Line #54 Main/LibertariansInSpace


1	Earth itself becomes [[TheOldCountry the Old Country]], backwards, repressive, ossified in its ways, a place where individualism is cramped. Other planets, moons, asteroids, or artificial space habitats become refuges for misfits, rugged individualists, visionary entrepreneurs, transhumanists, and so on. This often results in TheWarOfEarthlyAggression: Earth becomes a threat to these new islands of freedom in some way, and our heroes must overcome great odds in defending their newfound freeholds.
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3	This trope can cover the capital-L Libertarian ideology, which emphasizes both personal and civil liberties and laissez-faire capitalism, as Creator/RobertAHeinlein's works often did. There have, in fact, been numerous attempts by libertarians to [[StartMyOwn build countries in extreme environments]] very much in the spirit of the trope. The general idea, however, can also be more lower-case-l libertarianism, open to broader conceptions of liberty that needn't be, and indeed may challenge, the hyper-capitalist variety. Lower-case-l libertarianism includes ancoms, mutualists, and other libertarian socialists in space.
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5	This can be related to PrivatelyOwnedSociety if we're talking the big-L type of Libertarianism and this society is presented as an ideal, rather than a form of dystopia. May contain themes of CapitalismIsBad.
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7	These are some of the sorts of people that might end up as SpaceCossacks. If religious extremists move to outer space, see CultColony.
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9	----
10	!!Examples:
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12	[[foldercontrol]]
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14	[[folder:Fan Works]]
15	* ''Fanfic/TheWarOfTheMasters'':
16	** The Moab Confederacy turns out to be a {{deconstruction}}. Founded by several groups of settlers[[note]]mainly American and Southeast Asian nationalists and anti-communists, as well as Israeli Jews displaced by the fall of Israel in WorldWarIII[[/note]] that disliked the increasingly socialist OneWorldOrder route that Earth took after WorldWarIII (ultimately leading to the founding of the United Federation of Planets), after seceding from the Federation, they resume their laws from their LostColony period, which includes a low flat tax, approximately no restrictions on personal armament at all, and strips the vote from anyone who for whatever reason doesn't pay income tax (chiefly welfare recipients). Bear in mind that Moab III is a DeathWorld and a lot of the population suffers from a terminal neurodegenerative disorder. It gets worse when the Moab system is attacked by the Fek'Ihri in 2411 and a fifth of the Confederacy's population die; the Confederacy falls into a civil war after a disputed election just over a year later. The (largely Earth-dominated) Federation doesn't exactly come off smelling like roses, either, though, suffering from significant political corruption and a serious problem with Undine and [[ApocalypseCult Masters-cultist]] infiltration, and a paternalistic attitude towards the problems faced by less-developed border planets.
17	** The Bajorans (given a DayInTheLimelight in "Fanfic/PastContinuous" and the [[SoftReboot post-reboot]] story ''Fanfic/CreateYourOwnFate'') are a more sympathetic take: they're independent-minded and take their personal liberty ''very'' seriously, and have similarly high militarization, personal weapons ownership, and political unrest. However, they also have a more rehabilitation-minded judicial system than Moab and maintain ''some'' gun control (training and safe storage requirements are mentioned), and their nationalist streak is at least partly born out of suspicion of the Federation's secularism (the Bajoran religion has ''significant'' cultural influence).
18	* ''Fanfic/LeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemenTempestRewrite'': After turning the deceased [[Franchise/CthulhuMythos Ghroth]] into [[VideoGame/HaloWars Arcadia]], the Star Fems and Anime/CaptainHarlock set up an individualistic society with a minarchist government.
19	* The terrestrial Antarctic version appears in ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace'' with International City. Ironically this is why Antarctica is used to house the MasterComputer that runs the rest of the world, because no nation can be trusted with physical ownership.
20	* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager'': {{Lampshade\|Hanging}}d by Captain Janeway regarding the inhabitants of the Asteroid Belt (and in particular their radical faction, the Maquis).
21	-->It was just another eccentricity of these libertarian Belters, who believed that everyone should be guided by their personal morals instead of a centrally imposed authority. How they justified such an attitude in an environment where a single error or act of malice could kill not only yourself but everyone else was a mystery.
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24	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
25	* Earth is implied to be a teeming dystopia in the sci-fi thriller ''Film/Saturn3'', compared to the Saturn 3 outpost (presumably Tethys) where Adam and Alex tweak low-gravity crops for peak crop yield. Until the murderous Benson arrives, Adam and Alex have that moon all to themselves.
