The Weapon Shops of Isher

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The Weapon Shops of Isher is a 1951 novel by A. E. Van Vogt created from short stories about the Weapon Shops civilisation which originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction Magazine. To use van Vogt's own terminology, this makes it a Fixup.

[edit] Plot summary

The Weapon Shops of Isher and its sequel, The Weapon Makers, detail the workings of Isher civilisation and the adventures of Robert Hedrock, The One Immortal man, as he keeps it in balance in the face of Weapon Makers who have forgotten their purpose as a permanent government opposition and the strong government of the Empress, Innelda Isher. The only check on her was the power of the weapon shops which provided defensive weapons and an alternative legal system to the populace. Isher had ordered an invisibility shield which used such immense power that it caused a man by the name of McAllister to jump several thousand years forward in time. If not stopped, this would allow her to overturn the power of the weapon shops once and for all.

The most interesting thing about the first of the two stories, The Weapon Shops of Isher, is that it is one of the very few examples of Golden Age science fiction that explicitly discusses and addresses the right to keep and bear arms, specifically guns. (Indeed the motto of the Weapon Shops, repeated several times, is "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.") The story is thus relatively interesting and important when considered in relation to libertarian-oriented SF, since it demonstrates the conception of a society in which autocracy and the right to bear arms co-exist.