My introduction to science fiction came at the age of 14 in a one-two punch of Clarke and Card. Arthur C. Clarke teased my imagination, but Orson Scott Card left an imprint on my soul. I read Ender’s Gamethree times before finishing high school, and at least another two after that. I can remember one reviewer on Amazon dismissing it as an indulgent tale for the moody kid who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.

Many years ago I watched a made-for-TV movie called The Cold Equations. I found it extremely compelling, and apparently I wasn’t alone. It was based on a short story with the same title written by Tom Godwin in the 1950s. In 1970 the Science Fiction Writers of America gave it an award for being one of the best science fiction short stories written before 1965, and it was included in the first volume of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

There’s no getting around it. Ayn Rand has long served as the punching bag for anti-libertarian polemics. People who see the state as the fount of human cooperation tend to cast their opposition as on the side of “greed,” “hate,” and cold-hearted selfishness. If Ayn Rand isn’t the most frequently-used symbolic anchor for that smear, I don’t know what is. According to these folks, Ayn Rand authored the modern libertarian movement, and her defining characteristics always come out of a grab-bag of antonyms for camaraderie, compassion, or cooperation.