Reader Goldfarb pointed us to Call Me Joe, a novella written in 1957 by Golden Age science fiction writer Poul Anderson. Many fans of Anderson suspect that the story was an important influence on Avatar, and some are calling for Anderson to be credited on the film. And it's easy to see why.

Like Avatar, Call Me Joe centers on a paraplegic — Ed Anglesey — who telepathically connects with an artificially created life form in order to explore a harsh planet (in this case, Jupiter). Anglesey, like Avatar's Jake Sully, revels in the freedom and strength of his artificial created body, battles predators on the surface of Jupiter, and gradually goes native as he spends more time connected to his artificial body.

Now, there's nothing wrong with being inspired or influenced by other writers, and Cameron has mentioned a host of influences for Avatar: Dances with Wolves, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs. But it's odd, given some remarkable similarities in the plots, that he doesn't appear to have mentioned Anderson as a specific inspiration.

Should the similarities between Avatar and Call Me Joe cause problems for Cameron, it wouldn't be the first time. After The Terminator came out, writer Harlan Ellison sued the production company for plagiarizing two episodes he wrote for The Outer Limits. Even though Cameron took Ellison's ideas in a very different and novel direction, the company settled with Ellison, who is now acknowledged in the film's credits.

Avatar may be, by and large, an original film, much as The Terminator is. But there may be firmer roots beneath his story than Cameron has acknowledged thus far.

First, here's a quick disclaimer. The vast majority of science fiction is to some extent concerned with a heroic individual struggling against a large, probably oppressive society - so a huge amount of science fiction could be considered libertarian to some degree. What sets apart the books on this list - and there are certainly tons of others out there that would make worthy additions - is that they are actively concerned with exploring explicitly libertarian philosophy in a science fiction setting, and many on the list below have been specifically singled out as such by libertarians themselves.

1. News from Nowhere; or, An Epoch of Rest: Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance by William Morris

Of all the utopian books that appeared towards the nineteenth century (the most famous of which is probably Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward), one of the very few that saw a perfect future as fundamentally libertarian was 1890's News from Nowhere. Written from an anarchic-socialist perspective, Morris imagines a future where the community controls the means of production and existing social structures are a thing of the past, with cities, money, divorce, and courts all now obsolete.

2. Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells

There are a bunch of potential candidates when it comes to Wells's writings on libertarian utopias, but his 1924 book is by far the best. Scientists from our world stumble upon a parallel universe with an Earth thousands of years more advanced than ours. No governments exist because children are firmly indoctrinated to understand one single, solitary point: respect the autonomy of others. With this one simple rule in mind, there is no need for social institutions, and the people of that world spend their days enjoying their genetically engineered perfection and all the free love they can handle.

3. "Late Night Final" by Eric Frank Russell

This 1948 short story looks at a spaceship in orbit above the planet it has come to invade. As the crew learns how to communicate with the anarchic natives down on the surface, the command structure slowly crumbles. Eventually, presented with the opportunity of a peaceful, completely free life down on the surface, the invaders abandon their ship until only the captain is left. Russell's 1962 novel The Great Explosion also follows bumbling militarists from Earth as they encounter three long-isolated colony worlds that have since evolved into rather unusual societies. The third and most positively portrayed planet, K22g, has become a peaceful, libertarian society whose people call themselves Gands after their inspiration, Mohandas Gandhi.

4. The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

Originally published in 1956 as Tiger, Tiger!, Bester's novel of teleportation and revenge foresaw many of the elements that continue to dominate science fiction to this day. Of particular interest to libertarians is his depiction of corporations, oppressive mega-conglomerates that rival governments in their scope and power. The novel's protagonist, Gully Foyle, is defined by his growing individualism and self-reliance - the characteristics of the quintessential libertarian hero - which he uses to gain vengeance on those who abandoned him in his hour of need.

5. "The Last of the Deliverers" by Poul Anderson

Anderson's 1957 story imagines a world where limitless solar energy has made the geopolitical order of the Cold War obsolete. The world is now organized into countless little autonomous communities, and people are free to do pretty much whatever they want. Although there are enough people who still want to raise crops or make goods to prevent societal decay, most people spend their time pursuing leisure activities such as sex and hunting. To the interest of nobody, the last two true believers in the old world order - one a capitalist and the other a communist - pass the time arguing the relative merits of their systems, totally ignoring the fact it's all academic now anyway.

