"Ayn Rand modeled her Nietzschean superhero characters on an individual named William Edward Hickman, whom she gushed over, saying that he "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22)
Hickman, however, is most famous for kidnapping a twelve year old girl for ransom, then killing her, cutting off her arms and legs, removing her internal organs and strewing them across Los Angeles, and wiring her eyes so that she appeared alive. Then, after collecting the ransom money at the agreed-upon rendezvous point, he shoved the body indifferently out of the car at the end of the street and drove off. "This is going to get interesting before it's over," he told investigators after his eventual capture. "Marion and I were good friends, and we really had a good time when we were together and I really liked her. I'm sorry that she was killed."
Rand apparently thought this was completely awesome.
Your favorite books are written BY a psychopath, ABOUT psychopaths and FOR psychopaths."
To be entirely fair to that awful woman, she did say she envisioned her hero as Hickman without the depravity, but that's a bit like saying that Hitler was a great leader aside from all the warmongering and genocide.
