davidsloanwilson.world
* * *
**Preface**
How I ran away from my novelist father to become a scientist but returned to his craft by writing a sequel to one of the most iconic novels of the 20th Century: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.
* * *
**Chapter 1: Who Is John Galt?**
The first John Galt was a brilliant engineer who became notorious when he disappeared with his plans for a static electricity engine and called for the doers of the world to go on strike. Did he remain at large, like a master spy? Did he start a utopian community in a remote western valley? And how did he take over the airwaves to deliver what became known around the world as “The Speech”? Things are not what they seem…
* * *
**Chapter 2: The Evil Empire**
John Galt I has disappeared but Ayn Rant continues the Objectivist movement and her son, John Galt II, turns it into a world-conquering media empire. He marries Elena Lane, a starstruck girl from the Midwest who is impossible not to love. But Elena quickly sees the Objectivist movement for what it is: A cancer spreading throughout the body politic. In desperation, she devises a plan to save herself, her precious son, and just possibly the world…
* * *
**Chapter 3: The Village School**
Elena Lane hurls her son, John Galt III, as far away from Objectivism as possible by sending him to a school located deep in the Adirondack mountains of New York that emulates a colonial village. There John learns the joyous lessons of the outdoors and grows from a tall, scrawny, funny-looking kid to a tall, lean, and handsome man. But what John is like on the inside bears no relationship to his outside. How can he possibly achieve the greatness that is expected of him?…
* * *
**Chapter 4: Howard Head’s Cult**
John’s first semester at the University of Wyoming is the most humiliating time of his life. He is the center of attention and can’t even manage to pass his courses no matter how hard he tries! In desperation, he does the one thing that his mother told him not to do: He joins a cult that claims to explain ev-er-y-thing…
* * *
**Chapter 5: The Secret of Life**
Howard Head is an odd duck, a cross between a professor and stand-up comic. He claims that Darwin’s theory of evolution is the secret of life, by which he means not just the birds and the bees but the entire human condition. Then, he gives a demonstration by pulling something smart out of the mouths of his students during the very first day of class…
* * *
**Chapter 6: Eve**
Howard Head’s Secret of Life class is the start of John’s college education. And his teaching assistant, Eve Eden, might be the person who ends his lonely existence. Eve rebelled against her devout Christian upbringing and, after a period of feeling lost, felt saved by Howard and his Secret of Life class. Soon enough, John begins to understand why when he has his own first breakthrough…
* * *
**Chapter 7: The Conquest**
John and Eve have settled into a warm friendship that falls short of the closeness that he craves in every respect: emotional, intellectual, physical, sexual. But that might change when Eve invites John to accompany her to the University of Wyoming’s biological station called the Lodge. There, in one of the most romantic settings on earth, John gets his chance to make love to Eve. But first he has a terrible secret to share…
* * *
**Chapter 8: The Second Breakthrough**
Nothing comes closer to a utopia than the Lodge Biological Station when it is in session during the summer. The faculty and students are almost as varied and eccentric as at Hogwarts, the school attended by Harry Potter. But John comes to realize that nature is not so idyllic after all. The first and second Noble Truths of Buddhism—that the world is full of suffering and that suffering is caused by craving—are true for all life and not just humanity. Can evolution also reveal the path to end suffering, which is Buddhism’s fourth Noble Truth? With a shock, John realizes that the answer is in front of his face wherever he looks except up at the sky…
* * *
**Chapter 9: Enough**
John has graduated from college and is weaving three strands of his life into a strong braid. The first strand is his work with Howard to catalyze change within the Cult of Scholars. The second strand is to build a homestead on a piece of land adjacent to the Lodge Biological Station. The third strand is his relationship with Eve, who is now in Ecuador living among an Amazonian people called the Shuar to help create an ecological reserve. His world-changing efforts seem to go according to plan until the world reaches out and knocks him flat, using Eve as its agent of destruction…
* * *
**Chapter 10: The Trap**
With or without Eve, the time has finally come for John to combat the world-destroying media empire of his father. John Galt II is overjoyed to be re-united with his son and our John is not immune to the pleasures of his father’s 50-million dollar estate in the Hamptons. Can John reform the Objectivist movement from within? Or must he follow through on a plan that will stain him forever?…
* * *
**Chapter 11: The Catalysis**
A dual of speeches between father and son has captured the world’s imagination and provided a window of time for Howard’s theory of cultural catalysis to either prove itself or blow up in their faces. The first challenge is to reassert the norm of truth-telling, which had fallen into such disrepair. John explains to a group of journalists how he has become so supremely self-confident, but a moment of weakness attracts the sympathy of one of them named Angelina Garcia. John can’t possibly forsake his love for Eve, but can he resist falling into Angelina’s orbit?…
* * *
**Chapter 12: The Trek**
John captivates the world by walking 1000 miles to keep his appointment with his father for their dule of speeches and asking his supporters to join him. The most amazing thing about the trek is not the feat of walking 1000 miles but the efficiency of the caravan, even after it swells in size to many thousands of people. Why can’t the rest of society work this well?…
* * *
**Chapter 13: The Speech**
At last, the battle for the soul of the Objectivist movement is at hand. There could not be a greater contrast between a man of wealth at one podium and a man of the earth at the other. For all John’s planning and all the cultural catalysis that has taken place during the Trek, the outcome of the dule of speeches is based on something that he could not have predicted and did not comprehend as it unfolded…
* * *
**Chapter 14: The Recluse**
Howard's experiment in cultural catalysis has worked and John is so contented that he wonders if this is what the Buddhists mean by Nirvana. Then his tranquility is interrupted by a visit from an old, old, man…
* * *
**Chapter 15: The Homecoming**
John can’t begin a new life with Angelina until he is released by Eve or confirms what he fears most—her passing from the Earth. Then a thick manilla envelope arrives in his mailbox…
* * *
**Epilogue: The Science Behind Atlas Hugged**
The cultural catalysis that takes place in Atlas Hugged is a fictional portrayal of what I and many others are attempting to bring about in the real world; beginning with the first nonprofit organization that I helped to start, the Evolution Institute, and continuing with my new nonprofit organization, Prosocial World. Just as the True Objectivist movement invited everyone to join, we are designing Prosocial World for anyone to become engaged to learn and act upon an evolutionary worldview. The Epilogue serves as a bridge from the fictional world of Atlas Hugged to the real world of Prosocial World.
