Science-fiction, at its best, is a medium uniquely suitable for concretizing fundamental philosophical issues. The medium of science-fiction allows the author very wide freedom in projecting situations that men have to face, or even in projecting changes in man's nature; at the same time, the constraints of science-fiction (as opposed to fantasy) can help to keep the projected situations within the bounds relevant to our real lives. This allows the science-fiction story to project a "thought-experiment" that can, in some cases, be very illuminating philosophically.
One story that lives up greatly to this potential is "the sharing of flesh" by Poul Anderson. While Anderson is not an Objectivist, and I don't know whether he knows anything about Objectivism, he has projected a situation that illustrates crucial issues in Objectivist philosophy. I found his story tremendously helpful in understanding the basis of Ayn Rand's principle that there are no conflicts of interest among rational men, and the centrality of this principle to the Objectivist ethics.
"The sharing of flesh" first appeared in the magazine Galaxy, 1968, and was reprinted in the short-story collection The Long Night. Artistically, I don't regard it as a great work, but it is a good and highly enjoyable story. Unfortunately, The Long Night is now out of print, and so the story is difficult to find. Update: the story is available in the collection Flandry's Legacy, published by Baen Books.
Warning: the story centers around a mystery element, which is given away in the following discussion.
The story takes place on the planet Lokon, which was colonized by human beings, but then lost touch with earth and reverted back to a primitive society. Then, over several centuries, its people underwent a mutation, with the following results: the bodies of Lokonian adolescents can't begin, on their own, to produce certain hormones necessary for reaching puberty; the adolescent must ingest an initial dose of these hormones, and only then his body can begin to produce them internally. Since the only source of these hormones is human flesh, every Lokonian adolescent must eat human flesh, or never physically become an adult.
The value of this scenario, in throwing light on Rand's non-conflict-of-interests principle, is that it shows how a very specific, delimited change in human nature would invalidate this principle. The lives of the people of Lokon regularly involve situations in which one person's rational interests --- a chance to live as a fully developed human being --- require someone else's sacrifice. These are not rare emergency situations; these are the normal circumstances of life on Lokon. This illustrates how the non-conflict-of-interests principle is based on observation of facts of human nature --- here on earth, unlike Lokon, man's means of sustaining his life do not involve the sacrifice of other people.
The story goes on to illustrate how central the non-conflict-of-interests principle is to Objectivist interpersonal ethics. One of the characters in the story commits cold-blooded murder, for the purpose of obtaining human flesh to feed his two adolescent sons. By the end of the story, it is clear that this murder was a perfectly proper, moral action on his part. This demonstrates how a central principle of Rand's interpresonal ethics --- non-initiation of force --- depends on the non-conflict-of-interests principle, and would fall without it. Rand's basic ethical principle is rational self-interest; without the non-conflict-of-interests principle, this would imply that a man, such as the character in Anderson's story, should use force against others when this serves his rational interests.
The Kantian approach to ethics is so deeply ingrained in today's culture, that it is hard for many people to conceive of any other approach; as a result, despite all that Rand has said to strongly express her opposition to Kant, it is still quite common to hear Objectivists using Kantian arguments, or to hear Kantian arguments attributed to Rand. The two aspects of Kant's approach that Objectivists accept most often are: the derivation of morality from man's rationality alone, with no need for any further context; and the principle of "universalizability", the idea that the moral criterion for judging an action is that one should want it to become a universal principle on which everone would act. A variation on the principle of universalizability, which is used by several writers who claim to agree with Rand (for example by Tibor Machan in his book Individuals and their Rights is the "substitution principle" --- the argument that you should not initiate force because other people are similar to yourself, and so you should grant them the same freedom from aggression that you require for your own life, with no need to consider how this relates to your own rational interests. [1] "The sharing of flesh" can be very useful in identifying and refuting this type of Kantian influence; in effect, it provides a simple, concrete screening-test for such arguments: any valid argument against initiation of force must distinguish between the men of earth and of Lokon, and show why initiation of force is right for them, but wrong for us --- which all the above arguments clearly fail to do. Anderson's scenario demonstrates why Rand's method of defending her interpersonal ethics --- observation of the full facts of man's nature as a living being and of the requirements of his survival, and, on this basis, identifying the principles on which a man must act in order to live successfully --- is the only valid method.