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28	[[folder:Literature]]
29	* Paul [=McAuley=]'s novels ''The Quiet War'' and ''Gardens of the Sun'' pit an eclectic variety of small colonies in the Solar System against the growing aggressions of reactionary and "Gaian", ecologically [[KnightTemplar templaresque]] Earth [[SpaceFillingEmpire superstates]] Greater Brazil, the European Union and the Pacific Community -- whose main objections are to the wild transhumanist genetic engineering freely allowed in the colonies. It starts to play more with it as the story progresses, however -- it becomes clear that there are repressive strains amongst the Outer colonies, some of which turn out to be ''very'' important to the story, while other developments make clear that the Earth superstates overall aren't quite so bad as it first seemed -- the perspective was skewed because almost every viewpoint character on Earth was associated with Greater Brazil, who turns out to ''not'' be representative in just how extreme their anti-democracy sentiments are.
30	* Creator/KimStanleyRobinson's ''Literature/RedMarsTrilogy'' sees Earth [[MegaCorp multinational corporations]] trying to muscle in on the emerging Martian society, whose people want to be left alone to build their new world their own way.
31	* Creator/RobertAHeinlein novels:
32	** ''Literature/RedPlanet'': The Earth-controlled Mars Company administration vs. the Mars colonists
33	** ''Literature/BetweenPlanets'': The Federation (all Earth governments) vs. Venus colonists
34	** ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'': The Earth-controlled Lunar Authority vs. the lunar colonists
35	** The future history arc of novels involving Lazarus Long, beginning with ''Literature/MethuselahsChildren'', depict an Earth that persecutes certain families for their hereditary longevity. These families end up fleeing the planet and setting up the kind of free-love Libertarian utopia that would become a [[AuthorAppeal Heinlein]] [[AuthorTract trademark]]. Two thousand years later in ''Literature/TimeEnoughForLove'' the planet they colonized, Secundus, starts to become "too crowded", as indicated in Lazarus Long's opinion by the government needing to issue ID cards, and the planet's Chairman asks his help in founding a new colony.
36	* In Creator/CJCherryh's ''Literature/AllianceUnion'' series features the loosely tied Alliance of independent merchants and traders which split off from the technocratic Union that declared independence from Earth. Also, Cyteen, the capital of the Union, was originally colonized by a group of scientists and engineers fleeing increasingly oppressive earth.
37	* ''Steel Beach'' from Creator/JohnVarley's ''Literature/EightWorlds'' series features a Heinlein-inspired Libertarian group trying to build a {{Generation Ship\|s}}. The ship is even named ''The Creator/RobertAHeinlein''.
38	* Creator/EricFrankRussell's ''The Great Explosion'' features two unusual versions. The first, a former PenalColony, has developed a ruthless, dog-eat-dog society based on a mixture of ''laissez faire'' and MightMakesRight. The second is a quasi-socialist libertarian utopia based on passive resistance, civil disobedience and the teachings of Ghandi. Their motto is "Freedom -- I Won't!".
39	* Creator/DavidWeber has used this as backstory a couple of times, especially in the ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' universe, where whole planets have been settled by, respectively, artists, American ranchers, gangsters, genetically engineered humans, and a group who believed technology was evil. The Solarian League is the giant, sprawling nation who looks down on other star nations, OFS is the grasping military arm of the League, and there's a lot of corrupt planetary corporations doing things behind the scenes.
40	* Travis J.I. Corcoran put out the ''Literature/{{Aristillus}}'' series in order to bring his vision of this trope to fruition in a hard science fiction world. While it owes a lot to [[Creator/RobertAHeinlein Heinlein]], this series is chock full of enough new ideas, combined with ample libertarian political science, economic, and philosophical thinking, to arguably take this trope to the furthest extent yet seen. Not the least of which is taking the libertarian affinity for guns up a notch and arming most of the Lunar colony with huge anti-materiel rifles which they use to fend off invading earth forces.
41	* Michael Z. Williamson's ''Freehold'' duology is about the Freehold of Grainne, a libertarian's paradise in comparison to the corrupt and dying [[UnitedNationsIsASuperpower United Nations-controlled]] Earth.
42	* The Dorsai of the ''Literature/ChildeCycle'', a planet with [[OneProductPlanet the greatest mercenaries among the Fourteen Worlds]]. It's people are fiercely independent, free as long they do nothing to harm and respect their freedoms. Interestingly, the Dorsai has problems from this -- their government has very little power compared to the other Worlds.
43	* In ''Gradisil'', many of Earth's rich have migrated to space habitats, collectively known as "Upland".
