Wendy, let me pop in one more time to make a recommendation for a future Laissez Faire Books Celebration. It’s a novel that carries a Ray Bradbury endorsement (alas! no more of those are coming), was a Prometheus Award finalist, and enters into a territory that until now has been completely dominated by the left: the Spanish Civil War.

But let me to what Ayn Rand often did: quote myself, in my afterword to that novel:

———————————————
ANARQUIA
by Brad Linaweaver and J. Kent Hastings

AFTERWORD:
By J. Neil Schulman

Look, anyone who can read can blurb a novel.

Anyone who can write can write an afterword for a novel.

But aside from the authors, themselves, the only man who can touch me in his commitment to this novel is James A. Rock, publisher of Sense of Wonder Press, who is issuing the first edition.

Nevertheless, with all due respect to Mr. Rock, he only bought rights to this book once.

I’ve bought them twice.

In 1999, when Anarquia was nothing more than an outline, I obtained the book-publishing rights to Anarquia–and paid the authors an advance to write it–in my capacity as publisher and editor-in-chief of Pulpless.Com.

A couple of years later I reverted those rights to the authors so they could accept Jim Rock’s publishing offer.

Then, within 24 hours of the manuscript’s completion in July, 2003 – after reading only the first four chapters – I made an offer to purchase the movie rights. Within a week, the contract was signed, money changed hands, and I had an option on those rights.

You may reasonably conclude that I consider Anarquia an important work of literature, and one which, additionally, has great commercial potential both as a book and a movie.

I’ll go further than that. Anarquia doesn’t read to me like science-fiction, of which the alternate history is a subgenre. Neither does it read to me like an historical novel. Anarquia reads to me like a contemporary novel written in the late 1930’s, about the time that Ernest Hemingway wrote his 1938 Spanish Civil War stage-play The Fifth Column. But Anarquia reads to me not like flat-beer reporting by the newsman Hemingway, but a rich brew by his far-more talented contemporary, and fellow Nobel laureate, John Steinbeck.

My inside track on this book goes all the way back to its conception … and I’m going to reveal a few secrets for the first time.

In 1992 the idea for Anarquia originated in the mind of J. Kent Hastings … but Kent’s inspiration for the novel was Brad Linaweaver’s 1988 novel, Moon of Ice, an alternate history of World War II in which the United States remains neutral, Nazi Germany uses nuclear weapons to conquer both the Soviet Union and Europe, and the Cold War is not between the United States and Russia but between the United States and Germany.

Kent asked himself, “What would have happened if even before World War II started — if even before Nazi Germany had made its first conquest — the anarchists in Spain had prevailed in the Spanish Civil War?”

It was a rich vein to prospect for literary gold. The Spanish Civil War was in many ways a prologue to World War II, and the literary lions associated with it include not only Hemingway (who covered it) but also George Orwell (who fought in it).

By 1995 Kent had outlined the novel with three personal heroes as its main characters: the father of the moon landing, rocketeer Wernher von Braun; the mother of spread-spectrum communications, movie-star Hedy Lamarr, and the father of modern computing, Konrad Zuse.

By 1998 Kent had reached the limits of research about the Spanish Civil War written (or translated into) English, and was studying Spanish so he could read documents and books in their originals.

Kent and I briefly discussed my collaborating on the novel, but in 1999 my adventures in book publishing shoved my life as a writer aside, and Kent went back to the source of his inspiration and offered the collaboration to Brad. I offered them a contract and their collaboration was official.

The rest is history.

Yes – after I bought the movie rights for my production company, Jesulu Productions – I did finish reading the novel. Actually, Brad read me the second half on a long weekend he and Kent spent at my house in Pahrump, Nevada, where we signed the option contracts. It was fair revenge since I’d read aloud to both Brad and Kent the full text of my latest novel, Escape from Heaven … then read aloud to them my screenplay adaptation as well.

And when I expressed my dismay at the abruptness of the novel’s ending, Brad let me in on another secret, which I’ll now share with you.

The last chapter of this novel is not an ending. It’s a cliffhanger. The sequel is already in the works … and I’m already pumping Kent and Brad for deep background on my screenplay adaptation.

Here’s the teaser for my screen treatment:

WE OPEN on a ten-year-old boy pulling a little red wagon through the streets of Berlin in 1922. Little Wernher von Braun has tied six Chinese firecracker-rockets to the wagon and is about to conduct his first experiment in rocketry. He lights the firecrackers and the wagon careens uncontrollably through the streets, narrowly avoiding disaster. A policeman grabs the little boy by the scruff of his neck and takes him home to his father, who takes off his belt, and the incident ends with nothing more than a little boy’s yelps behind a closed door.

WE CUT TO July, 1969 – Cape Canaveral, Florida – as Wernher von Braun watches proudly as Apollo 11 is launched … and a few days later the famous TV broadcast from the moon, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin leave their footprints in lunar soil.

SUDDENLY WE ZOOM BACKWARDS IN TIME: the Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury missions … the launch of Sputnik by the Soviets … the liberation of Europe by the Allies …V-2 rockets bombing London and we’re back to a little boy’s wagon being pulled on a Berlin street in 1922.

WE REPEAT the rocket-propelled wagon careening wildly through the streets of Berlin, only this time the wagon knocks a well-dressed matron into oncoming street traffic. We hear SCREAMS and little Wernher von Braun watches his first experiment in rocketry end in tragedy.

And the rest is alternate history.

———————————————

Wendy, if you don’t have a copy of Anarquia, give me a physical mail address and I’ll have one of the authors ship you a deluxe hardcover edition pronto!

