Is Science Fiction Getting More Conservative?
Correia, author of the excellent Monster Hunter International books, said sci-fi writers are increasingly unafraid to speak out.
“I don’t really know if there are more of us or if we have just become less shy about it,” he said. “The publishing industry is primarily based out of Manhattan, which I’ve been led to believe is a completely paved island that doesn’t even have any shooting ranges. Of course us conservative types from fly-over country are going to seem odd to them. I’ve heard some real horror stories from other writers about the way they’ve been treated because of their personal politics.”
Correia also noted that most of the bad reviews he’s gotten have been from people who apparently objected to his politics.
“I’m primarily known as a contemporary fantasy author rather than a sci-fi author,” he said. “I’m usually writing about our current world with some fantastical elements thrown in.”
“I often get lumped into the genre ‘urban fantasy’,” he said. “Apparently, in urban fantasy it is really odd to have a main character who is a gun-loving, anti-authoritarian, stay-off-my-lawn libertarian accountant, who ends of working for a group of Alabama contractors that are constantly being harassed by petty regulations even while trying to kill monsters. I’ve received many negative reviews from people who don’t think it is realistic that I show the government as lumbering and bureaucratic at best, and cold-bloodedly ruthless at worst. This tells me that these reviewers have never worked with the government in real life. Ironically, every really scathing review I’ve gotten has felt the need to mention my personal politics.”
Dr. Pournelle cautioned that any discussion of an ideological drift would have to account for writers like Stanislaw Lem. While basically “socialist,” they thought that “individual liberty was a good thing,” if not always “easily achieved.” Norman Spinrad, for instance, “has always been for liberty, while embracing socialist economic ideas and often rather radical social beliefs.”
Like Dr. Pournelle, Col. Kratman — perhaps best known for his collaborations with John Ringo and his solo work such as A Desert Called Peace — was not entirely certain there has been a drift to the right, but perhaps for different reasons.
“I’m not sure that’s the way to describe it. If there has been such a drift,” he said, “I sense — and it’s only a sense — that it’s been more of a drift away from socialist Utopian science fiction. The whys of the thing are probably rather complex,” he warned, “and my understanding of them, such as it is, is no doubt colored and clouded by my being very America-centric.”
“Still,” he went on, “surely the collapse of communism in the former USSR, and the revelation of communist crimes so starkly that only loons can deny them — and rejection of the reality while retaining the name in China — have something to do with it.” For Kratman, “previous generations of heavily left-wing sci-fi have probably motivated some conservative writers.”
Motivated him? “No, not so much. I tend to take my motivation from leftist thought outside of science fiction, though I admit to urinating on the glib sci-fi staple of monocultural, unified, peaceful planets wherever possible. We probably ought not discount the growing and obvious failure of the social democratic state and liberalism-slash-progressivism, either.”
As for the future of science fiction, Pournelle submitted that “science fiction will always be just a bit out of the mainstream of political thought.”
Here are other factors to throw into the pot:
SF has for a long time been a literature of ideas, whose gems feature strong, innovative deviations from existing consensus. That would appear to militate (pardon the pun) toward a pro-freedom mindset.
Also, to write good SF, it’s necessary to be, if not technophilic, at least not technophobic. Leftist politics in our time is strongly technophobic, in contrast with the “engineering-like” socialism of Marx and Engels. But a technophobe SF writer would be compelled by his mindset to remain within a rather narrow cone of story patterns.
We must grant that SF imposes its own limitations on the writer, but as a rule it’s historically been rather more friendly to ideas and ideals of freedom than not. It’s even compatible with anarchist ideas, as Vernor Vinge, L. Neil Smith, and others can testify. Most left-leaning writers would run screaming from that. With the consequence that apart from Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson, it’s hard to name a prominent left-leaning SF author in print today.
Kim Stanley Robinson totally lost me when he kept insisting that nothing could be done to stop global warming from destroying much of the Earth – while we are terraforming Mars and Venus. Maybe we could do a little terraforming on terra? Too tied to his politics to write stories that make sense.
After reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, I was reticent to buy the next two in his Mars trilogy because of his incessant preaching of the superiority of Marxism versus capitalism. But my fascination with the possible processes of terraforming Mars got the better of me, and I got Green Mars and Blue Mars recently.
What a waste of money. I could not get 1/4 the way through Green Mars. I found myself skipping paragraphs, pages, and entire chapters devoted to the defense of Marxism. In Green Mars he actually blamed the failures of Marxism on capitalism! THat’s right…. Marxism would have been WONDERFUL if capitalist pigs had not constantly undermined it.
When I tried to re-sell the books back to Powell’s in Portland, Oregon, they declined. I asked if I could try again in a few weeks, and they said, “No. There is just do demand for Robinson. We can’t resell them.”
I guess I’m not the only one who just can’t stomach paying good money for science fiction, and getting a bait-and-switch for a leftist political tome.
“With the consequence that apart from Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson, it’s hard to name a prominent left-leaning SF author in print today.”
Charles Stross, Eric Flint, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Moon, Mercedes Lackey, Jim Hines, Joe Haldeman, Fred Pohl, Tamora Pierce, Spider Robinson, many others.
If you’re not reading them, you probably can’t name them, but there are plenty of them.
Well Damn! Welcome Mr. Williamson!
Your “Freehold” novels finished what Heinlein started in my move towards Libertarianism.
Korrect.
Stross had some insane bit about a US-Europe Nuclear War in one of his books with only Dubliner IRA, and North Koreans, and one other group going to the stars. It almost put me off reading him.
I think he is a believer in ‘what did my descendants ever do for me?’ version of atheism.
Eric Flint uses a lot of big words in his 1632 such as syndicalism which probably mean socialism, but I’m not that educated on the varieties of socialism.
Scalzi…ayup. And not nearly as good as Instapundit said. Curse you, Professor, curse you! Moderately interesting.
Moon wrote the Deed of Paksennarrion which is probably the best post-Tolkien fantasy I’ve read. Her other stuff is not nearly as good.
Joe Haldeman wrote ‘Downbelow Twenty’ which I think was a Blue State Evil Nutbars win the Second Am. Rev. by surprise bioweapon attack, and gloat about it book. I think he intended to portray their evil without the ‘hero’ realizing he’s scum.
Tamora Pierce is probably of the school ‘all good people think liberal, don’t they?’, or that’s my impression.
It does surprise me that there are as many lefties as Williamson points out. I think SF is still dominated by the Left, but the Left’s ideas are gone. There are no great dreams anymore for the Left.
There was always an element of Love Freedom in SF, and even genuine Conservvatism, but Powerful Gov’t and Love Freedom don’t work together even if some SF authors thought they did. And the rulers and powers of the dark age were liberal.
I do find it unfortunate that there is less socon in SF. Its something I’m trying to change. Fantasy is basically a socon project, but SF needs more as well.
One advantage Socons have is that they have to make up new mental furniture instead of using the same old threadbare banalities that have been used by decades of liberals. This also makes it harder. It also offers greater rewards for readers tired of the same ol’-same ol’.
Lastly, I am sad to see the Mr. Card seems to have been mistreated by the liberal thought police. I find his work good, if definitely weird. ‘Magic Street’ sticks in the mind.
First of all – enjoyed your work, sir. Please keep ‘em coming.
Then a question: what do think of Iain M. Banks’ work set in his Culture universe? He’s one of the few authors of which I am aware who explores the dynamics and the human condition of post-scarcity societies. And it’s a great question; onec we can literally have anything (or be anything) we wish – what’s left?
Hey Mike,
I never thought of Elizabeth Moon as particularly left leaning, but I don’t know her personal politics so there you go. I agree with the rest of the list. Good to see you are reading here.
Rob Turner
Moon is a doctrinaire leftist. She had a long, tedious screed on her website explaining why George W. Bush’s service in the TANG wasn’t “really” military service. What’s really sad is that I think she actually belived that what she was writing was true.
I don’t think you could really consider Elizabeth Moon to be that liberal. Last year year she was pilloried for some conservative statements she made on her blog and was actually uninvited from a convention where she was to be Guest of Honor because her views clashed with the liberal agenda pushed by the convention chair. She was very gracious about it, but to her credit stood her ground.
While the pendulum may be swinging back a bit from the left, being a conservative in a liberal dominated field such as SF/F (or name your literature) is still not easy.
Ahhh yes, Elizabeth Moon…. I was a huge fan of her novels but I made the mistake of thinking she might enjoy a differing opinion to one of her comments she made on LiveJournal. Let’s just say she was less than enthusiastic and was rather uncivil in her response. She was quick to ban me from her blog.
Before she banned me I had a liberal friend of mine (yes, I do have the occasional liberal friend and the occasional conservative friend) read the thread and offer me his opinion in case I was coming across as a jerk. He seemed to think SHE was the one who came across as the North end of a South bound mule.
I still think she is a very entertaining writer but my enjoyment of her material is colored by my disappointment in her lack of civility and open mindedness to different points of view.
Ironic, considering her troubles with WISCON.
Too bad this artice did not come out a couple of weeks ago. I was moderating a panel on consertatism in SF anf fantasy at Arisia.
Arisians are real? How’d they make out with that thing with Eddore?
The problem for liberals in SF is that their references tend to be mired in rather specific trends and issues from the 60s and 70s – stray too far from this by using archetypes and their point becomes rather lost.
This makes for time bound and rather dull SF as well as work that cannot be overly speculative.
A more conservative or libertarian approach tends to use overarching themes that are rather more classic and enduring and less time bound. This enables recognizable themes to be reworked, recombined and still recognizable as human concerns. Van Vogt’s “The Weapon Shop”, about the right to own guns on one level, would be rather pedestrian and boring today merely because of it’s too recognizable subject matter but it was ground breaking at the time because it looked into the future searching for trends extending into that future and this is one of the things SF does best.
With liberals, how many Vietnam or Palestinian analogues can you have before you’re bored out of your mind? Don’t need any more dolphins as pals or unicorns, kitty cats or spaceships named the John Denver either.
Conclusion: without todays headlines, there really is no liberal SF since it has difficulty projecting its concerns into the future. Hopefully this is an indication that political correctness has no staying power compared to reality itself, which is the big awakener and equalizer.
The biter bit? I used to feel sympathy for Moon, but not if she’s willing to ban dissent too.
I have had the same experience with Elizabeth Moon. Any deviation from the American Democratic Left party line in a comment to her blog is treated as “offensive.” I STILL felt sorry for her when she got disinvited, though, as she’s a giant compared to the dwarfs who chose to be offended by her Failure to Conform.
Hm. I would dispute that a few of those should be considered leftists on the basis of their published works. I’m not personally acquainted with them, though, so you might know more about their personal leanings than I. Then there’s the matter of “prominent.” Pohl? Yes. The rest? There’s room for argument.
BTW: Does Mercedes Lackey write SF? I thought she was strictly fantasy.
Misty’s a lefty? That’s so weird since in so much of her urban fantasy novels the hero’s always duck under the government radar. More than once they completely suborned the place of law and order.
Scalzi’s Colonial Union is rather conservative, that government does little more than provide defense and manage interplanetary relations.
Eric Flint, surprising since so much of the “Ring of Fire” is “git ‘er done” and “devil take the hindmost”.
I’ll never forget Heinlein’s piece “Take back your Government”.
Eric Flint, oddly, comes off to me as VERY left wing on most things, but then conservative socially.
“With the consequence that apart from Octavia Butler and Kim Stanley Robinson, it’s hard to name a prominent left-leaning SF author in print today.”
Ben Bova. I say that sadly, for two reasons: one, because I’ve been a Bova fan from way back; and two, because he’s a prominent and prolific author of the sort of near-future/near-space SF I like best. But his recent series of Solar System exploration books are so mired in caricatured conservative villains that I finally couldn’t stomach them.
Jack McDevitt is also at least a bit left-leaning — just read some of his essays where he bemoans the Tea Party and other elements of conservatism — but he keeps his politics out of his books. He’s my favorite modern SF author, and that’s one of the reasons.
Ben Bova is not a socialist. He’s a liberal Democrat of the post-WWII Truman/JFK variety. He’s wrong about global warming, but he’s right about most other things. To the best of my knowledge, he’s supported the GOP in most recent elections, although he continues to be registered as a Democrat.
As far as the corporate villains go, I interpreted that as him believing that corporations, rather than national governments, will be the real powers in space. He’s had many capitalist heroes as well.
Ben Bova’s Privateers felt like a celebration of capitalism. The Soviets were the bad guy and the hero was a businessman who was constantly being hassled by the “powers that be.”
I wouldn’t think of Bova or McDevitt as all that left-leaning. Bova invited Gingrich to speak at some SF function.
Left-wingers in SF are pretty common, but maybe in some areas more than others. As with movies action and military sub-genres might be more Right-leaning, but there’s plenty of other kinds of SF. Also I’d say that exempting Neal Asher most British SF tends to lean Left and some British SF authors can be found in US stories. I think that’s largely true of Canadian SF authors too. I’d say most of the major female names in Science Fiction (Connie Willis, Ursula K. Le Guin, etc) lean a bit left. There are exceptions to that of course, on women, but to be honest I can’t think of too many.
Yep, it’s a lonely game being an SF writer with my politics in Britain, Thomas R. But at least some here on this thread will now know that there are books they can pick up that aren’t Baen and won’t bludgeon them with political correctness and will definitely NOT start off with the line, ‘After the world was destroyed by global warming…’
Connie Willis is an AGW-worshipping leftist wingnut, from what I saw and heard of her at Denver World Con.
China Mieville, M. John Harrison, Brian Aldiss, Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Ian Watson…
I’m pretty sure Phil Dick is dead and so doesn’t count as a current SF author.
So is Octavia Butler.
I agree with most of what you stated, but for one oversight. You are all familiar with the works of Ray Bradbury, arguably one of the best SF novelists of the day. His variety of narratives is quite broad, almost never falling into a “story pattern.” Yet he is a self-proclaimed technophobe.
Actually, wasn’t Andre Norton a technophobe?
The literati have looked down their noses at sci fi since…well, always. Science fiction writers might as well write what they please; it makes no difference either way.
I agree. In any case, I read this genre not because I agree with it, but because it can make me think. As long as the writer is somewhat cogent, I don’t care what kind of politics they’re spewing.
The key is that I know exactly WHY my politics are aligned the way they are. A contrary opinion or three that gives me reason for thought is a GOOD thing.
We have several favorite authors in common. Thank you for introducing me to Larry Corriea; I’d never heard of him before, and will definitely check his books out.
To the list of if not conservative, but definitely not “progressive” SF writers at Baen, I would add David Weber and John Ringo. Weber’s military SF reflects less a conservative than a pragmatic libertarian approach, notably his Honor Harrington series. The Star Empire of Manticore may be a monarchy, but it’s one run more on the English “constitutional” model than any of the Continental “absolute” ones. Its most important ally, the Republic of Grayson, is essentially Utah as run by Brigham Young on a planetary scale.
As for its adversaries, the Republic of Haven has run the gamut from an oligarchic “Long Parliament” style state, to one modeled on Revolutionary France, and more recently one looking more like France after the 1848 revolts. (Which, for Haven, is actually an improvement.) The Solarian League is a pure oligarchic state, with a strong resemblance to what the Soviet Union might have evolved into if Stalin had been a Fabian socialist instead of a Marxist type.
Weber’s point seems to be that some forms of government (like the Solarian League’s, or Haven in its “Directory” stage) are inherently bad, and cannot be reformed, only replaced. While others (such as Manticore’s) generally work well, except when being run by the incompetent, the greedy, or those who are simply stupid. “Ashes of Victory” and “War of Honor” are about the consequences of letting those sorts have the controls.
As for John Ringo, if there is a more libertarian writer out there, it would have to be L. Neil Smith. Ringo firmly falls into the Robert Heinlein and John W. Campbell category, as his heroes are definitely examples of the “competent” men and women those earlier authors wrote about. Campbell defined the “competent man” as “The one who knows what needs to be done, knows how to do it, and goes ahead and does it, without waiting to debate it or give everyone else a fair and equal chance to screw things up.”
Mike Harmon, the hero (?) of Ringo’s “Paladin of the Shadows” novels (which are not, strictly speaking, SF) is a self-admitted “very bad man” who operates on this principle. The heroes of Ringo’s and Weber’s collaborative “Empire of Man” series also fit this description, and the main character, Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock, is openly critical of those with socialistic pretensions- even though many of them are his forebears and/or close relations. The point being that he doesn’t criticize their motives, just their methods, which consistently fail to produce their intended results. Incidentally, in this series, Ringo and Weber have an entire polity, the Cavazan Empire aka the “Saints”, which is run on the principles of true deep-ecology environmentalism, complete with missionary expansionism and Messianic fervor. It is not a pleasant place to live, nor is it a good neighbor.
SF was decidedly dominated by those of a “progressive” slant from the Fifties to the Seventies, ranging from Isaac Asimov to Harry Harrison to Dallas McCord “Mack” Reynolds, who was a self-avowed socialist. But that has changed, gradually, I think mainly because (1) most of that generation of writers are now dead, and (2) SF writers do, after all, look at the real world as you have shown here. And being devotees of science, which works on facts, they’ve concluded that in the real world, socialism, in any form, just doesn’t work very well.
Which means that if you write fiction in which it does work, you’re not writing science fiction. You’re writing fantasy.
cheers
eon
I’m a big fan of both Ringo and Weber, I was just unable to get in touch with them for this article. I highly recommend them both, especially Weber’s “Safehold” series.
