Reason Magazine has an interesting look at Tor Books, one of the most successful publishers of science fiction in the past 25 years (I have shelves and shelves full of nothing but Tor and Baen books).  The author, naturally, takes a particular interest in how Tor’s books have furthered an openness toward the libertarian political philosophy.  The piece makes a number of observations that go well beyond that, though:

Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the goateed and bespectacled Tor eminence who edited two of the house’s Prometheus finalists this year, draws a direct line between youthfulness and openness to libertarian ideas. “Young people read fiction to figure out how the world works,” he says, “and science fiction is an extremely effective, quick way of testing your views of how the world works.” Paraphrasing the late novelist and critic Thomas Disch, Hayden says, “Enormous quantities of science fiction and fantasy are about power, and who needs power fantasies more than teenagers, people who have a little bit of power for the first time in their lives and need to think about how power works?”

Oh, how true that is.