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Freedom Book of the Month
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Free-Market.Net's F r e e d o m B o o k o f t h e M o n t h
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Edited by Thomas L. Knapp. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this and
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December 2001
The American Zone by L. Neil Smith
Tor 2001, hardcover, 350 pp.
You don't need to imagine a terrorist attack on an unprecedented scale: a deadly assault on one of the world's largest and busiest buildings, wreaking havoc and taking an unthinkable toll in human life.
You don't need to imagine the reaction to such an attack: the outcry for security; the demand for a government powerful and omnipresent enough to track down the perpetrators and prevent future attacks; the fear and loathing of an entire class of people perceived of as being involved in, or at least approving of, the
attacks and the attackers.
But imagine a novel about this scenario. A novel written before September 11th, 2001. That novel is "The American Zone."
"The American Zone" is the latest addition to L. Neil Smith's "North American Confederacy" series, and quite possibly the best since "The Probability Broach," his debut novel. Set in a universe where the Whiskey Rebellion succeeded and a near-anarchist society, instead of what we know as the United States, flung itself
across the continent, the North American Confederacy books have been a mainstay of libertarian science fiction for two decades.
Although not released until after the September 11th attacks, the book was written long before them, and knowing this makes it an eerily prescient read. Like many of the NAC titles, "The American Zone" follows events in the life of detective Win Bear, the first human being to migrate to the North American Confederacy from "our" world via Ooloorie Eckickeck P'wheet's "probability broach" gateway.
The cast that Smith fans have grown to love -- Bear and his wife Clarissa, centenarian-and-then-some anarchist fireplug Lucille Kropotkin, even the redoubtable chimpanzee cum restaurateur, Mr. Meep -- are faced with the threat of (gasp! gag!) incipient government if they can't determine the origin of the attacks and defuse the growing cries for a central authority to "protect" the people of the North American Confederacy.
As always, Smith raises issues that are current, relevant and difficult. And, as always, he presents unique and ingenius solutions to those issues. "The American Zone" is the right book at the right time, and it makes one wonder if the guy might not have a crystal ball or a really good deck of tarot cards or something. The more likely explanation is that he has a great sense of the likely, perhaps inevitable, consequences of events -- and that he's able to get that sense down on paper in manner that's both highly entertaining and intellectually provocative.
[Disclaimer: Thomas L. Knapp, the author of this review, is involved in an effort to draft L. Neil Smith as the 2004 presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party. He believes that the readers of the review have the right to know this so as to assess the effect such involvement might have on his objectivity.]
o Order "The American Zone" from Laissez Faire for $27.95:
http://www.laissezfairebooks.com/product.cfm?op=view&pid=FN8584&aid=FM
o Order the new trade paperback edition of "The Probability Broach"
from Laissez Faire for $15.95:
http://www.laissezfairebooks.com/product.cfm?op=view&pid=FN8490&aid=FM
o Visit L. Neil Smith's Webley Page:
http://www.lneilsmith.com/
Read reviews of other L. Neil Smith titles:
o "Forge of the Elders,"
Free-Market.Net's 2000 Freedom Book of the Year:
http://www.free-market.net/features/bookofthemonth/fboty2000.html
o "The Mitzvah" (with Aaron Zelman), Freedom Book of the Month,
July 1999:
http://www.free-market.net/features/bookofthemonth/zelman.html
o "Hope" (with Aaron Zelman), Freedom Book of the Month,
August 2001:
http://www.free-market.net/features/bookofthemonth/hope.html
o "Lever Action," Freedom Book of the Month, May 2001:
http://www.free-market.net/features/bookofthemonth/leveraction.html
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