All in all this was a ton of fun to write. Sometimes I love my job…
Patrick
I had the chance for Ringo to come and speak to my Lit class a couple of years back. He’s a lot of fun. He has little patience for government supported idiots.
The Baen stable in general has a number of excellent writers. David Weber, David Drake, John Ringo, Michael Z. Williamson, Eric Flint etc (in no particular order). I am happy to say I have met or corresponded to some extent with several and while we may have differing opinions in some areas, most are at least open to the fact that people sometimes just disagree. LOL At least one other, not so much (see earlier reply).
I discovered several through the Baen Free Library. I have gone on to purchase many more of their novels thereby proving Mr. Flint’s postulations on the subject of books being made available freely without DRM idiocy. You can read his view of the subject at http://www.baen.com/library
I have read “Freehold” by Michael Z. Williamson multiple times and have bought copies for friends. While I believe he will assert that it was not written to be a libertarian book but a science fiction book, many of it’s libertarian ideals are what makes if such an entertaining read. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend adding it to your reading list.
Yeah, the Baen Free Library has cost me hundreds of dollars. But I’ve read and enjoyed a dozen or so authors that I might not have read otherwise.
OK, here’s a question: name me a liberal sci-fi writer? Frank Herbert? Maybe.
Gene Roddenberry? OK, but Star Trek isn’t a novel and say what you want the Klingons really were the Soviets.
Steven King? He’s horror/fantasy guy and the heroine of The Stand was a black Reagan Republican. Imagine the odds of one of them surviving an Apocalyptic plague.
And then consider some other contemporary names: Dean Koontz, whose almost every work can be summed up as Guns, God and Guts (and golden retrievers) and the late Michael Aliens Cause Global Warming Crichton.
With regard to the classics Robert Heinlein is the godfather of libertarianism and Ayn Rand is its godmother, and yes I recognize the irony in the phrase, and yes Rand wrote sci-fy.
“Is Frank Herbert still liberal or not, and if so, and that is THE question, when did he stop bein’?” as Cormac McCarthy might ask. Though dead quite a long time — twelve generations by Moore’s Law — I’m not sure Frank was a liberal while living. There are three stories I can recall off the top of my head in the collection The Worlds of Frank Herbert that would incline me to believe him a libertarian, and a strongly anarchist one at that.
Also David Drake says he’s conservative. but ringo is awsome
Off the top of my head….
“It was Tuesday, and I got to live the American dream. I got to throw my boss out of a fourteen story window.”
Yes, Correia can be lots of fun.
“As for John Ringo, if there is a more libertarian writer out there, it would have to be L. Neil Smith.”
I’ve never met him, but judging by his books F. Paul Wilson is about as libertarian as it gets. And (with the exception of Wheels Within Wheels) he manages not to get too anvilicious about it *cough*PaladinOfShadows*cough*.
In fairness to Ringo, Ghost was never meant to see the light of day, let alone get sequels. Blame the Barflys and Jim Baen for that one.
Ringo calls himself a Jacksonian conservative, last I heard. He and I certainly differ in friendly fashion over a few issues.
I personally wouldn’t call Smith libertarian.
Stross claims to be an anarchist, but from (unpleasant) interaction with him, I’d call him a anti-American global statist.
Etch it in stone.
Make it a Rosetta Stone so that future generations have a chance of understanding!
Last year I wrote a short essay titled: “Science Fiction Literature and Fine Art Photography: A Study In Contrasts”.
The main point as regards SF was that it seemed more concerned with planet building cultures as a way to speculate or make an interesting story than advancing a particular cause real to Earth.
Liberalism crept into SF, especially in the early 60s, more in terms of the soberness of the stories, almost as if the new “serious” writer was ashamed of the genre and wanted to circumvent it, subvert it and transform it. And of course reflections of the cultural revolution crept into SF at that time but still not in always obvious ways as the concentration was still on story and how those narratives were constructed.
“Dangerous Visions”, (1967), was a collection of many really fine short stories and was edited by that ultimate vision of contrary for contrary’s sake, the talented Harlan Ellison. The problem proved to be that if everyone is an iconoclast then no one is an iconoclast. Luckily the ship plowed on and took the best of the counter culture without throwing out the past entirely as was the case in so many other fields of artistic endeavor such as film, design and commercial art.
Political correctness soon followed typified by David Brin and his dolphins and before that Ursula K. LeGuin who, despite her many awards, I still feel is liked more for her politics than any claim to innovation or narrative distinction; Jack Vance is her master in every way possible but without a political polemic, no one outside the field has ever heard of him.
Some writers put on many hats for story and were sometimes confused with their subject matter being their politics as with Robert A. Heinlein and his “Starship Troopers” for whose politics he was roundly criticized by some. For some reason he never got the opposite effect from “Stranger In A Strange Land”. Heinlein tried to follow the new liberalism but failed utterly. Still, for my money is is the best and most influential SF writer of his generation.
Heinlein arguably has had only 1 film adapted from his work as I dismiss the other 2 while Phillip K. Dick is at something like 8. To me this is a sure sign of political correctness and a certain aura being attached to a work that is simply a kind of urban myth rather than a reflection of how good the work is in the larger context of SF literature. Dick certainly has his fans but I prefer a sober Heinlein to a semi-psychotic or drunk Dick; for me, eccentricity comes not out of wanting it or being troubled personally but out of a creative center like Heinlein or Van Vogt or Bradbury or Vance and scores of others.
Newer writers like Jack McDevitt and Peter Hamilton posit societies largely as politically correct socialist peacenik constructs with a healthy dose of capitalism much like the U.S. today. Having said that, McDevitt finds ways of introducing mystery and a certain amount of mayhem into his stories and Hamilton a great deal of violence.
The bottom line of the essay is that SF righted its own ship according to the marketplace and has never entirely succumbed to either liberalism or political correctness though the newest short story writers are troubling in this regard. Fine art photography became a type of bureaucracy unattached to a market place and has succumbed into a debauched and politically correct realm where every other artist’s statement seems to have something in it about social justice which I find creepy. It goes without saying that the vacuum of talent in fine art photography is immense; talent and people who can actually think have been scared away by a genre that is nothing more than a corrupt version of Democracy Now with not even a trace of conservatism or sense of humor about itself.
I also wrote an essay about photographer Robert Frank and his book “The Americans” and how it was a sign of the new self-loathing that crept into our country helped by Burroughs, Ginsberg and other outcasts who of course had no interest in families or the mainstream since they were obsessed with depicting that mainstream as conformist and therefore not for them when the truth is that they were just troubled oddballs who liked drugs.
Mr. May,
With respects to Heinlein’s one Hollywood adapted film – Starship Troopers – the movie and the book have extremely little in common other than the basic plot. The screenwriter(s) should have been lashed a few hundred times for destroying that entire story. Starship Troopers needs the same resurrective treatment the original adaptation of Dune (Herbert) had…a remake that actually follows the story instead of what the screenwriter(s) ‘saw’.
Couldn’t agree with you more. Starship Troopers is an abomination. I hated it so much I can’t stand to watch some others I used to like–Robocop and Total Recall to be specific. Verhoeven makes my hair hurt.
Most definitely! I remember being excited about the flick…and nervous about how it would be done. Then I saw it and all my fears came true. I even had to re-re-read the book again to make certain of my memory.
I wonder if the outfit that produced “An American Carole” would be willing to delve into the genre? Anyone have a hotline to David Zucker?
Well, I know very well of the horrors of those ‘movie adaptations’ of Heinlein’s most publicly known work. It’s a damn shame such a concept, even when you remove the politics but focus on the military tactics and equipment themselves, it would’ve been an awesome movie.
The Japanese made a more faithful adaptation (Rico was still white, not a Pinoy) and I can say the serialized TV stuff were also truer to the books than the stupid movies.
Yes I think most everyone rejects “Starship Troopers” and “Destination Moon” as Heinlein adaptations and also a third I’d forgotten, “Project Moonbase”. Only “The Puppet Masters” fits the bill and it’s an alright movie.
However I’m happy to report that I own a very rare 3-sheet on linen of “Project Moonbase” and also the handsome insert which is awesome. Sold my 1-sheet.
For some reason I’d like to see “The Door Into Summer” adapted into film. Not one of Heinlein’s notable novels but a favorite with me – maybe it’s the guy and his loyal cat and Heinlein always did time travel well. The story goes that Heinlein got the title from his wife remarking something about their cat looking in horror at snow when the door was opened.
One day at my girlfriends during the dead of winter in Minneapolis, I opened the door to let her cat out and the cat hissed at the snow and cold. I thought that was really funny.
Door into Summer is one of my wife’s favorites, too. Personally, I’d like to see The Moon is a Harsh Mistress made into a movie. Tunnel in the Sky wouldn’t hurt my feelings, either.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress; Puppet Masters (to the latest edition of which I got to write an Afterword — cue fangirl squee); The Door Into Summer; Have Space Suit; Glory Road; Revolt in 2100; The Number Of the Beast…
But honestly, the worst of Heinlein’s work (Arguably The Cat Who — though I never liked Job, possibly because of coming from another tradition and not ‘getting’ it) could give a run for the money to the best of the field today.
As for the politics of fantastic literature — I loved this article and wish it were true. Everything else aside, it would be good to have the politics in the field reflect the politics of the population. We’d sell more. They’d read more. Everyone would be happy. Unfortunately, judging by my facebook friends, most of which are in some way involved with the field, if Lenin were on the ticket in 12, he would carry it by something like 90%. Stalin would probably get a higher percentage of the vote. And I’m afraid in general writers are more on-the-fence or center than the editors, publishers and other, assorted gatekeepers — Baen excepted.
I don’t think that most of the juveniles would make very good movies – the exception probably being Starman Jones. There’s not enough visual action in them. And nothing is more boring in a science fiction movie than people sitting around talking about things.
I don’t think Job would be a very good movie cause it’s an idea book. It’s strongly from Heinlein’s anti-religion views and thus one of my favorites.
Stranger hasn’t been made into a movie because, lets face it, there’s noone in Hollywood who could successfuly play Valentine Michael Smith, even though they thought Tom Hanks could at one point (he would have been a terrible choice).
I think the book of Heinlein’s that would best translate into film is probably A Door Into Summer. Time Enough for Love should be made into an HBO miniseries.
Heinlein’s Puppet Masters made a pretty good movie, eclipsed by Anne Rice’s stupid vampire, whose film came out at the same time. He also scripted the excellent Destination Moon back in the 50s, and was involved in the sequel, Project Moonbase.
I vaguely recall reading somewhere that even Verhoven admits the film screenplay wasn’t adapted from the book itself. It was a screenplay he’d written or someone else had written. He was looking for something to call it and he just liked the name Starship Troopers. So he bought the rights..changed the screenplay to make it a ‘little’ more like the book, at least as far as the names of Characters…and ran with it.
The Puppet Masters was an excellent adaption and also in the early 50′s he wrote the screen play for a movie about a trip to the moon. Very well done for the time. For a better rendition of Starship troopers you have only to look at the short lived series Space: above and beyond.
Perhaps we saw different versions of Space: Above and Beyond Belief. The one I saw had fighter pilots/infantry officers/Hollywood models playing rock music in the cockpits while being “Sure” the enemy was defeated and no need to send scouts to double check, multistage chemical rockets flying from Earth to other systems, impossible biology, and said Hollywood models somehow looking cute and fresh while allegedly “Starving” to death while in their infantry officer role, with no enlisted people to lead.
Then apparently it got REALLY bad after I stopped watching.
Dear Mr. May,
I would very much like to read both of the essays you mention! Is there a website where I can find them? If not, I’d be most obliged to you if you could email them to permanentnewbie@rocketmail.com. Nothing I like better than to see someone perceptive point out parallels between fine arts and popular literature…
Click on my name. There is also a long essay about the relationship between literature and film SF.
If the white on black type bugs your eyes copy and paste it into a text editor; the photos will come along too.
I should change it. I wrote them for my own amusement; I’m not a blogger.
Can you imagine a movie made from Niven & Pournelle’s “Oath of Fealty”?
Neither can I.
Niven’s Ringworld works would make a stunning series of movies – in the hands of a competent director. Virtually any of Niven’s short stories would fit the bill as well. Given the capabilites of today’s CGI and film-making technology, I’m surprised that none of his works are even on the radar for production.
I’m fantasizing right now about the “Man-Kzin Wars” being made into a series of movies – or even well-made mini-series.
“A Hymn Before Battle” could also be spectacular. Or “Hammer’s Slammers” – or “Through the Looking Glass” or “Footfall”…
Quick, somebody put me in charge of the Sci-Fi channel!
The hell of it is that the film industry appears to be run by cocaine-addled, malignantly narcissistic popinjays who can’t seem to come up with anyting besides re-cycling older (and mostly better) films into pablum and crap. That is, when they’re not pouring millions into anti-American screeds that no one seems to want to watch.
Lordy, there’s a wealth of stunningly imaginative material out there. I’m a big Iain M. Banks fan, and I’d love to see any of his Culture novels put to the big screen. Not to mention his Against a Dark Background – very dark, hilarious and wildly imaginative with memorable characters.
“Footfall” first, for the whole sci-fi-writers-save-the-world bit.
Vinge’s “A Deepness in the Sky” shows what limitless government and surveillance give you.
I don’t know about an actual movie for A Hymn Before Battle. We had a discussion about that in Ringo’s room on the Baen Webboard about 2yrs ago and a few of us[I include myself in this] came to the conclusion that, the only way to get ANY of Ringo’s stuff done right would be to farm it out to one of the Japanimation houses and let them run with it. give it to hollywood and they’ll destroy it.
The entire Known Space series would give a good years worth of hour long, or two hour long mini movies. But, Mr. Niven may be a bit frightened about converting his work onto the screen. Maybe he saw Starship Troopers, too??
Is there someone in charge there now?
One day I was daydreaming about a movie trailer for Niven and Pournelle’s, “The Mote In God’s Eye”. Now that would be a great movie and one finally within reach thanks to new special effects. I saw the trailer as a series of really quick cuts highlighting the dramatic moments where one can never quite clearly see the Moties; maybe a poster could show a “gripping hand”.
I also think it is arguably as good an SF novel as has ever been written. SF as well as fantasy and horror have been blessed with some truly fine novels and short stories. Mainstream folks don’t know what they’re missing; how is it that one of the best American prose sylist’s of the last century is an unknown outside his field – Jack Vance? Translating the sardonic humor, cynicism and wit of a Vance novel to film would be difficult since they are so largely based on a perceptual atmosphere with plot a less obvious consideration.
I’d like to see a miniseries of the Mote in God’s Eye, The Gripping Hand and Outies. A CGI training ground for movie makers of the future as well as an exploration of eternal human themes.
Niven’s “Ringworld” as-a-movie has been in development several times over the last couple of decades. Not one version has ever gotten farther than some artwork and some character descriptions (of varying degrees of inaccuracy.) Each time an announcement of yet another version has come out, it seems that Hollywood is only interested in using the book’s name while rewriting the plot to include whatever SFX & political agenda is currently fashionable. Fans on the Larry Niven Mailing List often debate which actors would be best for which role, as well as whether live-action or CGI or traditional animation would stay truest to the novel. I think the main fan-reaction boils down to “you’d have to film a 10-hour movie just to make a decent *attempt* to stay true to the book!” Distilling the novel into a 2 hour movie would be very difficult, to say the least. The most acceptable compromise fans I’ve spoken with can agree upon seems to be “film the whole book and then edit the footage down into a series of movie-of-the-week TV specials for a cable channel that doesn’t run adverts.” My opinion is that the same can be said of any fan-favorite novel- If you love the book that much, it would be hard to accept any movie that condenses the best bits down to a 2 hour format.
“Imagine” isn’t the verb I would use. “Dream of” and “anticipate” are a lot closer. And though it wouldn’t fit the sentence structure, “knock down little old ladies to get to the front of the line” sums it up pretty well.
It would be a great thriller though
Patrick
Let’s not forget Niven addapted one story for the Star Trek cartoon series. I think it was “the soft weapon” but I may be confused.
Larry Niven’s “The Soft Weapon” is one of my favorite short stories and I think “Neutron Star” and “Tales of Known Space” are the 2 finest single author short story collections I’ve ever read.
Only John Varley’s “Persistence of Vision” and “The Barbie Murders” can compete in my view.
Used to enjoy John Varley quite a bit.
I always wanted the Star Trek producers to bring back the one-off reptile race of Gorns to whom Kirk shows “the advanced trait of mercy” and — in the Harlan Ellison guest-writer tradition — have John Varley do the screenplay.
It would be called… (drumroll please) …
John Varley’s “Gorn Must Die.”
I have to take you to task for labeling Peter F Hamilton’s work as positing societies largely as politically correct socialist peacenik constructs”. I’ve read and reread both the Night’s Dawn trilogy and his more recent two trilogies, both the Starflyer and Void trilogies. First, I agree, there is a great deal of violence (read as action), but none of it gratuitous. Second, in the Night’s Dawn trilogy, he specifically points out that mankind only found it could get along when a culture or religion had an entire planet to call its own…hardly multi-culti nonsense. I’m not sure what in his work would qualify as “pc” either.
