Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Politics seems to be everywhere. And maybe it always was, though I don't recall such pervasiveness before, say, the mid-1960s.

Admittedly, I grew up in the shadow of the New Deal and World War 2, an era when disagreements regarding the state of the nation and its place in the world were comparatively small in scale and tended to emerge at election season, leaving the rest of the time fairly quiet.

One place that seemed politics-free in those happy years was the field of science-fiction. Noticeable (to me) politics emerged sometime around 1970 when Harlan Ellison's writing struck me as being a bit Left. Well, whatever his slant, it wasn't the space opera libertarianism common up until then (think, among others, Robert Heinlein). In contrast, at about the same time, Poul Anderson's stories began to include explicit anti-Left elements.

It's worth noting that early sci-fi -- space opera, mostly -- featured conflict between humans and varieties of bug-eyed monsters wherein a Mensa-class scientist might almost instantly invent and build a weapon that would save the humans' day. Science fiction eventually evolved to the point where authors were inventing societies and conflict could be between humans. This opens the field to politics: are the bad guys businessmen, the military, big government -- or what?

Even so, classical science-fiction writers with a strong personal political bent could still keep the political dimension of their stories disguised well enough that it didn't interfere with the main action.

I've mentioned a number of times that I seldom read fiction, and that includes science-fiction. So I'm out of touch.

Can readers bring us up to date regarding the intrusion of politics into sci-fi?

And which currently active writers fall into various political camps based on the content of their work?

Later,

Donald

As you mention, the political history of science fiction moved from the libertarianism of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which venerated competent men dealing with harsh reality, to the progressivism of the New Wave, which found some modicum of respectability in literary circles by tackling fashionable issues.

In the 1980s, the Cyberpunks continued the more leftist trend, venerating not competent individualists but underdogs fighting The System, composed of Evil Corporations.

Posted by: Isegoria on February 3, 2010 7:09 PM

Well, H.G. Wells, one of the greatest sf writers, was a lifelong socialist. The British writers and their politics are a subject unto themselves. There were little if any political thoughts expressed in Golden Age sf, except for technocracy, which was even a short lived political movement until it expressed support for Nazi Germany. Asimov was liberal, but you wouldn't know it from most of his fiction. A kind of vague liberalism became apparent in the '50s with Galaxy and the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and authors like Fred Pohl and others who emerged in the post-war period. Certain subgenres seem to attract writers with certain political leanings. Military sf is likely to be written by conservative or libertarian writers. During the '60s and '70s, when eco-dystopias were a dominant theme, its authors were liberal.

Posted by: Peter L. Winkler on February 4, 2010 1:59 PM

A lot of the current Scottish/British writers are quite lefty - Iain M. Banks is certainly very left personally, and his fiction largely follows suit. Others like Ken MacLeod often contrast political systems e.g. anarcho-capitalist versus Trotskyist societies / factions. I think his might be the most politically interesting sci-fi of recent years.
Richard Morgan has written several books suggesting that he is anti-corporate/corporatism, most notably Market Forces - a road-warrior meets the corporate ladder plot. He has also imagined a universe where bodies can be bought and sold as "sleeves" for people to be downloaded into - people can have their "own" natural bodies repossessed to pay a debt for instance - they are given a unwanted replacement sleeve. This obviously touches upon political issues of personhood, identity and how this might relate to "body-slavery" in the future. His novel "Thirteen" deals with similar issues, but from the side of not being able to change ones genetics and identity.

Posted by: Alan on February 4, 2010 5:28 PM

Trying to find and like authors who belong to one's own side of the political spectrum is a bit of a chore, at best.

Re sci-fi, I tried it with Larry Niven (just readable) and with Heinlein and Orson Scott Card (for me, utterly unreadable).

About the only pointedly conservative sci-fi I've enjoyed would be That Hideous Strength.

By and large, I'd rather be reading H. G. Wells, a lifelong socialist, as Peter says.

Should the true conservative go about sniffing out those who are unfriendly to his favourite dogmas? Leave that to the other side.

Posted by: Robert Townshend on February 4, 2010 6:20 PM

Most science fiction authors currently popular have extremely idiosyncratic political views. Take Steve Stirling, who calls himself a Hillary Clinton liberal and yet stated that if a theoretical button existed that would kill every adult male muslim, he would press it. Another short story writer is a Tolstoyan Christian Anarchist.

It's why I love the genre. Filled with weirdos. Also cyberpunk is less anti-capitalism and leftist than it is just anti-authority and misanthropic.

