In regards to your comment about Philosophers who were also Authors, I'm reminded of a quote from Ayn Rand's diary as brought by Leonard Peikoff in his introduction to the new edition of "Atlas Shrugged". In it, Ayn Rand said that she essentially considers herself a writer, and that being a philosopher was a "means" to this end. "An absolutely necessary means", as any good writer embodies a certain philosophy in his writing.

As a result, I think that you cannot expect a writer worthy of reading not to convey a certain philosophy in his books. From my experience as both a writer (a hobbyist - so far) and an essayist/philosopher, I can tell that fully integrating and understanding the Neo-Tech idea system (= a spin-off of Objectivism), has been a necessary Catalyst for me to fully realise my potential as a writer.

(I do not blindly follow any philosophical theory, but rather am using Neo-Tech and other sources as a useful starting point in a "Standing on the shoulders of Giants fashion.").

My stories reflect this philosophy of mine in many ways. At one point, my cousin who had read one of my stories then asked me what was its moral. (He's not really philosophically inclined, but still has an engineering degree). Personally, I intended "The Enemy" to be a story that provided a Satirical look on the Israeli-Lebanese-Hizbullah situation. (Although came up with the idea very quickly back when I got inspired from it.)

However, naturally, I intended it to have a more general message than just "the Hizbulla Sucks". While the story convey several thoughts of mine, I believe that the main message was that any major defaulting on objective/universal Ethics, is likely to yield further defaulting and a deterioration into a complete unethical behaviour. That's what I told him that I thought the message was.

My other stories also reflect other aspects of my personal philosophy, and philosophy is incredibly integral for them.

I sometimes found that I sometimes gave up on reading a literary work because the internal philosophy contradicted my own. For example, I noticed that reading the Harry Potters caused me hypomanias because Rowling's view of life and death and other matters contradicted my own, and because they were fantasy books, that, although humorous, took themselves very seriously. I decided I will only read her future stories only when and if they would be Realism ones.

So I agree with Rand that philosophy is a necessary pre-requisite to being a good literary author.

Now, regarding your criticism of Ayn Rand as a philosopher and an author, while it has some merit, I still feel that Rand is still superb on both accounts: "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" both make a very good read, and I was heavily inspired and agree to her Objectivism philosophy. While she is not without her faults in both areas, I still feel that she had been doing very well in both.

However, I agree that it's hard to truly understand Objectivism from her novels, and that I found "The Virtue of Selfishness" (which was mis-labelled as selfishness is not rational self-growth, which is what it's all about), to be very heavy and hard to read a lot from at a time. (Even though, it's still a good book). The "Neo-Tech Discovery", which was my introduction to Objectivism, is much better in this regard.