44	* Allen Steele's ''Literature/{{Coyote}}'' novels are about the settlement of a planet in the 47 Ursae Majoris system. The original settlement expedition was originally state-sponsored by a repressive government that took over the USA (called the United Republic of America), but the crew was infiltrated by dissident scientists and technicians who "stole" the ship upon its launch. The new colony was largely democratic with the general freedom of the frontier, but was subsequently beset by attempts of other repressive Earthly governments to take it over, or overpopulate it too quickly.
45	* In F. Paul Wilson's ''La Nague Federation'' series, there are two planets that live by differing strains of a philosophy called KYFHO (Keep Your Fucking Hands Off). Every inhabitant of Flint is [[ProudWarriorRace armed to the teeth]] and deadly, while their philosophical siblings on Tolive are {{Actual Pacifist}}s.
46	* Creator/HBeamPiper's ''Lone Star Planet/A Planet For Texans'' was colonized by people who are trying to live the romantic ideal of Texas, RecycledInSpace. Everyone goes armed, and killing a politician is not illegal unless the politician's heirs can convince the court he didn't need killing (this is rare). ''Four Day Planet'', sometimes bound in the same volume, may count as well. The colony was started as a company town by a mining corporation which abandoned it, but the hardiest and most independent colonists stayed to make a go of it.
47	* S.A. Swann's ''Literature/{{Hostile Takeover\|Swann}}'' trilogy takes place primarily on the planet Bakunin, where any kind of social organization that doesn't call itself a government is allowed.
48	* {{Zig Zagged\|Trope}} in ''Slow Train to Arcturus'', as while we see some of the societies leaving what can justly be caused repression it is hard to imagine any vaguely functioning benevolent government not wanting to see heavily armed white supremacists or North Korea's leadership cadre sent ''very'' far from Earth.
49	* In ''Literature/TechnicHistory'', the MerchantPrince Van Rjn is definitely this, although he shows a slight MoralMyopia as he is willing to use his own resources to coerce those he think need to be coerced.
50	** [[BirdPeople Ythrians]] in general hold this attitude; in fact, they [[HumansThroughAlienEyes think]] government almost [[DeliberateValuesDissonance barbaric]].
51	*** However, one Ythrian gives a paradoxically libertarian argument for loyalty to the Terran Empire; the empire is far away, cannot concentrate enough on local affairs to be overbearing by human standards and provides security in an economic manner without the demands an independent local government would have to make.
52	* In Creator/IanMcDonald's "Luna: New Moon", contract law governs relations on the moon. There is no criminal law. The Five Dragons (oligarchs) rule the moon.
53	* In the backstory of Creator/ArthurCClarke's ''Literature/TheSongsOfDistantEarth'', it's mentioned that before the end, various factions, religions and nationalities sent their own seedships into space to both escape the impending apocalypse and build their own independent societies. The protagonists at one point muse whether any of those attempts had also survived.
54	* The [[Literature/{{Eldraeverse}} Eldrae]] tend to be libertarian by human standards by default, largely because the {{Precursors}} removed most of their "ape pack dominance instincts" but the inclination is best exemplified by their largest polity, the Empire of the Star. The Empire having developed from the merger of several private law providers and still operating in large part like one, what with requiring "citizen-shareholders" to buy stock in the Empire when they take their citizenship oath, which is not guaranteed by place of birth and isn't required to live in the Empire per se.
55	* ''Seeker'' in Creator/JackMcDevitt's ''Literature/AlexBenedict'' series featured colony ship named Seeker manned by a faction known as the "Margolians" who were fleeing the then-oppressive society of Earth in hopes of establishing a free world.
56	* In ''Voyage From Yesteryear'' by Creator/JamesPHogan, a probe is sent to Alpha Centauri containing a genetic bank to escape an impending world war. RaisedByRobots in a PostScarcityEconomy, the colonists form a community where money and authoritarianism are meaningless. This causes problems when the authoritarian Earth governments established during the war decide to send an expedition to bring them back into the fold, leading to severe CultureClash.
57	* ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' takes place on Earth, but in a partially post-apocalyptic science fiction setting, and has Libertas, a libertarian confederation that perseveres in the isolated Rocky Mountains region, while extreme environmentalists, transhumanists, fundamentalists, reactionaries and neo-Nazis claim the more prosperous surrounding areas.
58	* A small L version is ''Industrial Revolution'' by Creator/PoulAnderson. A privately-owned [[AsteroidMiners asteroid-mining]] company is on the verge of success at the same time as a Social Justice Party comes to power back on Earth. They try to arrange an 'accident' with a MisguidedMissile to force the miners off their space station. The incident is related in flashback years later after the miners have fought a war of independence.
