i have to admit, i was very critical about reading this book because i hate science fiction… but this book is amazing… and then to top if all off, you dont have a writing related degree, yet it is so well written… kudos…
Thanks so much, K-Stigs. Nothing beats getting reviews like that! I hope the first part wasn’t too slow for you; a number of people have mentioned that they liked it more after the first 100 pages or so. I enjoy a slow beginning that builds, but maybe next time I’ll step on the gas peddle a bit.
I think your interpretation of the destruction of Floralel is correct, or at least what I intended. The signal is meant to go off independently of any human switching it on (although a person can also flip the switch). This is a severe measure to prevent prisoners from getting their hands on technology. If there were any Gaians left in the city, Alistair was not aware of them.
Thanks for reading, and thanks for buying a hard copy! Maybe I’ll see you at a convention someday and I can sign it.
Take care!
[quote=“Isaac “Izzy” Marmolejo”]
i have to admit, i was very critical about reading this book because i hate science fiction… but this book is amazing
[/quote]
Music to my ears… or eyes as the case may be.
I have heard from a number of people who don’t like sci-fi that this is sci-fi for sci-fi haters. Then again, I also heard from a couple sci-fi fans that they wished it were more sci-fi, so I guess you win some and you lose some.
Anyway, I really appreciate the read and the compliment! Muchas gracias!
Am going to purchase this tonight and DL on my kindle. Soon as I finish Towers of Midnight WOT your book will be my next fiction.
I’ve been wanting to read this for a while, but I’ve had school and work, about to go on break. Time to get to it!
Great to hear, buddy! I hope you enjoy. And thanks!
I completely support your decision! Thank you!
It’s free on my website and you can either get a Kindle download or a hard copy (paperback) from Amazon.
I hope you enjoy!
“Mr. Alexander has generously agreed to donate 35% of the proceeds of Wĭthûr Wē to the Federal Government, and is prepared to donate 39.6% if President Obama requires it.”
lmao
A very readable book. Thanks.
[Beware of spoilers:]
I read it in three days, but it can be read in just two. I think you ought to congratulate yourself as I think this is what makes or breaks a wrritter. (Eg, Lois Bujold publishes books which are objectively speaking crap - once you put them down - are successful for no other reason than they are hard to put down before they are finished.) Reading this book I was anxious to know what happens next, and it was unpredictable enough that I worried about the outcome.
I thought the first part was the most powerful in the sense it is the most likely to sway a general reader, because what it is about is closer and thus more understandable to him. But also because the text is very good in presenting the dehumanizing nature of opressive government. The scene where the government-gangsters announce the restaurant will be taken from Nigel even though he had supported Aloysious should have anyone clenching their fists and cursing the SOBs. Otherwise the breakneck pacing and the constant action was intense enough to have me thinking Deathstalker series, but maybe that is just me.
In the second part I caught myself thinking the extent of the division of labour on Odin’s Island was too optimistic, as I think a practicaly males only society would be likelier to divide into “wolf packs” and live a hand to mouth existance than open farms and mines and contract with PDA’s, but then I don’t know why my guess should be any better than yours. The important thing is you make it so your version does not require a great deal of suspension of disbelief. Also the circumstances on the prison planet is fascinating enough that it should have the attention even of someone who is oblivious or hostile to its politics. It had a more than a few of the Canticle for Leibowitz style oddities, but - and here is the difference - in a text trying to explain rather than to confuse. The passage with the Agnus guy being interrogated by the jailors with which the second part ends is absolutely brilliant. I like this motiff of a quiet long term bitter-sweet triumph that no defense exists against and I would not have minded at all if the work ended right here. (In order to place a greater weight on it.)
The Space Odysseyan third part was less unpredictable and also seemed slower almost like an epilogue rather a part of the regular body of the book. It is true that as a reader I wanted to get back to find out what had happened on Aldra from which I had been so abruptly torn away from, but then when nothing unexpected occured I started feeling the other way around as if had not Alistair been too quick to abandon his experiment on the prison planet. But as this was the same conclusion that Alistair reached I can not be too critical, also by this time it was late so I it is entirely possible the problem was on my side.
A fine book overall.
Maybe you can tell us some of the stuff you have read? Like your literary influences, or if you are/were a science fiction reader yourself?
Thanks, Marko! This was a fun post to read and think about.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!
Great to hear!
I agree. I had more than one reader tell me he forgot he was reading a sci-fi novel during the first part.
Thank you. That’s the theme of part I. Part II: an alternative.
Well, that’s an interesting point and it’s hard to say for sure. Of course, that is what they were doing before Alistair came, but this was presented as being more due to exogenous pressures like overpopulation and such. Even after Alistair came, I think there was a small section where it was noted that many men had taken to living in small villages consisting essentially of groups of barracks. Many of them were business partners in farming and herding (did this make the final cut? Sometimes I have trouble remembering).
Here it is on page 567: “Alistair guessed forty people lived in the present one. Other than the various lodges in which groups of five or six men would cohabitate…” It seems to me I might have said one or two sentences more on the issue in the first draft, but there is a bit of a pack mentality on the planet, though perhaps not as much as you are suggesting. Who knows what would actuall happen?
Good to hear!
Can you believe I haven’t read CfL? On my list…
Thank you! I think you’re the first person to mention it and it’s one of my favorite parts.
I don’t think that there will ever be anything eternal about humanity (perhaps not even humanity itself). An anarchic society can grow soft, complacent, decadent, corrupt… some libertarians argue that once tasted, a truly free society will never be abandoned. I’m not so sure, but as Rothbard said, that’s no reason not to push for it. Even if it lasts but a year, a year of anarchy is a nice holiday from oppression! And I certainly think an anarchic order could last far longer than that (hell, the Irish proved that!).
Ultimately, things come crashing down on Sriliium, but I would argue that this happened despite anarchy, not because of it, and I wanted to leave my opinion on that topic in the pages of the book. The destruction of the society was not the author’s way of saying that anarchy sounds great but is ultimately impracticable. The destruction of the society was… well, Angus says it all on pages 625 and 626.
The book was originally conceived as a standalone. I am committed to writing a sequel now (though the sequel will not be my next book). Had I envisioned a sequel from the beginning, that may have been the end right there.
You nailed it, although I hope it wasn’t too predictable. I tried to keep people guessing about the vessel.
I felt like every theme, both libertarian and sci-fi, that I had been developing is finally tied together and completed in part III. The ultimate statement is that coercive relationships are cancerous for any thinking species, human or otherwise. I also felt that seeing Oliver Keegan would be important (Alistair and Oliver are sort of like Mises.org and Cato).
I had a discussion with a friend of mine as I was finishing Withur We in which we talked about the fact that I was writing a sci-fi novel but had only read maybe six to ten sci-fi novels in my life. I have since starting reading sci-fi in earnest.
Growing up, I read almost exclusively fantasy novels of the Tolkien variety. I probably read a couple hundred of those. When I got a bit older, I started reading some of the classics of literature. Soon after that, I got interested in cinema and libertarianism so I started watching a lot of my fiction and the reading I did was non-fiction for a few years. When I did read the occasional work of fiction, it was typically a classic: Twain, Conrad, Hugo and the like. I did manage to read Ayn Rand’s works during this time. For most of the time I spent writing Withur We - five years - I was probably most under the influence of Joseph Conrad.
I am now on a sci-fi kick, a genre I grew to love from cinema more than literature. Vonnegut and Heinlein are the best I have read so far (although Heinlein’s best known works are my least favorite). Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan, Puppetmasters, Starship Troopers and Forever War are some I have read in the last year or so and very much enjoyed them. Ringworld and Ender’s Game are, in my opinion, drastically overrated, especially Ender’s Game (even though I like the ethic of EG). Neoromancer was decent on some counts, lacking on others. A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky have good parts and bad parts, but the good parts are quite entertaining. Deepness in the Sky is superior to Fire, in my opinion.
Anyway, thanks so much for your post. I had a good time reading and responding to it!
Another note of congratulations on a superb work of fiction, sir. If Withur We was your debut novel – wow.
I’ll be getting the paperback copy from Amazon soon. My philosophy when it comes to literature is that if something is worth reading, it’s worth reading again, and I will be reading Withur We more than once. Always better to have hard copy of the good stuff. Besides, I want to put a copy of this book into my son’s hands when he gets older, as a sort of gentle way of introducing him to Austrian principles.
Expectations are high now for your next novel. No pressure, though. lol
I do have a question: You mention cinema. When you were writing (and revising), and you would watch the events in Withur We unfold in your mind, did you envision any real-life actors playing the various roles? Did that shape the dialogue or character development?
Thank you so much! Withur We is my first published novel. In grade school and junior high I wrote, I think, four first drafts of novels, although only one was completely finished. The others got to the 80% mark or so before I realized I hated them and threw them out. They were swords and sorcerers of the sort I devoured at the time. I do not regret throwing them out. About ten years ago I came across a surviving copy and read through a few pages before I vomited. That too has been destroyed, and the human race is better off for it.
