Freedom Book of the Year:
Forge of the Elders
by L. Neil Smith
Baen Books Books, 2000, 534 pp.

Choosing a Freedom Book of the Year has been difficult for me. In 2000, I've been privileged to review twelve volumes that all stand head and shoulders above the norm. I've seen astounding first novels (David Calderwood's "Revolutionary Language"), moving histories (Jim Powell's "Triumph of Liberty"), groundbreaking theoretical works (J.C. Lester's "Escape from Leviathan"), and more. What the decision finally came down to, for me, was a simple question:

Which of these twelve books will stick with me? Which one of them would I think about on a desert island, even if I couldn't take it with me? And thus I bring you, as Freedom Book of the Year, L. Neil Smith's "Forge of the Elders."

I confess to a certain amount of prejudice in the matter. I grew up, after all, as a science fiction fan, and not just any kind of science fiction fan. I thrilled to Robert Heinlein's juveniles, and later to the grandiose space opera of E.E. "Doc" Smith. To this day, while I can read and enjoy the cold, matte-black maunderings of cyberpunk or of science fiction novels so "hard" that you need a physics degree to really understand them, what I really like is a larger-than-life hero or heroine, villains so irredeemably evil that their presence on the page chills one's blood, and lots of action. And spaceships. We mustn't forget: lots of spaceships.

"Forge of the Elders" is all this and more: the tale of the asteroid 5023 Eris and those who love -- or at least want to control -- her. Smith starts off with three (three!) spaceships, or space shuttles at any rate, and it only gets better from there. More spaceships, more captains (one whose personality and elan in combat with ethical dilemmas makes James Tiberius Kirk look like the tight-ass, tin-horn authoritarian he is, another who happens to be a mollusk the size of a Volkswagen), more conundrums and more good humor than you can shake a tightly collimated ionizing laser beam at.

Smith writes space opera like ... well, analogies fail me here. Like a rodeo cowboy rides bulls, strapping himself to the story and letting it go hell for leather, only the trip is longer than eight seconds and you actually get somewhere useful. Or maybe like the astronauts of the old Apollo program, who sat atop a pile of explosive fuel big enough to blow a city-size crater in the earth, and managed, despite the bureaucratic meddling and red tape to make it take them into space -- to the moon, even -- instead.

Wrapped inside the big ball of fascinating yarn that Smith calls "Forge of the Elders" is a philosophical knitting needle, an audacious reclamation of a philosophy that brings sneers to the lips of academicians and demagogues even today: Social Darwinism. That anyone, in this day and age, would attempt to redeem the philosophy made famous in the 19th century by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner is remarkable in itself. That Smith succeeds not only in redeeming it, but in extending it and making it relevant, is key to my selection of "Forge of the Elders" as Freedom Book of the Year.

Smith has spoken to these issues in the past, most notably in his speech, "A New Approach to Social Darwinism." In "Forge of the Elders," he fleshes out his notion of the twin roles of adversity and diversity in the survival and improvement of species, and links these factors with both the emergence of sapience and the desirability of human liberty.

My bookshelves are full of well-plotted, entertaining novels, and they overflow with well-argued, logical treatises on economics, philosophy and politics. Only a very few books, by a select few authors, manage to be both successfully. A number of those books are by Smith, and "Forge of the Elders" holds pride of place among them. This trilogy -- in one omnibus volume -- is a must for anyone who cherishes both a great story and an intellectual challenge.

Order "Forge of the Elders" from Laissez Faire Books for $24.95.

December 2000: The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto

November 2000: Escape from Leviathan by J.C. Lester

October 2000: The Art of Political War by David Horowitz

September 2000: An Enemy of the State by Justin Raimondo

August 2000: The Triumph of Liberty by Jim Powell

July 2000: A Generation Divided by Rebecca Klatch

June 2000: Law's Order by David Friedman

May 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith

April 2000: Reciprocia by Richard G. Rieben

March 2000: The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand

February 2000: Addiction is a Choice by Jeffrey A. Schaler

January 2000: Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood

Special December 1999 Feature: The Freedom Book of the Year: Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998 by Vin Suprynowicz

November 1999: Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell

October 1999: A Way To Be Free by Robert LeFevre, edited by Wendy McElroy

September 1999: Assassins (Left Behind) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

August 1999: Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet): 101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom by Claire Wolfe

July 1999: The Mitzvah by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman

June 1999: The Incredible Bread Machine by R.W. Grant

May 1999: Send in the Waco Killers by Vin Suprynowicz

April 1999: It Still Begins with Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille

March 1999: The Dictionary of Free-Market Economics by Fred Foldvary

February 1999: Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra