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Pastimes : A CENTURY OF LIONS/THE 20TH CENTURY TOP 100 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (2773)	4/10/2000 10:35:00 AM
From: Raymond Clutts	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3246

When I was younger and had no family and few career aspirations, there was a lot more time to read SF and I could have probably offered a more authoritative assessment of the comparative merits of different authors. I can only tell you which authors I like that exhibit consistently libertarian themes. Of the new authors, I especially like Neal Stephenson since most of his works seem to rest on implicitly libertarian assumptions. The most recent, "Cryptonomicon" is about the importance of effective cryptography and the creation of a data haven where governments can't reach ones most private records. Of course you've already identified my two reigning favorites, Niven and Pournelle. Hmmm. I have to confess that it was only about a year ago that I began reading SF again by working my way through the HUGO and Nebula Award winners of the last 10-15 years. I am disappointed by the quality of much of what I have read. The writing wasn't at fault,if anything the overall quality of it had improved. It was the dismal, defeatist themes and the tone of so much of the work that disappointed. Many of the more recent works incorporated politically correct notions favoring statism and enforced equality of outcome among individuals of differing cultures and genders. (For an especially dreary Bolshevik manifesto look for instance at Kim Stanley Robinson's three novels, "Red Mars", "Blue Mars" and "Green Mars.") If you like the Niven/Pournelle duo then by all means read their very recent release entitled, "The Burning City." Guised as fantasy, it contains some very acidic commentary on the welfare culture that caused the LA riots.