[BOOK REVIEW] Revolt In 2100 📖

Sci-fi author Robert Heinlein was known to occasionally advocate libertarian ideas in his novels. It's actually Heinlein who originated the slogan  "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", which is found in one of his better books, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Revolt in 2100, first published in 1939, consists of three very loosely connected stories, one longer and two shorter. The first story depicts an America that somehow has ended up under theocratic rule, which is overthrown in a Second American Revolution. In the year 2100 the US is ruled by a brutal religious dictator. He maintains his power through a skillful use of advanced science and psychology. And he is supported by a devoted military apparatus. It's a quite prophetic novel; it foreshadows an idealism that is identical to the intolerant PC culture of today and the infringements of constitutional rights. In this society, reminiscent of today's Iran, with its ruling clergy and blindly devoted soldiery, there are however isolated pockets of resistance, consisting of individuals who, for various reasons oppose the government.

“War is a simple matter compared with revolution. War is an applied science, with well-defined principles tested in history; analogous solutions may be found from ballista to H-bomb. But every revolution is a freak, a mutant, a monstrosity, its conditions never to be repeated and its operations carried out by amateurs and individualists.” - Robert A. Heinlein, Revolt in 2100 

It's a fairly simple adventure story, and the ideological message is more superimposed than integrated into the plot to be honest. The main character discovers that he's 'down' with the ideas of Paine and Jefferson basically. The depiction of the future society is sometimes not very convincing. It's for example hard to imagine that a society run by ayatollahs simultaneously can be swarmed with salesmen in the fashion industry. The bottom line is that it's too little of a philosophical novel of ideas and too much of a future Wild West novel.

Part two is much better in that respect. Here Heinlein tries to concretize the idea of a rational way to deal with offenders in a free society. In the story, US has something like a night-watchman state, while Canada has a more anarcho-capitalist society. Those who can't stand the oppression of the night-watchman state are simply deported to Canada. It's no masterpiece, but it's thought-provoking.

The final part is a straightforward and realistic depiction of a step in the human colonization of space.