11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, scary, and I would love to move to the NAC..., September 23, 2005
This review is from: The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel (Paperback)
This graphic novel did not reflect the visions I had in my head for these characters, it more than exceeded them! In fact, the whole graphic novel was a wonderful experience, and I sincerely hope they do more in the series.
The book presents a wild vision of a world where, for example, trying to collect income tax can get you shot - by the little old lady who lives next door. Subtle little things, like happy people who do not live in poverty, self repairing windows, and oh yeah - a realiable cure for cancer make the setting in this novel rather unique. I may not totally agree with all the thoughts in this novel, but you come away from it wishing you could make *our* world more like *theirs*. If the political philosophy does not get you thinking, I do not know what will!
Highly recommended!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I truly didn't expect it to turn out so well!, May 4, 2005
This review is from: The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel (Paperback)
The Probability Broach is one of my all-time favorite books. So, it was with some trepidation that I approached it's transformation into a 'graphic novel'. I mean, really! We all know that 'graphic novel' is publisher-speak for 'Long Comic Book'.
Well, I was totally blown away! Not only are the story, characters, and visualizations true to the original book, but the artwork truly enhances the product! Mssrs. Smith and Bieser have done themselves proud!
So, when can we expect to see 'Venus Belt' so rendered?!
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best comic I've read this decade, June 14, 2006
This review is from: The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel (Paperback)
This graphic novel has to be considered both as an SF/Action-Adventure story, and as a piece of Libertarian propaganda.
As SF, it's colorfully imaginative, and runs with a theme previously used in L. Sprague De Camp's Wheels of If and the TV show Sliders (with a dash of Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia thrown in). The story is usually fast paced, but there are a few points where the propaganda acts like an unwelcome speed-bump (as when the medic spends two pages preaching to our Gulliver character about the psychological problems of pacifists who won't bear arms in self-defense). The art is eye-catching, and filled with whimsical background touches (e.g. the cameo appearances by Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Olsen, Peter Parker, and Billy & Mandy).
The Probability Broach is also largely successful as Libertarian propaganda (more successful than the environmental propaganda in Callenbach's Ecotopia, which shares a similar narrative structure). The alternate history of the "over the rainbow" world has plenty of shocks for casual readers, and encourages them to delve with an open-mind into real-world history regarding the Whiskey Rebellion and minor American politicians like Albert Gallatin. More importantly, its alternate world is largely plausible, especially to readers who have already been steeped in the works of Hayek, Virginia Postrel, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman, or who have already been persuaded by themes in Reason Magazine or John Stossel reports.
There remain gaps in the argument, though: like most Libertarian fiction, marriage and children seem out-of-place in this world. As in Ayn Rand's fiction, children are typically ignored, or if they appear at all, they enter as though they'd wandered in from a Victorian-era book written for children: the children are thoughtful and well-mannered enough to handle the responsibility of gun ownership or contract law at six years of age, instead of being subject to the kind of wild passions and fits that seem to demand authoritative parenting and restraint. In a post-Columbine world, the idea of gun-toting seven year olds strikes a sour note (though there is a temptation to see the kind of private school system that would avoid creating either Columbine-style pressure cookers of forced attendance, or the petty tortures cited in privately-run British boarding schools like the one depicted in Kipling's Stalky & Co.).
Further, the graphic novel is guilty of card stacking. "Our" world is depicted as one in which every historical example of government encroachment (short of pre-Civil War slavery) is carried one step further. For example, Executive Order 6102 (a Great Depression measure that prohibited "hoarding" of gold) is not only still in force in 1987 (instead of having been repealed on Dec. 31, 1974), but has been expanded to cover other precious metals.
Finally, the propaganda doesn't seem to adequately address why anyone short of a would-be dictator would be tempted away from the Libertarian model. Marxism never arose in the alternate world (Gallatinism swept Europe instead), slave-holders were *talked* into emancipation (by a President who, historically, was one of the few Revolutionary leaders who didn't include a manumission clause in his Last Will), the Plains Indians were apparently quick to reject tribal authority and the notion that their land was Sacred (in the alternate history, Manifest Destiny continued as a series of peaceful trades of land for precious metals and "stock options"), the Tragedy of the Commons never resurfaced (perhaps the alternate world's Confederacy arrived at a common law distribution of property rights for the broadcast frequencies, ground water, and air?), and Freemasonry is the closest thing witnessed to religious extremism.
The alternate world's Confederacy participated in a few variants of the "good" wars, but always via privately raised armies of volunteers, a method that uncomfortably resembles the distinction between 2001's nation of Afghanistan and the "unaffiliated" Al-Qaeda network that it harbored. The novel is gutsy enough to directly address the security question (how does a society that doesn't believe in borders or arms control stop a foreign army from assembling within its borders?), but the answers given seem terribly weak in a post-9/11 context, and remind readers that in real world history, an organized army was able to easily defeat a rag-tag band of farmers in the Whiskey Rebellion.
But despite these open questions, the graphic novel and the society it depicts remain compelling. I look forward to reading the unabridged prose version!
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