Hamilton, to me, has always gone to great lengths to create vibrant, believable space opera. It has always struck me, overall, as healthy libertarian/capitalistic societies that contend with the reality of near-immortality. I don’t think one could point to the Edenists as PC or progressive using our current terms. Given a situation in which everyone has telepathy and real empathy (as opposed to the flaky Hillary Clinton sort), it has always been my opinion that Edenist culture would inertia itself right into what Hamilton creates.
I didn’t mean to imply that Hamilton’s work is in any way PC since millions of people die really horrible deaths in both the Night’s Dawn and Starflyer work. In this regard I would say that his violence is entirely gratuitous as he is an entertainer and not an ideologue; the guy wrecks entire planets and some of the violence is very graphic, at times like a roller coaster ride of a horror movie. But there is not a trace of whiney liberalism in Hamilton’s work and if I had to place it in one camp or another I’d have to say Conservative since Hamilton very much comes off as a pragmatic rationalist.
Keep in mind that when Poul Anderson revised “The Broken Sword” in 1971 that he apologized in a new foreword for its violence and Hamilton is light years away from any considerations like that.
I was speaking more of the underlying and casually drawn cultural infrastructures that lace his work and not the societies he specifically engineers towards a specific purpose. Many of these resemble a Seattle full of Starbucks or Uptown Minneapolis and “Minnesota Nice”.
Perhaps this is why Hamilton kills off millions of these types in his work which I think is really brilliant – his work not the violence. McDevitt is brilliant too. I remember years ago Harlan Ellison was on the returned Tom Snyder show and he said, watch out for this guy named Jack McDevitt, he’s one of the very best writers I have ever seen.
I never heard of the guy and said to myself, “Yeah, right.” McDevitt’s “Infinity Beach” is one of the very best SF novels I have ever read and his other stuff is also very enjoyable to me.
“Ursula K. LeGuin who, despite her many awards, I still feel is liked more for her politics …”
I believe it’s more correct to say
“Ursula K. LeGuin who, as a consequence of her politics, got many awards.”
I went to that particular well many times in the late seventies at the insistence of my peers. Just goes to show — once again — how dangerous peer pressure can be. I don’t believe LeGuin ever actually had an original thought in her life.
I’m not so sure there has been all that much of a drift to the right – some of the greatest writers of science fiction have been libertarians with a conservative (mostly pro-military) edge: Robert Heinlein being the classic example, but consider also the essentially freedom oriented work of people like Poul Anderson, David Drake, and others like Philip Jose Farmer, all going back as far as the ’30s with Heinlein.
I read science fiction by the bale as a kid, starting with the Heinlein juveniles in the mid-1950s, and never had the sense that much of it I read promoted any sort of leftist worldview. The great exception was Asimov, but his work was interesting almost as a critique of the very collectivism he posited. Even the world of Dune was rooted in rebellion against tyranny in an uber-collectivist universe.
I think many of them were not social conservatives, in the sense that they were often not tied to traditional (especially sexual) morality, but they were very much tied to a very classical liberal view of liberty and individualism. Just the sort of thing to appeal to strong young minds who were attracted to classical liberal notions but who found traditional religion and morality stifling.
You got to sit and talk with all four of them? Hory Clap!
/swoon
I wish! No, I did it by email, although I do still get to correspond with a couple of them which is very cool…
Patrick
If one is looking for science fiction with a decidedly conservative point of view, I’d like to recommend just about anything by David Weber–especially his “Honor Harrington” series where the “bad guys” are collectivists with millions “on the dole.”
Thanks for the article. I’m an avid Science Fiction reader. My thoughts:
1. Regular Sci-fi readers are fairly tech savvy and intolerant of nonsense. Modern liberalism requires wishful thinking and false assumptions – a bad mix that can put glaring holes in the flow of a story. Honesty, even Kratman’s brutal honesty in “Caliphate” is preferred to wishful thinking.
2. Military vets have been writing military sci-fi for decades. Pournelle, Keith Laumer, Kratman, Ringo, David Drake, and Michael Z. Williamson are all conservative / libertarian writers in that vein.
3. The Dean – Robert Heinlein – was the original military vet, libertarian sci-fi rock star. His novels have greatly influenced all of the above as well as my own political views. “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” had more influence on me than any political essay.
4. I’m not sure that the writers have changed as much as modern “liberals” have. I was just reading a Pournelle essay in “Survival of Freedom”, he quotes extensively from John Stuart Mill – one of the pioneers of modern liberal thought – Mill sounds like a wild-eyed right-wing libertarian to the modern ear.
Heinlein and Solzhenitsyn were the two of the most influential authors i encountered in my youth.
There was something tremendously appealing about Heinlein’s freedom- and competence-oriented writing.
I first encountered Solzhenitsyn, when, as a 6th grader, I found his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in the school library.
Between the two authors, I was shown the antipodes of the human condition: with Heinlein, the freedom to reach for the stars on the one hand, and with Solzhenitsyn, the blunt and brutal cruelty of a society and a worldview that sought – and succeeded in many cases – to reduce humanity to cattle.
From that point, that was when I began to understand that the Left, alng with all of the premises upon which they based their view of Mankind were the true enemies of human dignity and freedom. History, and a couple of hundred million corpses has proven this correct beyond the shadow of a doubt.
I have no idea of you are right or not but SF movies like Avatar show a left leaning anti miltary/human outlook are still wel and good. Orinically despite Cameron’s attack on the white man everyone I ever spoke to loved the movie. When I asked them (young and old alike) about the political message they all said (almost verbatim) “I don’t know about that, it just looked cool”. Message aside, I just wasn’t interested in seven foot Smurfs on flying dinosaurs acting out “Dances with Wolves” (which was a much better movie).
That diatribe aside I think all four of these chaps made excellent points. I have writen two SF screenplays (which no has cared to buy, option, produc eor even read) but both of them are pretty conservativ because that is the kind of society that produces the real advancement required for such technological advancements (mine are “rockets and rayguns” types). Liberal SF of an all peacful ‘kum-ba-ya’ Earth true fantasy. It denies human nature. The very best representation of the manifestation of the libreal dream in in “Serenity” when they go to the planet Miranda. If you have not seen it, see it.
“I’m gonna show you your dream. I gonna show you a world without sin”.
…………………..Captain Malcom Reynolds
Please pardon the typos. It was suppsoed to read
a left leaning anti miltary/human outlook are still alive and well.
‘Ironically’, despite Cameron’s attack on the white man,………..
(which no has cared to buy, option, produce or even read)
Liberal SF stories that center around an all peacful ‘kum-ba-ya’ Earth are the true fantasy.
It’s interesting to compare Firefly/Serenity with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Two different takes on a collectivist, big-state future society. I bet Roddenberry and Whedon each believed that his vision of the future was optimistic, the former because the big state has made everyone safe and well-fed and the latter because there are still people around who value liberty more than soft living and security. I guess the two men are/were products of their times.
Interestingly, before his Star Trek days, Roddenberry wrote a number of scripts for Have Gun Will Travel, a fiercely individualistic Western starring Richard Boone. Paladin, the series’s protagonist, was the ultimate in self-reliance and insistence on personal responsibility.
I’ve often wondered whether Roddenberry’s subsequent association with the markedly leftist Harlan Ellison had anything to do with his own leftward drift.
Yes, but the Roddenberry episodes of “Have Gun, Will Travel” stand out. Not necessarily as good, either.
One of the things that makes Firefly/Serenity stand out in the field of media sci-fi and fantasy is its solid realism in making the central political conflict not one of obvious Good vs. even more obvious Eeee-Vil, but in recognizing that almost all such conflicts are between incompatible visions of the good. By contrast, Star Wars, while a delight to watch (well, the first three films, anyway), lacks the sophistication of even a Max Brand Western. I mean, the Empire is just everything one doesn’t like in one place; a break is definitely called for here…
That’s a good point. I think Whedon’s big government of the future really DOES provide a good, happy, healthy, secure life for those who want that kind of life. Where that government goes wrong, as far as I can see, is its insistence that *everyone* live that kind of life – that one vision of the good life, scientifically designed by very smart and well-intentioned people, is naturally superior to all others. Take that belief to its logical conclusion and you end up with people like the Operative.
“Whedon’s big government of the future really DOES provide a good, happy, healthy, secure life for those who want that kind of life.”
Agreed. Except when said government finds it useful to treat them otherwise. E.g, the monstrous experiments that government researchers performed on River Tam.
As PST said, Whedon reveals just enough of the Alliance’s dystopian underbelly to make you wonder. Too bad it could never be explored. Or, maybe that’s good. I’ve always said Firefly remains a favorite because it was only one season.
I can’t help but think the Star Trek universe is only great because we’re shown the actions of the elite of that society. Their technology (unlimited energy, and the ability to convert energy into matter) suggests there need be no limits to want. I imagine Earth is filled with wannabe artists and athletes, devoting time to hobbies and watching Galactic Idol. But for whatever small percentage of people wants to be the next explorer, military leader, or scientist, there’s Starfleet.
My joke is that communism only works in Star Trek and the Smurf village.
Re: ST — it works only for those who are willing participants in (obedient slaves of) the system. For those who are not, it is just as coercive and immorally murderous as every other elitist system ever invented. Witness the Iotians, Worf’s step-brother, Data, Bashir and his parents, the Maqui, etc.
An excellent critique here: http://www.rhjunior.com/QQSR/00014.html
I’ve always wondered whether Whedon knows that he has written one of the most conservative movies of the age.
Whedon, from what I’ve read considers himself something of a moderate…
That being said Whedon is a freaking genius! And the Fox exec who canceled Firefly should be impaled on a short stake.
Patrick
I have been very careful not to find out the name and location of that suit. I would be forced to visit him and deliver “something humorous but lingering.”
I wonder how much Tim Minear had an influence on Joss Whedon’s vision for Firefly and, later, Serenity. Minear seems more a libertarian in outlook. After all, he did attempt a script adapting Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the big screen (though nothing came of it, so far as I know).
I doubt Whedon sees Serenity the same way we do, given how much of a flaming liberal he is. But Whedon has always been committed to flawed characters and mixed motives, all of which figure quite prominently in Firefly/Serenity, as well as his other work.
If you listen to the commentary tracks and read the interviews, it’s pretty clear that Minear did all the world-building, and Whedon cared mostly about Summer Glau’s character.
By “conservative movie” do you really mean ‘Serenity’ in which one of the heroes is a prostitute, the other heroes all rob a bank together (because stealing from the Man is okay), and a heroic secondary character is seen having a non-traditional marriage?
Avatar was science fiction? Good to know.
I always thought it was a filthy-rich-guilty-white-liberal allegory of the myth of the noble savage.
My husband described it as Disney’s Pocahontas in space where the Indians win. (Think about it. The bad guys are tearing up the forest to get “gold.” :p )
Thank you, Patrick.
I recently donated 20 years of Analog to a charity bookstore. It was hard to part with them. I’ve been lugging them from place to place as our family moved. Of the 20 years of issues, I kept 4 issues from 1996 containing the serial “Higher Education” by Pournell and Sheffield. The basic message of the story, Progressivism is anti-progress. Progress takes work, initiative, imagination, discipline and individual freedom to learn from mistakes.
Thanks again for bringing these great authors together for this interview.
An interesting article.
As a SF/Fantasy geek myself, I would like to point out that Heinlein was very Libertarian, Weber very conservative and Christopher Anvil took great joy in poking Government in the ribs.
And I have to mention Mack Reynolds who had interesting viewpoints on all forms of gov’t and Keith Laumer’s Reteif series, which held up diplomats to well deserved ridicule.
In the ’70′s there was a large body of Socialist/Liberal writing in the field. I see this as the usual pendulum swinging
Heinlein was many things, including an Upton Sinclair socialist when he ran as a democrat, a proto-Technocrat, a liberal, a conservative and a proto-libertarian throughout his life. He also wrote about several other types of government he didn’t endorse.
According to Mrs. Heinlein whom I got to know late in her life, if he’d lived to see another election she MIGHT have got him to vote Libertarian. I don’t know. That’s what she told me. She also told me he voted for Reagan — which I wondered about as that was the first election I was in the US for (as an exchange student, back then.)
Mack Reynolds has always interested me. He was obviously a socialist, but several of his books have a rather negative view of what I would consider socialist societies. I collect old Ace Doubles, and his stuff was in quite a few – started by buying them new as a kid (wow- 2 books for the price of one), so I’ve got a fair number of his works.
I thought for sure there’d be a tip of the hat to Robert “There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” Heinlein.
I would agree with the general consensus of your authors that “conservative” may not be the right word, but I think we’re at a point in social and political evolution that any reverence for the liberty and sovereignty of the individual makes one, by default, anti-leftist. The leftists’ continued capacity to believe in a benevolent state boggles the mind.
Read Heinlein’s first book “For Us the Living” and then call him a conservative… of course people change…
Personally, I think the writer is just going to the “right” place – Baen Books. There is plenty of lefty, eco-catastrophic SF out on the market, you just won’t any of it published by Baen (THANK YOU, Terri Weisskopf!).
Also, Eric Flint, author and editor for the 1632 series, is a dyed-in-wool Socialist and former labor union activist, so a fair amount of his content has a leftist bent. Its just that, against the background of the Thirty Years War, it looks almost reasonable!
And yet, I love Eric Flint’s “Ring of Fire” books. He may be a died in the wool socialist, but his books sure don’t come off that way.
Patrick
I think the difference is that he’s a patriotic socialist/union activist (at least formerly). His view of Americans and what they are is too positive for the general strain of progressives. I always thinks it’s funny that many of the honest folks on the left think the Republicans/conservatives are elitist, so ‘power to the people’ is somehow anti-conservative, and making ordinary folks into heroes is somehow a slap at the right. PUH-LEASE! It’s always been the other way ’round. And somehow they don’t realize that a lot of union workers are now upper middle class, and bordering on a hereditary aristocracy. You want to get a cushy job in any union shop you MUST know the right people or have relatives within, or you can forget it. I’d love to make $150k + benefits for simply pulling the same lever for 20 years…well actually no I wouldn’t, I’ll take my current difficult job and less money cause I’d die of boredom otherwise. I think Flint is just a conservative who’s still caught in the fantasy stereotype that has a lot of other leftists/liberals trapped.
“The people” is hard to nail down. Who’s more “people-ish:” a big-business fat-cat who pulls down six or seven figures, or an activist, non-profit nerd with a degree in social work? I’d say “neither.” But I make one critical distinction: I work for the fat-cat, he pays me a pretty good salary and provides me with decent working conditions, and he doesn’t pass moral judgements on me or tell me how I should live. And if I’m really smart and hard-working, I can become a fat-cat, too. Still, he’s not “the people.” We don’t hang out or anything.
Can’t say any of that for the nerd. To me, the nerd is useless. He provides me with nothing. The best he can do is scream “injustice” until somebody else provides me with things. He’s not like me because he does no actual work and produces nothing anyone needs. And he’s always ready to judge me as a person and a citizen, judgement based not on my actual speech or behavior, but on my race, gender, and social class – and of course the degree to which my ideology diverges from his own. Yet he claims some connection to me because he’s all about “the people.”
In most of his books it is subtle, in others it is obvious.
Tanj.
“There ain’t no justice”
For an interesting essay by Dr. Pournelle (who, BTW, has far more legitimate credentials than anyone should have) see “The Pournelle Axis” at Baen books site: http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm
One example left out mainly because there isnot a single author or theme is Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry created a socialist future that seems to work, except that it does not. Non Interference was the mantra yet the Federation always interfered. Most of the drama was caused by normal human tendencies. Individual story authors were all over the spectrum but the themeatic push was for a socialistic utopia. More modern takes of Star Trek have all but disposed of the socialistic Utopia and the newest incarnation disposes of it entirely.
Just saying while I was and am a huge Star Trek fan, the politics it endorsed struck me as very juvinile.
I think it was less that “The Federation” interfered than that certain starship captains (notably one James Tiberius Kirk) kept throwing the rule book out the airlock. Mostly in situations where not “interfering” would have meant the loss of his ship, and crew. (“A Taste of Armageddon”, “Return of the Archons”, “The Apple”, etc.)
Note that in those three incidents alone, Kirk found himself in the position of a previous starship captain who had lost his ship and crew, very probably by following the Prime Directive to the letter. In gunfighting terms, strict adherence to the Prime Directive left the ship and its CO permanently in Condition White; which meant that by the time they realized the ball was in their court, it was too late.
Even Picard, that master of “kinder and gentler” behavior, broke the PD several times, usually in situations similar to Kirk’s. I find it interesting that in spite of the supposedly sacrosanct nature of the Prime Directive, neither Kirk or Picard was ever court-martialed for violating it. While Picard apparently had at least a few “friends at court” in the upper ranks (he was deep-dipped for an Admiralcy early on), Kirk was notably lacking in high-ranking friends.
The fact that both men’s careers survived (in the ST universe, as opposed to the needs of TV storytelling) could indicate that at least some flag officers had serious reservations about the Prime Directive.
Or at least were tired of having to write letters to next of kin when they lost starship crews because of it.
cheers
eon
Well said. I think it worked out like this:
1. Star Trek: Roddenberry had socialist Utopia in the back of his mind but never fully developed it, either because his ideas weren’t fully formed or because 60s TV wouldn’t let him get away with too much preaching.
2. Next Gen: Roddenberry’s socialist Utopian vision fully realized. All mankind’s problems solved, everyone healthy, well-adjusted, and rational, high principles determining everything they do.
