"Future history" is not prescriptive

I'm probably more prone than most people to be overly-inspired by the latest book I've read.  Sometimes not even the latest.  Sherlock Holmes has taken over a slice of my brain, possibly to lodge there for the rest of my life.  Yet I've never been able to understand what kind of book makes a person cross over from wanting to model themselves after a character to wanting to model the world after the book.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (for instance) are well-plotted, peopled by amazingly fleshed-out characters, chock-full of idealism, heroism, empathy, tear-jerking partings, laugh-out-loud funny dialogue, lyrical...all to a breathtaking backdrop straight out of Western European race-memory.  (Carl Jung ate this stuff for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight snack, yo.)  Yet the closest the books have come to being brought to life as a form of government is the Society for Creative Anachronism.  And even that's not based on a hereditary monarchy spawned by cross-species mating (e.g. elves and mortals).

Maybe, when I have less pressing things to do with my synapses, I'll get around to reading Ayn Rand's works.  That'll happen sometime shortly after earning my PhD in Underwater Basket-weaving, given my current level of enthusiasm.

Robert Heinlein--the secondary light of today's libertarianism--is another matter.  The man knew how to pace a story, and could write snappy dialogue like nobody's business.  Wanting the fuller background of a delightful snippet quoted in the otherwise leaden prose of Fred Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month, I put Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon on my Christmas wish-list...and the Book Fairy was gracious enough to comply.

Until this point, I was mainly familiar with a couple of short stories and his calling-card, Stranger in a Strange Land.  In the latter, the prime antagonist is the Fosterite Church--a cult that made the most lurid reporting on Scientology seem halfway sane.  No surprise there, I guess--Ayn Rand's contempt for religion was as profound as it is ignored by her modern posse  (looking at you, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-WI).

But after that similarity, I was shocked to find an almost 180-degree divergence between the Queen and King of Libertarian Fiction.  Rand's world is clearly divided into heroic industrialists, evil government bureaucracies (because you never, EVER find evil bureaucracies in business!) and the "moocher" proles.  (That latter would be us, by the bye.) 

The Man Who Sold the Moon is actually a collection of short stories in a fictional time-line that leads up to the title piece.   Self-made business mogul D.D. Harriman (who receives the most screen-time) is certainly cast from the mold of the heroic, visionary industrialist.  Thus far, Ayn Rand would have approved.   Except that the BigBads aren't the  satraps of government agencies.  Oh, no.

[Spoiler Alert]

• "Life-line" -  Insurance companies
• "Let There Be Light" - Energy companies
• "Blowups Happen" -  Energy companies (again)
• "The Man Who Sold the Moon" - A mostly unimaginative cabal of business tycoons
• "Requiem" - Greedy heirs

I suppose that if you wanted to stretch it enough, you could turn "The Roads Must Roll" into an anti-union screed.  Except that you'd be lying to yourself.  The vast majority of the workers are hard-working, diligent, and occasionally capable of heroic self-sacrifice.  Treason from within--based on self-serving delusions--is the culprit.

[End Spoiler  Alert]

If anything, government in Heinlein's "future history" is a tool to be used, and the public something to be manipulated--although those aren't always fool-proof.  Otherwise, they are just immovable obstacles to be avoided, rather than destroyed head-on.

And--whoa, Nellie--did I just see something like Open Source being proposed all the way back in May of 1939???

But one of the most un-Randian, and delicious, passages comes early (almost like the proverbial warning shot over the bow) in "Life-line," from the mouth of an anonymous judge :

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest.  This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law.  Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back for their private benefit."

Bazinga.

 Pity nothing's changed since this was penned over 75 years ago (April 1939).

Don't get me wrong--I'm not a huge Heinlein fan, although I am looking forward to what looks like Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" played out in a spaceship (Orphans of the Sky).  And The Moon is a Harsh Mistress comes highly recommended from a couple of people.  I've lost much of my taste for fiction, but I'm fairly sure I won't regret giving these a go.

In the meantime, I'm wryly amused at finding yet another "prophet"'s handiwork thoroughly cherry-picked by his/her acolytes.