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J. Neil Schulman's Alongside Night
It's the near future and America is in trouble. Hyperinflation and disorder reign in the towns and cities of the nation.
Alongside Night tells the story of Elliot Vreeland, son of Nobel Prize-winning economist Dr. Martin Vreeland. When his family goes missing and while being shadowed by federal agents, Elliot, with the help of his mysterious companion Lorimer, explore the underground world of the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre to rescue them. It's a story of romance, intrigue, action, adventure, and exhilarating science fiction thrills.
Beyond Elliot's personal journey, Alongside Night portrays -- in the words of Anthony Burgess -- "an inflation- crippled America on the verge of revolution." When originally published in 1979 Alongside Night portrayed a futuristic dystopia ending with a fictional Agorist revolution; but decades later Alongside Night as both novel and movie now presents hope for a world ready to be renewed by the real-world Agorist movement pressing the re-set button on the universal freedom principles first fought for in the 18th century American Revolution.
This movie edition of J. Neil Schulman's classic 1979 novel both returns to the original text of the first-edition Crown hardcover and adds new forematter and aftermatter including a new foreword by fellow Prometheus-award-winning author, Brad Linaweaver; a review of the movie by another Prometheus-award-winning author, L. Neil Smith; a new afterword by J. Neil Schulman titled "Welcome to Customer Service," and the complete text of Samuel Edward Konkin III's New Libertarian Manifesto. This edition retains afterwords by Schulman, Konkin, and J. Kent Hastings, published in the 1999 20th and 2009 30th anniversary editions of the novel.
Alongside Night scored lavish praise for a first novel when it appeared in 1979, winning accolades from luminaries such as Anthony Burgess, the English novelist many consider the greatest of his generation, and Milton Friedman, the first American to win a Nobel Prize in Economics. Ten years later the Libertarian Futurist Society voted the book into the Prometheus Hall of Fame as a novel embodying the spirit of liberty, alongside Orwell's 1984, Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
The novel has been lauded on the pages of Publisher's Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit News, Reason, and Liberty. In the years since its original publication Alongside Night has been praised as well by Dr. Ron Paul, Glenn Beck, and Austrian-school economics professors Dr. Thomas Rustici of George Mason University and Dr. Walter Block of Loyola University.
Alongside Night tells the story of Elliot Vreeland, son of Nobel Prize-winning economist Dr. Martin Vreeland. When his family goes missing and while being shadowed by federal agents, Elliot, with the help of his mysterious companion Lorimer, explore the underground world of the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre to rescue them. It's a story of romance, intrigue, action, adventure, and exhilarating science fiction thrills.
Beyond Elliot's personal journey, Alongside Night portrays -- in the words of Anthony Burgess -- "an inflation- crippled America on the verge of revolution." When originally published in 1979 Alongside Night portrayed a futuristic dystopia ending with a fictional Agorist revolution; but decades later Alongside Night as both novel and movie now presents hope for a world ready to be renewed by the real-world Agorist movement pressing the re-set button on the universal freedom principles first fought for in the 18th century American Revolution.
This movie edition of J. Neil Schulman's classic 1979 novel both returns to the original text of the first-edition Crown hardcover and adds new forematter and aftermatter including a new foreword by fellow Prometheus-award-winning author, Brad Linaweaver; a review of the movie by another Prometheus-award-winning author, L. Neil Smith; a new afterword by J. Neil Schulman titled "Welcome to Customer Service," and the complete text of Samuel Edward Konkin III's New Libertarian Manifesto. This edition retains afterwords by Schulman, Konkin, and J. Kent Hastings, published in the 1999 20th and 2009 30th anniversary editions of the novel.
Alongside Night scored lavish praise for a first novel when it appeared in 1979, winning accolades from luminaries such as Anthony Burgess, the English novelist many consider the greatest of his generation, and Milton Friedman, the first American to win a Nobel Prize in Economics. Ten years later the Libertarian Futurist Society voted the book into the Prometheus Hall of Fame as a novel embodying the spirit of liberty, alongside Orwell's 1984, Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
The novel has been lauded on the pages of Publisher's Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit News, Reason, and Liberty. In the years since its original publication Alongside Night has been praised as well by Dr. Ron Paul, Glenn Beck, and Austrian-school economics professors Dr. Thomas Rustici of George Mason University and Dr. Walter Block of Loyola University.
313 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 9, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 14, 2018
After reading SEKIII’s “New libertarian manifesto” on agorism, I was genuinely impressed. The reason was that, while Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe, etc., are deep thinkers, most of their work centers around theory, not practice; i.e. ideas without implementation. During my MBA I learnt a ton of nonsense, but one of the best things they taught me was: a good strategy with a bad implementation is a bad strategy.
Konkin was all about strategy implementation. He recognized that a libertarian party is a contradiction in terms and that, if the lifeblood of the state is tax dollars, black markets are the only logical answer. While black markets offer immoral products (stolen credit cards, stolen passports, for example), black markets also keep money outside the tax system. While idiosyncratic -- I mean who is going to risk jail time or associate with criminals --, I must agree with Konkin that the Rothbardian school leaves only one logical conclusion to their ideas: agorism. This is precisely what Alongside Night is about, a future world where agorist activists succeed in overthrowing the “statists” and establish a new stateless order, where every individual is sovereign and all interactions are voluntary.