3. Voyager: Pulling back from the Utopian vision a bit. Conflict w/in the Federation (Maquis, etc.). Still not quite abandoning the vision, though. Maquis are quickly tamed, most inter-crew conflicts resolved, still plenty of high principles to go around.
4. DS9: Utopian vision totally disposed of. DS9 combined the worst (and, not coincidentally, the most dramatic) elements of the wild west, the cold war, and a Balkan-style ethnic war. The lone Federation Utopian, Cisco, can barely manage the place on high principles. Religion treated as a major factor in people’s lives.
5. Enterprise: Presumably set in pre-Utopian times. Still pretty tame, but not as idealistic as STNG.
7. Star Trek: No Utopia at all. Just a place where regular people live and pick up girls and have bar fights.
Rodenberry was uninvolved in NG or later. His name was on it for credibility with the fans, and he was paid a retainer by Paramount, but he was not allowed any relevant input. The starry-eyed leftist claptrap in NG, and the cartoonish Ferengi, are products of Whollyodd writers and the mentality of the subculture that produced it.
True, but I got the impression that the NG creators and writers were implementing Roddenberry’s celebrated “positive vision of the future.” Maybe it was just their version of that vision.
Anyone here besides me who couldn’t shake the impression that the Ferengi were an antisemitic caricature?
Oy vey!! You thought so, too? If those fershlugginer Ferengi weren’t caricatures it was only because the mashuggineh producers hired real mensch to play them.
In one of the Star Trek movies there is some line about “there is no money. Everyone just works because they want to” — I laughed out loud, before I realized it wasn’t a joke…
“there is no money. Everyone just works because they want to”
Ayup – because they know the alternative. Probably NOT because they just plain enjoy unclogging people’s drains in the middle of the night. Maybe they just use transporter technology to flush the toilet, but when (not if) that technology breaks down I doubt people quietly live with it until the morlocks can pay a house call.
Nothing makes a person want to work quite like a phaser set to Kill aimed in your general direction.
Regardless of the Great Bird of the Galaxy’s personal politics, there wasn’t anything inherently socialistic about TOS. Most of the action took place on board a navy ship. Internally, that works pretty much like socialism in real life (been there, done that). The few glimps we got of Federation society outside Star Fleet didn’t show how the economy worked, except that there were guys at a low level engaged in “buy low, sell high” market activity (Cyrano Jones, Harry Mudd). The Enterprise spent a lot of time on rescue missions & the like, but navies have been doing that since long before Marx (the Roman navy is recorded as rescuing people from the Pompei waterfront during the Vesuvius eruption). Meanwhile, civilian officals of the Federation government were seldom if ever portrayed in a positive light – seems like everybody outside Star Fleet was a pompous jerk or an idiot, some both at once.
Articles like this one are the reason I read PJM. If the works of just Pournelle and Card were to be removed from the shelves, dozens of stories of ideas in areas ranging from the heavens to Hell (yes, literally)–that were all best sellers–would be lost. Thank you for writing it. And, by the way, most fans I know tend to be libertarians (small “l”) rather than social conservatives.
Ron Pittenger
Thank you for that,
I was a bit nervous about how this piece would do, I was uncertain on that. I kinda badgered my editors about it until I think they told me to write it just to get me to leave them alone about it… (kidding we have great editors here) But it was mostly a vanity piece for me, an excuse to meet some of the writers I love to read. I’m very glad to see the hugely positive response.
Patrick
You, sir, have done a tremendous service with this column as far as I am concerned. I admit I have never heard of Larry Correia. I clicked on the Baen link and he is the featured author with a story that starts,
“Once upon a time, in the state of Mississippi, there dwelt an elf princess. The princess lived in the Enchanted Forest with her mother, the queen of the elves, in a ninety-foot long aluminum double-wide trailer.”
I’m hooked.
No e-book version?
Forget it. I’m done lugging around moving boxes of paperbacks.
Baen books sells its own ebooks. Go to baen.com and look at webscriptions. All formats, including Kindle and no DRM — which means they trust the reader not to be a thief. It also means you can put the book on has many devices as you wish — a bonus, if, like me, you don’t want to have to buy a copy of an ebook for each family member.
Baen also (as mentioned above re the Free Library), gives away *tons* of stuff free–you can get hooked on a writer before ever having to pay a cent. (Sarah Hoyt, I just downloaded yours! Always great to find a new writer!)
I agree with Lily. Thank you for writing this.
Though I do tend to disagree that SF is tending right nowadays. I think it’s more that the right-leaning (and libertarian-leaning) authors have more options. And those of us who are a bit tired of the left tend to find them (Thank you, Baen!).
Perhaps it is that conservative & libertarian more easily make it through the slush pile/editing/publishing process nowadays. Previously such authors (except such long-established ones as Heinlein) were probably regurgitated without making it through the system (in the case of Kratman, projectile vomiting; some ideas are just too alien for the system to digect.)
Inducing apoplexy is much more emotionally satisfying than merely causing projectile vomiting. Still, one takes what one can get, emotional satisfaction-wise.
My dad introduced me to sci-fi and fantasy with Ray Bradbury’s “R is for Rocket” and “S is for Space.” I read a little Heinlein, a little Asimov, a little of this and that, but never became a hard core fan. At the time I was starting to read SF, the so-called “New Wave” was in full swing. I quickly discovered that “serious” science fiction (or, pardon me, “speculative fiction”) was all about rubbing society’s nose in its own shit. The left-wing agenda, in other words. Pretty much turned me off the genre. The last time I picked up a sci-fi magazine, it seemed to be filled with the same kind of stuff, only updated for the Bush years and quite overt in its anti-conservative orientation. Has anything really changed, or did I just pick up the wrong magazine?
Forget magazines. Pick up a compilation like Pournelle’s “There Will Be War” series. I got into David Drake, Larry Niven and many others with that series.
Or just go to the library and check-out Ringo’s “A Hymn Before Battle” and enjoy.
The Legacy of the Alldenata series. I read “A Hymn Before Battle” on the Baen free library and have purchased all of the others as soon as they came out. Excellent series!!!
“I quickly discovered that “serious” science fiction (or, pardon me, “speculative fiction”) was all about rubbing society’s nose in its own shit.”
I can’t remember who wrote it, but there was a novel titled “Dying Inside” about a telepath — fits your description to a ‘T’.
Thankfully, while I was reading it I was also getting my first exposure to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, which was enough of a counterpoint I didn’t develop a loathing of the entire genre.
“Dying Inside” was by Robert Silverberg, IRRC
You’re right about the pathetically left leaning short stories if you’re referring to Analog. The last issue has a time travel story that is so pathetically, shallow with the main theme about Bush causing everything evil in the future that I seriously considered stopping my subscription. It seems like there are stories like it every other issue or so.
Is Science Fiction Getting More Conservative?
A Conservative uses what has worked in the past
as a guide to what will work in the future, and
does not try to fix things that are not broken,
innovating only where called for, and only far
enough to meet the need.
Science Fiction starts with the world as it is,
and predicts the results of _one_ major change,
usually in natural law (Faster Than Light ships)
but sometimes a natural or ‘man caused’ disaster.
Sarah A. Hoyt’s DarkShip Thieves (Also a Baen book) is another good one in the “not left-wing” collection, as well as an old-fashioned can’t-put-it-down space opera.
One thing I noticed browsing the comments – notice how few (I think none) of the modern authors listed as “not left-wing” SF writers are non-Baen.
Hm…
Yeah, funny that. . . Jim Baen was a HUGE supporter of the military, in the non-liberal, totally sincere sense. My husband once wrote him about the dearth of good literature – and space – on the submarines he rode, and Baen sent a bunch of DVDs full of ebooks, no DRM and different from the ones on Baen Library, to distribute to the ships. Did the same for a lot of Navy ships, often sending print books to the larger boats – the Enterprise sent him a postcard thanking him for his support, and he scanned that sucker and posted it on his website, right on the front left above the fold.
He may have been the last great Conservative editor, at least for now.
Jim Baen; Hail and Farewell to one of the Greats,
those who demonstrate that _only_ individuals
make a difference.
Amongst his other enthusiasms was longevity;
his use and promotion of supplements such as
Co-Q10, SAM-e, and NADH prolonged and enhanced
his life and the lives of those who were early
adopters of his regimen, myself included.
He would have had a good laugh at the AMA’s
reversal of opinion on the value of vitamins,
in particular the common deficiency in D.
Science Fiction tends towards conservative, because it’s always about the stark truth.
We should not miss the Anti-Utopia theme quite popular in former communist paradises.
“Brave New World” by Huxley,
“1984″ by Orwell
“We” by Zamyatin
“Moscow 2042″ by Voinovich
In response to the idea that conservative readers are more loyal fans than leftist readers, I have to say that it is my experience that conservatives and libertarians, in general, are a much more tolerant bunch. If they like an author, or a series, they are not inclined to peer into the author’s personal politics or religious beliefs. Leftists, on the otherhand, cannot abide the thought that an author may have double-plus-ungood thoughts on either politics or religion.
One only has to read a few comments and reviews about any Orson Scott Card book or story before you see the HE IS A MORMON! *gasp* bigots heft themselves up from their fainting couches to denounce him. They don’t even make the case that his world-view or his religious preferences effect his stories in anyway that makes them inferior. No, just the fact that he has the unmitigated gall to HAVE that world-view and religious preference and STILL think he is worthy of publication offends their delicate sensibilities.
And it’s not the Catholics and the Baptists who are all up in arms about it. It’s the atheists and other assorted leftists.
Well then, if they don’t like mormons, they better stay away from http://www.schlockmercenary.com, then.
As an atheist of impeccably libertarian credentials, I’ll thank you not to lump me in with the godless Commies, okay?
(Although I agree with your point in general, the assumption that failure to acquire belief on this point means I must believe in a bunch of quack socialist nostrums irritates just a little, especially because it gets made a lot.)
Thanks. Imagine how often an atheist of impeccably conservative credentials gets the same treatment.
Yes, it is!
I know this is science fantasy versus science fiction, but Terry Goodkind had an outstanding indictment of socialism in his Sword of Truth series. The book “Faith of the Fallen” gave a stark illustration of the difference between free societies and controlled societies. Great read!
-burger
Goodkinds Sword of Truth series started out as basic sword & sorcery, but when he got to Faith of the Fallen and the books following, he incorporated a lot of Objectivist ideas. Had Rand been a better fiction author, she could have written the later books herself.
I think one of the best early authors in the libertarian school was Eric Frank Russel. One of his short stories gave us the phrase “MYOB”–mind your own business–and he always played on the entrenched stupidity of bureaucracies with determined, competent protagonists winning out by playing their idiocy back on them. I suspect he may have hated beancounters even more than I do, which is hard to imagine.
Another commonality to many of the better SF authors of the 1950 – 1980 period was that many had served in uniform, though it impacted them differently (Heinlein and Haldman, for instance). Relatively few of today’s authors are veterans of any sort (only 5% of the general population now has military service in their backgound).
the nice thing about the sf market is that it is just that: a market. other than books purchased by librarians – who tend to be “non-conservative” – the ultimate decisions are made by the purchasers.
personally, I rarely give an non-Baen book more than a passing glance. Right on, Kate.
even Eric Flint the “socialist” comes across as rather tolerable, even pleasant, in his books. I think of him as an compassionate conservative, or as Ed Koch described himself, as “a liberal with sanity.” Unless I am missing something, his primary themes are thrusts against tyrannical authority and abuse of people for the benefit of the elite. I don’t think he is quite happy with the Labor scene today; indeed I picked up a bit of union-mockery in “The Crucible of Empire” although it’s impossible to tell if that’s from him or his co-author.
As a Sci Fi geek not much older than the author, I have been disturbed by the amount of liberal writing that has invaded the genre. I think the real point is that popular liturature is so liberal that science fiction and some of the adventure genre (see Vince Flynn and Brad Thor) is a last bastion of conservate and liberatarian writing.
Joe Haldemans Forever War was an obvious indictment of the Vietnam War, however much of the back story was of social liberalism. David Brins work, including Startide Rising, is of a liberal viewpoint. Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkisegan novels are a generally liberal rebuttal of conservative themes. These authors should be on any science fiction fans bookshelves,and all three have won the Hugo or Nebula awards for thier excellent work, but they are liberal writers.
Beyond them however I have seen or picked up some absolutly horrid Sci Fi liberal dreck. The genre faces significant challanges from publishers other than Baen.
Can’t disagree that there are a lot of liberal ideas in the Vorkosiverse, but there’s also plenty of conservatism in them in the love of life and freedom. Dunno whether it was Aral or Cordelia who dreamed up letting the residents move from one counts’ district to another easy, but it “federalized” Barrayar by making the counts compete with one another.
Of course, Lois does use the word “progressive” as if it meant “freedom-loving”. That sure doesn’t match with here-and-now usage!
Patrick, great article. And hey, I know one of those guys! (the big, rugged, handsome one)
Larry, I love your work. I discovered you, Sarah Hoyt, John Ringo, Michael Z. Williamson and others by buying one of the Baen Webscription bundles. Found others on the Baen free library. Baen is great.
As for SF in general, I felt surrounded by liberal loonies at the Renovation World Con. I listened to David Brin pontificate that all Republicans were anti-science.
I don’t think SF as a whole is getting more libertarian/conservative. But more of it is available, especially at Baen Books.
I enjoyed Nancy Kress’ “Probability” series and Robert Charles Wilson’s books. I always had a nagging feeling they were liberals, however, they never let it screw up their stories.
John Scalzi is a flaming liberal but I liked “Old Man’s War”. I don’t know what Dan Simmons thinks – I assume he is completely insane – but his books are brilliant.
As Lily said, I don’t really care as long as the book is solid.
Not sure why you would label Simmons as “insane”. Other than having a mind that generates absolutely astounding stories.
He strikes me, in reading his website occasionally, as being realistic about things, with a strain of frustrated libertarianism poking its head out every once in a while. He is, more than anything else, thoughtful. I think that is worth much.
Simmons’ stories – their depth and variety – have to come from a mind far in advance of mine.
I’m surprised you think that, Simmons has proposed genocide of Muslims, and as a result of that, I will never read a Simmons novel ever again. A pity, I’m morbidly curious about Flashback. Morbidly being the keyword.
Mr. Picaro has been clearly tagged as a troll in more than one place in this thread, and long ago, but I still feel an obligation to report what I’m sure is obvious to most: Dan Simmons has certainly not advocated genocide of Muslims or any other group.
What an abhorrent lie, and in the midst of a thread that practically saved the internet for me.
Jack Vance was and is a conservative. Read his his great classic ‘Wyst’.
What is fascinating about Pournelle is that he is the holder of H. Beam Piper’s future history timeline. Piper put together a continuous future history as a framework for writing short stories and novels, and he modeled that on various past historical trends so that a modern reader can get insights into something like the Great Sepoy Mutiny by reading ‘Uller Uprising’. His protagonists tend to be the DIY/self-reliant man sort of people who take part in their small time of this future history so as to enlighten it and show what if feels like to live in a certain era (the early Federation, say, and then after the fall of the Federation and then into the Empire). Also notable is Piper’s Paratime stories that take a far different look at time travel, even if the background is shot full of holes.
One hard to pigeonhole is Gordon R. Dickson who utilizes psychology (Jungian to a degree) for his storylines and story arcs. If there is a basis in that form of pyschology, then how we turn out as individuals and a species looks very different than when cast under earlier systems of psychological theory. One of his best is an unconnected novel to any series, ‘Way of the Pilgrim’ which examines Earth invaded by far superior beings who are very lefty-benign… and are then faced up with something they don’t have and they have no way to understand or counter it.
SF realms and writers can roam all over the ideological spectrum and still present interesting stories if they retain a self-consistent continuum to work with: continuity of past events with current and future ones is a must no matter the political bent. Reading Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula books and Empire of the East to Swords continuum is fascinating as he explores how these characters and worlds work as seen through the eyes of those living within it. Similarly Michael Moorcock, pretty much into the left, writes well when he keeps the continuity factor between stories high but falls apart when he wanders from the impetus of events. I can’t say if the genre has gone more to the ‘right’ as I’ve suffered the Pournelle view that I can only paraphrase as ‘the future is making sf obsolete too quickly for writing stories’. And no one could have written about our current situation in the past and been believed as the suspension of disbelief to retain so many far-fetched happenings necessary to get us here would not hold. The future is both stranger and stupider than anyone could have imagined…and no one would have believed it.
The one thing that really gets to me in the SF/Fantasy section these days is the dearth of new authors and new ideas. One of the things that attracted me to Larry’s book was that it was a new author with an idea that sounded fun.
In the Urban Fantasy Genre, which seems to have taken over my local Hastings SF section that’s mostly all you see. And with the exception of a few guys like Larry and Jim Butcher, it’s horribly derivative stuff. Pick up one and you’ve read them all.
There also seems to be a dearth of good hard SF. Lots of great space opera. I consider most of Tom Kratman’s stuff more alternate future history, (if you’re reading this Tom, feel free to correct me.)
Patrick
Unfortunately, “Caliphate” is likely future history not alternative.
For Hard “Science” Fiction I would recommend the Looking Glass Series by John Ringo and Travis S.Taylor.
Patrick..as far as the ‘Urban Fantasy’ subset of fantasy novels goes…Most of them seem to be written by ladies. Sadly..most of them seem to be more like serial romances put into a fantasy or scifi setting. And the market is flooded with them. I swear it’s almost gotten to the point where, if it doesn’t have the Baen logo on it..I won’t even bother to pick it up to look at it.
