Sigsoft 97 4th Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering Book

I know a lot of people sneer at Ayn Rand and her admirers. But one would think the one thing they'd acknowledge is that she was a writer who knew how to tell a story. *thinks of reviews she's seen.* OK, maybe not. But even if I'm not an uncritical devotee, I for one do love her style, do, with some reservations, love her novels. And I think the core of her argument here is absolutely true--you can't write fiction without revealing your philosophy and values--even if you try. Ayn Rand is the one who above all made me aware of that. I don't care if you're talking about Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment or Mercedes Lackey's fantasy books about talking horses--I can tell you a lot about the values and worldview of the authors only from reading their fiction--ditto about even the most trite work in pulp romance. That doesn't mean I agree with all Rand's evaluations. Sometimes I think she argued backward to validate her own idiosyncratic tastes, and certainly there are plenty of works of "naturalism" I prefer over works of "romanticism" (I personally found Hugo's Ninety-Three, which I read on her recommendation, overwrought.)

But Rand gets at something basic though: that in a lot of the books we love--that what we look for is our values reflected back at us. That's what resonates, in both low and high literature. And we look for, crave for, heroes. And the lack of them is what makes so many modern works arid to me. I think that's why I, and many others, love science fiction and fantasy so much--they're the last refuge of the hero.