This book really chugs along and the 700 pages fly by. The philosphy behind it has some merit although if thought through leads to supermen and Adolf Hitler. ( )

The first thing that I should clear up is that I actually think that "Atlas Shrugged" is a philosophical science-fiction novel. It's set in a future where capitalism has been supplanted by Rand's version of socialism, the economy of America is slowly dying, and all of the great minds of industry and commerce are vanishing.

I should like this novel, because I am interested in the type of novel this book attempts to be. I'm interested in science fiction, and I'm interested in philosophy. Both together usually work for me. But this novel fails in so many regards that I cannot enjoy it at all.

Firstly, since this is a SF challenge, and I am claiming it to be an SF novel, I should consider this aspect first. Simply put, "Atlas Shrugged" is not a good SF novel at all. Although there are some new technologies, such as Reardon Metal or the instrument used for Project X, much of the technology, and the thinking behind it, is firmly set in what would be available to use in 1957. As for the society depicted, you can only be interested in what is happening if you buy into Rand's philosophy, and I don't.

And that leads quite nicely to a discussion about the philosophy in the book. As a philosophical vehicle, Rand's novel fails. Yes, the book expresses her philosophy quite clearly (the numerous tirades by Rand's favoured characters ensures this), but Rand never manages to convince the reader that her philosophy is a tenable one. Rand's philosophy, from what I understand, is that big business and capitalism is good, governments and socialism are bad, everyone's simply greedy at heart, and this greed is good.

Disregarding the fact that Rand never manages to refute more than a strawman version of socialism, Rand still fails to answer some quite basic questions that would arise in the idealised situation that occurs at the end of the novel, where her philosophy triumphs. How does a society without any form of government system manage with crime or environmental problems, for example? What safeguards are put in place to protect consumers against monopolies raising the price of necessities? These are questions that naturally arise from this philosophy, and for Rand to not to answer them in twelve hundred pages is simply not good enough in this novel.

But a book review is not the place to debate Rand's philosophy; it is sufficient to say that if you do not buy into her philosophy, you really won't be enjoying this book. And I don't think too many people buy into Rand's simplistic philosophical and economic view, but I'm always open to alternative opinions.

As a general fiction novel, this book fails. Rand's characters are not characters at all, but vessels created merely to espouse her philosophical ideas for several pages (up to sixty pages for one speech, believe it or not), or to create strawmen which her favoured characters knock down with the ease of knocking down, well, er... strawmen. If the characters do not do either of these things, they advance the story forward in order to get to Rand's next speech about the virtue of capitalism or big business, or to a tragic situation which would only occur in the socialistic society Rand depicts, and would never have occured if capitalism had the reins on society. And since Rand only really has two types of characters in her novel, with only their gender and name to change between them, it's quite easy to find yourself skimming over Rand's rants.

The plot of the novel, about a woman trying to keep a railroad company afloat while the world slowly crashes, is serviceable when you don't think too hard about Rand's philosophies, and while Rand's writing style is also serviceable, is not enough to sustain the reader, either.

And twelve hundred pages was not necessary. You have been warned. ( )

It's a bit of a beast to get through, but the philosophical vision is compelling and I would recommend it. See my blurb on The Fountainhead, much of it applies here, though I preferred Atlas Shrugged.

Favorite quotes:
"He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. ... Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive."

"Why had she always felt that joyous sense of confidence when looking at machines? - she thought. In these giant shapes, two aspects pertaining to the inhuman were radiantly absent: the causeless and the purposeless. Every part of the motors was an embodied answer to "Why?" and "What for?" - like the steps of a life-course chosen by the sort of mind she worshipped. The motors were a moral code cast in steel."

"She turned deliberately and glanced back. He as looking at her. He did not turn away, but held her glance, coldly and with full intention. She smiled defiantly, not letting herself know the full meaning of her smile, knowing only that it was the sharpest blow she could strike at his inflexible face. She felt a sudden desire to see him trembling, to tear a cry out of him. She turned her head away, slowly, feeling a reckless amusement, wondering why she found it difficult to breathe.
She sat leaning back in her chair, looking ahead, knowing that he was as aware of her as she was of him. She found pleasure in the special self-consciousness it gave her. When she crossed her legs, when she leaned on her arm against the window sill, when she brushed her hair off her forehead - every movement of her body was underscored by a feeling the unadmitted words for which were: Is he seeing it?"

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law."

"Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness - to value the failure of your values - is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the alters of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man - every man - is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose."

Rearden laughed. "Eddie, what do we care about people like him? We're driving an express, and they're riding on the roof, making a lot of noise about being leaders. Why should we care? We have enough power to carry them along - haven't we?"

"He did not think of the ten years. What remained of them tonight was only a feeling which he could not name, except that it was quiet and solemn. The feeling was a sum, and he did not have to count again the parts that had gone to make it. But the parts, unrecalled, were there, with the feeling. They were the nights spent at scorching ovens in the research laboratory of the mills -
- the nights spent in the workshop of his home, over sheets of paper which he filled with formulas, then tore up in angry failure -
- the days when the young scientists of the small staff he had chosen to assist him waited for instructions like soldiers ready for a hopeless battle, having exhausted their ingenuity, still willing, but silent, with the unspoken sentence hanging in the air: "Mr. Rearden, it can't be done-"
- the meals, interrupted and abandoned at the sudden flash of a new thought, a thought to be pursued at once, to be tried, to be tested, to be worked on for months, and to be discarded as another failure -
- the moments snatched from conferences, from contracts, from the duties of running the best steel mills in the country, snatched almost guiltily, as for a secret love -
- the one thought held immovably across a span of ten years, under everything he did and everything he saw, the thought held in his mind when he looked at the buildings of a city, at the track of a railroad, at the light in the windows of a distant farmhouse, at the knife in the hands of a beautiful woman cutting a piece of fruit at a banquet, the thought of a metal alloy that would do more than steel had ever done, a metal that would be to steel what steel had been to iron -
- the acts of self-racking when he discarded a hope or a sample, not permitting himself to know that he was tired, not giving himself time to feel, driving himself through the wringing torture of: "not good enough...still not good enough..." and going on with no motor save the conviction that it could be done -
- then the day when it was done and its result was called Rearden Metal -
- these were the things that had come to white heat, had melted and fused within him, and their alloy was a strange, quiet feeling that made him smile at the countryside in the darkness and wonder why happiness could hurt."

"You, who claim that you long to rise above the crude concerns of the body, above the drudgery of serving mere physical needs - who is enslaved by physical needs: the Hindu who labors from sunrise to sunset at the shafts of a hand-plow for a bowl of rice, or the American who is driving a tractor? Who is the conqueror of physical reality: the man who sleeps on a bed of nails or the man who sleeps on an inner-spring mattress? Which is the monument to the triumph of the human spirit over matter: the germ-eaten hovels on the shorelines of the Ganges or the Atlantic skyline of New York?"

"What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the cardinal virtues of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love - he was not man."

"If you search your code for guidance, for an answer to the question: What is the good? - the only answer you will find is 'The good of others.' The good is whatever others wish, whatever you feel they feel they wish, or whatever you feel they ought to feel. .... You need no proof, no reasons, no success, you need not achieve in fact the good of others - all you need to know is that your motive was the good of others, not your own. Your only definition of the good is a negation: the good is the 'non-good for me.' ... Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when experienced by you?" ( )

What a load of twaddle - I've never read such a badly written book, and I'm shocked that so many people consider this a literary classic. Interesting ideas if you like propaganda. ( )

Excellent, but long!!!