Great Ghu, do we ever think alike. When I hit the PB rack in my local grocery store (which is big enough to qualify as a news stand all by itself), where I used to see a variety of novels, ranging from SF to mysteries, all I see are endless cookie-cutter covers of endless cookie-cutter novels about beautiful women reporters swooning over handsome vampires in modern-day NYC or LA. (Except when the beautiful women are mages, in which case they swoon over handsome werewolves. Go figure.)
After that, I have to come home and watch F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu” (1922) to regain some perspective.
Strangely enough, about the only thing close to “hard SF” that seems to get on those racks now are books by Clive Cussler and his group, including his son Dirk and Craig Dirgo. This bunch has been writing near-future SF disguised as “adventure novels” for about a decade now, in many ways reminiscent of some of Jules Verne’s later work like “The Southern Star”.
The trick is, to find them stuck in between all the stuff by Dan “The Whole Freakin’ World is A Gigantic Conspiracy” Brown.
cheers
eon
Patrick,
Those of us who are relatively new have a hard time getting on the shelves. PARTICULARLY coming from Baen. Mind you, my last one has got on the shelves, but the others not so much.
Sarah,
Like a lot of these guys, I got to looking through my book collection and realized there’s about two imprints that cover nearly everything I own. Baen and Tor.
That was one of the things that caught my attention with Larry’s MHI books. That Baen swoosh. Jim, we miss you!
Patrick
For good hard sci-fi, try anything written by Travis Taylor. He is another in a long line of sci-fi authors whose personal credentials border on the unbelievable and his works are generally based upon actual or theorized scientific research.
You got my vote, I would love to see all of the movies you want made, as for Starship Troopers, back in the 70s a friend and I figured it would take 8 to 12 hours to do justice to the book. Maybe some cable channel will take on the task.
I’d kind of like to see Williamson’s “With Folded Hands” (I can almost hear Rod Serling introducing it) but I’m not holding my breath. For one thing, they’d have a heck of a time with the environmental impact statement to cover all the critics’ heads that would explode.
I frequently use “With Folded Hands” as a type of bellweather in my political essays, referencing either political correctness of a nanny state mentality. I understand that Williamson meant it somewhat differently but to me it is a seminal work ahead of its time.
‘With Folded Hands’ has already made it–in a way–to the big screen. It was called ‘I, Robot’.
Not only was the story more reminiscent of Williamson, but the robots even looked more like the humanoids(picture them in black) than like Asimov’s positronic robots.
Think about it.
A personal favorite of mine that could now be made into a movie is Niven’s Dream Park. It isn’t too dated and the story itself is timeless.
There are a couple of competing trends at work, I think. First, the huge influence that New York City had in develeoping authors and editors has really waned. It was nothing I was aware of as a kid when I was a big SF reader but I was going back and reading some old folks tales of those days and WOW was it a closed shop. As this has dropped away, the influence of a certain type of cosmopolitan leftism has also diminished.
On the other hand, as the entire sorry tale of RaceFail shows, there is an element of SF writers and (a much lesser amount of) readers that are startlingly leftist in orientation. It is a different leftism–not the one-worldism a lot of old SF had but an extremely identity-informed view of what is acceptable to be written–and by whom.
Well thought.. What’s going on is not totally simple as a slide across the political spectrum.
I don’t know if posting a link will get my comment trashcanned, but I’ve been trying to figure out why this is and this blog post is a place where I tried to work it out: http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2010/10/gipsies_tramps.html
The left almost killed SF when they started taking control of the publishers, after some conservatives started their own publishing houses things started looking up. I read as much SF as I can afford (not near enough in my opinion) and will read liberal authors if they spend more time entertaining me rather then preaching at me. As a conservative I have found I have to tolerate liberal actors and authors or not have much entertainment. The liberals on the other hand refuse to even watch a conservative actor or read a conservative author.
Born in 1971 and remember one of the Apollo missions? That memory goes back longer than you think, the last of the series (Apollo 17) was in December 1972.
I’ve got no doubt your memory is real (I can remember a couple of things from about that age myself).
Could be thinking about Apollo-Soyuz or Skylab.
I’m not sure Gene Roddenbury recognized his drift from enlightened libertarianism to high-handed national socialism, but it’s there by the time you get to the late Picard-era movies without question. There is nothing but the Federation and Star-Fleet locked in a universal nation-state of communitarian-virtues; no money exchange, no private industry nor private property other than your replicated possessions…not even any taxes. The Federation and Star-Fleet does everything that needs to be done, provides everything, and consumes everything to the point of being a dystopia.
The Picard family vineyard isn’t even a business…it’s more of a multi-generational hobby.
As I noted above, Rodenberry was uninvolved with anything past the cartoon series of the early 70s. Paramount paid to license his name to give an imprimatur for the fans. He had almost no input on the movies or later series.
Anything you think you see there was the product of the crap machine at Paramount.
Roddenbury had very little to do with “Star Trek” after the original series. He was given “producer” credits on the movies mostly to shut him up.
It’s very interesting to read Nick Meyer’s biography, in which he proudly takes credit for setting the direction of the Star Trek universe starting from the second movie onward. He admits to a twinge of guilt over Star Trek 6, where he bullied Roddenbury into letting him turn Starfleet into a bunch of warmongering bigots, but other than that he’s happy with how it all turned out.
Just to throw my two cents in: the greatest hard SF writer in my opinion is Gregory Benford. Don’t know where he is (or was) on the political spectrum, but in 50 years of reading hard SF, nobody else has come close.
From Wikipedia: Benford’s Galactic Center Saga novels, beginning with In the Ocean of Night (1977).[2] This series postulates a galaxy in which sentient organic life is in constant warfare with sentient mechanical life.
Second that opinion. Excellent hard SF.
I really liked Benford’s series too but it became increasingly fractured and seemed to lose its focus as it went on.
In the larger scheme of things he is not considered an important or particularly innovative SF writer.
One reason that the shift appears to be going rightward is that many of the best sellers in the 70′s were writers who chose to write SFF in order to explore and present their liberal world view. Ursala LeGuin comes to mind. Today liberal belief structure does not have to be presented as “what if”. Therefore excellent liberal writers can now write in whatever genre they prefer instead of in the SF Ghetto.
The worlds they created…women who are treated equally, minorities mainstreamed and alternative sexual life styles accepted…are no longer fantasy. They are today’s reality. Which leaves the exploration of the unknown. And such exploration is simply not believable cast as a product of the Great Collective Endeavor. That didn’t even work in the Soviet Union’s SF.
Meanwhile, conservative writers keep writing about what they always have. I mean why struggle to write liberal science fiction at the wages it pays when you can write mainstream fiction for the big houses or for the Media?
Interesting you should mention LeGuin. Her most famous short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” is in some ways a pretty devastating critique of the Great Collective Endeavor–or at least, of the terrible moral compromises that are required to make a Great Collective Endeavor work.
I would say that Le Guin’s most famous short story is far and away “The Word For World is Forest” which many have compared to “Avatar”.
Perhaps, but I’ve read “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” – and I agree with Baby M’s comment. I’ve not read “The Word for World is Forest.” (Admittedly, I haven’t read that much LeGuin.)
Oh, for the Love of Life Orchestra, how I hate that story. The first thing that hit me when I read it was how once you walk away from Omelas, there’s nowhere else to go. Really. Try and find a society in which no innocent person will ever suffer unfairly. Just try. I dare you.
And on the subject of Ms. LeGuin: Why is it that, when the hero and most of the characters of A Wizard of Earthsea are clearly described as black, the TV movie version and most of the published book cover designs show them as white?
@The permanent newbie.
Haven’t read Earthsea in over 30 years; however, I believe your recollection is incorrect. The complexions are described as more like Native Americans. I always assumed that meant Polynesian — which would be more in keeping with our commonplaces concerning an Oceanic setting.
At least one racial characteristic I do recall is long straight hair.
Even assuming your memory is correct, there are at least two reasons: 1) The filmmakers and book designers knew their audience probably didn’t include many African-Americans. 2) The characters have no cultural similarities to either Africans or African Americans. Your mentioning it reminded me of Black Elk’s description of African-Americans in the US Cavalry as “The black white men.” However politically correct she may be, LeGuin’s characters in the first three books are whitebread down the line.
My goodness, Quilly, ain’t it strange where some folks meet? Seems half of Baen’s Bar is here (too bad posting on the Bar is so difficult).
The Great Collective Endeavor has always lacked appeal for those writers who are fascinated by “how things work.” Eric Flint is a good writer in part because his rock-ribbed common sense has always urged him to peek behind the curtain. One wonders at the large number of folks who might otherwise have been good writers, if only their realities hadn’t been skewed by utopian claptrap.
Been a long time, Trashhauler. Clearly the more intelligent half is here. Eric shows that in his writings in the Honorverse where he clearly shows the problems with Communist States; expertise in subject matter does work and works better when you’re willing to criticize what you believe in.
Look at the SF niche that went to the convention that banned Ms. Moon. The fiction there represents a utopia where there is no distinction between men and women and what they can do. No examination of the struggle to get there and no explaining women stevedores hoisting bales of cotton as well as a man. So it speaks to true believers whose suspension of disbelief is complete when it concerns their own agenda. It doesn’t carry past that niche and as we have seen the small publishers cannot use those diminishing niche markets to sustain themselves.
Jim Baen was a smart man and knew a sustainable audience when he saw it. That it, more or less, fit his worldview was only secondary.
I hear the rattling of Mr. Smith’s chains as we see the left slowly fade from dominance in SF.
The stated reason for banning Moon was that she made them “feel unsafe”–as if a mere expression of opinion regarding Islam implied a promise of violence against non-Muslim radical leftists. This reason was, of course, a shameless lie: They didn’t want to permit dissent. With this ban they showed that they are continuing the Maoist/Leninist/Stalinist ideals of its founders.
The story is the thing – tell it honestly, tell it truthfully, eschew the utopian claptrap and the author’s politics don’t so much matter. As Kratman said, “right and left don’t share basic assumptions” — but an author’s assumptions must be realistic or the story falls apart.
The Bar’s getting an upgrade, Mike. I’ve looked at it. It might be easier to work with than the current one.
I can’t comment regarding an overall trend, but I recently co-authored a SF novel with some distinct conservative/libertarian themes. It’s a near-future novel about a young girl growing up on Mars, titled “In the Shadow of Ares”. More information is available at aresproject.com.
We were inspired by the rampant progressivism in current SF, as well as the vacuum of Heinlein-like juvenile SF (pro-human, pro-liberty, pro-capitalism).
Carl, I, too, have noticed a similar lack of Heinlein-esque juveniles. Those books are not just pro-individual, pro-liberty, but they were a source of adventure, awe, and wonder. I think the juveniles are still relevant, but are showing their age and need of modernizing. In short, good on ya, and I’ll be sure to check out the Ares project.
Thanks, Nate, a good observation. In the Shadow of Ares includes the additional elements you cite (adventure, awe, wonder). We see these as largely missing from current SF. They are particularly important for juvenile SF, and I would also add another one: hope (though not necessarily the audacious kind).
For convenience, here’s an Amazon link for the Kindle version. It’s also available for Nook if that suits better.
SF is not a conservative literature at all, but it gets mistaken for one because libertarianism is wired deep into its DNA. In fact, it is structurally *impossible* for SF to be conservative! I have explained this in depth, with references, in my essay A Political History of SF.
The “rightward drift” is SF’s fundamental libertarianism asserting itself as left-wing gatekeepers in the establishment media become less able to suppress it. People who mistake this as a reassertion of conservatism are revealing their own confusion about the ways conservatism and libertarianism are mixed in their thinking.
Eric. . .
Perhaps you’re looking at it from a different angle, but from where I’ve been observing, Fandom has split ideologically just as America has: there are fan-groups, authors, and cons on the left, and likewise, those on the right. It really does seem to have split into two niche markets. The entire kerfluffle about Elizabeth Moon being uninvited as GOH at LosCon is symptomatic of that.
I know that I personally don’t travel in the same fannish circles as I used to, and a LOT of the breaks came as a result of Sept 11th: some of us realized there’s a war going on, and others dismissed that as fantasy. . .
a LOT of the breaks came as a result of Sept 11th: some of us realized there’s a war going on, and others dismissed that as fantasy. . .
That. In a nutshell.
Lost a lot of so-called friends that day, or shortly after.
Nope, they didn’t die. Just found me distasteful because I refused to budge from the position of “We can die when they do, or kill them first.”
Ran across that when Bush Jr. came out in favor of going back to the Moon and on to Mars. The local fandom mailing lists exploded in a frenzy of “Oh noes! We has to fix things here first! No blood for vacuum!!!11eleventy11!” The target demographic for manned space exploration was trashing the idea because they hated the person espousing it.
Pournelle said Libertarianism was a vector, not a destination.
I also think Mr. Williamson’s take on Libertarianism on Freehold, where a collection of satisfied saints runs the Libertarian gov’t, is more accurate than dreams of squaring popular democracy and libertarianism. It was quite an innovative idea of his, and that shows one of the many good things about SF.
SF is not essentially Libertarian, any more than ‘all smart people are liberals’. But we do need to develop a more broadly Conservative SF. SF does have a lot of Libertarian heritage, but that’s different than its essential nature.
I remember hearing one lady writer say that Christianity and SF were incompatible, and I was left thinking I’d heard one of the stupidest comments ever said in public. We lack much full on Conservative SF, but some out here are trying to fix that. It is not evidence of the impossibility of true Conservative SF.
Eric: I think your comment quite accurately expresses the current environment. The “left” is today behaving in quite “conservative” ways–for a certain definition of “conservative”–including an intolerance of dissent or different opinions and an unwillingness to examine their core beliefs.
The dominant “leftist-conservative” culture has pushed the minority libertarians and social-conservatives (who, together, may actually be a majority of people, but without commensurate access to the media pathways of expressing and maintaining power) into an uneasy alliance–the “Tea Party” if you will.
The “rise” of conservative (or probably more accurately, classical-liberal/libertarian) science fiction is part of the cultural pendulum swinging back from the left apex back the other way, IMHO. A “leading indicator,” perhaps . . .
But present day conservatives are classical populist/liberals while present day liberals are progressive socialist communitarians. The terms are slippery.
Which is “those who think people (like you )need rulers (like me)” and which is “people (like you) need to keep their nosy suggestions away from other people (like me)” ? Liberals who would ban tobacco and CO2 emissions, or conservative who would ban abortions and annoying music?”
This part struck a chord with me:
“…with the lefties “fairly well cocooned by the magazines, the awards system, the reviewers, and no small number of readers who read only them…”
I recently resubscribed to Asimov’s after a couple of decades absence. One issue made me wonder why I bothered. From start to finish, it was nothing but stories on the horrors of living in a future despoiled by waste and global warming. I think that’s a legitimate subject for stories; but for an entire magazine issue, it’s a bit much. Perhaps this was a “theme” issue; but if so, I didn’t see it mentioned anywhere in the issue.
Fortunately for them, it wasn’t the first issue in my subscription. Earlier issues were more balanced in content. If I judged solely by that issue, I would’ve canceled my subscription.
I subscribed to Asimov’s and Analog because I wanted to reacquaint myself with voices in the field, since there are so many I don’t know (and sadly too many of the names I know are now gone). I thought short story magazines would be a good way to sample the field. But maybe if I want some balance, I need to stick with novels.
Hate to be the one to break it to you, but if you were born in 1971, I don’t believe you actually have memories of astronauts on the moon. Apollo 17 was the last flight, in December 1972.
If you were three or four, you probably remember Apollo/Soyuz (1975), or possibly Skylab, but even that would have been a bit early for you (1973 or so).
And that may very well be the case. I’m just guessing it was Apollo.
Patrick
I think the post begs the question that SF as become more conservative. While I applaud (and BUY) efforts from excellent writers like John Ringo, The overwhelming tendency in SF has been leftist and/or deconstructionist/20th century liberal. I recently was given a large anthology edited by Gardner Dozois, who IMO has been a dependable choice for editing the best SF anthologies for many years. It was a boring compendium of eco-disaster memes, the-wonderful-uber-wise-aliens-will-save evil-humanity-from-itself ‘plots’ and several pieces that were not even stories, but poorly contrived set pieces that started nowhere and ended where they began. Most of the anthology was clearly written to impress other writers, (Bravo! let THEM buy it) but there was not an original idea or concept in the whole lot. A sad reflection on the genre. I have three 6-foot bookshelves that I keep my SF in after reading. I threw this anthology out so no one else would have to suffer through reading it.
When I go to the bookstore, it’s more of a crap-shoot them ever before to find something with some redeeming qualities. And no, I don’t necessarily have anything against left-wing SF, but I want GOOD SF first. 9/10 of the time, if it’s LW, it’s dreck. I also just read “Ring” – christ, I waded through the whole thing, nicely written, but ultimately idiotic. Yeah, the whole planet is going to be saved from our own evillness by ONE ‘stargate’ the we can sail ships through. Pathetic. I don’t mind depressing stories (read “Sea of Glass sometimes – a masterpiece, but depressing as hell), but I want them to at least be marginally credible.
Maybe SF is getting better, and my dollars are going to those who can craft a real story and tell it persuasively, but I see no evidence to date that it getting more ‘conservative’ versus self-involved and progressive/leftist-meme infested.
I think libertarian is a better term than conservative. And the trend is not recent, remember Heinlien had many conservative/libertarian views.
