Episode Details

It’s rare for a sci-fi writer to be famous enough, to be known enough, to be truly, deeply… hated.

Robert Heinlein. Dominated American science fiction in the mid 20th century. With novels like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and Starship Troopers. Amazing ideas!

Ideas like

CHECKS NOTES

Only military veterans get to vote?

and

Bombarding humanity with meteorites because you’re not a fan of the Deep State?

Wowzers.

Watch the full video essay

People called him a fascist. But RAH was more like your crazy contrarian uncle who just says mad sh*t at Thanksgiving to get a rise out of those darn kids.

Then you’ve got L. Ron Hubbard. Widely, and I think we can all agree, justifiably reviled for turning space opera into a celebrity-endorsed cult that is phoning its lawyers as I speak. Also, his books were just…unremitting trash.

HP Lovecraft’s racist poetry. Orson Scott Card’s open homophobia. Isaac Asimov for being a gropey old man.

And a lot of die-hard fans really, really hate Andy Weir for basically being the Nickelback of science fiction.

But none of them. None of them…attract the kind of intense, sustained, white-hot rage reserved for one woman.

Ayn Rand.

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And yes! Yes, Rand is a science fiction writer. Don’t even start. 

With over 10 million copies sold, Atlas Shrugged might be the best-selling adult sci-fi novel by a woman in the last century. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale? 8 million. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness? Maybe 2 million. And as Rand is her mirror-dimension evil twin, Le Guin really should be winning this!

In the words of Science Fiction community member Michael Maindi my-indy

“A revolutionary mystery about trains and unobtainium and zero point energy and superweapons that culminates with a cloaked city in Colorado?” 

Ayn Rand wrote science fiction. But people deny it. Why? Because it’s standard human behavior to deny any credit to those we hate. 

And we really, really hate 

Ayn Rand.

“Rand’s novels are just poorly written adolescent power fantasies. Utterly unreadable.”

True but this does also describe every book written by Brandon Sanderson and he’s beloved! And like Sanderson, while Rand’s sentences may be…shody…her training as a screenwriter gives her books compelling dramatic structure.

“Let’s remember R