Book Review – The Gallatin Divergence – L. Neil Smith – 1985

One more old Sci-Fi novel from the armful I picked up at Apple Wild Books in Littleton, Ma.

I know you’re probably getting tired of these reviews…but, for the sake of completeness, I must forge ahead.

This novel is part of Smith’s North American Confederacy series, an alternate timeline universe the proposes the United States never became Federalist society but instead became an independent loose confederacy.

Which was a possible outcome after the American revolution.

In this particular novel some plucky libertarian heroes travel back in time to the whiskey rebellion period and try to thwart their federalist nemesis.

I guess this would be a sci-fi subgenre of “Libertarian sci-fi”.

Science fiction has always had a streak of libertarian.  One need look no further than our friend Heinlein to find it.  It’s all very macho and independent living stuff.  Self-reliance and smarts.  Good-old ingenuity and pluck.

I don’t begrudge anyone their point of view, but this felt a bit sophomoric and even irresponsible.  Maybe I’m just entering my grumpy-old-man phase.  Everyone believes in self-reliance and freedom until they need something.  It’s just too simplistic of a hand-waving political theory.  “Wouldn’t we all be better off without a central government?”

Umm…no actually.

The cavalier dismissal of federalism feels somewhat dangerous as I write this in 2025.

The story itself is a revolutionary war era caper with a couple outsized future characters tromping around, apparently trying to make things right in the timeline, but failing.

It’s an interesting artifact, this novel, can’t say it was more than middling.

Chris Russell

ChrisRussellAuthor dot com