L. Neil Smith

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
 This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (February 2008)
This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2008)
(Find sources: L. Neil Smith – news, books, scholar)

L. Neil Smith (full name Lester Neil Smith III), also known to readers and fans as El Neil,[citation needed] is a Libertarian science fiction author and political activist. He was born on May 12, 1946 in Denver. His works include the trilogy of Lando Calrissian novels: Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu (1983), Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon (1983), Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka (1983), and the Omnibus edition The Lando Calrissian Adventures. He also wrote the novels Pallas, The Forge of the Elders, and The Probability Broach, each of which won the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award for best Libertarian novel.

Contents

[edit] Writing career

L. Neil Smith should not be confused with J. Neil Schulman, another Libertarian science fiction writer. Smith is aware of this occasional confusion, once humorously signing a letter to Samuel Edward Konkin III as "Neil (L., not J.)"

Several of his works constitute the North American Confederacy series:

  • The Probability Broach (1980) is an alternate history novel in which history has taken a different turn because a single word in the Declaration of Independence was changed. The United States has become replaced by an anarchist / Libertarian society, the North American Confederacy, in this parallel universe, also known to science fiction fans as the Gallatin Universe, due to the pivotal role of Albert Gallatin in the point of divergence. The villains of the series are styled Federalists after the historical political party of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. In 2004, a graphic novel version was released, illustrated by Scott Bieser.
  • The Venus Belt (1981) is the next written novel from the Gallatin Universe, which takes place in outer space and discusses other settlements in our solar system. The Federalists are attempting to base a new civilization in outer space, with a plan to someday return to take over the government.
  • Their Majesties' Bucketeers is the third novel set in the Gallatin Universe. The story is a pastiche of the Sherlock Holmes tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, introducing the Lamviin, a trilaterally symmetrical race of aliens native to the arid planet of Sodde Lydfe. Their Majesties' Bucketeers introduces characters who would later interact with others in the Gallatin Universe.
  • The Nagasaki Vector is about a time traveller who is shifted into the Gallatin Universe by the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki which ended World War II on August 9, 1945.
  • In Tom Paine Maru, the entrepreneurs of the Confederacy travel from world to world, exploring the various kinds of messes made by the Federalists who had been shifted back in time and scattered at random over the universe at the conclusion of The Venus Belt. The Federalists had created dozens of colonies, all of which had suffered disaster and retrogression under Federalist rule. Smith uses this device to criticize non-libertarian forms of government.
  • In The Gallatin Divergence, a time-traveling Federalist woman wants to change history but is opposed by the heroes of The Probability Broach. As these two forces clash, history is once again altered and a third timeline is created.
  • The American Zone (2001), the most recent entry in the series, is a direct sequel to The Probability Broach concerned with the refugees from various anti-libertarian versions of the United States who take up residence in the Confederacy, and the response of the Confederacy to terrorist violence.

Another series of his works constitute the Lando Calrissian (Star Wars) series:

Other works:

  • Pallas is the first installment of what Smith has called "The Ngu Family Saga"[1], a planned four-volume series. Pallas is the story of Emerson Ngu, a boy who lives in a dystopian socialist commune in a crater on the asteroid Pallas. Emerson creates a crystal radio and is astonished to learn of the world outside the commune. Escaping, he discovers that the rest of Pallas is a libertarian utopia. Unable to forget his semi-enslaved family -- whose "workers' paradise" is starving to death -- he innovates a cheap but durable gun (because the Libertarians on Pallas, to their shame, did not have a domestic firearms industry), and sets about liberating his former commune. At the same time, he must learn the skills necessary for life in the outside world. The novel thus functions both as a bildungsroman and a story of political revolution.
  • Ceres is the second work in "The Ngu Family Saga," completed on December 25, 2004, planned to be followed by Ares, both set in the Pallas universe and being funded by private investors. The Ceres Project was organized by Alan R. Weiss, a friend of Neil's. After efforts to find a publisher for Ceres proved fruitless, on March 23, 2009, Smith decided to begin publishing the novel online, one chapter being added each week.
  • The Mitzvah, which is a novel about a Catholic priest who is a pacifist and influenced by socialist values of the 1960s. His entire world is shattered when he learned the German immigrant parents he grew up with adopted him, and that his true parents were a Jewish couple who were murdered in the Holocaust.