The story also illustrates the basis in man's nature of Rand's politics, through its description of the social organization on Lokon. Most of the people of Lokon live in hunter-gatherer tribes, constantly warring with each other, or ambushing each other's people, in order to get human flesh. The one organized society on the planet is a city-state that keeps a large slave class, bred and raised for the purpose of being eaten. In a scene written deliberately to be shocking, the leader of the city proudly shows the slave barracks to a visitor: "They are well treated, are they not? We do have to crush their hands and feet when we choose them as children for this service. Think how dangerous it would be otherwise, .... But we treat them kindly unless they misbehave. .... We slay them quickly, cleanly, at the beginning of each summer --- no more than we must for that year's crop of boys entering into manhood, one slave for four boys, no more than that. .... We are not savages, warring and raiding and skulking to get our man-flesh. We are civilized."
The significance of this scene is in the realization, by the end of the story, that our shock was inappropriate; the standard we would use to condemn this society --- the standard of individual rights --- simply does not apply to the people of Lokon. For us, a society recognizing individual rights is a condition for human life; for the Lokonians, such a society --- by making it almost impossible to obtain human flesh --- would make human life impossible. Just as the non-conflict-of-interests principle is central to Rand's interpersonal ethics, it is also a necessary basis for her concept of rights and for her political philosophy.
Finally, the story powerfully illustrates the meaning of an objective approach to values. The main characters in the story are human beings from another planet, with an advanced civilization and space travel, who rediscover the colony and land on Lokon. When they discover the cannibalistic practices of the Lokonians, and the nature of their social organization, they are shocked. While they pay lip service to cultural relativism and to the need to be "objective scientists", they can't help condemning the Lokonians. However, when they later find out about the Lokonian mutation, and realize the way in which the Lokonian's biological nature is different from theirs, they no longer condemn them (and they are then ready to change the Lokonian's practices, by supplying them with pills containing the necessary hormones).
Consider how an intrinsic or subjective approach to values would have led the space visitors to treat the Lokonians. An intrinsic approach would be: our social standards are right in and of themselves; the Lokonian practices are wrong, they should be condemned, and nothing could possibly justify them; on an individual level, initiation of force is wrong in and of itself, and nothing could possibly justify individual Lokonians who engage in it; the biological nature of the Lokonians is irrelevant. The subjective approach of social relativism, dominant in today's social sciences, would be: our social standards are merely biases; other societies are entitled to their different norms; it is inappropriate to condemn the Lokonian practices, just as it would be inappropriate to condemn similar practices, or any other social practices, here, on earth; the biological nature of the Lokonians is, again, irrelevant. The objective approach, in contrast, is that morality and politics should be based on man's nature, which implies what principles of action and what type of society make human life possible; societies with "different" standards here, on earth --- whose people have the same biological nature as ours --- are wrong, and should be condemned (like the space visitors condemned the Lokonians, and were right to do so, when they thought they have the same biological nature); but our standards do not apply to people with different natures. However, this does not mean that it would be wrong of the space visitors to impose their values on the Lokonians; once the space visitors make it possible for the Lokonians to obtain the necessary hormones by other means, the essential facts of their nature become the same as ours --- the non-conflict-of-interest principle is now true for them, too --- and then their social practices become wrong, and should be changed.
The thought-experiment of "the sharing of flesh", projecting a very specific change in human nature with the drastic implications for ethics and politics that we saw in this paper, illustrates the way in which Rand's ethics and politics are based on specific facts of human nature, and, as we saw above, concretizes the meaning of an objective approach to values.
[1] For a more detailed discussion of the substitution principle, contrasting it with the Objectivist approach, see my paper "Deriving rights from egoism: Machan vs. Rand", Reason Papers no. 17, Fall 1992.