{"id":485,"date":"2018-06-04T20:15:13","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T01:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lfs.org\/blog\/?p=485"},"modified":"2024-05-10T23:39:35","modified_gmt":"2024-05-11T04:39:35","slug":"review-the-fractal-man-by-j-neil-schulman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/review-the-fractal-man-by-j-neil-schulman\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: J. Neil Schulman’s The Fractal Man brims with humor amid cross-time conspiracies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

J. Neil Schulman<\/em><\/p>\n

By Eric Raymond<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Fractal Man<\/em> <\/a>(written by J.Neil Schulman) is a very, very funny book \u2013 if you share enough subcultural history with the author to get the in-jokes.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t \u2013 and in particular if you never met Samuel Edward Konkin \u2013 the man known as known as \u201cSEKIII\u201d to a generation of libertarians and SF fans before his tragically early death in 2004 \u2013 it will still be a whirligig of a cross-timeline edisonade, but some bits might leave you wondering how the author invented such improbabilities. But I knew SEKIII, and if there was ever a man who could make light of having a 50MT nuclear warhead stashed for safekeeping in his apartment, it was him.
\n<\/p>\n

David Albaugh is a pretty good violinist, a science-fiction fan, and an anarchist with a bunch of odd and interesting associates. None of this prepares him to receive a matter-of-fact phone call from Simon Albert Konrad III, a close friend who he remembers as having been dead for the previous nine years.<\/p>\n

His day only gets weirder from there, as SAKIII and he (stout SF fans that they are) deduce that David has somehow been asported to a timeline not his own. But what became of the \u201clocal\u201d Albaugh? Before the two have time to ruminate\u00a0 on that, they are both timeshifted to a history in which human beings (including them) can casually levitate, but there is no music.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Before they can quite recover from that, they\u2019ve been recruited into a war between two cross-time conspiracies during which they meet multiples of their own fractals \u2013 alternate versions of themselves, so named because there are hints that the cosmos itself has undergone a kind of shattering that may have been recent in what passes for time (an accident at the Large Hadron Collider might have been involved). One of Albaugh\u2019s fractals is J. Neil Schulman.<\/p>\n

It speeds up to a dizzying pace; scenes of war, espionage, time manipulations, and a kiss-me\/kill-me romance between Albaugh and an enemy agent (who also happens to be Ayn Rand\u2019s granddaughter), all wired into several just-when-you-thought-it-couldn\u2019t-go-further-over-the-top plot inversions.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that the natural audience for this book is large, exactly, but if you\u2019re in it, you will enjoy it a lot. Schulman plays fair; even the weirdest puzzles have explanations and all the balls are kept deftly in the air until the conclusion.<\/p>\n

Assuming you know what \u201cspace opera\u201d is, this is \u201ctimeline opera\u201d done with the exuberance of a Doc Smith novel. Don\u2019t be too surprised if some of it sails over your head; I\u2019m not sure I caught all the references.<\/p>\n

Lots of stuff blows up satisfactorily \u2013 though, not, as it happens, that living-room nuke.<\/p>\n

(Reprinted by permission from Eric Raymond’s Armed and Dangerous blog).<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE<\/strong><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Watch the <\/strong>videos <\/strong>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\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/strong><\/a>
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\n<\/u><\/strong>* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For the list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced\u00a0Prometheus Awards page\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to the full set of published appreciation-reviews of past winners.<\/p>\n

* Read\u00a0\u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/em>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us<\/strong>! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards,\u00a0join\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n

Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters! We understand that the arts and literature can be vital, and in some ways even more powerful than politics in the long run, by sparking innovation, better ideas, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights and differences.<\/p>\n

Through recognizing the literature of liberty and the many different but complementary visions of a free future via the Prometheus Awards, the LFS hopes to help spread better visions of the future that help humanity overcome tyranny, slavery and war and achieve universal liberty and human rights and a better world (perhaps eventually, worlds) for all.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

J. Neil Schulman By Eric Raymond The Fractal Man (written by J.Neil Schulman) is a very, very funny book \u2013 if you share enough subcultural history with the author to get the in-jokes. If you don\u2019t \u2013 and in particular if you never met Samuel Edward Konkin \u2013 the man known as known as \u201cSEKIII\u201d … Continue reading Review: J. Neil Schulman’s The Fractal Man brims with humor amid cross-time conspiracies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2353,1924,8],"tags":[1651,24,23,25,1650],"class_list":["post-485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-comic-works","category-review","tag-armed-and-dangerous-blog","tag-eric-raymond","tag-j-neil-schulman","tag-samuel-edward-konkin","tag-the-fractal-man"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-7P","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7550,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions\/7550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}