[edit] Politics

In 1999, Smith announced that he would run for president in 2000 as an independent if his supporters would gather 1,000,000 online petition signatures asking him to run[2]. After failing to achieve even 1,500 signatures, his independent campaign quietly died. He next tried an abortive run for the Libertarian Party nomination, which ended almost as quickly when, in the California primary, Harry Browne overwhelmingly defeated him, 71% to 9%[3].

However, Smith did appear as the Libertarian Party candidate for president on the Arizona ballot in 2000, although Browne was chosen by the party's national convention, due to a major dispute between the Libertarian Party's national organization and their Arizona affiliate. He and running mate Vin Suprynowicz received 5,775 votes. Shortly thereafter, Smith's supporters announced a new 1,000,000-signature petition drive; however, in late 2003, with the new drive once again failing to achieve even a small fraction of that total, Smith announced that he would no longer pursue political office.

Smith is no newcomer to the Libertarian Party, though: he joined in 1972 (just after its beginnings in 1971), in 1977 and 1979 served on the Platform Committee, and in 1978 ran for state legislature in Colorado (winning 15% of the vote with a total expenditure of forty-four dollars). His influence, and that of the "Ad Hoc Conspiracy to Draft L. Neil Smith" (which has hundreds of informal members) helped influence the 2004 Libertarian Party selection of Michael Badnarik for President (although third-place candidate Gary Nolan's endorsement of Badnarik may have had a more immediate effect). Badnarik was profoundly influenced by Hope, by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman (Zelman founded and is Executive Director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership). Smith endorsed the Free State Project in 2004, and endorsed Badnarik's campaign for President in 2004.

Smith is the founder of and regularly contributes essays to The Libertarian Enterprise, an influential anarcho-capitalist and paleolibertarian journal, and his most influential essay is considered[who?] to be Why Did it Have to be ... Guns?.

[edit] Published works

[edit] North American Confederacy series

  • The Probability Broach (1980, unexpurgated edition 1996, graphic novel 2004)
  • The Nagasaki Vector (1983)
  • The American Zone (2001)
  • The Venus Belt (1980)
  • Their Majestys' Bucketeers (1981)
  • Tom Paine Maru (1984)
  • The Gallatin Divergence (1985)
    • Brightsuit MacBear (1988) [1st in new series set in NAC universe]
    • Taflak Lysandra (1989) [2nd in new series set in NAC universe]

[edit] Lando Calrissian (Star Wars) series

[edit] Forge of the Elders Series

  • Contact and Commune (1990)
  • Converse and Conflict (1990)
  • Forge of the Elders (2000) [comprising the previous two books plus a previously-unpublished 3rd book]

[edit] Ngu Family Saga

  • Pallas (1991)
  • Ceres (2009) (on-line publication, with a new chapter added each week)

[edit] Stand-alone works

[edit] Non-Fiction

  • Lever Action (2001)

[edit] With Aaron Zelman

  • The Mitzvah (1999)
  • Hope (2001)

[edit] Criticism

Smith's vision of a libertarian utopia, particularly in reference to the free ownership of firearms, was held up in a rather critical light in the military science-fiction novel, First to Fight, the first volume of the StarFist series by David Sherman and Dan Cragg. The principal action in First to Fight takes place on a planet named Elneal. David Sherman reportedly named the planet after L. Neil Smith[1]. Sherman expresses his dislike of Smith thus: "He's more along the lines of Ayn Rand with guns, lots and lots of guns. Imagine Tombstone before the Earp brothers showed up. Although, honestly, most casualties would be caused by basic ignorance of physics rather than use of firearms."

[edit] External links

Search Wikiquote Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: L. Neil Smith

[edit] References

  1. ^ "...the planet Elneal was named "in honor of" the libertarian science fiction writer L. Neil Smith"
v • d • e
United States presidential election candidates, 2000
Democratic Party
Candidates
VP Candidate
Republican Party
Candidates
VP Candidate
Constitution Party
Green Party
Libertarian Party
Reform Party
Natural Law Party
Other candidates
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Neil_Smith"
Personal tools
Languages