Gentlemen, Start Your Halbards!, by L. Neil Smith

Exclusive to TLE

Reputation is a funny thing. I don't like it any more than you do whenever I'm accused of being something I'm decidely not. One idiot recently described me in e-mail as a pacifist, of all things. But I absolutely love it whenever people accuse me of being exactly what I've broken my back advertising myself to be for decades. It used to happen all the time when I was a regular guest on conservative talk radio. They'd call in, and in hushed conspiratorial tones, point an invisible finger at me and mutter, "Why, you're .... you're ... a libertarian!"

If -- within principle -- you can help to make your adversary's worst nightmare about you come true, you will render him speechless, for a time, and floundering. It's rather like a prospective blackmail victim telling his blackmailer, "Go ahead, tell my wife everything you know. We may have a rough time for a while, but we'll stick together, and then we won't have a parasite like you on our backs to make it tougher." Over the years, I've found that if you're honest about what you stand for, folks will respect that honesty (and offer a surprising amount of support) even when they don't respect what it is you stand for.

A while ago, some geeky little tattletale wrote to an e-mail list, accusing me of advocating the reestablishment of formal duelling. (People should know that if they write about me behind my back, I'm going to hear about it sooner or later, and maybe even do something about it, as I am now.) The message looked as if he thought he'd made a real discovery and had a super scoop in the grand style of Matt Drudge.

The trouble for Drudge Jr. is that I've spent almost every waking minute of the last 20 years doing everything I can to encourage people everywhere to purchase and read the very first book I ever wrote, The Probability Broach -- and a good many that followed afterward -- in which a civilization that I constructed laboriously by hand to be as admirable and attractive as I knew how to make it, commonly practices duelling.

Twenty-first century Americans have the misfortune to live in a civilization where it's pretty well understood by everyone that the last thing to expect in a court of law is justice. Even where that isn't so, on the (possibly debatable) assumption that there's no necessary correlation between being in the right and being skilled at arms, duelling fills at least 50% of the gap, statistically, between what the law provides and what justice demands. As an engineering sort of solution to a knotty and eternal problem, that's nothing to sneer at.

And it got rid of Alexander Hamilton, didn't it?

Duelling isn't a major point of the novel, although it provides a climax of sorts, and takes the foundation of libertarian philosophy to its limit, which is always a good thing. If you truly own your own life, then nobody has a right to tell you how to live it -- or to end it. Nobody has a right to assess or define risks for you. And nobody has anything to say about any kind of relationship between consenting adults.

If you support drug law repeal, private weapons ownership, equal rights for gays, or any other expression of personal self-ownership, and you don't support the moral right of two individuals to enjoy "coffee and pistols at dawn", you're a 24-karat, glow-in-the-dark hypocrite.

Naturally, I'd try to avoid having to fight a duel (a good reason in itself to reestablish duelling; it encourages good manners) and I'd certainly never challenge anybody. That would deprive me of the choice of weapons and conditions -- make mine .44 Magnum revolvers at 100 yards.

At the same time, I'd oppose any ordinance, statute, or amendment, at any level of government, that forbade challenging politicians and bureaucrats -- especially police officers -- or exempted them from accepting a challenge or being publicly branded as a coward if they declined. Where "checks and balances" have become meaningless because all three branches of government get their paychecks from the same source, duelling could become a check or balance that actually meant something. In a world of faceless alphabet agencies illegally pushing people around, duelling could represent the ultimate in government accountability.

The mental picture of Janet Reno struggling to hold up a heavy duelling piece in her shaking hand as spectators scatter is absolutely irresistible.

Naturally, there would have to be some kind of rules to determine what constitutes a fair and evenhanded duel. Fortunately, there are several distinct duelling codes to choose among, historically, and that would have to be the first point settled by the combatants' "seconds".

One familiar school prefers the "ready, aim, fire" approach we know from movies about Jim Bowie, Andrew Jackson, and their ilk, or the back-to-back, walk a number of paces, turn, and pull the trigger. But another, interesting, and apparently commoner procedure is for the referee to drop a handkerchief and count from one to three. If the antagonists can't get a shot off in that interval, a shot afterward is illegal.

Then there's the choice of weapons. As I indicated earlier, as a longtime silhueta competitor, I would select large caliber handguns, preferably revolvers, at the length of a football field (although I've always rather fancied an elaborately-boxed pair of high-powered Thompson-Center single-shots on my mantlepiece). Others will prefer the traditional rapier, which I'm told is a lot like a sport-fencer's epee.

But there are those who will always make unconventional choices. The Bowie knife comes to mind, having mentioned the fellow who gave it its name -- and reputedly beheaded one attacker with a backhanded blow. Battle-axes have been proposed, as have dynamite and hickory switches. Abraham Lincoln, challenged to a duel, chose broadswords -- across a huge fallen log -- knowing it would put his shorter-armed opponent at a disadvantage. Revolutionary General Israel Putnam dared his challenger to sit on a powder keg with him as the fuse burned down. Putnam is said to have hated duelling, and after his opponent ran away, it turned out that the general had filled the empty keg with onions.

I suppose, if I have my evil way, as the poor e-sap tried warning people about, insurance companies will begin writing duelling clauses into policies, letting them off the hook in the case you get yourself shot, skewered, or otherwise inconvenienced as a result of a formal difference of opinions. On the bright side, duelling will make fencing much more popular than it is now, and restore to salons everywhere a certain seriousness of purpose they've been missing for a couple of centuries.

And the proposal -- that we reestablish duelling by repealing all existing laws against it -- should dissuade those who claim that I'm a pacifist.

The American Zone

L. Neil Smith writes:

Naturally, I want you to buy this book for yourself, your family and your friends. My fondest hope is that it will help put the brakes on a runaway state. But I have a special purpose in asking you buy it now. I've just been told that my hope of selling my next project to this publisher depends on how well The American Zone sells between now and Christmas.

I don't want to give away too much unfinished business, but one of the items before them is Ceres, a sequel to Pallas, in which the largest of the asteroids gets terraformed, while the grandchildren of Emerson Ngu protect the Earth and the Settled Worlds from rogue meteoroid strikes and do many other strange and wonderful things.
[snip]
The American Zone is a hardcover novel with what may be the most beautiful cover I've ever been given, and costs $26.95. It should soon be available at bookstores everywhere, and will be doubtless showing up at Amazon.com and LaissezFaireBooks.com before you know it. You can always order by clicking through on my personal website, The Webley Page, at http://www.lneilsmith.org//americanzone.html and see the wonderful cover at the same time. I will have a few copies myself that you can order from me signed and personalized to you. Send me e-mail: [email protected].

In December, Tor Books will release a new trade (large) paperback edition of my first Win Bear novel, The Probability Broach, with a splendid matching cover by the same artist. The price will be $15.95 and some booksellers are offering a special deal for both books together. Click http://www.lneilsmith.org//lns_tpb-3.html soon.

And whatever else you do, don't forget to celebrate Bill of Rights Day, December 15. See http://www.jpfo.org for some suggestions.

Thanks for your kindness and patience,
And happy holidays to you and yours,

L. Neil Smith

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