Letters

1983 Authors Reply

I am certainly honored to know that the Libertarian Futurist Society has put The Dispossessed in the running for the 1983 award. Evidently and obviously, I disagree with certain elements of modern American “Libertarian” theory. Just as evidently and obviously, where this kind of Libertarian stands on Anarchist ground we are standing very close together indeed.

Ursula K. Le Guin
Portland, Oregon

This is to put on record my delight and gratitude to the Society as a whole for having been honored by the selection of my book, Voyage from Yesteryear, for this year’s Prometheus Award. I freely admit to being an incurable optimist as far as our species and its future are concerned, and it is my belief that we are gradually but surely, despite our not-so-infrequent errors, setbacks, miscalculations, and reversals, evolving closer to the kind of society that your members and I would all like to see. In fact we have probably arrived there many times over already when judged by the terms of the past at any given time; but the past’s goals and ideals are never satisfactory when attained, and so we will set new ones. Voyage from Yesteryear indeed!

James P. Hogan
Sonora, California

Word from the Stoned Age

Sam Konkin’s piece, “je M’Oppose La Program d’space” (Summer, ’83) was Konkin in his favorite pose, the fearlessly lucid super-rationalist confronting the mass, the heroic dissenter…he thinks he’s a character in a Heinlein novel.

We know of course that the Government is sooner or later to blame for everything, from split ends to heroin, but—would you run past me once more how the Government is to blame for the fact that there is not, nor has there ever been a Delos D. Harriman as the Lib/Futs desire? Is there a law against rocketing off to the asteroid belt? Doubtless taxation and so on soak up resources that might otherwise be available for spacing out… the fact remains, though, that plenty of capital remains in private hands, and so long as it does, why do investors put their money into every other imaginable venture—except space?

That militarist scum like Niven/Pournelle were even in the running for a (suppositious) “libertarian” award sure shows how little liberty and “Libertarianism” have to do with each other. Their libertarian claptrappings are membrane-thin at best—just a stage set for slaughtering lumpen, hippies, niggers and commies who wanna loot their condos (and do them a favor).

Atlas Shrugged is an all-star nomination, but 1984 isn’t? Why is Philip K. Dick excluded—because he depicts the little guy caught up in a high-tech world he can’t fathom or control? You know what my nomination would be? Harry Harrison’s Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers because it sends up the (ass) whole whizz-jism-kid breathless all-American extremism that you LFsers epitomize. Do you know what happened to Marinetti and the rest of the original Futurists? They went Fascist, ending their careers as Mussolini’s ideological errand boys…I guess there was no nomination for The Word for World is Forest—or Ubu Roi.

The two-dimensional space-jockey rationalist is only a libration away from mysticism—example: how L. Ron Hubbard took John Campbell in. Grok of shit! Look at Clarke, “promise him anything but give him space” on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays—and Buddhrivel orientalia on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays! Look at Star Wars!

Back to the Stone(d) Age!

Ned Ludd
Berkeley, California