Neil

Wendy asked me to write some replies to “predictable” questions — and I asked her to send me some since even though I’m a “prophetic” science fiction writer I couldn’t predict them.

Here are some of those questions and my replies:

> –Is the book your tribute to Heinlein?

Alongside Night has often been compared to Heinlein’s YA novels from the 50′s; and the Los Angeles Times reviewer of The Rainbow Cadenza slammed my second novel for being too Heinleinesque; but my best tributes to Heinlein are in my book The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana (in print both from Pulpless.com and the Virginia Edition, and soon to be out as an audiobook from Sound of Liberty/ARTC) and my third novel, Escape from Heaven, where Heinlein, himself, turns up as a major character.

> –Which SF writers have influenced you?

Heinlein — ya think? Also C.S. Lewis, Ayn Rand (yes, I’ll call both “SF” writers), Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, Ira Levin, and probably every writer discovered and published in Astounding by John W. Campbell, Jr.

> –What was Sam Konkin III like?
That would take another book, just for a full list of adjectives. Sam was my bromance, and his own brother told me I was closer to Sam than he himself was. He was a polymath genius, had as many traits of OCD as Sherlock Holmes or Adrian Monk, was addicted to the pleasures of life including fine pipe tobacco, spicy gourmet food, dark beers, jazz, rockabilly, Broadway show tunes, science-fiction and fantasy, all-night parties, and James Bond movies and their music and theme songs, and I think one day SEK3 will be viewed as the man whose theory of Agorism finally put Karl Marx’s communism into the dustbin of history.

> –Do you think we are already in an “Alongside Night” society?

Not quite because the novel and screenplay only portray the final crisis; but the economic conditions leading to that crisis are all in place

> –Do you think it is time to pick up a gun against the police state?

That’s never our decision. But when the police state goes on a rampage, violating its citizens’ rights, even their own federal law — Title 18 USC, Section 242 — guarantees us the right to defend ourselves using deadly force from officers violating our rights under color of law.

> –Are you Elliot? Or Dr. Vreeland?

Elliot is cooler than I was at his age, and Dr. Vreeland has degrees I don’t have.

> –Are you going to make your other books into movies?

I have a shooting script ready to go on Escape from Heaven, and I just sent it over to Kevin Sorbo, at his request, for the lead roles of Duj Pepperman and God. After that, Rainbow Cadenza would be a dream project, but only if I make enough money on earlier movies that I can get financed to write the script and direct it.

> –Other than Sorbo, who else is in the movie?

I’m finalizing contract offers with actors right now, and casting the remaining principal roles, so it’s just a few weeks early for me to answer that question.

> –What did you have to leave out from the book?

Human Action, Man Economy and State, and Power and Market!

> –Thanks for opening the door for libertarian producers. Will you do movies *not* based on your own books?

I’d love to direct L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach, Brad Linaweaver’s Moon of Ice, and I already have an option on Brad Linaweaver and J. Kent Hastings’ Anarquia.

> –Where do you think the economy is going?

Ultimately that question is about faith in the human spirit, so no matter the collapse, I believe in a recovery. I just don’t agree with the current politicians that recovery is possible with them ruddering the boat.

> –Is Sorbo a libertarian?
I don’t think Kevin would self-describe that way, but I’d say Kevin has a lot of libertarian beliefs mixed in with conservative/Tea Party views. He describes himself as believing in common sense — and I don’t think he’s too far from Thomas Paine’s meaning for those words.

Definitely thanks to the authors, LFB, and Wendy for this event. It is not often we get to talk to the folks who entertain us so well in the privacy of our own homes and libraries !

Well, unless Alongside Night makes it to the Toronto or Montreal film festivals, I expect I’ll have to wait for the DVD release. It’s definitely on the “to buy” list when it becomes available.

And thank you, Scott.

Maybe it’s off-topic, but kind of related. I realize that I am asking the choir here, but does anyone know of any real evidence that more people are coming around to Agorist/Voluntaryist/AnCap/small “l” libertarian values/beliefs/ideas? Or does it just seem that way? Are the ideas having any visible effects?

Heinlein wrote very little non-fiction. He may have been the greatest storyteller on the side of liberty in American history — or at least the 20th century.

I write a lot of non-fiction, but only because it’s the only cure when I’m feeling angry or depressed because of the shape our civilization is in. I couldn’t sleep, otherwise.

I have now written a sort of manifesto, in _Down With Power_.

I have the same feeling about the culture as L. Neil. So many of my leftist acquaintances and friends cite older fiction (like “The Jungle”) as if it was reference material, and quote from entertainment media like they were footnotes, it seems like their entire experience is constructed of leftist memes. It is very hard just to get one such to admit that there might be an alternate view that is not both evil and insane. (Anyone familiar with “projection”? And, yes, that’s a rhetorical question.)

Was the writing of this book, influenced by your friendship with SEK3? If so, could you tell us how?

No problem, Wendy.This is a great moment — and one that’s very badly needed. I, too, am working on a movie project, although it’s somebody else’s, not mine. I’m nt here to advertise that. But it looks like we’re about to take the next great step, doesn’t it?

Along the lines of my last comment regarding the importance of our fiction writers, actors, artists and the like, are you working on a new novel now? If so anything you can tell us about it?

Hello from Seoul!
Excellent read. I look forward to the flick.
Like Brad, I wonder when it might be out.

J. Neil, I saw the great pic of you with Kevin Sorbo. What is it like to work with him?

Has casting been done for Elliot and / or Lorimer yet?

Also – other than location, and the year the story takes place, are there going to be any other signification deviations in the movie from the novel?