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08/20/08
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December
16, 2003 I'm a huge science fiction fan. I love stories about human beings exploring the unknown -- in the words of the most famous SF in history, I like stories about boldly going where no man has gone before. More importantly, however, I'm a devotee of the Zero Aggression Principle, which states: "No human being has the right -- under ANY circumstances -- to initiate force against another human being, nor to threaten or delegate its initiation." Because the overwhelming majority of modern science fiction advocates initiation of force -- often on a galactic scale -- I am constantly frustrated in my attempts to enjoy it. With only a few exceptions (the work of seminal libertarian author L. Neil Smith immediately comes to mind) modern SF explicitly features heavily-regulated, government-sponsored Utopias. In the future, everyone will be more "enlightened" and able to look beyond their own needs to the good of the group. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one," we are told. Naturally, the only organization that can be counted on to see to the welfare of everyone is an omnipotent, wise, central government. In most SF, the moment everyone turns over control of their lives to government, all the world's ills are solved overnight. While this sounds attractive, it ignores several thousand years' objective reality: that the more power individuals cede to government, the more it attracts the corrupt and the corruptable. As we can easily observe in modern America, a government with too much power is simply a hopelessly corrupt body accomplishing nothing but the advancement of its members. The perfect case in point is the most popular science fiction franchise of all time: Star Trek. Every single series -- from its premiere in 1966 to the present day -- chronicles the military arm of an interstellar government. Their government is a communist Utopia, and they implement socialist policy wherever they go. By explicit editorial policy, there have never been any private businesses depicted in Star Trek's 23rd and 24th century: the only non-governmental economic activity is criminal. The second most popular franchise, Star Wars, centers on the police officers of the Republic, the Jedi Knights. In many ways, Star Wars is far more palatable that Star Trek because there still exist private-sector businesses and free-market solutions to problems -- even if the free-market solution involves bounty hunters. Of the top ten science fiction movies of all time (Jurassic Park, Independence Day, Star Wars, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Men in Black, The Empire Strikes Back, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Return of the Jedi, and Batman) only three don't focus on government or its representatives. Of those three, only one (E.T.) portrays government as anything other than entirely positive. The other two (the Jurassic Park movies) portray the free market as evil, and scientific advancement as contrary to nature. None of the "non-government" movies involve what interests me about science fiction: human beings exploring the unknown of deep space. The moral of the story is simple: the future belongs to government. In reality, the function of government is to halt any technological progress that would free the human race from planet Earth. Modern government flunkies understand that once humanity has moved beyond the influence of Earth's gravity, it will have simultaneously moved beyond the influence of her governments. Interplanetary and interstellar distances make Solar and Galactic governments an impossible Statist wet dream -- and they know it. Even planetary governments are an impossibility: no matter how much the socialists in the Republican and Democratic Parties would like to believe otherwise, neither the United Nations, nor the League of Nations, nor any other central authority will ever control the lives and destinies of every human being on Earth. Socialism is inherently unstable, both economically and sociologically. The larger a socialist regime gets, the more unstable it becomes. If at some point the U.N. were to attempt to become the world government it hints at wanting to be, it would collapse in short order. So as I say, I'm frustrated: there is no SF on television, almost no movies, and only a small handful of books that cater to my philosophy. The rest I find ridiculous at best and outright insulting at worst. While I can watch the SciFi Channel's recent re-make of Battlestar: Galactica and admire its artistry, its Statist underpinnings make me want to shoot my TV set full of holes. No doubt this would improve my viewing habits considerably, but I would occasionally miss some real gems. Case in point: The Adventures of Pluto Nash, starring Eddie Murphy. Murphy is my contemporary, someone I've watched progress through his career as a performer as I've progressed