Monday, July 30, 2012

"Atlas Drugged": a ForeWord Magazine's Best First-Fiction Finalist

"Atlas Drugged" a ForeWord Magazine's Best First-Fiction Finalist

Atlas Drugged, by Stephen L. Goldstein, has been named one of 6 finalists in ForeWord magazine's "Best First-Fiction" contest. According to the magazine's publisher, Victoria Sutherland, the competition "spotlights and honors great books that deserve more attention."  

Friday, July 13, 2012

On Firedoglake.com Book Salon: Author Stephen Goldstein discusses Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Stephen L. Goldstein, Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!

Email your comments and questions to author Stephen L. Goldstein directly at trendsman@aol.com

Saturday, July 14, 5 p.m.-7p.m. Eastern, join the discussion of Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! Here's how:
1--Go to Firedoglake.com, the story will be on the front page
2--If you would like to comment during the live chat, Register a few minutes early at the "Log In" at the top of the page. You'll be emailed a password
3--If you want to just follow along, you'll need to refresh your browser occasionally to see the new comments: PC=F5, MAC=Command + R keys, or any browser has an arrow/button to refresh by the URL bar

http://hellgatepress.com/stephen-l-goldstein/atlas-druggedWelcome Stephen L. Goldstein (Journalist – SunSentinel) and Host Nicole Sandler (Nicole Sandler Radio – RadioOrNot.com)
Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!
Ayn Rand has become the symbol for today’s right-wing obsession with selfishness. In the half-century since her opus Atlas Shrugged, numerous institutes and societies have sprouted to promote Rand’s philosophy of “objectivism” which teaches the ridiculous ethical egoism and her advocacy of “rational selfishness“.

To a compassionate person, these ideas are truly foreign. In a nation whose Declaration of Independence includes the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and whose Constitution directs the government to provide for the “general welfare” of its people, the Randian philosophy seems at direct odds.

Yet today’s Republican Party is pursuing an agenda that favors the rich at the expense of the needy. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin chairs the House Budget Committee and, as such, has put forth a budget that, over the next decade, would spend about 16 percent less than the White House on “income security” programs for the poor — that’s everything from food stamps to housing assistance to the earned-income tax credit.

Medicare would be privatized as a voucher program, requiring seniors to find health insurance on the open, for-profit market, and reaching into their pockets to subsidize the wholly insufficient amount of the vouchers with which they are supposed to be able to purchase the coverage. Of course, being forced to buy health insurance on the open market also means buying from a company that would use up to 20% (or more, if not reigned in by the Affordable Care Act) of those premiums on overhead (and profit) as opposed to Medicare’s 3% overhead.

The lines between Rand’s vision of an every man, woman and child for his or her self world and that of today’s GOP and Libertarian visions are quite blurred. Congressman Paul Ryan requires his staffers and interns to read Ayn Rand (though he has recently denied this, the Atlas Society has released video of a Ryan address to their membership in which he stated this requirement quite clearly), and Senator Rand Paul (born Randall) is said to have shortened his name in reverence for the author.

Rand’s philosophies are now so far-reaching that one need not read her massive missives to know what it is she and her followers believe – government is bad, the individual is all that matters.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Rand. Although I read The Fountainhead when I was younger, I found it long-winded, boring and something which with I didn’t identify. So when my friend Stephen Goldstein (author, journalist, tv/radio host and South Florida Sun-Sentinel Op-Ed columnist) told me he had written a “sequel” of sorts to Atlas Shrugged, I wasn’t initially very excited.

No, I’ve never read Atlas Shrugged, nor have I ever had a desire to. But I’ve been inundated with the “Who is John Galt?” message – even on an ad for a restaurant here in Coral Springs, FL that I had enjoyed – until I saw the ubiquitous question sniped on an ad in a local monthly magazine. Now I no longer frequent that restaurant. (Sorry, if a local business believes it’s important to promote his religious devotion to Rand’s theory of selfishness, I believe it’s important to not be a customer.)

But after Stephen assured me that one need not have subjected oneself to reading her 1,088 pages of drivel in order to enjoy his new novel, Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!, I jumped in, and was glad I did.

Atlas Drugged picks up where Shrugged left off. Sixty-seven years after John Galt’s “restoration” (revolution for the rest of us). The US has become a Libertarian paradise. No longer the United States of America, we’ve “evolved” into the United Corporations of America.
The divide between the 99% and the 1% is even more pronounced. Tent cities or shanty towns, known as Coopervilles (for then-President Cooper) have popped up in every major city, with the largest having taken over NY’s Central Park.

Government has become today’s right wingers’ wet dream – shrunk small enough to have drowned in a bathtub. The free market reigns so that no longer do governmental agencies exist to protect the citizens. It’s now buyer beware. If a product makes consumers sick, eventually they’ll no longer buy the products. And should a hurricane threaten Florida, there’s a privatized Hurricane center to warn the population … or not. Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! should be the warning shot to all Americans to be careful what you wish for.

In paperback and on Kindle, Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned is available from Amazon: (paperback) http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Drugged-Ayn-Rand-Damned/dp/1555717098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342287664&sr=8-1&keywords=atlas+drugged+ayn+rand+be+damned (Kindle) http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Drugged-Rand-Damned-ebook/dp/B008L2H2RS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1342287664&sr=8-4&keywords=atlas+drugged+ayn+rand+be+damned, as well as from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/, http://www.hellgatepress.com/ (directly from the publisher) and in bookstores nationwide.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Satire! Prophecy? Haunting! Helen Nash reviews Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!

What if corporate billionaires took over the government of the United States? What if the United States of America (USA) became the Corporate States of America (CSA)?
Stephen L. Goldstein explores these questions in his fictionalized vision Atlas Drugged:Ayn Rand Be Damned! Adept and gifted writing creates a tale of allegory, satire, fable, social commentary, and, perhaps, ultimately, prophecy.
Pitting the narcissistic ideology of Ayn Rand against the struggling, Promethean masses, the tale assumes nightmare proportions that will haunt your dreams for many nights...and days. Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! is a five-star Good Read that may strike readers as already borderline reality.

Email your comments and questions to Stephen L. Goldstein, author of Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!, directly at trendsman@aol.com

Order Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! now. It's available from amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Drugged-Ayn-Rand-Damned/dp/1555717098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341961789&sr=8-1&keywords=atlas+drugged+ayn+rand+be+damned, barnesandnoble.com, hellgatepress.com (the publisher), and from bookstores nationwide.