When I first read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged back in my junior high school days, my biggest gripe with the book was that its antagonists were too far-fetched to be taken seriously. Now, twenty-five years later, I realize that I erred in this judgment. J. Neil Schulman’s prophetic Alongside Night is another one that seems to get better and better with age, and for the same sad reasons.
The events depicted in Schulman’s debut 1979 novel are now eerily familiar. From the website…
The American economy is in freefall. Markets are crashing. Inflation is soaring. Bankruptcies, foreclosures and unemployment are up, and even defense contracts are going overseas. Foreigners are buying up everything in America at firesale prices while gloating over the fall of a once great nation. Homeless people and gangs own the streets. Smugglers use the latest technology to operate bold enterprises that the government is powerless to stop, even with totalitarian spying on private communications. Anyone declared a terrorist by the administration is being sent to a secret federal prison where constitutional rights don’t exist.
I have bought dozens of used copies of Alongside Night over the years. I give them to libertarians or science fiction fans and explain Agorism in an attempt to win a few converts. Congressman Ron Paul recently gave the book a nice plug saying that it, “may be even more relevant today than it was in 1979. Hopefully, this landmark work of libertarian science fiction will inspire a new generation of readers to learn more about the ideas of liberty and become active in the freedom movement.”
The 30-year anniversary of its release is an exciting time for the book’s fans. Schulman recently met up with the Motorhome Diaries and had a chat with Pete Eyre. A massively multi-player online game is in the works and Schulman finished writing the screenplay a few months ago in the expectation that it could soon become a feature film. Another very exciting development is that a graphic novel version is underway and will be illustrated by Scott Bieser who did such a great job on L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach.
H/T to Darian Worden
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