through mine as a computer scientist. As a young man, I was a big fan of his stand-up comedy, his tenure on Saturday Night Live was positively brilliant, and his early movie career hilarious. He is an extremely underrated actor who rarely gets movies that show his full range. Murphy has not made a good transition from "young, irreverent, leading man" to "mature, irreverent, leading man." In the last few years (in an apparent attempt to reinvent himself), he has appeared in a number of Disney movies. His most memorable have been the Doctor Doolittle and Nutty Professor re-makes. My daughters have the habit of leaning over to me during movie trailers and whispering, "I want to see that one, Daddy," if they see something promising. When we saw the trailer for Pluto Nash, it was so uninspiring that my daughters leaned in and said, "I DON'T want to see that one, Daddy." I had to agree. The trailer didn't look good, and we gave the movie a miss in the theater. So, apparently, did the rest of America: with a budget of over $90 million dollars, US box offices receipts grossed only $4.4 million, making_The Adventures of Pluto Nash the number one movie failure of 2002. Last week, in a fit of Murphy nostalgia after seeing another forgettable performance in The Haunted Mansion, I rented the movie. The next day, I returned it and immediately purchased a pre-viewed DVD for a song. This is a GREAT movie. Don't get me wrong: there's nothing technologically ground-breaking about it. It doesn't have a brilliant script. It's not extraordinarily well-acted. It is no Matrix, no 2001: A Space Odyssey, nor even Star Trek. It is, however, the best filmed libertarian science fiction since the late, lamented Firefly (DVD Collection ). The Adventures of Pluto Nash chronicles the adventures of Pluto Nash (Murphy): a smuggler turned nightclub owner whose establishment has been targeted for acquisition by unsavory characters. The twist: the nightclub is on the moon, in a domed settlement known as "Little America." Within the first fifteen minutes, Club Pluto has been bombed, and Murphy spends the rest of the movie trying to track down those responsible. He is principally aided by his robot bodyguard Bruno (Randy Quaid) and love interest Dina (Rosario Dawson). The film is a breath of fresh, capitalist air in a genre dominated by socialist pollution. Government is mentioned only briefly as a plot point: Earth, having outlawed gambling worldwide, has driven organized crime to the largely unregulated moon. Free commerce is also immorally regulated: at the beginning of the movie, Nash has recently been released from a prison after serving a term for smuggling. "Smuggling," by the way, is never anything other than a political crime. There is no victim. It no more initiates force to transport a truckload of heroin across the country than it does to transport a truck full of Beanie Babies. At one point, we see Nash's inventory: it consists largely of antiques that might be found in any late 20th century garage sale -- the sole exception being cryogenic Chihuahuas. Precisely why such items would be banned by the otherwise laissez-faire lunar government is never addressed, but clearly Nash is anything but a force initiator. Indeed, his only initiation of force in the entire movie is theft of a car -- necessary to avoid being identified by the bad guys. The only government functionaries in the film are Nash's retired ex-cop buddy Rowland (Peter Boyle) and a crooked FBI agent on the payroll of the bad guys. The bombing, gunplay, and general mayhem never once attract the attention of an active-duty policeman. For personal protection, humanoid robots such as Nash's Bruno are commonly used as bodyguards. Most tellingly, everyone carries a personal sidearm -- including Nash's mother (Pam Grier) -- and no one on the moon so much as bats an eyelash at this state of affairs. We are never treated to an impassioned speech denouncing the evils of guns and gun violence, no one makes any attempt to take away anyone else's weapons on principle, and everyone we see using them does so responsibly. The only exception is love interest Dina. After randomly spraying projectiles all over the bad guys' lair (with her eyes closed, no less), good-guy robot Bruno forcibly takes the gun from her and admonishes, "Haven't you ever fired a gun?!" Dina's excuse? She's a recent arrival from Salt Lake City. No doubt she'll learn. Positive firearms references abound throughout the film. At one point, Nash's mother guns down a pair of the bad guys' robots to Nash's comment, "Nice shooting, Ma!" We later learn (in a moment of Nash's panic at not having appropriate weapons to fend off a gang of thugs with a rocket launcher) that his Streetsweeper with the Supercharger is at his mother's house. Furthermore, the weapons used in the film were designed by someone who actually knows something about firearms. They realized that firing guns designed to operate in Terrestrial atmospheric pressures and