I think some here are right that an affinity to technology is part of it, since many leftists hate technology, while simultaneously claiming to respect science (yet another contradiction in leftist thought). I also notice that many sci fi writers have an affinity for the military, or volunteer mercenaries, both of which tend to be politically conservative institutions. I have noticed that “hard” sci fi writers, that have modern technology are more likely to be libertarian/conservative, while fantasy/swords and sorcery writers (who also normally appear in the sci fi books section) are more likely to be political leftists.
90+ comments in just a few hours?
Has Pajamas Media considered a regular Science Fiction column?
I’m also impressed by the breadth and intelligence of the reader commentary.
Well. . . it helps that MANY of us connect and organize via a single point, notably Baen’s Bar ( http://bar.baen.com ). In fact we get complaints there, about things leaning too far to the Right! (to which **I** say: Welcome to MY world. Nearly everyplace else leans too far to the Left for our taste. . .) Plus we tend to have friends all over the blogosphere. . . often, who were friends BEFORE there was a blogosphere. . .
Additionally, Fen tend to be technophiles, and we were online FAR earlier than most: many of us recall “@ parties” at SF Cons, where you needed an email address (hence, the “@”. . . ) LONG before having a personal email address was common. . .
It’s not that SF is becoming conservative; it’s that *conservative* is becoming *SF*. SF has always had a strong countercultural element; and, well, strong expressions of individual authority and personal responsibility are increasingly countercultural…
Just passing through, but wanted to thank everyone for a dynamite article and discussion! Very informative.
A couple of conservative SF giants have yet to be mentioned: C.S. Lewis and Gene Wolfe. Nonetheless, the more overtly political SF tends to be left wing–but I grew up in Heinlein’s shadow, so I’ve always thought of SF as libertarian.
And yes, SF can be conservative — consider something like “A Canticle for Leibowitz”
I’ve read everything Lewis has ever written but I disagree that he can be deemed “a giant of sci-fi,” much less a sci-fi writer at all. The Perelandra series is, it seems to me, more fantastic (and fantasy) than true sci-fi.
The “Space Trilogy” was fantasy, yes. But he did write some real SF as well. Mostly short stories, with a philosophical or moral point, but they were there.
(The one I remember offhand was a short story in which some odd group decides the Mars expedition is in terrible danger, because NO ONE can live for two or three years without sex. So they equip the next supply ship with two prostitutes, to relieve the tensions of the all-male expedition. You can imagine the opportunities for irony…)
Oh, but good point about “Canticle.” I think that that is one of the three greatest sci-fi novels ever (along with “Dune” and “The Mote in God’s Eye”).
Walter Miller wrote Canticle (actually composed of 3 novellas) as penance for his role in destroying Monte Casino, the oldest monastery in Europe. He was a navigator on the allied bombing raid.
I think another thing that helps conservative/libertarian sci fi writers is that the publishing houses tend to view sci fi as mainly a money making enterprise, rather than real “literature”. So as long as they have loyal fans, conservatives get a fair shake, because their books dont have to be “important” and “ground breaking” by entirely subjective leftie standards.
Ironically, I find that most science fiction has far better literary standards than the leftist pap regarded as “important” in regular fiction.
Again, a comment I wish fit the reality. It did once, but almost for sure not since the eighties when I started paying attention. Houses don’t view SF as a money-making enterprise. Like the rest of their list, it is a “statement making” enterprise and a “see how smart I am” enterprise. Most editors/publishers are liberal arts graduates and mostly they want to impress their friends and their old professors. Again, I hate to link to my own blog posts, but… I went into it here: http://madgeniusclub.blogspot.com/2011/01/pour-lamour-ou-le-sport.html
And SF has fallen so deeply that for ten years no one would buy my Science Fiction, because “fantasy sells so much better.” In this, as in all other discussions of the genre, one should except Baen for whom Science Fiction is STILL a major money-making enterprise. (And they bought my science fiction.)
Sarah, may I say that you have a unique perspective on the ills of communism and socialism, having *grown* *up* under communist / socialist regimes? You remind me of Ayn Rand — but you tell MUCH better stories and *never* preach!
I just loved your interview with Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit)!
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/113124/
One thing I would like to point out is that not all authors allow their politics to interfere with their storytelling. Steven Brust, an avowed Trostkyite, whose politics I completely reject, nevertheless writes some of my favorite works, the Vlad Taltos novels. I think it is an indictment of the art that we seem to expect people’s politics to shine through in their writing. It is a failure on the part of the authors that they can’t write a good story without beating people over the head with their ham-fisted ideology.
David
Great piece, Mr. Richardson! I have talked to Dr. Pournelle on email and he is truly a scholar and a gentleman.
Unless I missed it, no one on here has mentioned Frank Herbert and the Dune universe. I’m curious as how most of you would categorize it. He certainly takes religion seriously, and war. But his view that religion is a (false) human construct would seem to put him in the a non-conservative, if not liberal, camp.
As an academic whose specialization is Islamic eschatology, I certainly appreciate and like Herbert’s use of Islamic Mahdism (messianism) as a central motif.
A reading of the second and third of the Dune series first 3 books reflects a man deeply suspicious of gov’t bureaucracy and also revolutions since they invariably turn into the very thing they revolt against. Those 2 novels seems to be almost a chastisement.
They also seem to feel that revolutions that throw out the baby with the bath water as America did in the 60s cultural revolution risk running ahead too fast and too far. In finally realizing this, the distance to recross that gulf may be too vast and the lessons of the past lost.
The first book seems to be a different kettle of fish altogether with plainly drawn heros and villains which is the opposite of the tone of the next two novels where it is suggested that both sides are constricting and dooming mankind to an endless series of stagnating destructive actions and the lesson to fix it is in the Golden Path.
The Golden Path is meant to teach mankind a lesson so profound and enduring that it would never again cluster around or trust centralized and entrenched systems. The result would be a mankind that would scatter away from such constraints, continually redefining itself and too large and dispersed to ever gather again in one place to be straitjacketed.
There is also a theme in the later books of combining the best of both pragmatic bureaucracy and more dreamlike altruists, thus leaving behind the worst of each which is secretive manipulation and the unwillingness to be more thoughtful; passion would be tempered by wisdom and vice versa.
So what does that get you? A conservative, a liberal, a commentator, an observer, a warning? I dunno.
It is Herbert who wrote that a liberal is a closet aristocrat.
It may not have been a live broadcast. His parents could have easily Tivo’d Cronkite’s coverage and then shown it to him on an iphone.
Although it does not address the issue of conservatism in modern SF, I think we have been remiss in not talking about A.E. Van Vogt’s bright 1942 short story, “The Weapon Shop”.
This story takes place in the far future of perhaps America itself. In it, a small business man lives in a society ruled by an Empress and he is very loyal to her rule. Gradually this man’s business is ruined by what he thinks is a new player in town but it turns out to be the bureaucracy of his beloved Empire who have legally stripped the business man of his rights.
This new player opens up shops which sell highly advanced defensive only hand weapons and their motto is, “The right to buy weapons is the right to be free”.
In the end the people who are behind the secret weapons shops organization are there to provide a counter balance to the tyranny of the empire.
All of these posts and not one word about the arch-conservative John C. Wright, who is probably the most talented sf writer of his generation.
If you don’t believe, read this:
http://www.thenightland.co.uk/nightawake.html
You won’t be disappointed.
I was disappointed since it was some weird homage to William Hope Hodson’s “The Nightland” (1912), using Hodgson’s world and plot references in that book but without mentioning the original book or author.
Patrick – you may want to read a highly informative essay by Eric S. Raymond titled “A Political History of SF” – http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/sf-history.html
In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s a noted open source hacker and organizer (he was instrumental in the acceptance that Free/Open Source Software enjoys in modern world), maintainer of “Hacker’s Dictionary”, and, in contrast to a large majority of hackery types, a very strong proponent of gun rights and anti-statist political philosophy (he’s defined himself as miniarchist, which could for simplicity be classified as “libertarian”).
Two minor corrections: I’m an anarchist libertarian, not a minarchist one. And libertarianism is not at all an unusual position among hackers, though willingness to be a public advocate for it may be.
My only sample of Science Fiction fans is the LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society) when I joined in January of 1978. This is the organizatin Dr. Pournelle is a member and I’ve known him since ’78.
My impression was clear back in ’78 that Science Fiction was conservative to libertarian even then.
Fantasy and SF writer Dan Simmons has taken major hits from the 9/10 PC police for his 9/11 attitude regarding Islamist violence. The guy is the best pure writer on the SF/Fantasy scene. His books do not have noticeable political overtones.
Dan Simmons’ “April 2006 Message from Dan” was one of the most chilling SF short stories I ever read. I don’t doubt he’s taken much flack from it.
Holy cow. Thank you for that title. I’ll be watching for some Dan Simmons in the future now too.
The whole field, for the last three decades, at least, has been so leftist-leaning that I’d look at a book blurb and put the thing down in disgust. And I’m a certified book-aholoic! Thank God for Baen publishing! And, just to give you a hint, look at the Hugo novel *nominees*, let alone winners, and their publishing houses. Lois Bujold has won, twice — both were published by Baen. There have been *no* other nominees of Baen books. None!
Which is bizarre, if you look at the quality of author and book that Baen publishes. What possible reason could there be for this strange lack? How about that the field, and the “movers and shakers” — move and shake to the *left.* It seems like somebody hung a sign on the Hugo awards that says, “Baen Books Need Not Apply.”
This year I will be attending my first World Con — and I’m taking advantage of my nominating ability to put forward Sarah A. Hoyt’s Darkship Theives for best novel! And Larry Correia for the Campbell award for best newcomer! Baen authors, both!
Yeah, it’ll an uphill battle. But, hey — that’s what individualists *do*! Vote for the best! Not the “most likely to win” or “most polticially correct” — The BEST.
Yes indeed. Thank God for Baen books and thank Pj Media for letting me look at pixels written by my favorite authors.
Thank you for considering me for the Campbell Award. I appreciate that.
Come on, Larry: the Barflies wouldn’t have organized it if we didn’t think you were worthy.
Besides, the MHI series is the best, and more importantly, FUNNIEST “gun-porn” I’ve read in years ! Trailer-trash Elves ? Hip-Hop Gnomes ? And all those little easter-egg asides you make. . .
Great lists and really fun topic. Agree overwhelmingly with most everyone on this threat, but what ever happened to Elizabeth Moon…former Marine and one tough broad, she wrote the Vahta series. She was banned from the Scifi and Fantasy writers convention this year because of what she wrote right after 9/11 on her blog. When I heard that I went out and bought more of her books.
Just to throw in here, I would highly recommend reading Michael Z. Williamson’s “Freehold.” Heinlein on speed, as it were. It’s well worth the time spent.
D’oh! Here I am recommending this novel, to realize the author (if it is him) has been commenting in this thread.
Post in haste, repent in leisure…
I suspect he won’t mind.
One more observation. I am sure Dan Simmons has been attacked by the PC police because he is truthful in his portrayal of anti-semitic Arab hate and has a rather ingenious way of showing Jews of the future in a positive light in his books Ilium and Olympus.
Jewish characters have played central, and as far as I can tell strictly positive, roles in many of Simmons’ stories. He clearly has an affinity towards us!
I had the pleasure of sitting next to John Ringo on a panel (How To Kill Your Characters) at DragonCon 2008. Great guy. I will admit to having used him a straight man; I rolled a few jokes off him, but he took them in good humor.
Most of the science fiction writers I’ve met have a distinctly conservative or libertarian bent. My own work shows a pretty solidly conservative view of the future. I haven’t sold nearly as many books as Orson Scott Card or John Ringo, but hey, I’m still working on it.
Since I doubt that you wrote under the name “Animal”, what name do you write under and what have you written?
Michael Z. Williamson, Drake, John Ringo are newer voices and not afraid to go against the grain of common thought now, but have paid their dues in the old publishing system. The whole publishing paradigm is in trouble along with the rest of the economy and authors are increasingly moving to self publishing and the Kindle program at Amazon as another example of outlet for the creative not dependant on established (and controlling for any reason) market forces. For instance “RECON OF WORLDS” BY CC Sarver on Kindle is about as strong a novel of “competent man”, violence, fantasy-adventure values are one is likely to find would never have seen the light of day in a NY Publishing house no matter how “tolerant”.
Early Tues. evening.
Conservative nerd central.
Who knew?
Pajamas Science Fiction.
Coming to a theater near you.
Oh, not all conservative. There are a few (both minarchist and anarchist) libertarians hanging about as well.
… all my sins remembered… ?
Kathy, I’ll submit that as we are defined BY THE OTHER SIDE, we are all “conservatives” or often, weirdly, “nazis” — because nazis are those who want to NOT tell people what to do. Yeah.
Sarah, it’s the accent.
Herr Quilly, if that iz really your name, I vill have you know that ve haff abzolutely NO accent. Und IF we did it might sound vaguely Slavic, despite my neffer haffing been near the East.
Sarah, the Portuguese-born and raised American who writes SF/F in English and has no idea why she sounds Russian, but is fairly sure it’s a vast cosmic joke she just hasn’t got yet and who figures a fake German accent might be an improvement.
Sarah, from that well known high school text, Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza’s Historia y Filosofia Moral, Legionary Press, Balboa, Terra Nova, copyright AC 468:
The perception of a left-right political spectrum has survived
for seven centuries and spread across two planets. There
are sound reasons for this, despite the fact that it is not
perfectly descriptive. One reason is that the core of political
differences is the varying perception of the nature of
man, at those perceptions’ extremes: Perfectible by breeding
(right), perfectible by training and education (left ), neither
perfectible nor even all that changeable by either (center).
A second reason is that the existence of one extreme tends
to organize people along the other. Perhaps better said, the
two extremes tend to organize each other. Moreover, they
tend to drag people away from the center, or to make those
who remain in the center very quiet . . .
Take the typical X-Y graph that purports to describe the
true nature of the political spectrum, one that, perhaps,
posits an X axis that describes the attitude to planned social
progress or attitude to human reason, while the Y axis
describes the attitude to government or attitude to power.
If one plots out a given sample of people one will find that
two corners of the graph are uninhabited. There is no one
who is both sane and not a moron who has a very positive
attitude towards government (except insofar as such a
person may be personally dependent upon a government
meal ticket) and a very negative attitude to planned social
progress, or vice versa. Instead, in plotting a sample, one
gets a fairly narrow oval, running from lower left to upper
right. Turn that graph clockwise forty-five degrees and look
at it again. Yes, it now describes left-right again, with minor
up and down differences, which differences are irrelevant
when compared to the major right-left differences and which
are, again, overcome by the mutual and hostile organization
driven by the extremes . . .
What about Allen M. Steele? I enjoyed his “Saving Alabama” stories; the bad guys back on Earth went from being a fundamentalist dictatorship taking over the US to a politically correct “Social collectivist” government that turned out to be not much better. I’d also add Spider Robinson in the category of staunchly libertarian; in his essay “Rah, Rah, R.A.H!” he supports Heinlein’s view of patriotism and clearly loves America.
I think the distinction here is what defines a conservative. If you’re looking for social conservatives in SF then many here are right-they’re relatively few, or at least keep their opinions out of their work. Libertarians abound, however, and many of their views are hardly what would be called liberal in other pop culture circles.
West Virginia Rebel, I’m going to respectfully disagree. Twice.
I’m a big fan of Allen Steele; but his Coyote (which sounds like the “Saving Alabama” you describe) was full of ugly caricatures of conservatism that made me wonder if he ever met a real conservative. And the collectivist government in the sequel was indeed “just as bad” in their actions; but not (my opinion) in their portrayal. The Evil Conservatives in book 1 were eeeeeeeevil; the Cold Collectivists in book 2 were just cold. His early work was mostly libertarian in my judgment, with a high quotient of sex-and-drugs-and-rock-and-roll in space.
And the Spider Robinson who wrote “Rah, Rah, R.A.H!” bears little resemblance to the Spider Robinson writing today, more’s the pity. I picked up one of his essay collections a few years ago, leafed through it, and did something I’ve never before done with his books: I put it back on the shelf. He was in full tilt Bush Derangement Syndrome, and it ruined the book. Respectful policy differences are one thing (Pournelle certainly expresses some real doubts about the War on Terror), but this was right in line with the worst leftist lies about President Bush. And from what I understand, his recent Heinlein-based book had a lot of BDS intrude.
Mr. Steele is yet another leftist writer who is aware of the pitfalls of that ideology.
That’s good.
One thing I question about Eric S. Raymond’s essay is the idea that SF must promote radical social change. Some hard SF focuses on scientific/technical speculation alone and doesn’t explicitly posit significant changes in social norms (I think this was especially true in Golden Age SF). Also, conservatism, as I see it, does not imply resistance to all changes, even in social norms, so much a cautious, go-slow approach.
On another note,did Poul Anderson call himself a conservative? I was thinking he did, but then I realized that I may have read that description only from others, including from Isaac Asimov.
I didn’t claim that “SF must promote radical social change”; what is difficult is to write SF from a position that is instinctively *hostile* to radical change. You can’t very well have a future different from the present unless you’re open to disruptive change in existing power relationships; this is the exact reason that conservatism, even of the “go slow” variety, is not readily compatible with SF. The extent to which self-labeled “conservatives” are confused on this point tracks the extent to which they are actually classical liberals or libertarians.
