Americans Have Obeyed Their Last Gun Law

The Libertarian Enterprise — An International Journal of Opinion — Number 857, January 31, 2016 Now In Our 20th Year Online A Reader Supported Web Magazine Who is a libertarian? Search Back Issues powered by FreeFind Back Issues Archive Advertise in L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise Receive an e-mail when this page changes: Be notified of page updates it's private powered by ChangeDetection

We interrupt this issue for an important announcement:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, January 24, 2016

L. Neil Smith, Lifetime Achievement Award

The Libertarian Futurist Society has decided to present a Special Prometheus Award for lifetime achievement to L. Neil Smith.

Smith is only the fourth author in LFS history to receive a Special Prometheus Award for lifetime achievement. The previous Lifetime Achievement winners were Poul Anderson (2001), Vernor Vinge (2014) and F. Paul Wilson (2015).

Smith has received four previous Prometheus Awards—including the first Prometheus award given by the newly-constituted Libertarian Futurist Society in 1982 to Smith's The Probability Broach.

Sometimes considered one of the definitive libertarian science fiction novels, The Probability Broach tells the story of Denver homicide detective Win Bear, a Native American, who accidentally goes sideways in time, to the North American Confederacy, an alternative future in which the federal government has grown less powerful over time. Likely still Smith's most famous novel, it's part of his seven-book North American Confederacy series.

Smith won his second Prometheus in 1994 for Pallas, set on the asteroid of the same name. The novel dramatizes the struggle for freedom of its hero, Emerson Ngu.

His third Prometheus, in 2001, came for The Forge of the Elders, set on the fictional asteroid 5023 Eris (one of many nods in Smith's work to the Illuminatus! trilogy of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson). It featured alien-like Elders, although they actually originated from Earth. The Baen paperback featured a memorable cover of one of the book's characters hoisting a beer with an Elder. (Smith wrote in a 2007 blog post that the book was his "favorite" and featured one of his best cover paintings.)

Smith's fourth Prometheus was a 2005 Special Award given to him and illustrator Scott Bieser for The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel.

Smith created the Prometheus Award, presenting it in 1979 to Wheels Within Wheels by F. Paul Wilson. In order to transform the one-time award into an annual program, the Libertarian Futurist Society was organized by other fans in 1982 to take over and sustain the awards program. Since the initial award to Wilson, Smith has not played a role in the LFS. The awards were later expanded from Best Novel to include an annual Prometheus Hall of Fame Award (for best classic fiction published or broadcast at least five years ago) and occasional Special Awards.

Smith has attracted attention beyond his immediate core fandom of American libertarian science fiction fans. In all, Smith has written 28 books, according to an official tally published in May 2012 on his blog. Star Wars fans, for instance, know him for his three Lando Calrissian novels.

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia has hailed Smith for writing "fast-moving and often amusing adventures" and describes The Probability Broach and its two immediate sequels as "comedy thrillers."

British novelist and critic Sean Gabb, who also writes as Richard Blake, included two essays about Smith in his book, Literary Essays. Gabb wrote that in 1985, when he was traveling by train from London to York and suffering from depression, he found a copy of The Probability Broach in one of the luggage racks. Gabb concluded immediately that it was a "great novel," and writes admiringly about Smith's ability to seamlessly integrate opinions into his books without interrupting the flow of the plot with long speeches.

"What I got from The Probability Broach was my clearest perception yet of what libertarianism should be about," Gabb wrote. "Yes, we believe in free markets, and in enterprise, and, so long as there must be a government, in certain constitutional safeguards. But this is all supportive of the true argument for liberty—which is that it allows us to have a really good time for a very long time."

Including their Lifetime Achievement awards, Anderson, Vinge, Wilson and now Smith have all been recognized five times with various Prometheus Awards. (The only author to receive more awards from the LFS was Robert Heinlein (1907- 1988), with a grand total of six.) Visit lfs.org to see a comprehensive list of Prometheus Award recipients and for more information about the Libertarian Futurist Society.

The special awards ceremony will take place in 2016 at a time and place to be announced. Check the LFS website (www.lfs.org) for updates.

For more information, contact LFS Board Chair Bill Stoddard.

All trademarks and copyrights property of their owners.
All else copyright LFS 2003-2014

We now return to our regularly scheduled issue:

Bernie Sanders
(The Feature Article)

Socialism is Forever by Scott Bieser scottbieser.com Now available for sale as a 35x23 inch poster!

