This week’s poll is a bit of fun. We’d like to know what you consider to be the best pro-gun novel. I’ve tried to select a good variety of fiction that I thought spanned the genres – everything from military sci-fi to urban fiction to historical fiction; Correia to Heinlein to Smith.
If you don’t see your favorite in the bunch, choose “other” and let us know which one. Let us know why you love the book you love. Maybe this poll will help expand some of our horizons and help find new literature we enjoy.
Let’s stick to fiction this week, and we’ll do non-fiction later.
Sound good?
Ready? Go!
Read and enjoyed them all, but the Freehold series are the books I can give to total newbies to get them thinking about freedom, and what we have lost…
The others are for refining the message. Bracken and Ross are graduate level studies…
I have to agree. For sheer fun, I’d definitely the MHI series, if you haven’t read it yet.
No fair having two of my absolute favorites, “Unintended Consequences” and Matt Brackens trilogy on that list. I cannot vote one over the other!
Sigh.
Bob
III
I strive to make it difficult. 😉
Wonderfully, there are many examples of “pro-gun” fiction available, and I’ve read hundreds of them, but any story that involves little but “pro-gun” rhetoric can’t hold my interest.
Therefore, one of my favorites is “The Mitzvah,” by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith. The gun is only a part of the story of individual liberty, and the best writers blend all of the elements of liberty with their very human characters to create a reality we can appreciate. And strive for.
That’s why I included Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter books on the list. Yes, it’s escapist literature, but very much pro-liberty, and just plain fun! 🙂
For some strange reason, I can’t even remember ever reading anything by Correia… so I downloaded one of the “Monster Hunter” books from Amazon and will see what it’s all about. I don’t read much SF as such, so that’s maybe how I missed Correia. We shall see. 🙂
It’s more urban fantasy, but aside from the monsters, it’s private enterprise against the barely competent government goons. Correia is a gun expert too. If you have some time, go here:
http://monsterhunternation.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/
Great stuff!
Just one problem with that link, Nicki… it’s running 42 different “scripts” and has my security settings going bonkers. I copied the text and will read it in the word processor. The page won’t load right, or respond properly when partially loaded. I don’t “do” scripts or flash if I can get out of it. 🙂
Ack! Sorry about that. I think that has more to do with the thousands of comments as well. IIRC, Larry had to repost that essay, because the number of comments was crashing his site. Let me check and see if there’s a newer link!
He did repost it. Try this and see if it’s any better?
When I think of “pro-gun fiction” specifically, I think of Smith’s The Probability Broach as the archtype of the subgenre. Preachy as hell and some of the subplots haven’t stood the test of time very well, but there it is. His version of Libertopia requires people to preach about guns a lot. And it is still a fun read.
Oh, yes indeed. The Probability Broach is how I got introduced to L. Neil Smith, and I’ve bought quite a few of the graphic comic versions to give to young people over the years. That and “Reble Fire” may be some of the best literature to give to children… of any age. 🙂 My eldest son, approaching 50, loved that and “Roswell, Texas” (http://www.bigheadpress.com/roswell) on line when I introduced “Big Head Press” to him a while back.
I don’t know how many of “us” make a point to share these stories with others, especially young people, but it seems like a darn good idea…
Not a fan of MHI, but I loved Freehold, and the Enemies series. I grew up with all Heinlein’s works, and later L. Neil Smith’s The Probability Broach.
“An armed society is a polite
society.
Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life”
- Robert Heinlein
“People who object to weapons aren’t abolishing violence, they’re begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically ‘right.’
Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.”
— L. Neil Smith
Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises
by Max Velocity
The United States has descended into Civil War.
The Storm was Rising for some time, a Resistance in the hearts of American Patriots to the strangulation of Liberty by creeping Authoritarianism.
The scene was set. It just took a little push. A terrorist attack on the United States leads to war with Iran, followed by Collapse, as the economy goes over the cliff.
The final blow is a widespread opportunistic Chinese Cyber Attack, taking down the North American Power Grid.
From the ashes, the Regime emerges. Liberty is Dead.
What remains of the United States of America is polarized. The Resistance Rises.
Jack Berenger is a retired Army Ranger Captain, living in Northern Virginia with his family. Following the Collapse, they fall foul of Regime violence and evacuate to the farm of an old Army friend. Jack is recruited into the resistance, to train the fledgling forces in the Shenandoah Valley.
Live Hard, Die Free.
The fight begins.
Resist.
He also has another book; “Contact” which is more of a how to book, and while speaking of How to:
The Reluctant Partisan, Volume One: The Guerrilla
A Comprehensive Training and Evaluation Program for Community, Tribal, and Family Security Preparedness
by “John Mosby.”
and my all time favorite on How to:
“A Failure of Civility”
Consider reading this book as if the Authors have parachuted into your backyard as Special Operations Soldiers to assist you in forming a cooperative protection of your neighborhood.
Impossible to find but at one time it was on Scribd, don’t know if it still is.
And I do like everything Matt Bracken writes, I even have family in Greene County Virginia, my wife father’s best friend had the same name as Matt’s patsy in his first Enemies book.
Read them all, had to go with Ross’ seminal how-to manual disguised as fiction.
Anyone wanting the real hard-core gun stuff written by an expert might want to check out the Swagger series by Stephen Hunter. Very satisfying and a nice respite from writers who 1.) Don’t know a clip from a magazine and 2.) That revolvers don’t have a safety and 3.) That a “silencer” on rifles is ridiculous. 4.) Etc.