[Ask the Gulch] Why is Atlas Shrugged usually labeled as science fiction when it is obviously social and economic commentary?
Posted by ProfChuck 8 years, 10 months ago to Ask the Gulch
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I am just winging it here because I was just a lowly physical chemist and mathematician. It sure would be nice to be able to shield one side of a body from part of the radiation but does not look like that would be possible. Same for gravity if it is particle driven, otherwise not possible to shield gravity and get rid of inertia, if inertia is due to all the sources of gravity in the Universe.
Zero point energy is part of my specialty as a physicist and it serves quite well as the mechanism behind Galt's motor. It is poorly understood but if the models are even remotely close to to reality its potential as an energy source is astronomical. It is also likely to be quite dangerous.
What I find interesting is how Paul Ryan, who loved AS, could take so long to detect that the philosophy was atheistic and thus not to be recommended to his staff any longer.
But as a major in Economics and minor in Philosophy, AS is definitely more realistic and predictive than science fiction. For God's sake, it's coming true just as written, and clearly to me has been since my first of many readings in 1969.
My other theory is that the people who fear it being read call it science fiction in order to marginalize the truth in it, and minimize the profound lessons to be found in both the novel and her incomparable leap forward in Rationist Philosophy
By any other name would smell as sweet;"
http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Ran...
1. John Galt's electrostatic motor,
2. Rearden Metal,
3. Project X, and
4.John Galt's refractor-ray camouflage screen.
Of these, I'd pick the electrostatic motor as the main element.
Years ago, for a project to discuss Atlas Shrugged on Conservapedia, I researched each of these four elements, to decide whether and how well I could explain them. The electrostatic motor was a staple of the science fiction of Jules Verne. Captain Nemo's Nautilus (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) had an electrostatic power plant, and so did Robur's Albatross (Master of the World, Robur the Conqueror). (The film adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues changed the electrostatic power plant to a nuclear power plant. But the adaptation of the Robur story kept the electrostatic power plant for Albatross. Considering the latter was a multi-rotor helicopter, it made sense.)
People have tried to build the electrostatic motor, but have achieved no success beyond a student-level project. Rearden Metal remains a dream of metallurgy: a substitutionary alloy of iron and copper, with interstitial carbon to harden it. The refractor-ray screen frankly needed a microprocessor to run it. But Project X, in view of the coherent sound beam project at Leeds University, now becomes a feasible project in present day.
Having said all that, I did not regard Atlas Shrugged as science fiction. The inventions seemed to me to be the kind of thing one would expect in a few years from a contemporary setting. And most of the story took place in the setting of contemporary inventions. So whoever labeled it science fiction, probably didn't want to believe some of the other future-history elements. Like the runaway Constitutional convention that is the only thing that could have produced a generically named "Head of State," and a unicameral Legislature that could grant such sweeping powers to the quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial bodies we saw in Directive 10-289 and the Railroad Unification Plan.
But as "1984" and "Brave New World" are also often classified as Science Fiction, I do not think it is dismissive to include "Atlas Shrugged" in this category.
Science Fiction often has that predictive element, as it imagines what the world could be like. Atlas Shrugged does have that "20 minutes Into The Future" aspect to it, wouldn't you agree?
NOTE: I may be biased in that I first found Rand in the Sci Fi section of my library in the 70's. After reading Atlas Shrugged" and "Anthem", I was pleasantly surprised to discover her other novels and essays.
Perhaps I never questioned the category where they were to be found via the "Dewey Decimal System", because other (Great) dystopian novels were placed there as well?
Good Question +1
Fortunately for old dino, I like speculative science fiction about the near future.
The "labeling" led me in.
I found the social and economic commentary fascinating.
Thus I became exposed the Ayn Rand's philosophy and discovered the Gulch doing research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi7QQ...
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