While studying in Spain, in college, I kept a notebook in which I began to write another novel. I didn’t get very far, and the seventy or so pages I scrawled were destroyed a few years ago when my basement flooded. Again, not a great loss, but it was much better than what had come before. One of the ideas I was going to use in it will be used in my next novel.
After coming back from Spain, I went to the New York Film Academy and envisioned a future in cinema. There were a few hurdles that, let’s say, I was unwilling to jump over and a movie career - though not entirely discarded - was put on indefinite hold. In my desperation to do something artistic, I rediscovered my love of literature, combined it with my discovered love of liberty, and plunged into - perhaps a touch too quickly - the novel you have just read.
Though it postponed my writing career a few years, I do not regret my foray into cinema. Studying that discipline has done nothing but help me as a novelist. Incidentally, I think Ayn Rand, who worked a bit in Hollywood, would have made an excellent director. Her relative weakness in character - at least as I see it - might have been shored up by a couple good actors. Her sense of location was nothing short of superb. There are a thousand scenes in Atlas Shrugged that are so much more than just political and philosophical ramblings due to her excellent choice of location and her exquisite description of it.
You bring a tear to my eye!
I don’t think I’ve ever received a greater compliment. Muchisimas gracias!
I’m already nervous.
I did not. Ever since I began to study cinema, I have been more about the directors than the actors. The screenwriters are, of course, of monumental importance, and the more I got into movies the more I realized how important the editor was. Actors are also important, but the big three, for me, are writer, director and editor. I would rank actors somewhere around set designer/costumer and cinematographer.
What cinema did for Withur We was make me a better writer of dialogue (however good or bad you think I am, I am better than I used to be by a wide margin) and make me think about interesting locations and atmosphere. There are also some directorial touches that I believe make a scene just a bit more interesting. For instance, in the last post I talked a bit with Marko about the scene at the end of Part II. In that scene, the woman from The Incarcerator is wearing high heels and she keeps sinking into the mud on the ground, once stepping out of her shoe. This is the type of thing a director might add, something that is not in the script but which fleshes out the scene (for more on this, there is a good Francis Ford Coppola interview in one of the versions of Godfather II).
A little thing like that, I believe, adds spice to the meat of a scene in a lot of different ways. It provides for the reader a way to view the scene without resorting to constant descriptions. It is a character’s actions that paint the picture. It also provides a little relief from the back-and-forth of dialogue. It humanizes the scene a little. This sort of thing I learned from directing.
Thanks for the comment, Joe! I enjoy this sort of thing very much. I hope your son enjoys it in a few years, i.e., when he is old enough to read about what Giselle does to Alistair!
Take care and Happy New Year!
Ha! Most excellent!
In responding to Marko, I mentioned Ender’s Game and that I didn’t like the book,but agreed with the ethic. I have just finished reading a few criticisms of EG, and seeing that some readers take a very different view of what EG is about, I thought I better clarify my stance.
For me, Ender’s Game was about a lying, brutal military turning a young boy into a brutal killer. It seemed to me more of a stance against the military than a justification for military brutality. Whatever it was that Orson Scott Card intended, that’s what I came away with and what I was talking about when I said I agreed with the ethic of EG.
Also, it seems that many people object to Orson Scott Card’s examination of mens rea. They don’t like that OSC seems to be obsolving Ender of criminal responsibility because Ender did not know what he was doing. I can’t see how such a thing could be objectionable in the slightest. If I destroy a civilization but think I am playing a video game, the guilty ones are the ones who set me to playing the video game, knowing what would happen. This seems to me to be indisputable.
At any rate, for me, this is what EG is about, and I am largely in agreement with it. I just don’t think the book is very good.
For those interested, these are the reviews that prompted me to post this: Here, here, and here.
" I’d also send info to Geoffery Allan Plauche, he used frequent these forums and is now a lecturer; he also set up a forum dedicated to libertarian sci-fi."
The phpBB forum is dead unfortunately. It never reached critical mass. But a few months back I started a new project that doesn’t require as many active members and both Matthew and Jeremiah are already on board: Prometheus Unbound: A Libertarian Review of Fiction and Literature.
I just started part two.
The question in libertarian fiction stopped being ‘who is John Galt’, and started - or ought to start - to be ‘Where is (our) Alistair Ashley?’
Only a few minor details that I think where a bit wrong to implement (but are not groundbreaking and unrelated to the story) it’s probably the best work I’ve read in a long, very long, time.
Absolutely amazing.
Thank you so much for your kind words. One review like that makes five years of work worth it!
I’d be very interested to hear the details you had a problem with, and don’t worry about hurting my feelings.