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Republican and Democrat, they're all socialists at heart, who want to kill you and cook you and eat you. ARTICLES The Impeachable Offenses of Barack Hussein Obama by Terence James Mason In 7 parts. •     READ ARTICLE   Letters to the Editor from A.X. Perez and Tor Chantara •     READ ARTICLE   Bernie Sanders by L. Neil Smith I confess that I haven't been paying much attention to Bernie Sanders. I've known a thousand of him. I grew up, politically, surrounded in, smothered by, crowded with creatures like Bernie Sanders, mostly in the movement to stop the war in Vietnam. I quickly learned that they had no regard fo the moral principles ivolved, or the people whose lives were being taken or abused, except as poster children. •     READ ARTICLE   Hail Caesar by Sean Gangol Not that this comes as a shock, but recently Emperor, or excuse me President Obama has decided to ignore the Constitution once more by passing a series of gun laws through Executive Orders. These laws include extending background checks and requiring any private gun seller to obtain a Federal Firearms License, even if he is just a onetime seller. Then of course he made sure that the orders included an expansion of BATFE agents so that these laws will be enforced. •     READ ARTICLE   Skin Deep by L. Neil Smith A while back, I wrote a piece about Gwyneth Paltrow (you probably know her as Pepper Potts from Ironman or as Viola de Loesseps in Shakespeare In Love—which she won the Academy Award for) lamenting the fact that such a lovely creature can make completely stupid remarks, politically and economically. To paraphrase Julie Brown, who wrote "Earth Girls Are Easy" and "The Homecoming Queen's Got A Gun", I forget now what she said, it was so stupid. The one and only reader-reaction I received was a brief message from some guy who opined that I must be blind because I think that Gwyneth Paltrow is lovely. It only goes to show you just how subjective these matters can be. •     READ ARTICLE   The Norseman's Diaries: Snowpocalypse Now—AGAIN by Jeff Fullerton It's time for installment of the Norseman's Diaries. In this day and age there are things unfolding that may prove far more dangerous than the phenomenon we fear and know as weather. Especially in a year where the winter season has been so far unprecedentedly mild. We had a few minor shocks that punctuated the mild Pacific influence of El Niño over much of North America. The first snow event before the holidays was not much. But it was timed late in the evening and blanketed the roads quickly enough to tender the heights above Kecksburg impassible and required the same roundabout course of least resistance by way of Greensburg, New Stanton and bypass of Mount Pleasant on the interstate to reach home that night like I did two times last year under far worse conditions. •     READ ARTICLE   Facebunk by L. Neil Smith According to an article in the New York Times online, the idiots and moral cripples who run Facebook have decided, in their complete absence of wisdom, to prohibit private gun sales on their system. Federally licensed dealers will not be affected, nor gun clubs. All hail to the People's Glorious Collective! •     READ ARTICLE   EDITORIAL MATTERS New shotgun slug. There is serious slice & dice here: OATH Expanding and Fragmenting Slugs Taking 12ga to a whole new level of destruction. [Link] Trigger Warning: This issue of this magazine (like all the others) may contain: Humor, Snark, Truth, Thoughts That Might Be Different Than Yours, Ideas You Never Thought Of, Things You Never Heard Of, and so on. YOU have been WARNED! We are a Reader-Supported on-line eMagazine. Click the "Pay" button here and at the end of most articles to pay the author of what you just read whatever you want to pay. We all will appreciate it! Ken Holder Editor-in-Chief editor@ncc-1776.org Click here To submit articles, letters-of-comment, cartoons, pictures, etc., email: editor@ncc-1776.org For our Get the UN Out of America Project: anti-un@ncc-1776.org Products used and recommended by L. Neil Smith (read more): Handy-Racker (small, medium, large) Handy-Racker (Beretta 92, 94, 96 and M9, and clones) LED Weapon light with Green laser LED Weapon light with Red laser List of WikiLeaks mirrors: wikileaks.info Exposing War Crimes is NOT a crime! Free Bradley Manning Join TLE on Facebook   L. Neil Smith personally recommends Climate Depot as the best general source of infomation on the subject.   The Down With Power audiobook read by Brian Wilson Get it here! Americans Have Obeyed Their Last Gun Law A cyberpamphlet by L. Neil Smith Holsters and Sheaths from Survival Sheath Systems   Used and recommended by L. Neil Smith Take a look at: survivalsheath.com Agenda 21: The United Nations Programme of Action Planning for Your future, serf! Read all about it!: Download .pdf View publication The Last Sonuvabitch of Klepton Archive

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