Libertarianism’s Limits on Creativity
The practical argument is based largely on the problem of economic calculation. Due to the protean nature of human desires, and that fact that these desires are specific to the individual, capitalist theory says there is no way that a centralized planning system organized by the state can accurately perform all the necessary calculations to ensure a smoothly functioning economy. These calculations must be performed by the individuals themselves, who make endless calculations throughout the day as to what actions will maximize their personal satisfaction. This has certainly been largely true in the industrial age, but isn’t science fiction about change, and isn’t it possible that the information age will be different? No, and no. These novels endlessly replay the concerns of the early industrial age. They do this by creating a new frontier (near space is common) and, more strikingly, using a set of genre conventions that severely curtail the nature of scientific advancement.
Given the vast spectrum of human science and practices, one might expect wonderful hypothesizing in any or all of them in a randomly chosen score of science fiction novels. In libertarian science fiction, the wonders of the world come from and for the individual, which makes for some very strange narrative twists indeed. Varley’s The Golden Globe imagines far greater malleability of form and biological system for humans; genitals can be sucked into body cavities at will, drugs are available to reliably stimulate the sexual drive, and so on. However, rather than make definitions of humanity more porous—more cybernetic, if you will—these powers are always put in the service of the coherent individual self. Pallas postulates household-sized fusion reactors—but computers are largely absent, and the planning computers of the government have not advanced along with fusion or space exploration. Vinge does posit the ability to interface mentally with machines, and immense advancements in computing power, but these are all located in individual computers. The possibility of meeting mind to mind and reaching a shared agreement about the needs of the community or race is never acted on. The dream of connecting with other humans and really knowing them is age-old in the human race. It is so completely absent from these novels that it almost reduces to an equation: libertarian science fiction is about the freedom to explore and manipulate the entire universe, so long as the essential human self is not tampered with.
The Essential Self
At various times the stability of this essential character is so extreme that it is self-evident, maintains itself essentially (beyond physical bounds), and is self-propagating. To give examples of each of these qualities, the detective in Vinge’s Marooned in Realtime can accurately read faces and say without a hint of irony that someone looks like a murderer. The character is, of course, a former member of a government. In Milan’s The Cybernetic Samurai, a scientist whose mind is downloaded at the time of death into a computer system inhabited by an AI maintains an independent existence within his circuitry, and thinks “privately” despite his omnipresence in the system. Finally, in Pallas the son of the leader of the collectivist state is literally a sociopath, a condition that is an implicit extension of his father’s statist policies. James Gunn has stated that science fiction “is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people.” Given the stability these novels claim for human character, libertarian science fiction is more about stasis, or, more charitably, about people effecting change on the universe without being changed by their actions.
The Family
One area where all the libertarian arguments about how humans are innately individuals dissolves is the family unit, most especially the heterosexual couple. Time and again in these novels man and wife do—somehow—form a unified collective. Within the family unit it is somehow possible to reach an accord that is genuine, in which a) individuals do not strive to reach their own goals over those of others and/or b) the goals of two individuals somehow fuse and become one. Sexual relationships are the site where the male orientation most often becomes painfully obvious, and where the male perspective fuses with the (forgive me) thrust towards rebellion to become explicitly adolescent. In these novels sexuality is a force that leaps across all cultural barriers and obstacles. No libertarian character, for example, is drawn only to partners who come from a similar cultural matrix or ethnic background. A free mind leaves these things behind. However, in these novels it is only women whose desire must leap over physical unattractiveness or age. The inventor hero of Pallas, who is scarred and has only one eye, is sexually exciting to a woman less than half his age (who is also the daughter of his first true love); the heroine of The Rainbow Cadenza accepts the proposal of her former teacher, many decades older than she, and so on. Given the power to do so, it seems clear that male sexuality will reshape its object to be younger and prettier. The disembodied but somehow male AI in The Cybernetic Samurai reshapes the virtual form of his scientist mother to be more slender and fit, despite lacking a body himself, so that they may have virtual sex (that he assumes will be more satisfying for her).
The relationship of parent to child is more slippery. If a parent nurtures a child’s abilities, allows free rein for his or her curiosity, and allows free sexual expression, parent and child will have a good relationship. However, if a parent acts for what he or she perceives to be the child’s own good and this contradicts the will of the child, the parent will inevitably be shown to be, well, wrong. To justify this, most children in these novels are prodigies, with judgment and insight far beyond their years. Pallas’s Emerson Ngu is both inventor and instinctively pro-freedom, and the child-actor in The Golden Globe is both a genius and instinctively pro-freedom.
Two things are missing in these portrayals of family. The first is any sense that guidance or schooling is necessary. Families too become (somehow) voluntary units, in which already formed and complete humans are simply cared for. Enculturation is unnecessary, and schools, long the tool of statist socialization, are almost completely absent from these narratives. The second missing element is any recognition that the family could be either drastically reshaped by culture and circumstance (as happens, for example, with the line marriages in Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of the LFS’s Hall of Fame Award winners), or, contrarily, form the metaphorical basis for a state that is less oppressive. The specific qualities of romantic love that allows it to form the base for a non-oppressive assemblage would surely be a worthy object of inquiry in any examination of freedom, but passes instead unexamined.
The absence of an examination of the family is particularly telling because it is another example of libertarian science fiction cutting all ties with the lineage of actual libertarian and classical liberal thought. Locke, and many thinkers since, Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill among them, have argued that challenging the accepted nature of the family is a crucial step in freeing the mind. Rather than finding ways to make the maturation period more graceful, or examining how we can relate to children in ways that better equip them to be free, these novels show a self that is somehow naturally coherent and naturally equipped to operate responsibly in a market economy. All attempts to guide this self are oppressive. Individuals who are not perverted statists can reason purely and cleanly to their ends, an ability which passes beyond reason into some direct perception of the nature of existence, one that happens to align nicely with Western heterosexual desire, a desire that somehow transcends its physical container and is written into the nature of the universe. It would not be going too far to suggest that in rejecting the presence of a Judeo-Christian deity, as these books have, these authors have simply taken the position and qualities to themselves.
The result of this schema is a grand melodrama, populated at its best by archetypes, but more often by thinly characterized placeholders for the reader’s point of view. Such a narrative design makes a wonderful engine for a teen adventure story, but produces science fiction that is curiously distorted by the ideological limitations placed upon it, and allows examinations of freedom that are only marginally honest.
The Wondrous Exceptions
It’s clear that I’ve judged the winners of the Prometheus Award harshly. (Hey, that’s what happens when a libertarian looks closely at what he’s been reading.) Despite the many specific examples I’ve provided, I’ve also generalized broadly. This was intentional; I’ve been looking at the genre’s shared characteristics. The obvious question now is: is that all there is? Stated more positively, do any winners of the Prometheus Award actually write fiction that is both good science fiction and that honestly examines the nature of freedom?