I hope you enjoy part II. That’s when it gets really libertarian!
SPOILER ALERT
I haven’t finished the book yet. They just discovered that the prisoner’s planet has it’s own economy and are about to attack. So maybe some of my comments change when I finished the entire book.
Well; I felt a bit odd reading Alasdair lecturing about economics/freedom ideas; using words as ‘subjective value’, ‘Ludwig von Mises’ and so and and so forth. Maybe it was explained - but than I skipped it - but I think it should be more clear that he was thought in ‘the classics of ideas’. It felt a bit that he had access to on the one hand unique and important ideas, where everyone else was completely ignorant of and on the other hand that it was no effort what so ever to have these ideas and insights. It felt a bit unnatural. I’m not sure how to describe it. It was like I was thrown back to myself in the contemporary world, whilst reading a story far, far away in the future. Does this make sense to you?
I especially liked in the first part the intellectual struggle between the revolutionaries; making clear that ‘wanting change’ is not the same as ‘wanting freedom’. The debates between Mike, Alasdair, Johnny and Oliver where very interesting and felt real. Like: yes, a revolution is not enough. I liked how things developed in the first part; very recognizable and real.
(As someone who is familiar with the Misesian-Hayekian-Rothbardian-De Jasayian analysis of the world; it also felt familiar, which wasn’t bad.)
The second part was a bit of a mixed feeling; because it all felt so easy and fast. As if a widespread anarchist society with just thieves, murderers and so on was going to be that easy. On a more philosophical note; I think you overplayed the role of the four ‘big’ anarchist protection agencies. (But that’s just my mere prediction. I think that you displayed it very accurately that if a few ‘big’ companies would run the protection business, the temptation of state building is, in fact, there.)
But the philosophical discussions - especially the ones regarding the Nozickean argument of the origin of the state - where very, very good. And the fact that they were ingrained in a story - and thus not merely philosophical arguments really made sure the ideas I hold dear come to live in as a real sense as they are bound to come.
I’m not sure though if a non-libertarian would feel as excited as me. And maybe a non-libertarian wouldn’t get the revelance of all the philosophical debates; allthough you do an excellent, excellent job in presenting them. I’m pretty confident I’ll be copy/pasting some of those discussions as arguments in the future if I don’t feel like making the same argument myself - e.g. the part on the illegalization of prostitution.
I read through a few reviews on amazon - note that you have very good reviews on amazon; deservingly so - and I tend to agree with this point: “There’s probably enough here to make two or three novels taking these characters through the same story with more time spent on some of the other characters and their stories.” The problem I’m having with the book is not that it’s too long, but that it is too short! But then again; that’s probably fan boyism that wants it to go on forever.
Also; it’s probably been said before. But the book is a real pageturner. Maybe not all the time, but certainly a lot of the time. It’s like Dan Brown meets Rothbard meets George Orwell; 3 writers who are good at what they do.
I’m probably not saying there is no room for improvement. But there certainly is a lot of talent.
One technical point I want to make, though. One important thing and a mistake a lot of writers often make is that all the ‘side persons’ are copy/pastes with no real personality. I think you have thoroughly succeeded in given most if not all of the characters in the book their own life, personality and imput. They are not idling standing by when the story happens with the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ guys; they are complex figures who change, based on feelings of power, morals, sentiments and so much more. They were humans, not characters. The only problem - maybe - was that Alisdair might feel a bit too principled. I’m not sure. But than again; does it have to be? It’s not impossible that someone who has been through a lot truly is principled to the core.
Another point - which I think is neither positive nor negative - is the fact that, unlike 1984 and Brave New World, your book is not only anti-totalitarian government (that, by the way, even is democratic; which I liked) but offers an idea, an alternative. And as we all know; ‘an idea, mr Creedy, is bulletproof’. That might make some non-libertarians not regard the book as highly as I do, but within the libertarian world; I know of no reason why any libertarian shouldn’t read this book. Preaching to the choir is often considered as a negative; but I know of no successful organization or movement that didn’t participate in widespread ‘preaching to the choir’. This is a an exciting new way of doing so - it doesn’t always have to be Human Action. Maybe it won’t become a classic as Atlas Shrugged; but, as I said before, I never asked ‘who is Joh Galt’, but I do wonder: where is Alisdair Ashley?
On a personal note; sometimes I wonder why I care. Why not just retreat into academia or whatever and just try to make my own life worthwhile. This book convinced me that there is actually something worth in trying to improve the world, even though people will piss on your ideas. That doing good, because you are doing good, is doing well. And that’s something I needed. If for no other reason; that’s why I’m liking this book.