temperatures was a recipe for disaster. Logically, the lunar weapon of choice is the Gyrojet. The Gyrojet bears little resemblance to conventional firearms. Designed in 1960 by MBA Associates, the gun fires a 13mm (12mm civilian) stainless steel, armor-piercing rocket. MBA manufactured both a pistol and carbine version. When a conventional gun is fired, all the pressure from the exploding powder is held in the chamber and/or barrel. This pressure is what pushes the bullet forward. Because all pressure is expended on the bullet at the moment of firing, a conventional bullet begins losing velocity almost immediately -- hence the measurement of the velocity of the bullet at the muzzle of the gun. The Gyrojet round is pushed by burning solid rocket propellant contained within the projectile itself. All the pressure is contained by the PROJECTILE rather than the gun. Muzzle velocity is significantly lower than a conventional gun (roughly 860 feet per second). However, since the projectile is a rocket, the propellant continues to burn long after the projectile has left the muzzle. The longer the propellant burns, the faster it pushes the rocket. At about one hundred yards, a Gyrojet rocket is 50% more powerful than a conventional .45-calibre bullet. MBA manufatured Gyrojets in both a pistol and carbine configuration. The pistol is about the same size as a Colt M1911, but weighs only 22 ounces. I had occasion to handle a Gyrojet pistol at Wanenmacher's Tulsa Arms Show in April of 2003, and was surprised by its appearance. In conventional firearms, the feeding mechanism, chamber, and barrel are all manufactured to close tolerances because of the need for accurace under pressure. In contrast, the Gyrojet has no such need for precision. The barrel isn't even rifled, because the jets of the projectile are angled, thereby providing spin. In fact, MBA occasionally demonstrated the rockets by firing them through paper tubing not even as thick as a toilet paper roll. Since a Gyrojet barrel is only a guidance tube, paper tubing works as well as a metal barrel. In addition, MBA's Gyrojet has very few moving parts and was cast in very few pieces of lightweight alloys. The barrel has holes running the length of both sides in order to allow the fuel to escape as the rocket travels its length. The total impact of its appearance is a gun that looks more like a child's toy of the 1950s rather than a powerful mini rocket launcher. They are not a particularly attractive weapon. The MBA Gyrojet barely got off the drawing board. They saw limited use in Vietnam, where they were a popular sniper weapon due to their negligible recoil and almost silent report. Soldiers who used them say they sounded more like a bottle rocket than a gun. The guns were offered for sale for approximately fifteen years until their stocks were depleted in 1975, at which time MBA folded. Taking into account the many advances in firearms design since 1970 (and projecting another century) the prop designers of The Adventures of Pluto Nash have carried the Gyrojet concept to its next logical stage. Firstly, rather than made of inexpensive steel, the Pluto Nash Gyrojets are polymer. They're brightly-colored -- often green, yellow, red, or silver -- clearly colored to suit the tastes of the owner. They're selectable full- and semi-auto, .47-calibre, and fire approximately fifteen rounds before requiring a new clip. One model even has a retractable tripod in the base of the grip. Since a Gyrojet is virtually recoilless, this feature allows Nash to set the gun to auto-fire at the closed door of the bad guys' lair -- thus trapping them inside while the good guys make their escape. The moon itself is a capitalist paradise, filled with hovercraft, private businesses, and billboards advertising everything from motels to lumbar vertebrae replacement. Lunar inhabitants (as is typical of all free individuals) think nothing of helping each other out. This is evidenced by "rill-hopper" Felix (Luis Guzman), who is shocked to have unwittingly rescued his idol, Pluto Nash. What's a rill-hopper? I won't spoil it for you -- rent or buy the movie. However, if you're going to be rill-hopping, you should use a Chrysler-DeSoto S5000, which cruises on a 14" cushion of air, hikes up to 64" in rough terrain, is heat-resistant, meteor-resistant, with a torq-compressor power thrust, and a kick-ass sound system. Not to mention a snooty English artificial intelligence autopilot played by John Cleese. The Adventures of Pluto Nash is a wonderful little romp through the moon. Certainly not great literature or ground-breaking technology, it is nevertheless a refreshing libertarian film that's fun for the whole family. Grade: A+
William Stone, III is a South Dakota-based computer nerd (RHCE, CCNP), security consultant (CISSP), and Executive Director of the Zero Aggression Institute . He seeks the Libertarian Party's nomination in 2004 for United States Senate.  |
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