Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
John,
I can’t wait to live this…er…read this.
Regards,
Jim
Fascinating. So how does he deal with the spies and treason?
That’s uncanny. Wow.
I just ordered it.
Crazy. I might order it also.
Hmm, no need to order it, just keep following the news.
Prescient indeed. I find myself realizing just how much vision, fortitude and sheer staying power will be required of President Trump if he is to succeed. Actually, given the volume of incoming fire, it will take all that to just get out of bed in the White House every morning.
I fully expected the federal bureaucracies to try to obstruct him at every turn. I am not sure, though, I am prepared (and I sure hope he is) for what is beginning to look like a post-modernist version of a revolution – a coup by a thousand cuts, with the so-called intelligence agencies providing the ammunition being fired by the Dems allied with the MSM. Whenever Schumer speaks, after I get over the creeps, it confirms by belief that there is nothing they won’t do to correct what they believe to be the erroneous election result.
John – I’m wondering if you could do a podcast with the author – he has to be in shock – might be time for a sequel so we know what’s going to happen over the next few years – “a real nail bita”! I agree with Civil Westman’s comment above – everyday I wake up wondering what the headline will be….
L. Neil Smith was my guest on the now-defunct EAMU (Earlier/European Audio Meet-Up) for 2015-02-15. In early 2015, Trump wasn’t on the radar, and we didn’t discuss Hope, as I recall. Here is a recording of the EAMU; L. Neil joins the call around one hour in. Co-author Aaron S. Zelman died in 2010.
That closing line sounds like a mini-review of the previous administration, penned by the most besotted members of the press pool.
And the book sounds fascinating. Thanks!
Amazon did not have a Kindle version. My library system does not carry it, either in hardback or ebook. Had to order it from Amazon.
This is considered a “back list” book, originally published in 2001 by a different publisher, then re-issued in 2008. The publisher has been slow to produce Kindle editions of such works.
I was actually happily surprised to find it was still in print at all.
No way. Someone seriously thought this could happen? Wow.
So do they get him in the end?
I think Trump is doing better I expected, and I loved his press conference this afternoon.
Hillarious to see the press so upset.
I’m a bit worried that the Seal didn’t want the job. That is actually the first thing that has worried me so far.
The media and Democrats are crazy.
It might be nice to skip to the end and find out if the CIA brings Trump down or not.
I’m trying not to be emotionally involved, but this is really unfair and it’s hard to keep emotional distance.
Uncanny.
L. Neil Smith is a radical libertarian. I read several of his books back in the Bill Clinton years. He’s one of those authors that tries to copy Heinlein from his later crazy years. He’s entertaining, but preachy.
Kind of like Heinlein at Heinlein’s worst. Even at his worst Heinlein was entertaining. Most writers are just preachy at their worst.
Seawriter
Aaron S. Zelman (the middle initial is used to distinguish him from the television producer with the same first and last names) was the founder of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, and author and co-author of several books and publications about gun ownership. He and L. Neil Smith were also co-authors of The Mitzvah, which is now out of print but readily available used.
Hope sounds as prescient as this novel. Let’s hope things don’t end as badly this time around as they did in the previous novel.
Seawriter
Sounds like a fascinating novel.
Does it address the fact that the hidden power of the so-called “deep state” come largely from its relationship with the press?
I’d argue that our current environment validates the Laws of Secrets. That is, a secret that stays a secret is no threat; it only causes damage when it’s revealed, and the potential for blackmail comes when the secret-holder threatens to make it public. In this game, the “deep state” secret-holders are only damaging (and therefore powerful) if they release secrets to the press. The deep state can’t be a threat without the “surface state,” i.e., the press. The press becomes the accomplice.
To break the deep state, you have to break the press as well. The press enables the deep state.
Which one of those authors is doing the precognitive remote viewing that is explained by my post-quantum mechanics? Or, are they time travelers back from the future? ;-)
The influence of the legacy media and its relationship to the ruling class is an important part of the story. The novel was published in 2001, when the Internet was not yet in a position to challenge the legacy media. Yes, Drudge had broken the Lewinsky scandal in 1998, but most people still got their news from the big networks, newspapers, and magazines. The emergence of an alternative to this stranglehold on the flow of information and President Hope’s exploiting it to go around the entrenched media is central to the plot. An innovative Internet journalist with “Net Planet News” is an important character whose picture figures on the cover.