6. Emphyrio by Jack Vance

This 1969 novel follows Ghyl Tarvoke of the planet Halma, where the ruling lords have outlawed mass production by the populace and use the resulting masterworks of the world's artisans - which they then mass produce - as the linchpin of their interstellar trade. Following the example of Halma's legendary hero Emphyrio, a figure of liberty and rebellion, Ghyl leads a revolt against Hamla's aristocracy, rocking the foundations of the planet's society.

7. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Set in her Hainish Cycle universe, this book won both the Nebula and Hugo award in 1974. Among other topics, Le Guin explores the society on Annares, a large, habitable moon of the planet Urras on which revolutionaries from that planet settled so that they might realize their dreams of an anarchic utopia. Two centuries later, the revolution has stagnated and hierarchical structures are reemerging, even if no one on Annares is willing to admit it. Le Guin wasn't kidding when she put "ambiguous" in the title - lots of anarchists and libertarians believe Annares is portrayed in a fundamentally positive light, while capitalists tend to see Annares as an outright dystopia.

Also worth checking out is 1973's "The Day Before The Revolution", which depicts the historical and ideological background of Odonianism, the anarchic thought that pervades the worlds of The Dispossessed. There's also the introduction to her short story collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters, which offers a succinct summary of why she finds anarchy so interesting to explore:

Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.

8. Pretty much anything by Robert Heinlein

If you're looking for science fiction with a libertarian perspective, you really can't go wrong with Robert Heinlein, particularly his later works. His constantly evolving politics, tempered with an always iconoclastic belief in individual freedom, led him to place seemingly contradictory ideas in his books, from his advocacy of the sexual revolution in Stranger in a Strange Land to the complicated militarism of Starship Troopers.

But The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is probably his most comprehensive exploration of his libertarian ideals, not to mention one of the most successful attempts to couch his beliefs in a compelling narrative. One of the book's main characters, the "rational anarchist" Professor Bernardo de la Paz, explains at length how government - any government, even democratic ones - is an inherent threat to individual freedom. Considering the repressive lunar society presented in the novel, it's a difficult point to argue, although Heinlein is the first to admit that once the revolution is over most people would rather choose the security and laws offered by some new government over the uncertainty of true freedom.

9. Absolutely everything by Robert Anton Wilson

Probably the only author who exceeds Robert Heinlein in fusing science fiction and libertarian thought is Robert Anton Wilson, who has written several trilogies that are equal parts futuristic yarns and philosophical explorations. The Illuminatus Trilogy! (coauthored with Robert Shea) is primarily concerned with anarchism, with several appendices ostensibly written by the books' several anarchist groups that provide extensive theoretical ruminations on the topic. 1979's Schroedinger's Cat trilogy looks more directly at libertarianism, considering an alternate universe in which the Libertarian Immortalist Party has turned that world's United States, known as Unistat, into an authority-free utopia.

10. Wheels Within Wheels by F. Paul Wilson

Wilson's 1979 novel looks at a massive conspiracy that threatens the liberty of an entire interstellar Federation. As Pete Paxton and the granddaughter of his old partner, Jo Finch, struggle to uncover the truth, they must face Machiavellian political operators and a ruthless telepath. The novel is a classic example of the struggle between individual defenders of liberty and shadowy governmental figures who look to take freedom away for their own ends, but that's not why I included it on the list.

The book is also the inaugural winner of the Prometheus Award, a yearly honor given out by the Libertarian Futurist Society for the best science fiction book that explores libertarian themes. Past winners have included Harry Turtledove, Neal Stephenson, and Terry Pratchett; a full list of past winners can be found here and is as good a place as any from which to develop a libertarian science fiction reading list. (You also really can't go wrong with awards that have given special honors to Patrick McGoohan for The Prisoner and Joss Whedon for Serenity. You just can't.)

Many, many thanks to Liz Henry with the Feminist SF blog for helping me put together this exhaustive list of lesbian-dominated cultures in science fiction. Smug Sappho! There are way more than I'd expected.

Ammonite by Nicola Griffith. A weird virus on the planet Jeep kills all the men, and most of the women, and the women who survive are changed, gaining access to a sort of Jungian collective unconscious. Deprived of access to men's precious bodily fluids, the women start mating using a weird ritual called "deep trance." One reviewer was annoyed that all these women, who presumably aren't naturally lesbians, seem way too comfortable turning to lesbianism and don't seem to miss the men at all. Ammonite won the Tiptree Award for science fiction that considers gender themes, prompting also-ran David Brin to complain that he'd been robbed.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree Jr. A trio of astronauts blast off into a mission around the sun, but a solar flare knocks them forward in time a few hundred years, to an era when a plague (again!) has wiped out all the men and most of the women. The surviving women reproduce via cloning, and a few of their girl-babies are dosed with androgens early on to make them grow up bigger and stronger. The three male astronauts are thrilled at the chance to be the only men on Earth — either to become patriarchs, or just to have lots of sex — but then it turns out the women rulers have no intention of letting the men live. They're happy without men around, and don't want to upset their groovy, stable society with annoying menfolk.