59	* Creator/LarryNiven's ''Literature/KnownSpace'' series has the libertarian Belters versus the statist U.N.-controlled Earth. While Niven prefers the Belters, he recognizes the the government on Earth is struggling with massive overpopulation and is trying to do the best it can for the inhabitants. Some of the works by his fans [[{{Flanderization}} go over the top]] and show the Earth as evil and over-controlling and deliberately trying to breed initiative out of humans.
60	* In ''Planet of Fear'' by Paul [=McAuley=], the protagonists are the [[AlternateHistory Soviet]] [[VenusIsWet naval crew of an ekranoplan on Venus]]. The American libertarians are regarded as pirates, and assumed to be at fault when the personnel of a Soviet outpost go missing.
61	* Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin's ''Literature/TheDispossessed'' is about the society that populated the moon of Anarres based on the mutualist anarchist principles of Odonianism. They deride the much wealthier but inegalitarian planet they left, Urras, as being full of "propertarians" and "archists".
62	* There have been multiple anthologies of libertarian-themed sci fi, including ''Free Space'' (1997), ''Give Me Liberty'' (2003) and ''Visions of Liberty'' (2004). Authors Creator/PoulAnderson, Creator/RobertAHeinlein, Creator/FrankHerbert, Creator/JamesPHogan, Creator/MikeResnick, Creator/RobertJSawyer, Creator/MichaelAStackpole, Creator/VernorVinge and Creator/AEVanVogt were among those with stories in them. A fair number of these feature full libertarian societies on other worlds or a future Earth (they're naturally depicted as mostly positive).
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65	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
66	* ''Series/Babylon5'' touches on this idea somewhat, in that Earth slowly ([[FromBadToWorse and then more quickly]]) becomes an oppressive place, and also more heavy-handed toward its off-world colonies. Mars probably takes the brunt of this, but it is implied that even [[spoiler:pre-coup]], most colonies are at least taxed very heavily by Earth, and labor strikes are banned (in theory, only when they endanger a military base or operation. In practice, after the Earth-Minbari War, the law authorizing the suppression of strikes has been invoked more often than that). [=EarthGov=]'s intrusions affected the Babylon 5 station adversely as well -- until Sheridan [[spoiler:decisively declares the station's independence]].
67	* ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' and ''Film/{{Serenity}}'' give us Browncoats. Earth is [[EarthThatWas not present anymore]] in this Verse, so the Core Worlds, ruled by the Anglo-Sino Alliance, fill the repressive role, and the Independent Worlds ("Browncoats") are heroic separatists who want to preserve their freedom. However, while the protagonists are led by former Browncoats, the franchise notably treats the conflict as more OrderVersusChaos than BlackAndWhiteMorality: while the core worlds are police states, they also have a significantly higher standard of living. Whereas on the rim it's easy for gangsters and warlords to rule whole planets and basic supplies such as food and medicine are often hard to come by, but you're at least able to look your oppressor in the eye and put a bullet in his head.
68	* The Belters on ''Series/TheExpanse'' are a hard-hitting {{deconstruction}} of this. The no-margin-for-error conditions of deep space have produced that bizarre combination of civic pride and steadfast independence prized by this philosophy, with Belters instinctively looking out for each other rather than crying to the authorities when something breaks; they fix problems -- by any means necessary -- as they happen. However, the nasty side of this is that they're prone to vigilantism, which can manifest in heroic actions like aiding in the assault on Thoth Station, morally grey actions such as the summary murder of administrators who won't keep the air filters clean, and villainous ones such the indiscriminate [[ThrownOutTheAirlock spacing]] of refugees from the Inner Planets.
69	-->'''Miller:''' When I was homicide, there was this guy. Property management specialist working a contract out of Luna. Someone burned half his skin off and dropped him out an airlock. Turned out he was responsible for maintenance on sixty holes up on level thirty. Lousy neighborhood. He'd been cutting corners. Hadn't replaced the air filters in three months. There was mold growing in three of the units. And you know what we found after that? Not a goddamn thing, because ''we stopped looking''. '''Some people need to die''', and he was one. And the next guy that took the job '''''cleaned the ducting and swapped the filters on schedule'''''.
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73	* The [[Music/JeffersonAirplane Jefferson Starship]]'s UsefulNotes/{{Hugo\|Award}}-nominated concept album ''Blows Against the Empire'' features a [[RagTagBandOfMisfits rag-tag band of hippies]] who hijack a starship and flee an increasingly oppressive Earth in search of "free minds, free bodies, free dope, free music".
