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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3274 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 16, 2026

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It's full of good fantasy/sci-fi ideas and even though it's a bit ra-ra-workers-of-the-world-unite, it's well-presented/justified. You can skip everything else by that (obnoxious commie) author, but PSS is worth having read.

What I try to do these days when judging the worldview or ideology of a story is, rather than evaluating it on how much I agree with that ideology or not, I evaluate on how good a case the story makes for its ideology in the context of its own world.

I've read the series at a time when I had more tolerance for crappy writing, and thought The Scar was by far the most interesting of the bunch.

ra-ra-workers-of-the-world-unite

What would be the opposite of this?

There's also The Sword of Truth. The author is a big fan of Ayn Rand.

Wizard's First Rule is a strong contender for worst book I've ever read. Hopefully he gets better with time.

Spoiler alert: in my view, it really didn't.

Standard fantasy. One ubermensch, possibly Chosen by fate or the gods, who will unite the fractured polities and just do things.

Ayn Rand?

Really gotta read Atlas Shrugged. Tried The Fountainhead when I was like 19 and while I remember a lot from it, and even fondly, it kinda put me off Rand for a long time.

I'll straight up rec Atlas Shrugged. One of my favorite books. If it helps, think of it like a fantasy novel where the premise is "Capitalism is 100% correct both morally and practically", and then instead of the usual 95% action mixed with 5% crappy "What is Evil?", AS is 5%/95% the other way around. Same with the protagonists; they're not realistic people, they're hash functions defining her philosophy. Tremendous technical accomplishment, even if you disagree with the validity of the premises.

I also straight up enjoyed the writing. I bought it with the explicit intention of writing a critique and found myself enthralled. I want to say it's very Russian, but I don't actually have a broad enough experience base to make the claim with certainty.

You really gotta read Atlas Shrugged, but not if the reason is that you want to fix being put-off from Rand. I haven't voted for a non-Libertarian for President since 2000, and I still couldn't make it through Atlas Shrugged without wanting to write various rebuttals in the margins to some of the endless monologues and endless-monologues.

But although I wasn't a fan of how she wrote her protagonists there, her antagonists were perfect. I don't think I've gone a year since without running across at least one new politician or pundit who could be justly described as "an Ayn Rand villain".

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