Walk To The End of the World and Motherlines, by Suzy McKee Charnas. A horrendous gay male-dominated society that locks up women in breeding farms. But then a free lesbian society, the Motherlines, springs up and shelters the refugees from the ebil male society. And the nomadic, horse-riding lesbian culture has an... interesting way of reproducing. In a nutshell, they, ummm... collect semen from their male horses and then use it as a catalyst to reproduce themselves. Or as Liz puts it, "horsefucking lesbians."

The Marq'ssan Cycle by L. Timmel Duchamp. In the dystopian future of 2076, everything's run by lesbians, and somehow the world is still totally fucked. The novel pits the lesbian Anarchist Collectives in the Women's Free Zone against the evil Executive Class, which runs the rest of the world and is equally lesbiotic. Ideomancer explains:

Executive men are 'fixed', which means they are capable of reproduction but entirely uninterested in the act except as a mean to an end. They derive no physical pleasure from the act, which frees them to pursue their vocations and hobbies without internal conflict. Executive women are almost entirely homosexual, except when it is necessary to bear their executive men children-and it is a distasteful act: in Renegade, one executive woman speaks of the obvious perversion of heterosexuality-but there is a very strong prohibition against executive-with-executive sex: executive women are only to have sex with service-tech women, who are sometimes available during parties much as champagne and caviar are provided. Executive women are also taught self-defense against un-fixed men.

The Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski. The planet Valedon is materialistic and has a rigid class system, but its moon, Shora, is covered by a shallow ocean full of water-breathing lesbians who live in harmony (but don't have any goats.) The Sharers of Shora are pacifists and super-advanced biologists, who communicate across long distances by talking to the insects, and reproduce by parthenogenesis. They live in peace... until an army from Valedon comes to "develop" Shora. Here's sample dialogue after the army has taken a few Sharers prisoner:

"We seek our sister Sharers," Merwen said.
"Who might they be?"
"Lerion Nonthinker, Ronesha the Coldhearted, and Oo the Jealous, who were last seen with Valans on Nri-el raft."

The Wanderground by Sally Gearhart. A linked collection of stories about a future lesbian utopia, where women can communicate telepathically, not just with each other but also with plants and animals. They can talk to the flowers! And everyone lives in harmony with nature. The women raise children collectively and die when they decide to. Gearhart coined some fancy terms for the lesbians' non-verbal communication, including "learntogether" and "listenspread." In the book's final story, an old woman and her goat prepare to pass on together.

Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson. This is more like the traditional "spaceman visits a planet of all women" story, except that for once the women-only planet is explicitly lesbified. As Liz puts it, "The lesbian society is like OMG SPACEMENZ please fuck us." Similarly, World Without Men by Charles Maine from 1958 features a lesbian-dominated dystopia, which is saved by a man. Here's how the Feminist SF web page describes it:

In World Without Men, all the men are dead and the women perverted lesbians. The story explains that this was caused by feminism and sexual liberation. One man is created from frozen sperm and saves the society.

Solution Three by Naomi Mitchison. Everyone in the ruling class is gay, except for a few "deviant" professional class hets. Cloning has replaced sexual reproduction as a means of carrying on the species, but a few women rebel and bear their own children. Heterosexuality is seen as "rather an unpleasant word," because heterosexuality leads to violence and aggression. And sports. By the end of the book, however, there's the suggestion that eventually society may stop conditioning everyone into mandatory homosexuality.

Shore Of Women by Pamela Sargent. In a post-nuclear dystopia, the sexes have been segregated: Lesbians live in the cities, while savage men lurk out in the wastelands. Every now and then, men come to "shrines" in the wilderness and "consort with the lady," meaning they have virtual-reality sex with a fake goddess. During these cyber hook-ups, the savage men are milked of semen, which is used for artificial insemination by the city women. A woman who murders another woman is exiled from the city, to a horrible fate in the wilderness of men. But there's a shocking twist: the men are so conditioned to worship women that when they meet one in person, they're enraptured instead of violent. So you see, cybersex can change the world after all.

Want more worlds ruled by lesbians? (And who doesn't?) Here's an exhaustive list of gay female worlds in lesbian science fiction.