Today is a good day for "the new Romantic Revolution"--if there ever is to be one. This summer, at the Atlas Summit 2013, I gave a presentation on "The Romantic Revolution: The Glory, The Tragedy, the Future" (find the video link on this page). The Romantic Movement spanned the years 1800 to 1850--with some works far later, or far earlier, than that time frame. But I briefly addressed what the audience most wanted to hear. Ayn Rand, when she wrote "The Romantic Manifesto," said that no Romantic movement existed today; she hoped the book might help one to emerge.

I had to tell the audience that, today, 40 years later, there is no sign of a Romantic movement in literature. But there is, today, what existed in Ayn Rand's day: a welter of what she called "popular Romanticism," in the form of mystery stories and secret agent thrillers. But that is not a Romantic movement in literature. Literature requires a certain depth of character, depth of ideas, seriousness of theme, and literary style.

To me, the first sign that a book might be a contribution to a literature of Romanticism is that it is not a standard, formula mystery or secret agent book.

Well, enter "Pendulum of Justice" by the husband and wife writing team Khaila and Dale Halling. (Dale by the way is a patent lawyer who has published a book on the stumbling blocks to innovation thrown up by government bureaucracy.) I read this novel in manuscript. It instantly engaged me and kept me reading right to the end. This is a first novel, so that, as you would expect, there is not a fully achieved literary style and development. But there is as effective and professional as any found in today's best popular Romantic literature.

"Pendulum of Justice" IS a thriller (but so is "Atlas Shrugged"), but it is a thriller with a serious and complex theme: the literally life and death decisions we now leave in the hands of the Washington bureaucracy that controls innovations through the Patent Office. One can SAY "life and death," but "Pendulum of Justice" dramatizes this issue in heart-stopped reality--and suggests how the man of justice might respond when someone he loves is the victim.

The hero of "Pendulum of Justice" is a great innovator and entrepreneur in the field of medical technology. But today, there are GATE KEEPERS of that technology--and their motives and the basis of their decisions are as affected by power lust, ambition, horse trading, and lobbying as any other decision out of Washington.

Believe me, as the hero of "Pendulum of Justice" comes to see what that bureaucracy has done, and why, you will cheer and cheer at how he decides to reacts.

See for yourself, and be a witness to the first stirrings of a new Romantic Movement, the potential for which Ayn Rand spent so much of her life trying to keep alive.