The book “Alongside Night” is a decent read, but nothing special. The storyline is ok, a bit on the level of older spy novels, complete with chases, double agents, secret organizations and mysterious killings. The writer clearly is a dedicated, sincere libertarian at heart and tried to introduce agorist ideas in a playful way. I appreciate he didn’t go overboard in agorist theorizing, like Randianism with all the grotesque objectivist philosophy. The novel has also been made into a painfully bad movie, but the comic book version is actually pretty good. Some of the issues in the book seem already quite dated, how many libertarians are still gung ho for gold to replace fiat? This is now quaint 00s stuff.
Today most libertarians champion crypto to replace fiat, and rightly so. And the background for this is exactly why I think agorism is misguided. Don’t get me wrong, Konkin had the right instincts by arguing changes can’t be achieved from within the system; changes can only come about from working outside the system. This is why the cypherpunks have discovered a strategy superior to agorism: they do not work in (Libertarian party) or against the system (black markets), but “cypherpunks write code”. They simply design & build systems which route around bad actors and create new digital alternatives for the institutions we have today. Make bad ideas obsolete, do not fight them.
FD: I would never put agorism in practice myself, for 3 reasons; 1) disobeying the law by not paying taxes will get you jail time, I value freedom above everything, 2) dealing with criminals (which is what black markets leads to) is even worse than dealing with the state & 3) black markets are full of immoral stuff I don’t want to help succeed, I therefore voluntary choose not to take part in it.
Konkin was all about strategy implementation. He recognized that a libertarian party is a contradiction in terms and that, if the lifeblood of the state is tax dollars, black markets are the only logical answer. While black markets offer immoral products (stolen credit cards, stolen passports, for example), black markets also keep money outside the tax system. While idiosyncratic -- I mean who is going to risk jail time or associate with criminals --, I must agree with Konkin that the Rothbardian school leaves only one logical conclusion to their ideas: agorism. This is precisely what Alongside Night is about, a future world where agorist activists succeed in overthrowing the “statists” and establish a new stateless order, where every individual is sovereign and all interactions are voluntary.
The book “Alongside Night” is a decent read, but nothing special. The storyline is ok, a bit on the level of older spy novels, complete with chases, double agents, secret organizations and mysterious killings. The writer clearly is a dedicated, sincere libertarian at heart and tried to introduce agorist ideas in a playful way. I appreciate he didn’t go overboard in agorist theorizing, like Randianism with all the grotesque objectivist philosophy. The novel has also been made into a painfully bad movie, but the comic book version is actually pretty good. Some of the issues in the book seem already quite dated, how many libertarians are still gung ho for gold to replace fiat? This is now quaint 00s stuff.
Today most libertarians champion crypto to replace fiat, and rightly so. And the background for this is exactly why I think agorism is misguided. Don’t get me wrong, Konkin had the right instincts by arguing changes can’t be achieved from within the system; changes can only come about from working outside the system. This is why the cypherpunks have discovered a strategy superior to agorism: they do not work in (Libertarian party) or against the system (black markets), but “cypherpunks write code”. They simply design & build systems which route around bad actors and create new digital alternatives for the institutions we have today. Make bad ideas obsolete, do not fight them.
FD: I would never put agorism in practice myself, for 3 reasons; 1) disobeying the law by not paying taxes will get you jail time, I value freedom above everything, 2) dealing with criminals (which is what black markets leads to) is even worse than dealing with the state & 3) black markets are full of immoral stuff I don’t want to help succeed, I therefore voluntary choose not to take part in it.
March 10, 2025
Enjoyed this book. Exciting, adventurous with an underlying waring to the future.
February 16, 2014
The book is a fun ride with many twists and turns, none of which I will give away. It was originally written late 1970s when the US and the west were on the verge of hyper-inflation. This book presents an anarcho libertarian point of view of how to save the country and run the economy. I am not convinced that anarchy is the solution, it usually leads to a dictatorship, but really the book presents competing private "governments", not true anarchy. A function I used to consider an essential government function is the police. But police forces are a relatively modern concept with mixed results for freedom. Today we are facing an even bigger economic crises in the US and the West, so this book is even more important today than when it was written.
DK Halling author of Pendulum of Justice Pendulum of Justice (Hank Rangar Thriller)
DK Halling author of Pendulum of Justice Pendulum of Justice (Hank Rangar Thriller)
September 11, 2014
Upfront I must say that is it not the best thrillers I have read. But while it is no Gresham, this book should be an interesting read for all those who have some basic idea about libertarianism and want to know more. This book is a must read for all the counter-revolutionaries who pander to the power helping them "trim their operation" - think tanks, policy makers and partyarchs.
Some people have said that this is a good book for introducing people to libertarianism, but i did not find it so. Maybe its because libertarian thinking is too deeply woven in my thoughts, that I didn't notice libertarian ideas being introduced.
While in all honesty i should say that the book is a little too optimistic about the strength of the libertarian movement in the future, but this is fiction.
Some people have said that this is a good book for introducing people to libertarianism, but i did not find it so. Maybe its because libertarian thinking is too deeply woven in my thoughts, that I didn't notice libertarian ideas being introduced.
While in all honesty i should say that the book is a little too optimistic about the strength of the libertarian movement in the future, but this is fiction.
October 24, 2013
The description says it all. This isn't atlas shrugged. Ok read and story, but not as good as ayn rand. Also poignant that I started reading it right when the government shutdown was taking place...
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews