THE RIGHTEOUS STUFF: THOUGHTS ON “THE DA VINCI CODE” May 18, 2006
By L. Neil Smith <lneil@lneilsmith.com>
Attribute to www.BigHeadPress.com
and The Libertarian Enterprise
May 18, 2006
I love a good flap.
Author Dan Brown, moviemaker Ron Howard, and actor Tom Hanks (among others) are giving us a great one, with a whole lot of help from religious lunatics and enemies of free expression all over the world.
In case you’ve been hermetically sealed in a cryogenic flask for the past six months or so, what I’m talking about here is a novel — and, more importantly in this case, …
REWRITING HISTORY April 30, 2006
REWRITING HISTORY
MAY 01, 2006
by L. Neil Smith <lneil@lneilsmith.com>
This essay first appeared in
The Libertarian Enterprise
http://www.ncc-1776.org
Lots of my work as a novelist involves the creation of “alternate histories”.
For readers unacquainted with the concept, the writer usually chooses some event most people consider pivotal — the Battle of Waterloo is an obvious choice — and then finds (or makes up) some reasonably credible way that the event might have happened differently.
No, I didn’t invent the idea, although folks often ask me if I …