Posted by: Spike Gomes on February 5, 2010 2:59 AM

Peter -- Wells is an interesting case because he wrote most of his science-fiction before sci-fi acquired its name and genre status -- this being due to Hugo Gernsback in the 1920s and early 30s.

In short, he doesn't fit the template because he was pre-template.

Posted by: Donald Pittenger on February 5, 2010 11:53 AM

Sci-fi has always been a somewhat amorphous term overlaping with Fantasy or what is sometimes called Speculative Fiction. And it has always been an excellent platform for social and political commentary. Authors can (and frequently do) use magic, aliens, time travel, space colonies, and other distancing devices to enable them to tackle socio/political issues obliquely ... or not so obliquely.

To arbitrarily define a "template" for sci-fi based on a particular slice of material from the decades in which one first encountered the genre as a reader, then further assert that the material dominating this so-called golden era ("space opera libertarianism") was not political is to distort both the past and present. The last time I checked libertarianism and support for technological advancement regardless of any human or social costs are both political positions.

Posted by: Chris White on February 5, 2010 1:41 PM

Heinlein's novels, especially "The Door into Summer" and "Time Enough for Love", were truly about freedom, openness, and the virtues of competence. In contrast, I think most SF writers are apologists for either socialism or fascism and I find them quite nauseating.

However, I did enjoy cyberpunk in the late 80's. Perhaps this is due to its adolescent-like anti-authoritarianism. The only two writers I've enjoyed in the past decade are Alastair Reynold's "Revelation Space" novels, which are a mishmash of all aspects of SF, and Peter Hamilton's "Commonwealth" novels, which depict an immortalist capitalist society.

Posted by: kurt9 on February 5, 2010 3:10 PM

No discussion about SF is complete without mention of James Hogan's "Voyage from Yesteryear". This is probably the single best SF novel ever to be written and is my all time favorite novel of any kind. It depicts the society, the Chironians, that is based on all of the values that I believe in: life, love, freedom, creativity, reason, competence, and individualism.

"Voyage from Yesteryear" is for me the same way that "Atlas Shrugged" is for the Randians.

Posted by: kurt9 on February 5, 2010 3:52 PM

Wells and Verne are justifiably considered the progenitors of modern sf. Something is sf or not dependent on content, not the publication date.
Wells' novel The Shape of Things to Come, was published in 1933 and he scripted the impressive Alexander Korda-produced film, which came out in 1936.

Posted by: Peter L. Winkler on February 5, 2010 10:32 PM

The early U.S. science-fiction community was heavily politicized. The "Futurians" of 1930s NYC (Fred Pohl, Don Wollheim, Judith Merril) were left-wing and for a while some were even Communist.

Heinlein was both a leading SF writer and a Democratic Party organizer in California. Much of his early work reflects a belief in paternalistic 'technocracy'. (In Methuselah's Children. there is a passage where two characters discuss the words news services are allowed to use, based on numeric "emotional index" values - and think it is reasonable.)

With other SF writers, political beliefs pop through in the assumptions behind their imagined futures. Hal Clement was overtly apolitical - but I recall seeing a statement in one of his novels that effectively assumed the truth of socialist doctrine by implication. (Unintentionally, IMHO.)

SF has always had a strain of social radicalism. The "New Wave", like the avant-garde in the arts, was out to smite the Establishment. The result was lots of stories attacking business, religion,
the military, and celebrating sexual freedom.

OTOH, there was a vein of material deliberately aimed against contemporary liberalism to the point of overt parody. Christopher Anvil and Keith Laumer were both prominent in this. Anvil was a favorite of editor John W. Campbell, who turned right-wing in the 1960s. Jerry Pournelle, of course, in the '70s and later.

What's going on now? Can't say - I've largely stopped reading the current stuff.

Posted by: Rich Rostrom on February 6, 2010 6:11 AM

I'm surprised no-one has yet mentioned the Futurians, who were indeed decidedly political, fairly early on.

Posted by: Will S. on February 6, 2010 10:33 AM

You need to know about S.M. Stirling (Man-Kzin Wars series with other authors) re: mankind's ongoing battles against a humanoid tiger race, the Kzin; Dean Ing (Heavy Lifters, Fourth World War trilogy) celebrates businessmen, technology, inventors, and a love of liberty; L. Neil Smith is a gun nut and libertarian with some winning characters. Check them out!

Posted by: DC Handgun Info on February 17, 2010 9:21 AM






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