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76	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
77	* ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}: TabletopGame/TranshumanSpace'': The Duncanites, derived from the Ares Conspiracy that initiated the terraforming of Mars and were chased off to the Belt and Jupiter's Trojan asteroids for eco-terrorism, which turned them off the idea of "statism". Divided into the "Green Duncanites" who are attempting the same thing on Europa, the "Red Duncanites" or "Trojan Mafia", and the nomadic Gypsy Angels.
78	* ''TabletopGame/EclipsePhase'' has the Autonomist Alliance throughout the Belt and Outer System (except Jupiter). The Extropians are anarcho-capitalists, the Anarchists are anarcho-collectivists, the Scum are space gypsies, and the Titanian Commonwealth is a state with a gift economy similar to the Anarchists'. While the different sub-factions disagree on many things they formed TheAlliance to fight off the Jovian Junta and Planetary Consortium.
79	* The in-universe official history of ''TabletopGame/HcSvntDracones'' says that corporations built privately owned cities first on Earth, and then on Mars, which were populated with human-animal hybrids called Vectors. Then Earth's obsolete bio-conservative governments started a nuclear war with the Corp Towns and Earth was sterilized in the crossfire. However, it's obvious to most readers that at least six of the seven {{Mega Corp}}s that own the Solar System 700 years later are effectively dictatorial governments as oppressive as many 20th century countries, with the possible exception of [[http://hcsvntdracones-game.tumblr.com/post/149521040593/im-betting-most-of-my-streamers-have-traveled the Corp whose primary products are espionage and assassinations.]]
80	* TabletopGame/MutantChronicles: Defied. As the narrator points out, an environment where the survival of entire communities, if not civilizations, are dependent on hundreds of thousands of things working ''exactly'' the way they are supposed to is not exactly conducive to individualism and ''laissez-faire''. True to form, the most authoritarian of the factions make their home on the most hostile planets.
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83	[[folder:Video Games]]
84	* Rapture from the ''VideoGame/BioShock'' series is a terrestrial version of this, built under the oceans rather than space. Columbia from ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' is an atmospheric version, in the skies of Earth rather than another planet. Both are also [[{{Deconstruction}} scathingly unflattering]] depictions of this ideology and all the [[DeconstructedTrope horrible things that could happen in this kind of settlement]] when it's founded and controlled by a fanatical tyrant with no respect for the value of human life.
85	* ''VideoGame/SidMeiersAlphaCentauri'' presents two variants on this in its factions: the Morgan Industries faction represents the more corporate, market-and-business-oriented vision of Space Libertarianism, while the Spartan Federation is the more "rugged gun-nut survivalist" brand (which makes occasional references to [[Creator/RobertAHeinlein Heinlein]] with stuff like bases named Literature/FarnhamsFreehold). The Alien Crossfire expansion adds the Nautilus Pirates, who in gameplay terms are a clone of the Spartans [[RecycledInSpace ON THE SEA!]], and in story terms are a breakaway of the Spartans who thought being sea pirates would be cool.
86	* ''VideoGame/{{Starfield}}''.
87	** This theme is explored via the Freestar Collective, whose members pride themselves on minimal government control over people compared to their more bureaucratic rival, the United Colonies. The realization of this ideal can be quite complicated. The laissez-faire economy encourages corporate investment disproportionate to the Collective's apparently smaller population... but some settlements are either utterly dominated by said corporations (Neon) or owned outright (Hopetown). Akila City presents a purer, frontier-style version of this trope in which independence and personal liberty are heralded, but those who can't make it end up in a slum or the belly of an Ashta.
88	** LIST, the League of Independent Settlers, takes this ideal to an extreme. Families might have a whole planet to themselves, with only their own familial hierarchy to govern them and to save them in a disaster - unless some adventurer happens to be passing through.
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91	[[folder:Web Comics]]
92	* In ''Webcomic/EscapeFromTerra'', Ceres and a number of other asteroids are anarcho-capitalist. In an early arc they fight off an attempted invasion by the [[StrawCharacter straw socialist]] United World of Earth.
93	* ''Webcomic/QuantumVibe'' presented the idea that when there's no frontier to explore and expand into, [[http://www.quantumvibe.com/strip?page=191 culture begins to rot and erode]].
94	* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'' is the lower-level version, and is mostly just used as an excuse to allow bands of mercenaries (such as the protagonists) to wander around.
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97	[[folder:Web Original]]
98	* ''Literature/InGoldenWaters'', a SharedUniverse created by the users of the Website/SomethingAwful forums, is a DeconstructiveParody of seasteading, a proposed real-life terrestrial version of this trope.
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