Date: 22 Jan 1981 1753-PST From: Mike Leavitt Subject: SPEAKING OF NEIL SMITH . . . Brief reviews of L. Neil Smith's brand new libertarian SF: The Venus Belt (in paper as of 1/5/81): Nanoreview: If you liked Probability Broach, you'll love Venus Belt. If you thought PB was a bit much, you may like VB anyway! Microreview: VB picks up the universe, the characters, and the style of PB, but since it assumes you've read the latter, it doesn't spend all of its time telling you how the Confederacy of North America got where it did. Instead, it spends much of its time on a very quickly-plotted action/mystery sf story. The gadgets are great, the twists fairly unpredictable, and the fun quite substantial. If you are into Libertarian politics, the in jokes and parodies are very well done, but not being into Libertarian politics doesn't leave you feeling left out -- you just don't know what you missed. In any case, it is good, contemporary SF. Have fun. Mike Date: 23 Jan 1981 1000-EST From: LS.MELTSNER at MIT-EECS Subject: Yolanda, L. Neil Smith, and other trash 1) MITSFS, in its vast collection of SF, has the second Yolanda story. Apparently quite crude (i. e. not subtle), the following might be useful to lovers of trashy books: Yolanda #2: Slaves of Space, Dominique Verseau, Grove Press, (c) 1976, $1.95 Whirlwind Book Co., 80 Fifth Ave., NY, NY, 10011, was listed as the distributor. I hope this helps those of you who were intrigued by the discussion a few weeks back. 2) L. Neil Smith is vaguely interesting, even though the ending of The Venus Belt was useless, ridiculous, and perhaps impossible. (Look MA, no spoiler!!!) Political "Philosophy" was reprehensible, as was the entire book. Several bad puns, (i.e. distracting, cutesy, etc.) further mar the story. Best bet: ignore, take a walk in the inner city, and wonder why nothing works perfectly in the real world. (regardless of political creed) IN short, the book (TBV) lacks characterization, action, development, and reason. (Though there appears to be a half-dead plot staggering around in the ruins.) Don't Buy!!!! 3) Story about the rejuve process that duplicates younger selves and leaves the old guy to slavery, is by Orson Scott Card in OMNI, and I think it was published last spring. Good story. (See, I do like something other than my own inflated ego.) Yours for the low price of $9.95, (tapes $11.95) Capt. Polaroid Date: 25 Jan 1981 1610-EST From: LS.MELTSNER at MIT-EECS Subject: TVB flame As an addendum to my previous flame on The Venus Belt, I'd like to mention that the reason the political philosophy is being discussed, and not the book, is the fact that the book itself is quite poor. The only valuable part, perhaps, is the philosophy, and that is why we are arguing. Even a hard-core believer in libertarianism should admit that the book is poorly written. Even The Probability Broach was written better than TVB. To me, it just looks like L. Neil Smith is bucking for the Prometheous Award. Capt. Polaroid Date: 4 Nov 1981 at 2111-CST From: hjjh at UTEXAS-11 Subject: THE VENUS BELT ^^^^^^^^^^^^ AUTHORS, PUNS, AND A RIP-ROARIN' GOOD READ ^^^^^^^^^^^^ It's intriguing that "SF authors as fictional characters", and "puns" should crop up in SF-L on a day when I had planned to burble about L. Neil Smith's THE VENUS BELT. It's a sequel to THE PROBABILITY BROACH which I had tried earlier but tossed aside after the first couple pages because a book which starts out with a corpse having been flayed and the skin neatly folded and laid over the back of a chair was *NOT* my kind of a book! But I may have been too hasty. ...BELT is exciting, ironic, fun, and razzle-dazzle with puns and in-group references. For one of the latter especially appropriate to SF-L readers-- "computerwise, there's no such thing as a free crunch". Or, if you want your references more blatant, there's mention of an Admiral Heinlein (it's an alternate universe story), a town called Nivenville, an asteroid named Bester 9656, a spaceship "Lord Kalvan", and so forth. There's an Emperor Norton University, but I have a feeling that's some other reference I can't quite place (but betcha Chip will), rather than our Andree. It's \full/ of clever ideas-- like the elevator to the city in the hollow, weight-free center of Ceres opening onto "a life-size replica of M.C. Escher's RELATIVITY, potty plants, arches, and staircases going every whichway, some people walking up the treads, and others down the risers". It reads very much like Janifer's SURVIVOR with a dash of Heinlein for extra strength. So it's back to THE PROBABILITY BROACH for me after all, despite that neatly folded skin. Anybody whom the "About the Author" blurb says is "jointly owned by four cats" surely can't be \all/ bad! Date: 10 Nov 1981 15:25:14 EST (Tuesday) From: Ben Littauer Subject: Utopian Novels I've just finished The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith. I'd seen this in the library for a long time, but had been rather turned off by the blurbs. The recent discussion of Smith's books, however, inspired me to read TPB anyway. I'm glad I did, but I didn't like it. This is a book about a libertarian (or propertarian) utopia on a parallel Earth where George Washington was assassinated when he tried to tax Whiskey. [no spoiler: most of this is in the blurb]. It begins in the near future on our Earth, in a very nasty Denver (the neatly folded skin scene...) and the hero through a sequence of accidents finds himself on this other world. Complications ensue. But the major