Poul Anderson was a minimal-government conservative bordering on minarchist libertarian, similar politically to Robert Heinlein who lived very close to the other side of that divide. Anderson was never as reflective or analytical about his politics as Heinlein was, which is perhaps why it is more difficult to extract a position from his writings.
Thanks for the reply. I would have to say that, to the extent I have a firm philosophy right now, I am probably more of a classical liberal than conservative. Still, I suspect there’s some disagreement about what consitutes conservatism even among people who know better than I.
What SF must be is truthful. If you honestly look at the future and see more the same, then write that. If you think that human society is a repetition of cycles, that human nature is essentially unchanging, then write.
And I’m not happy about sneers at ‘carnographic’ Pournelle who wrote with Niven what many consider to be the best SF novel ever, The Mote in God’s Eye. If all you got from Drake was the pornography of violence, then you’re just like the shocked maiden looking to hang a drape over a Greek statue.
The article is interesting, informative, and in parts ill-thought.
BTW, I didn’t mean to post anonymously in No. 68, I just got in a hurry and forgot the name.
I’m pretty darn sure that Poul Anderson described himself as a libertarian. If Asimov actually called him a conservative then maybe that was very long ago, or maybe it was just due to Asimov’s leftist view of the world.
I have a vague memory of Pol Anderson describing himself as libertarian.
As for the libertarian/conservative thing, see above. Sorry guys. No point fighting like cats in a sack. For now we’re tossed on the same side by the other side.
The NY Times is running a series called Disunion, about the beginnings of secession. According to a recent column, in Georgia a sizable percentage did NOT want to secede. Problem was:
“A voter who favored immediate secession could vote for a separatist candidate on the ballot and feel assured that his views would be accurately represented at the convention in mid-January. But those candidates running as cooperationists represented a variety of views, ranging from staunchly pro-union under all circumstances, to reluctantly pro-secession if talks with the North should prove unavailing, to happily pro-secession, but only if other southern states leave as well.”
Insofar as Conservatives and Libertarians quibble over trivialities and take their eyes off the prize, we’re on the losing side of the big question.
Besides, the labels that the MSM try to stick on us do not fall under the Truth In Labeling laws, as any recent poll comparing the views of the general public and the Tea Party “extremists” reveals.
A really fine collection of passionate and informed comments that have provided me with a great reading list. Thanks, P. Richardson and PJM.
This thread could set records for PJM…anyone post this link on RASFW?
G,D & RRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I may have found this post too late to usefully contribute, but oh well
From a futurist / speculative-fiction, (not science-fiction) point of view, where is mankind headed in the next 10-20 years and how do we avoid socialist mayhem?
I despise socialism, and I believe it be reliably a disaster, and it seems completely unavoidable given the current trend in technology (i.e. robots making the 90% of people unemployable who aren’t already creative knowledge-workers).
Specifically, computerized systems have put entire classes of people out of work (i.e. secretaries, librarians, researchers) and robots have depopulated manufacturing facilities (compared to the volume or value of outputs scaled up from N years previously).
Robots are _starting_ to take over any repetitious human task and they’re just barely getting to minimal advancement and sensor-motor-mechanical-complexity.
By twenty years from now, do you (brilliant writers, libertarian/conservative-thinkers etc) really believe that McDonalds will have non-robotic burger-flippers and WalMart will have non-robot shelf-stockers?
We read today about the efforts of Walmart etc to have smart-tags on all products so shoppers can toss items in their carts and walk out of the front portal-door where the portal will RFID-scan the entire cart and the shopper’s smart-phone or token and automatically charge their account before letting them exit the portal
Robotic fruit-pickers, robotic house-makers, maker-bot-type make-anything-devices cheaply on everybody’s desktops, robot-taxis, robot-nurses, computerized and then roboticized classrooms, today’s waldo-ized surgeons leading to fully robotic surgeries, same for robotic GPS-driven road-work and eventually building construction (NB: quadricopter building-maker video) … and the now-being-deployed robotic-hands+arms etc replacement for the kids who assemble iPhones and other small electronics …
What job is safe from being replaced by robotics by a mere 20 years from now (I actually believe the number is 10, but I suspect we all can agree on 20) …
Society is primarily populated by people whose jobs can be automated and replaced by robots well within our current technological trajectory.
So how do we avoid putting 90% of the country on welfare or its future renamed equivalent when that 90% is unemployable at a minimum-wage of $x/hr or unemployable at any minimum wage whatsoever? (NB: every employee costs SOMETHING even if only for liability reasons … and especially when factoring in mandatory employer-paid health-care and for X, Y, Z social taxes and programs, etc … at some level of confiscatory regulation, the robots will end up costing less than anything any human can do).
How do we run a society where people need cashflow to live but 90% of humans are more expensive than robots and thus unemployable?
Isn’t it terrifying and sad how all those cars kicked every carriage driver out of the market place? And what about the plight of the lamplighters? And… and… and… oh, noes, the candle dippers? What about all those textile workers in now largely automated factories? What will CHILDREN work at if they won’t mind the looms?
You’re looking through the wrong end of the periscope. NO ONE has to come up with new jobs, so humans can do something productive, so that they have “cash flow”. It is the business of each person to find something productive that other people will pay him/her for. And the concerted evidence of history is that, absent someone to hand them a living, most human beings will.
Unlike you, I have great faith in my fellow human beings and their capacity to survive and make life better for themselves and the rest of us too.
> And the concerted evidence of history is that, absent someone to hand them a living, most human beings will [find something productive that other people will pay him/her for].
> Unlike you, I have great faith in my fellow human beings and their capacity to survive and make life better for themselves and the rest of us too.
I have faith that reasonably smart people will do quite well in the coming change-over.
But at some point not-smart-people will be (and are now) surpassed by specialized robots that do their jobs cheaper (i.e. unionized autoworkers with grossly overinflated salaries that drove GM into bankruptcy being undercut by heavily roboticized factories)
And at some point before 20 years from now, robots that are specialists (and then humaniform / generalists (perhaps as mimics even without AI)) will be cheaper than minimum-wage @ $16k/year (future-adjusted for the coming inflation from today’s crazy overspending).
Cars obsoleted carriage-drivers and buggy-whip-makers, and they got different jobs (i.e. making cars) but cars also obsoleted horses, and now we have alot fewer horses than we did.
Computerization obsoleted typists and phone-switchboard-operators and they got different jobs … but the advent of substantially advanced robotics may obsolete almost all *people* (i.e. the first stage of the “singularity” … before the self-aware-AI phase) when there may no longer be economical jobs for people not smart enough to finish high school (or for English majors below the 80th percentile in their university who cannot continue indefinitely further into academia).
Right now, it is cheaper via offshoring to replace US manufacturing workers with Chinese workers who are less productive but FAR less costly. Now the Chinese are discovering that their coastal cities are having cost-of-living problems and that interior-China is cheaper than coastal (convenient-for-shipping China) … and unfortunately for the Chinese, parts of Vietnam are even cheaper again, and Chinese cheap-goods companies are offshoring their manufacturing to Vietnam.
Eventually, through robotics or 3D-deposition-replicators or something even more advanced, humans will be obsolete even for sewing soccer-balls and baseballs (i.e. something that machines yesterday were really bad at but recently there have been machines developed to do, en-masse and flawlessly).
You are completely accurate in saying that historically humanity has adapted brilliantly to every crazy thing that has come along to transform our existence.
But I believe that just as stem-cell-breakthroughs may soon obsolete farms-raising-cows+pigs+chickens, the internet obsoletes much of business-travel-for-conferencing, planes obsoleted passenger-transport-ships, cars obsoleted horses, printing presses obsoleted monks, robots will obsolete average-IQ people, and eventually pseudo-AI expert-systems will obsolete slightly-above-average-IQ people.
And I believe that culture and society (divided as we are between the alliance-of-social-conservatives-and-capitalists and the alliance-of-social-liberals-and-minority-groups-and-anti-capitalists) are not philosophically and educationally ready for the changes that are coming in the several-decades-timespan as Moore’s Law advances robotics from 2010-2040 the way it did for computers from 1980-2010 (approximately 1,000,000x more capable in 20 doubling cycles.)
Sarnac. . .
Methinks you’re looking at only one side of the automation issue. Have you read Marshall Brain’s “Manna” ??
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Highly suggested.
I like how you say that people aren’t ready for the kind of changes that advanced technology will bring. I like it, because you seem to be one of those people.
Remember how air conditioning used to be an expensive luxury feature for your automobile, to the point where its availability was included in marketing copy and used as a selling point? And now it’s so cheap to have A/C that a car *without* it is remarkable.
Remember how cell phones used to be a symbol that the owner was one of Tom Wolfe’s Masters Of The Universe? And now they’re so cheap that you can throw away the one you bought last year just to get this year’s fancier model.
You’re talking as though there’s going to be hordes of people starving in the street because they can’t work. It seems to me that what’s going to happen is that life will become so inexpensive that you won’t *need* to work to survive.
And I’m certain, sir, that you yourself employ clerks who stand at podiums all day, adding figures with quill pens, so as to give work to all the scribes who once toiled so, before the advent of the adding machine, much less the calculator, put them out of work. Bless you, sir! Think of all the hundreds — nay! thousands! — of shivering unemployed who receive gainful salaries, just to equal the computing power locked in your own cell phone!
Oh, you *don’t* want vast rooms of people standing around, whittling their own nibs whilst doing mind-numblingly boring math that a tiny machine can do in a trice?
Then what makes you think any of the other low-level jobs you named up there are all that wonderful? Who is going to do *repairs* on all those robots? Who is going to design them, build them, install them? Maybe the same people who are doomed to ask, “Do you want fries with that?”?
You seem to have a very short-sighted view of history. Every advance, while ending some jobs, has created significantly more. And people were excited to learn new things! The difference between computerize (point of sale) cash registers and mechanical ones was incredible as far as the excitement of the people running them was concerned. I can only *imagine* what it was like not to have to stand there while the clerk totted up the final sum using a pencil and sheet of paper, when the mechancial cash registers hit the markets!
Have some fun, next time you buy something: Insist on figuring the sub total, the tax due, and the final total of your order using only your head and a pencil and paper. See how long the line gets behind you. Fun stuff, huh!
Some people see the glass half empty. Some people see it half full. You, sir, see it as unformed sand yet to be melted, and lament it’s ever being turned into a drinking vessel.
> Then what makes you think any of the other low-level jobs you named up there are all that wonderful?
I don’t … I look forward to robots doing currently-expensive things cheaply … and I rather expect everything we spend X on now to cost some smaller fraction of X in future by competition to drive cost of manufacturing down, mostly by saving on labor costs.
> Who is going to do *repairs* on all those robots?
Very, very few people compared to the people*hours the robots replaced. Well deisgned robotic systems should use completely modular components each of which should be trivial to replace (at less than the cost to repair, the way we do with computer power-supplies now, or the way Google does with entire servers today).
And a few years later, the robots themselves will be able to diagnose and repair each other (i.e. swap quick-change modules out).
> Who is going to design them, build them, install them?
Very very few people, mostly the people we have in our Gifted classes in high school.
> Maybe the same people who are doomed to ask, “Do you want fries with that?”?
Quite likely not …
The (numerically few) designers are the same caliber of genius-level-people who make the Roomba and military PackBot or BigDog robots now …
The robot assembly will be almost entirely handled by other robots, as it is now (see Toyota robotic auto manufacturing etc).
The repair people, however rarely needed (how rarely do elevators need repair people?) are far more likely to be the people who were displaced from jobs as auto-assemblers.
> Have some fun, next time you buy something: total of your order using only your head
I am autistic … I tend to do this automatically … and I generally try to do so as often as possible as a memory exercise since complications from my heart surgery have left me with serious problems in my short-term memory
> You seem to have a very short-sighted view of history.
> Some people see the glass half empty. Some people see it half full. You, sir, see it as unformed sand yet to be melted, and lament it’s ever being turned into a drinking vessel.
You have a most amazingly beautifully poetically graceful way of misunderstanding me.
I suspect my undiplomatic autistic style has once again interfered with the point I was trying to convey …
People as smart as those capable of the intelligence and poetic style above have little to fear from the upcoming changes to economics-as-we-know-it.
But people who are only capable of repetitive and replaceable actions have a substantial dislocation ahead of them.
Imagine a world of unlimited-free-energy and unlimited use of star-trek style replicators (i.e. infinite abundance) … somehow we have to transition (unevenly) from where we are here-and-now to that world over the next N years … this may be a rather wild ride.
I am rather staggeringly optimistic about humanity’s future … I’m saying we need to have more of a conversation about how we get the normal people from here to then without the unpleasantness that usually accompanies societal dislocations (and the socialist demagogues like Piven’s riot-encouraging craziness)
I do apologize for how I may have come across, since you appear to have taken offense at my futurism and analytical projection of societal and technological trend patterns.
Autistic types like me tend towards excess bluntness and frequently unintentionally trigger adverse reactions, which is why we are far more likely simply to not engage in discussions where adversarial conversationalism can occur.
Hey, I read that book! When the robots take over, I for one will seek a job crushing automobiles without engines that have price support loans against them even before they were built.
And I’ll get a cat.
…and, as with most people who intentionally refuse to contact other human beings, you’ve got an overly optimistic sense of your own mental capacity.
They say that the dumbest ones think they’re the smartest…
When you start trying to figure it all out, how do we solve this ahead of time, you are engaging in central-planning thinking. It can’t be done. Central planning never works, because no one is that danged smart.
Do not worry about such things. Society will always adjust, because of a concept called hunger. Self-interest will make folks adapt and society will follow the path of the possible.
Another flaw is the distinctly Leftist thinking that people are stupid. You came just shy of stating that aloud. (They are just too stupid to take care of themselves). People only seem stupid, because their thinking processes only work as hard as they have to. It becomes atrophied. If times get hard, and the governmental do-gooders do not respond to the bleating of sheep, suddenly those folks will get smart awful quickly… or get dead. Either is a good result. (I’m not a “Compassionate Conservative”.)
Let’s try a different angle. let’s say you are right, and these folks will not be able to adapt. Heinlein addressed this in “Gulf”. New Man has to take over, was the concept. Does that mean Old Man will disappear? No. “Probably more dogs in the world than in umpteen BC, and better fed, too.” If what you describe comes to pass, there will be an abundance you cannot imagine. Those marginal people will be well-fed.
It were best to refrain from thinking yourself so superior that you worry about how THOSE people will cope. Are you so absolutely sure YOU will be able to cope, hmm? Do you have an alternate game plan for the future? It is only juvenile arrogance which allows you to worry about how THEY will cope. That is the wellspring of NeoLiberalism. WE are superior. WE are not THEM. It is the beginning of nanny-statism, the notion that you have to take care of other adults as if they were children.
I guess if that happens, it’ll be time for us to move out into space – it’s the amount of work that needs to be done that is our limit today, really. We’ll do just fine, really. As for me, I can’t wait – my only fear is that wrongheadedness will cause us to fall backward instead of moving forward. In other words, I’m a lot more afraid of thinking like yours, Sarnac, than I am of what the future will hold for us.
After my father retired from the Air Force (Dec 1976) he took over my grandfather’s hardware store. Granted the store is in a small town – population at the time of 1,500-ish…now around 1,000. Picture the classic ‘general store’ with the pickle and cracker barrels out front and the 4 guys playing cut-throat pinochle right near the counter. The cash register was a button push/hand crank and we did sales tax calculations on the counter.
Fast forward to 198(something) – we did the annual inventory and input it into a Texas Instrument PC with 5.25 floppies.
Presently that same store is hard-wire networked with at least 9 Apples and one PC (yes, the Apples and PC can and do ‘talk’ to each other). We’re working on wireless but are security-concerned.
When my father took it over in ’76 there were no employees, just his wife and 5 sons in and out as time allowed when we weren’t in school. Today there are 3-4 employees along with a ‘store manager’ and my father still works faithfully every single day, Mon-Sat.
The moral of that anecdote is this: the more we ‘simplify’ with technology, the more humans will be needed.
As someone who is somewhat into Sci-Fi, it is a real shame that no one has yet produced a Sci-Fi series that negatively depicts Gaia / Nature Worship and Environmentalism (along with Parahumanism), as well as tearing apart the whole notion of being in harmony with the Earth in some pristine and heavily depopulated Terraist “utopia”.
While at the same time giving a positive depiction of Transhuman / Posthuman individualism and that optimistic futurism of humanity controlling its own evolution / destiny and colonizing space. Which until recently everyone in the West was accustomed to seeing, whether in Sci-Fi in general or in real life before the left demoralised most with their “Global War on the Weather” scam.
While it’s not strictly speaking SF, you might check out Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six” for a description of what happens when the Gaiaists get out of control.
It’s been decades since I read it, but I belive Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise for a few thoughts on the subject as well.
Patrick
FigureFour,
While it’s not TransHuman, Niven and Pournelle’s Fallen Angels (available as a free Baen download, I believe) is a pretty good start. It posits that the Weather Scare of 2010 (Global Warming) is false, but rather the Weather Scare of 1970 (Impending Ice Age) is correct; and by trying to conserve our way out of warming, we only exacerbate the cooling by cutting down our urban heat islands. The main protagonists are a couple of stranded astronauts from the space station; and their allies are the kooks and freaks and individuals known as Science Fiction Fandom. (And as those characters were based on real fans, some of them may even be commenting here tonight!)