One of the villain-politicians remarks (this is from memory—I read the book 15 years ago), “The Internet—we didn’t stop it when we had the chance.” Don’t think they’ve given up trying.
I look back and fear that my admiration for Neil may have seemed subdued. I do like him, and while I’m not quite as radical a libertarian as him (I’m a big believer in world peace through superior weaponry and the will to use them), and I’m certainly not a Libertarian, I do like a lot of what he says. My comment about preaching was only meant as a mild literary criticism.
edit: I don’t know why my quote of John shows up as being from Seawriter. I think I had something highlighted. Sorry.
Just received from one of the usual suspects ;-)
Hope: L. Neil Smith, Aaron Zelman: 9781604502930: Amazon.com: Books
http://www.amazon.com
“Particularly pertinent to the 2016 presidential cycle, ain’t it?
By Dr. van der Lindenon January 23, 2016
Format: Kindle Edition
I had read this novel shortly after publication (the authors’ earlier novel The Mitzvah – set in the same speculative fiction ‘universe’ as Hope – had been entertaining in a meaty, thought-provoking way) but in light of The Donald’s presidential candidacy (and the fact that the novel’s Alexander Hope was described as running in an election wherein the National Socialist Democrat American Party had nominated an altogether undisguised representation of Hitlery, ‘America’s ex-wife’) I can’t understand why this title isn’t flying off the shelves – or out over the Web in Kindle format – like hotcakes.
Irreverent, consummately well-informed (pertinent even to the recent #OccupyMalheur uprising against the federal Bureau of Land Management, a foul mess stewing for decades in the flyover country of the Jackelope Rebellion) and entertaining on a humanist character development level, it’s the sort of contemporary political science fiction that would be up for a ‘retro Hugo’ this year were the Social Justice Warriors not ripping the guts out of the World Science Fiction Society in a ‘destroy the village in order to save it’ campaign.”
I don’t believe in the supernatural but when a prophecy is as accurate as this one, it’s tempting. One alternative is coincidence, but such detailed coincidences are just as hard to fathom. Perhaps another is that there was already something in the air at the earlier time that the authors were channeling without knowing it.
Otherwise, such accurate prophecies are beyond comprehension.
I’ve been trying to remember where I came across the idea, whether it was a classic sci-fi story, or maybe even Douglas Adams. A story of scientists telling the public that a world-ending disaster is imminent as a ruse to take control of society. And then I think of climate change.
Hmmmmmm…
I think you are correct that climate change is simply a way to get more government control over every nook and cranny of our lives. But are all the scientists in on this or are they just dupes like a lot of other people?
I forget now who it was who observed how curious it is that regardless of what the “existential crisis” of the moment happens to be (“population bomb”, “resource exhaustion”, “new ice age”, “genetically modified crops”, “peak oil”, “deforestation”, “collapse in biodiversity”, “global warming”, etc., etc.) the solution always seems to be increasing the power of the state and further reducing citizens to serfdom.
An excellent fictional treatment of the end point of all of this is Agenda 21 by Harriet Parke and Glenn Beck. (Beck is forthright in stating that his contribution to the book consisted solely in getting it published.) A factual treatment of the anti-human thread which ties all of these hysterias together is Merchants of Despair by Robert Zubrin (yes, him).
They have been bribed. They make good livings as research scientists. They know the golden rule applies (he that deals out the gold makes the rules) and the grants end if they do not report results the grant providers want. They may be consciously shading their results or they are true believers (because they deliver the results sought by the government) who are rewarded for reporting desired results. Either way, the process culls out all the nonbeliever/heretics who don’t feed the government line.
Seawriter
In one of Michael Moore’s movies he made a big deal out of global warming skeptics being funded by ‘industry’, to the tune of $19m. At that point in time, the cumulative total for believers from government and other sources was over $50b. More than 2500 times as much.
It’s become a trope that if you want funding, add a global warming angle. If you want to study the mating habits of harp deals, submit a grant proposal for studying the effects of global warming on the mating habits of harp seals, and add a discussion of global warming in your executive summary when you publish the study. Easy money.