Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

L. Neil Smith and I are both winners of the Prometheus Award for best libertarian novel.

I’m a fan of L. Neil Smith’s novels and he’s a fan of mine.

But we’re also friends.

One of the great pleasures of my life was sitting in Neil’s living room in Fort Collins, Colorado, and listening to Neil read me his novel The Venus Belt.

Not a chapter. The whole novel.

In The Venus Belt L. Neil Smith introduced me to the “smartsuit”—a skin-tight space suit that not only provides a space-dweller oxygen and pressure necessary for survival in the vacuum of outer space but also provides its wearer other environmental support services.

According to the Wikipedia article “Spacesuits in Fiction” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacesuits_in_fiction):

In L. Neil Smith’s novel The Venus Belt, the protagonist describes in some detail a skin-tight Smartsuit which is capable of furnishing not only life support in various types of hostile environments, but also limited medical treatment for the wearer. The suit also functions as a powerful wearable computer, with the circuitry, displays, and controls integrated into the fabric of the suit. In the novel, the suit is, as a matter of tradition, included in the price of a space-liner ticket to Ceres. The character notes that a properly fitted Smartsuit leaves the wearer feeling “completely naked…a testament to the makers’ art.” Most spacefarers live in their Smartsuits for indefinite periods, as the suit can handle waste management and hygiene for the wearer.

We science-fiction writers frequently write homages to each other in our own stories. Er, that is, we borrow ideas from each other. Damn it, we steal from each other.

But if we have any class at all we put in some sort of attribution.

I’m currently writing my fourth novel, The Fractal Man. My publisher, Steve Heller, is serializing the novel on his publishing website at http://www.SteveHellerPublishing.com. As of today the first ten chapters are up for free reading. When complete the novel will be released first on Amazon in a Kindle edition.

Among other descriptors The Fractal Man can be called “libertarian science fiction.” It can also be called “gonzo fiction” and “post-modern metafiction” because L. Neil Smith is not the only author I steal from.

But I have characters in The Fractal Man —agents of the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre (because I also stole from my own first novel, Alongside Night)—whose standard mission gear includes wearing “Smith-suits” under their street clothing.

And now you know where I got that idea.