertarian, a veteran Prometheus Awards judge and recently honored as the Libertarian Futurist Society’s first Emeritus member.
Q: You’ve practiced aikido for many years – and have even demonstrated the martial art at area festivals. What attracted you to aikido and does it have any relevance to your libertarian views?
A: Aikido is a non-aggressive martial art (virtually the only one).
Its strategy is to de-escalate rather than resort to fighting; its tactics are to avoid and restrain, rather than to damage the opponent. Although its techniques can damage or kill, they are applied in a measured way that at least attempts allowing an attacker to shift from domination to negotiation.
It respects human agency including one’s own right to self-defense.
Q: The right of self-defense is certainly at the foundation of individual rights and the philosophy of freedom – which in political terms, means the freedom to live in peace (properly understood and defined as the absence of coercion by others) while respecting the rights of others, avoiding aggression and only using force when necessary to protect individual rights.
But free trade and free markets are also key aspects of libertarianism and its close antecedent, classical liberalism. Are there any novels that inspired or influenced you about economic freedom?
A: Trader to the Stars, by Poul Anderson (inducted in 1985 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame), was my introduction to the idea of free trade. In some ways, Anderson’s novel prepared me for Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
Q: Besides Heinlein’s classic works, name your favorite sf/fantasy novels (whether or not they have anything to do with libertarian or anti-authoritarian themes) – and why you enjoy them.
A: For pleasure on an epic scale: Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and Carl Sagan’s Contact.
Both of these first-contact novels leave one spellbound by the scope of advanced civilizations – advanced because they apparently found a way to avoid destroying themselves in power struggles.
How they did this remains unknown, but the consequences led to mind-bending advances in science and discovery. A good word for this mind-bending awe is “numinous,” which Sagan actually uses in his novel (made into a quite good movie, I might add).
In Sagan’s tale we actually get to meet (sort of) an alien, and discover that this alien is in awe of still another unknown and far more advanced culture that preceded him. It is valuable to read tales that hint at solutions, but perhaps even more valuable to read tales that inspire us to yearn and dream.
Q: Do you have any favorite novels that explore the perennial issue of how to succeed at defending freedom and/or achieving a fully free society?
A: For directing me toward a possible solution for the Great Libertarian Mystery (how to make freedom happen), I admire and highly recommend James P. Hogan’s Voyage From Yesteryear; Vernor Vinge’s story “True Names” and Marc Stiegler’s Earthweb.
Hogan’s Prometheus-winning novel is a tribute to education unhindered by coercion, and of the resolving of disputes by simply ignoring people who are childish.
In 1970, I and some of my friends discussed applications of what we called “selective Shrugging” as a means of dissuading others from the use of force.
I got this idea from a Heinlein story (which I can no longer identify) in which a society was bombed and a character exclaimed something like “their organization was geographic instead of dispersed.” Subsequently I quit thinking of jurisdiction/administration as being limited to geography – “governments” could overlap.
Reading Vinge’s story sparked my realization that computer science is a profoundly diverse and useful technology, and that it can form the basis for harnessing the power of concerted, targeted Shrugging.
Finally, Earthweb by Marc Stiegler (a frequent Prometheus Best Novel nominee and finalist)was the first novel to dramatize for me (quite realistically) how powerful human cooperation could become when assisted by digital technology.
We need technology to “out organize” the authoritarians.
* Check out Part One, Part Two and Part Three of the Prometheus Blog interview with Rick Triplett.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:
* Prometheus winners: For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including 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, which now 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.
* 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.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt),Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
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