thrust of the novel is contained in long discussions of the relative merits of the libertarian and "big-state" systems. About a third of the way through I looked at the bio of Smith -- surprise, surprise! he's a libertarian! Very heavy handed with the politics, which I disagree with, though some of the problems that libertarians object to are definitely BIG ones. The answer is not to dissolve the state and have everybody tote a gun for self-protection. Smith's alternate history is not completely unimaginable, though I have great doubts about its likelihood. My main complaint is that I think that Smith would claim that libertarianism is still a viable solution for our current society; people today are too ingrained with a thirst for power for this to be true. Also, even if we could have his world, I, for one, don't think I'd be very comfortable in it. But I digress. The above discussion is inappropriate for SF-LOVERS, and there is one raging in POLI-SCI already, so enough of that. What about the story? Not badly written -- sort of run of the mill writing. Fairly straight adventure novel stuff. The science part of SF? Bad. One of the crucial properties of the Broach, in terms of plot, is pure hogwash. But no spoiler, so I'll leave you to read. -ben- Date: 10 Nov 1981 1416-PST From: Mike Leavitt Subject: pro-technology utopias Two recent protechnology utopias are the recently-discussed \Probability Broach/ and \Venus Belt./ In both, the hero is someone transported across a "hole" between parallel universes: one, a near-term projection of our own; the other, a libertarian utopia. Libertarians being what they are, that utopia is also a strong pro-technology utopia. It has many of the flaws and virtues of the more classic utopias. Mike Date: 26 Nov 1981 0857-PST Subject: Review of L. Neil Smith's latest From: Mike Leavitt L. Neil Smith has a new one out: \Their Magesties' Bucketeers./ If you've been staying away from Smith because of his libertarianism, you might want to take another look. Aside from an absolutely unnecessary prologue (and a few paragraphs at the end) this has nothing to do with his two earlier works, either in style, message, or content. This is a tour de force about a society where the intelligent creatures are tri-laterally symmetrical (the cover picture is an accurate description), tri-sexual (much better than I've seen this done before) and otherwise built on systems of 3s and 9s rather than 4s and 10s. The story takes place in the equivalent of a Victorian England, with a (male) hero based on Sherlock Holmes and a (surmale) foil, based on Dr. Watson. It is a reasonably good locked-door mystery (I'm not a mystery fan, so I really can't comment on just how good a mystery it is). The picky will find some flaws in the translation, but it is great fun looking for them. Although I liked previous Smith books, I recognize where they might not appeal to everyone; this one, I recommend generally. Mike Date: 13 Dec 1981 2350-CST From: LRC.HJJH at UTEXAS-20 Subject: L. Neil Smith as a Historian ^^^^^^^^^^^ HOW RELIABLE IS L. NEIL SMITH AS A HISTORIAN? ^^^^^^^^^^^ Tho not to the extent that SF's old-time-Eugene-V-Debs-style Socialist Mack Reynolds does, Libertarian Neil Smith incorporates what appears to be real history as well as fictional future-history into his books. Reynolds seems to be pretty reliable in the often surprising oddments he tosses into the pot, but what about Smith? Sometimes I recognize hyperbole to emphasize a point, as in: "England has very little crime; guns are strictly forbidden. But Switzerland has even less, and \by law/, everybody's armed to the teeth. Somebody said it once: guns cause crime like flies cause garbage." p. 115 Well guns AREN'T strictly forbidden in Britain, tho HANDguns may be, or how could the gentry have all those grouse shoots and the like. Nor are the adult MALE citizens "everybody" in Switzerland! (By the way, did Swiss women ever get the right to vote yet?) [ Yes, Swiss women have had the right to vote since at least the early 1970's. -- Jim ] But it was a section in PROBABILITY BROACH which particularly caught my attention. I can see all kinds of impact lessening ramifications behind the facts, but are the FACTS accurate in-- "Of 74 delegates chosen to attend the [American] Constitutional Convention, 19 \declined/, and 16 of those present refused to sign. Of the 34 remaining, many of whom signed only reluctantly, just 6 had put their names to the original Declaration of Inde- pendence. By contrast, that agreement had been \unanimous/, and most of its 56 signers actively opposed the Federalist Constitu- tion." p. 82. [ Obviously the bare numbers are not quite correct (they do not add up properly), but roughly those number of people did (or did not) do those things. However, this quote is a bit shaded (for instance, those 19 who declined to attend mainly did so at the request of their state governments). There were quite a number of differences between the two documents - the Declaration was a simple document put together under the real pressure of British arms, while the Constitution was a far more complicated document that was drawn up under pressure from various state governments. It should come as no real shock to people to that the bodies which drew up these very different documents, for very different sets of people, with 11 years separating them, were themselves very different. Remember that facts - even when correct - can still distort the truth by omission as much as comission. -- Jim ]