On international orders…

Unfortunately we (UA & 9BB) have had issues with Amazon.com, and are trying to resolve them, but they are a giant, and we’re trying to sell books that few people want and many would rather see just disappear.

With Lucifer’s Lexicon we used our printer as a distributor, but it seems Amazon is punishing them for not being owned by Amazon, and listed on the product page that our book could take 1-2 months to get even though it would be sent out within 24 hours in most cases. They currently stock copies, but it took months for that to happen.

Their International websites showed spotty availability, but it was available.

With The Myth of Natural Rights the publishers are supplying Amazon with copies themselves, which added weeks of time before they placed an order and then got it in stock.

Unfortunately that means that the international websites aren’t carrying copies of our book, and I’m not sure of the logistics involved in getting them copies and having them sell them on our behalf.

Shipping from the US anywhere else is becoming cost-prohibitive and more and more of a hassle. One ounce can often change the cost of postage up or down more than the price of the book.

One solution is finding a reliable European bookseller that we can list as the place to get them, but we have no contact like that. Please reach out if that is you.

Nine-Banded Books and Underworld Amusements are very small publishers and we are doing what we can to make these books available to all who are interested, but sometimes that will be challenging. With Amazon folding to pressures of thought-police, and Western governments increasingly doing the same, and the puritanical force of Westerners themselves rising up against Free thought and speech, our projects will be increasingly in the crosshairs, and we’ll have less and less resources.

For the time, we’ll maximize our use of the tail-end of American free-speech, and please contact us with any questions.

If you are outside of the US, and would like to order a copy of Lucifer’s Lexicon, please drop Nine-Banded Books a message.

“The Myth of Natural Rights” Expanded & Revised

Nine-Banded Books and Underworld Amusements are pleased to announce the release of a massively expanded edition of L.A. Rollins’ The Myth of Natural Rights.

Available from:
Amazon.com | Nine-Banded Books | Underword Amusements

Marked by an incisive moral skepticism seldom encountered in libertarian discourse, Rollins’ original 1985 tract presented a blistering critique of one of the central tenets of the liberal  ⁠— and libertarian ⁠—  worldview: the idea that humans have unalienable rights merely because they are alive.

While Rollins was not the first to question the philosophical basis for natural rights, his monograph received attention for its hard-hitting style and for its confrontational engagement with the arguments of the most recognized individualist advocates of “natural law.”  The essentially “egoist” core of Rollins’ skepticism would also draw comparison to the work of Max Stirner.     

As TGGP writes in his introduction:

The difference between Stirner’s The Ego and His Own and Rollins’ Myth is that the former is more deeply animated by the author’s iconoclastic elan than by the rigorous strictures of analytical discourse. Where Stirner was mirthfully content to spin logomachian webs and toss Young Hegelianisms at Young Hegelians, Rollins sets out not to declare his defiance toward an impotent God but to carefully deprive believers of their deity. And Rollins’ act of Deicide is accomplished in cutting measures, without pomp or apologies or safe, humanistic palliatives.

It would be well enough to bring The Myth of Natural Rights back into print as a standalone volume, but this new edition has been extensively supplemented with contemporaneous texts and commentaries. The definitive text of Rollins’ scathing work is thus followed by a series of essays that document a conflagration that erupted in the pages of Samuel Edward Konkin III’s journal New Libertarian in its wake. Publisher Kevin I. Slaughter, in his new preface, likens the embroilment to a similar episode that played out in Benjamin R. Tucker’s individualist-anarchist periodical Liberty more than a century ago, when advocates of objective morality clashed with the amoral egoists of the day.

Readers with a longer memory than the internet will recognize the names who leap into the fray on one side or the other: Jeff Riggenbach, Murray N. Rothbard, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert LeFevre, George H. Smith, and Sidney E. Parker.  

The specter of natural rights haunts the minds of men still. This book, for the dissenting few, will serve either as ammunition for intellectual combat, or as a palliative against the brutal futility of the mass mind. As L.A. Rollins was fond of saying, “make the most of it!”


Table of Contents

2019 Publisher’s Preface Kevin I. Slaughter
2008 Publisher’s Preface Chip Smith
2008 Introduction TGGP
The Myth of Natural Rights
New Libertarian Debates
Author’s Note
Natural Outlaws vs Natural Lawmen Samuel Edward Konkin III
Libertarians: Natural Outlaws, Natural Bastards Jeff Riggenbach
On the Duty of Natural Outlaws to Shut Up Murray N. Rothbard
Roughing-Up Rights George H. Smith
A Letter Sidney E. Parker
Natural Law Robert Anton Wilson
Natural Rights! Robert LeFevre
Kranky Notions Jeff Riggenbach
A Reply to My Reviewers
Instead of an Afterword
Acknowledgements
Recommended Reading
Cover Gallery

Hello world!

