The Stone Canal

I've blogged before about Ken MacLeod. [search blog]

Here is the third in my series of relocated BlackCrayon book reviews (1st, 2nd):

Tuckerite Brit in the 20th century / Anarcho-Capitalism of the far-future ...

The Stone Canal is the 2nd novel in the 4-part Fall Revolution series.

All four novels play with the tug-of-war between the Marxist/Trotskyite activism of
author Ken MacLeod's youth and the libertarian criticism of state authority, which the older Ken MacLeod seems to take quite seriously. Book two is the only one narrated by an actual anarchist, and the only one to make more than passing reference to libertarian philosophy.

Jonathan Wilde appears only briefly as an old man in the first book, The Star Fraction, where he is the unofficial leader of Norlonto (short for NORth LONdon TOwn), an anarcho-capitalism in early 21st-century Britian. The Stone Canal is his story. Early in the novel, he announces himself as a philosophical descendent of Proudhon and of Tucker. (And later, he acknowledges that Robert Anton Wilson is also part of his philosophical lineage.)

The narrative in The Stone Canal alternates between a young Jonathan Wilde in late 20th-century Glasgow/early 21st-century London and a technologically resurrected Jon Wilde on the anarcho-capitalism of "New Mars" untold light-years (and untold temporal years) away from Great Britain.

The first time I read The Stone Canal, I did not yet know either Benjamin Tucker or Lysander Spooner and I wasn't aware of the split among 19th-century Individualist Anarchists on the question of Natural Law theory versus Philosophical Egoism. Jonathan Wilde is, as it turns out, as much a Stirnerite as a Tuckerite, and the narrative on New Mars exposes us to some of the moral consequences of the distinction. Wilde finds himself among the anti-propertarian (i.e., communist) minority in this anarcho-capitalism, a group called The Abolitionists who fight for the equal rights of machine intelligence.

Wilde goes along for the ride, but is more amused than moved by the moral indignation of his comrades, and ultimately, Wilde's actions can be seen as pragmatic or monstrous, depending on your views of natural rights and personhood.

Kirkus Reviews calls the novel "Another wonderfully knotty, inventive, intelligent yarn, if top-heavy with political minutiae that even dyed-in-the-wool Anglophiles will have a hard time deciphering." It's these top-heavy political minutiae that make Stone Canal a BlackCrayon top pick.

bkMarcus

The Fall Revolution series:

1. The Star Fraction


2. The Stone Canal


3. The Cassini Division


4. The Sky Road

Ken MacLeod Links:

1. Ken MacLeod's weblog


2. The Ken MacLeod Fraction