This website will primarily serve to provide detail about The Portable L.A. Rollins series of books being co-published by Nine-Banded Books and Underworld Amusements.

In addition it will provide some biographical detail and history of Rollins and his work, via this blog.

We have begun the transfer of posts from Rollins’ old blogspot blog to here. As time allows, we will populate this website with his musings from the short span of December 2008 until February 2009.

We are, however, very interested in obtaining more of his work, and any letters he’s sent and any reminiscences people have of him. We’d appreciate donations of original material, but scans are also quite welcome. Please get in touch.

I’ve Won Two Million Dollars!!!!!!

I’ve won two million dollars!!!!!! At least, that’s what I’ve been told recently in a couple of e-mails I’ve received. It seems I’ve been so lucky that I’ve won two prizes, each about a million dollars, in two random drawings of e=mail addresses.
One of these e-mails has the following heading:

MARKETPLACE MIDDLE EAST UNDER
DIFC/DUBAI INTERNATIONL FINANCIAL CENTER
(YOUR GATEWAY TO GROWTH) AND MTN MIDDLE EAST NETWORK
IN COLLABORATION WITH INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION UNION
PO Box 702101, Dubai Media City-United Arab Emirates
DUBAI INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY PROGRAM

Then comes the good news:

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws of the DIFC/DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CENTER (YOUR GATEWAY TO GROWTH), AND MTN Middle East Network in Collaboration with INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUUCATION [sic] UNION LOTTERY PROGRAM PROMOTION. Your e-mail was among 20 Lucky winners who won $950,000.00 (Nine Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) each in the MARKETPLACE MIDDLE EAST UNDER DIFC/DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL CENTER PROMO dated as stated above.

Wow! Pretty impressive, huh? And at the very bottom of the e-mail is the following name: Prince Sheikh Salaiman bin Hamad al-Khalifa. Now that’s a name that sounds like MONEY.
The other e-mail gives the following address: Yahoo/Windows Live, 125 Shaftsbury Avenue WC2H 8AD London, United Kingdom. And here’s the news of my good fortune:

All the executive members of Yahoo/Windows Live wish to inform you that you have won a prize money of Seven Hundred, Twenty Thousand Great Britain Pounds…for the 2009 new year Prize promotion which was organized by YAHOO MANAGEMENT TEAM & WINDOWS LIVE this Month of February 2009 to celebrate our 15 years since we became the best e-mail provider worldwide.

At an exchange rate of about $1.44 (US) for each British pound, that amounts to about $1,036, 800. So, according to these two emails, I’ve won a total of about two million dollars!!!!!!
However, I suspect these e-mails are scams of some kind. The fact that the e-mail that supposedly came from England is written in pretty poor English reinforces my skepticism. And by doing an Internet search for “Yahoo/Windows Live Drawing,” I found that other people have received that same e-mail and give various reasons for dismissing it as a shoddily-done scam.
So, after all, being the pessimistic, skeptical, cynical guy that I am, I’m going to treat these e-mails as scams and ignore them.
Of course, last year I thought Ron Paul had no chance of being elected prsdent, and look how wrong I was about that.

I Predict

Jesus will be coming in the near future. No, not Jesus Christ, Jesus Morales, who will be coming to the US as an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

Muslims will impose Sharia (Islamic law) in Europe. Looking on the bright side, though, they’ll repeal the European laws against “Holocaust Denial.”

American Christians will be rounded up and herded into concentration camps. Then they will wake up, realize it was just a nightmare, and begin another boringly normal day.

Piers Anthony Has Favorably Mentioned My Book

In his Feblueberry 2009 newsletter now posted on his website, fantasy and science fiction writer Piers Anthony has favorably mentioned my book, “The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays.” Those of you who are involved in writing or publishing might find his newsletter interesting reading even if you don’t read far enough to see what he said about my book. Revisionist history fans, and others, who read what Anthony says about my book will learn that he agrees with James Bacque’s claim, in the book “Other Losses,” that a million or more World War Two German POWs were allowed to starve to death by their American captors. As for my book, Anthony concludes, “…Rollins’ book made me think, and it is worth reading by anyone else who likes to think. You don’t have to agree; just consider.”