Besides poking fun at climate alarmism, the book also takes shots at other Politically Correct pseudo-science: crystal healing, Gaia worship, and more.
It’s also Fen to the rescue! Science Fiction nerds save the day!
Patrick
Fallen Angels was great. “The Last Centurian” by Ringo made fun of the enviro-weenies and other such nonsense.
Back in the early Seventies, I ran across a novel titled “The Bridge” (not the 1986 novel of the same name by Iain Banks). I can’t remember the author’s name (but somehow “Santha Rama Rau”, the travel writer, keeps coming up in my damaged memory banks in reference to it). It was about a future “world state” in which the government had decreed a “return to a natural state” at all costs, and was certain that no one would get hurt as a result.
The novel’s protagonist begins with memories of how, at age 14, he left his .22 rifle on the seat of his father’s tractor in a field and walked away from both, under the eyes of government “proctors” who then took everyone to new, “pristine” settlements run on strict deep-ecology “living in harmony with nature” principles.
Most of the rest of the novel is about the protagonist trying to escape this “paradise”, in which almost everyone he knew has already died from starvation, pestilence, etc., by crossing the bridge of the title to reach a “no man’s land” beyond the reach of the regime’. On foot. While being pursued by the government’s minions, who are of course allowed to use technology to enforce the government’s diktat. Which means he is being chased by vehicles, and at least one helicopter.
The author (whoever it was) seemed to me to be making the point that “environmentalism” carried to extremes could be just as deadly as any other form of prejudice or fanaticism. And that those who fervently believe in same would have no problem violating their own precepts to enforce their will and “vision” on others, without being self-aware enough to see the hypocrisy of their position. Except of course for those who just enjoy hurting people, and would latch onto this as just another excuse to indulge themselves.
I read it once at my high school library. After which it was either pulled, or stolen. But it left an impression.
cheers
eon
Your first paragraph effectively describes the second book to a series I’m writing right now: Zero Point. The first book, The Departure, depicts the one-world nightmare the ‘progressives’ seem intent on dragging us into.
Neal Asher
I will definitely be keeping an eye out for The Departure and Zero Point, though the former does not appear to be available in the UK at this time.
Fwiw, elaborating a bit more on the first paragraph of my comment. I included Parahumanism in the mix since I envision it being somewhat of a resolution to the following Gaian / Terraist contradiction:
On the one hand, eco-mentalists view humanity as a plague that is to be confined to Earth, held down in terms of technology and eventually killed off quietly, with all monuments to human civilisation completely erased so that other life forms out there (if there are any) will never know that humanity once existed.
Yet in spite of considering themselves as the “elite chosen few” destined to inherit the Earth, they themselves are still physically human even if they do not identify themselves as such.
It would be easy to think of some ill thought out reason to highlight such hypocrisy on why the eco-mentalists would be exempted from the mass culling of humanity and that is where Parahumanism comes in.
I sort of see the Parahuman as an Eco-mentalist version of the Nazi Ubermensch and the Soviet New Man, where the elite chosen few do managed to “evolve” beyond their human limitations yet devolve into conscienceless beasts / monsters / genetic abominations that are at “one with nature” and far removed from their human origins.
The Departure isn’t out until september.
You should go take a look here: http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/ – all those calling for a reduction in human population always seem to have upwards of three children.
My other comment, unrelated to how robotics will upend our economic model is similarly about societal disruption …
Science-Fiction and Speculative Fiction takes a strongly libertarian leaning …
But how do you run a society (safely) when there are trivial technologies available for any nut to cause apocalyptic-level destruction … surely you must either
1: restrict the technology, hide it, banish it, regulate it severely, etc
2: restrict the crazies, intrusively probe for and hunt them, etc
3: some excessive hybrid of both
The scary problem is that we are already technologically there with genetically manipulated viruses (see the Australian mouse-pox problem when they added the genes for ?mouse-interferon? to the virus … definitely not good) and we are *might* be there with something-else-I-should-not-describe-publicly.
So … how do we liberty-lovers (I am small-L-libertarian) reconcile our philosophy with a society that has apocalyptic nuts, genocidal religious moonbats, enviro auto-specieciders who would love to more-successfully replicate Crichton’s novel (my amnesia blocked the name, my apologies)
And (not exactly hypothetically) what do you do with a technology that might provide nearly infinite [capability] but is both trivial-to-build (no unobtanium) AND exceptionally dangerous and risks some nut figuring out that this can be used to send *everyone* to judgement-day simultaneously?
What if X technology were discovered *today* that we are hundreds of years from being societally ready for?
And what if (by accident, utopianism, etc) some idiot in the US govt (USPTO, DoD, DoE, NNSA, etc) failed to keep that secret safe and allowed it to be published.
So now, I hope my invention is completely and absolutely wrong, but I fear it is not.
BTW: if anyone knows how to reach Dr. Pournelle, could you ask him to check his spam-box for Jan 14 for email from a gmail account starting with “do-not-publish” in the subject (Somehow my mail from yahoo and gmail seems to end up in people’s spam-boxes).
See Larry Niven’s Gil the A.R.M. stories — as well as other early Known Space stories — for an exploration of this. The U.N. police were heavily invested in tracking down and controlling dangerous technologies. I haven’t read them in years, but I recall the control not working out very well.
There’s only one answer, and Heinlein said it long ago: The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket to keep all our eggs in.
I read a Libertarian short story in a Gardner Dozois anthology about just such. A laser generator anyone could make with a few bits of stuff, and it could punch a hole through the Earth. Result: Instant Libertarian Utopia! No more gov, and everyone is forced to get along. Woohoo!
Back in the real world where Professor Dawkins and President Ahmadinajad might disagree a teeeny bit…
You raise a serious problem. I wrote up a setting for a game in which the response was a Chinese-American Imperium (yes, Pournelle was an influence) and spying on everyone was everywhere. It stopped the Problem, but unfortunately it created another problem. No one really wanted to live. Suicide rate through the roof, few babies being born….Humans cannot live like in my Black Box Imperium even if they must.
Two canonical discussions of this theme: Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (Pyre X) and Damon Knight’s A is for Anything (The Gizmo). Two technological advances that allow a single individual to upend the social order.
Might you be thinking about Crichton’s State of Fear?
“What if X technology were discovered *today* that we are hundreds of years from being societally ready for?”
Wrong question. Answer: we would leave the Earth available for a better adapted species (the smart money appears to be on cockroaches, although there’s a pretty good side bet to be had on rats.)
The right question is: “Who gets to decide what we’re societally ready for?” Right now there appears to be a large contingent that views the elimination of human slavery as premature.
I’ve been a SciFi fan since I was 12, back about the time of the first Sputnik launch. The names of some of the new people mentioned here tonight will be where I look for new material tomorrow.
I write science fiction also, but haven’t been published -except for “self-publishing” on B&N Nook and Amazon Kindle. A few people who have read it say it’s ok, but “not up to Heinlein”. What is? (I spent the better part of four hours chatting with the gentleman on an airplane in the 1960s – he was indeed an interesting person.)
Science fiction is about the future. It’s mostly about people who have left the “womb” of Earth and gone outward. That takes a certain kind of courage and an urge to see something or somewhere new. It involves taking risks, including the risk of dying itself. “Progressives” are risk-averse, even averse of others taking risks. Risk-takers are the people who will conquer space, while the risk-averse “progressives” want to stop all risk-taking. Science Fiction is about the risk-takers, and about the constant, never-ending battle between various groups of risk-takers, or about the battles between risk-takers and the risk-averse. The risk-takers have “adventures”, the risk-averse have “disasters”. While disasters have a certain amount of play in Science Fiction, a constant whining attitude doesn’t make for a very satisfying story.
I’m surprised that nobody has yet mentioned the late Robert Anton Wilson here. The Illuminatus! trilogy he authored with the late Robert Shea is a classic of anarchist / libertarian SF, but from a much more counterculture perspective than, say, Heinlein (except for Stranger in a Strange Land, of course). Wilson carried on the same sort of material with the Schrodinger’s Cat trilogy, one book of which featured a female libertarian US president. (And some devastating jabs at “feminists” such as Brownmiller, Dworkin, and MacKinnen.)
And from a more mainstream writer, there’s John Barth’s “Giles Goat-Boy”, which satirizes government as an extension of the university.
This was my first encounter with PJmedia and I thank my friend R.M. for sending me the link to this article – I anticipate I will be reading regularly. I am extremely encouraged by the polite and intelligent comments following the article. I had begun to give up hope on finding such civility and depth in any comment thread that in any way involved politics.
I do not see how SF could not have libertarian leanings. When a story relies on an individual or small group succeeding via wits and talent, the inherent individualism necessitates some libertarian identification. Additionally, marketability plays a part in what gets published and there is still present in the American identity a strong affiliation with the individualist, the independent explorer, the cowboy, the settler and this plays a part in which stories are selected for publication (IMO).
On a separate note, while they are not SF writers, I have no doubt that Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson are both well known here. I am curious as to how any of you who wish to respond would classify these two politically.
It isn’t always polite when the trolls come a’cruisin – like Dan Picaro down below.
Ah, but where is it written that a story must rely on an individual or small group? In other words, it can go either way. As a matter of fact, as soon as you set your scale of conflict large enough, the large group, not the small, becomes either the focus or constrains the focus of any small group shown, while any individuals concerned that set things in motion may be purely totalitarian.
There’s really no rule.
Tom,
Obviously it is not a rule. However, in general readers have more trouble getting into a story without a focus on a core individual or small group of individuals. It is simply easier to relate to individual struggle.
I do not doubt that there is non-libertarian scifi out there but it is not obvious in anything I have read. I admit that could be due to sample selection bias so I welcome people suggesting some for me to read, but please do not recommend anything that you consider trash
Nothing of mine is libertarian, though some of it is minarchic and still more is timocratic. Neither of those are particularly rare in military sci fi, of course. Conversely, libertarianism doesn’t usually have much of a place in a chain of command in an organization at war.
Tom,
Fair enough. But please bear in mind that my original comment was phrased “in general.”
That being said, what about a libertarian viewpoint prevents its inclusion in a novel in a military setting? Or is this a misunderstanding of meanings (perhaps on my part) as libertarian to me means wanting government that has minimal intrusion into the personal lives of its citizens. I know many who have this view and desire for government who are also strong supporters of the military and frequently have served in the past. I am only partly in that group myself as I was disqualified on medical grounds from joining
Scienecker:
Since, for reasons unknown and perhaps unknowable, it won’t let me reply to you, I’ll reply to me.
To some extent it depends on what flavor of libertarianism we’re talking about. Much of it isn’t a lot different from anarchism. There, the rules, regulations, orders, discipline, and selfless behavior (at its ideal, anyway) of a military organization at war are very hard to square with this kind of extreme libertarian ideal. When one talks with that sort of libertarian, which I have done, one quickly realizes that it’s nothing more than a fantasy ideology, unsuited for anything but mental masturbation. I always ask three questions of that kind of libertarian: How do you deal with foreign enemies? How do you deal with domestic enemies; essentially home grown barbarians? How do you deal with public health (by which I mean plague prevention, not socialized medicine)? I never – What Never? No, never! – get an answer much beyond fuzzy minded wishful thinking and ahistorical nonsense.
On the other hand, and more reasonably, there are the libertarians – Mad Mike is probably one of them – who, if asked, would probably say they want no more government than needed…and no less either. There’s nothing inconsistent or impossible between that more moderate libertarianism and either mil sci fi or, for that matter, waging war in real life.
Tom,
I too am experiencing “reply to” issues.
I agree, libertarian is a very broad term. When I looked up timocracy and, to be sure I had interpreted the term correctly, minarchy I found that the source I visited listed them as subsets of libertarian.
I am of the “government as small as possible, but no smaller” flavor of libertarian. I favor a limited but still strong central government so that the issues that you mentioned can be properly addressed as needed.
I know the original right to vote was only granted to property owners (as I learned in the past 24 hours, a form of timocracy). In truth, I would not mind if citizenship and the right to vote (as opposed to resident status) had to be earned. I may get flamed for stating that in an open forum like this, and I know that deciding how such things would be earned could be a serious challenge, but I believe people are more likely to respect and protect something for which they must expend effort to obtain.
Timocracy means, more or less, “the rule of the virtuous.” Often this has meant – or been taken to mean – “well to do,” quite despite there being no completely unambiguous evidence that there’s any innate virtue in wealth.
When I say “Timocracy,” I tend to mean something a la Starship Troopers. Note, Heinlein never used the term in that context; I just swiped it for my purposes. (Yeah, yeah, not to pimp my books but I’ve gone quite a way out of my way to add some philosophical meat to the bare bones of SST.)
Tom,
I rather figured that was the version of timocracy you meant. And my source for the other definition is wikipedia which may cast even more doubt about the veracity of the landholder definition of timocracy.
At any rate, I will probably continue to label myself as a libertarian for most discussions even though, thanks to you, I have learned that there are other terms that more accurately define my views (but those newly learned terms will come out when the discussion is with someone who won’t get lost in the big words).
On the inability to reply, I think this is a feature, not a bug. I suspect that the software allows only a certain number of “replies” in order to limit thread drift and discourage the kind of tit for tat exchanges that typically degenerate into flame wars.
figurefour
If you are looking for a book with most of the stuff you asked for that works on more than simplistic level try Trekmaster by i believe James Johnson though don’t know if ever got around to writing a next book but certainly begged for one.
Also John Ringo through the mirror series also shows no joy in nature and bugs and exfoliates both with abbandon. ( though last book in series wanders)
I have been a Sci-Fi reader since the early 80s, with the Tom Swift teen series. I have an 800 plus volume book collection, most of which is Sci-Fi. And for the last 4 years or so, I have almost exclusively bought from Baen and Tor to the exclusion of almost everyone else. I have just about everything Weber, Ringo, and Williamson have written, in both hardback and paperback.
Someone tell David Weber to hurry up with the next Honorverse book, I’m starting to get withdrawal symptoms…
“A Rising Thunder” is due out in 2012.
I’m anticipating both the Solarian League and Mesan Alignment Navies getting surprises they will not appreciate.
Well, they asked for it.
cheers
eon
I have read PJM since well before Charles Johnson became a liberal again, and of all the great articles I have read here, this has got to be my favorite. It addressed a burning question for me (horrid to feel out of place at a freakin’ SF convention) AND introduced me to many, many great writers I need to check out now.
Thank you SO MUCH.
Allan Cole and Chris Bunch’s Sten novels is a conservative leaning (or perhaps libertarian leaning) series that breaks down the old school future utopia led by a benevolent dictator that knows best.
Well, I think we’ve learned that it is a difficult thing to identify conservatives and liberals as a few writers have been credited with being opposites. I don’t know that there actually is liberal SF so much as politically correct SF; PC is a type of unwitting ideology as it must be since it will inevitably choose any solution but the correct one.
Rather specific political preaching is what many SF fans try and get away from and so it is a pleasure that one has so much literature to choose from that purposefully tries to get away from the mundane and demogougery and explore possibilities in new combinations.
One of the reasons I read SF is because in it, anything can happen and it allows us ways to redefine what it means to be human and redefine our own perceptions by having them challenged and handed cleverly back to us by having us take sides with an opposite point of view without realizing it. SF teaches empathy in a perceptual way.
SF fans are ready made to engage in technology without being intimidated by it or fooled by its dangers as well. We had James H. Schmitz’ version of the world wide web long before its actual existence and Frank Herbert’s warning about artificial intelligence subsuming mankind’s roles in his Butlerian Jihad as well.
SF fans have had possibility after possibility and world after world presented for their inspection and delight and consideration and one can say in confidence I think that SF is a literary genre that has really delivered and part of the reason is that there is a great deal of fundamental love of this genre by the writers who have created it; there are no riches for SF writers for the most part and they also have had to deal with getting looked down on by their peers.
SF still has a connotation in the minds of many in the mainstream as being stupid and its fans as wanting to flee from reality when in fact the intellectual challenges and type of hyper-reality wherein the future is met head on provide the opposite.
Even the casual fan will be met with concerns such as Delta V, Dyson Spheres, event horizons, ringworlds, planetary and social engineering, generational star ships, faster than light travel, anti-matter, what defines a human, artificial intelligence, time travel, atmospheric braking, nation building, cloning, dystopian warnings, first contact.
And just about every imaginary Martian there could be from Burrough’s noble warriors to Brackett with the “tiny bells the women wear, a sound as delicate as rain, distillate of all the sweet wickedness of the world.” From Bradbury’s odd ducks to Nourse’s separatists.
SF has a legacy as rich and sophisticated as it’s Western culture and is indicative of the West’s difference between the East in that it is a forward looking and not backward looking culture. The old bravado of the heady days of embracing a new and bright future has been leavened a great deal by newer and more cynical images of rockets flying over corrugated tin roofs but has never gone away entirely.
Dreamers dream a thing and then make it reality.
Sci-Fi junkie here…watching TNG right now on WGN. Thanks PJM and authors and commenters…this is great!
The article (and lots of the comments) demonstrate that the political labels we give each other can be misnomers, ambiguous and misleading. Be careful. In your haste to avoid a label, you might miss out on an exceptional book.
I believe America is experiencing an ascendancy of conservatism, and Sci-Fi productions that mirror this change will certainly be popular.
Yep, that’s all I got out of this story, too.
Who’s screening this stuff at PJM?
The editors, and judging from the response to the article you’re in the minority.
Patrick
My observations are exactly the opposite of Mr. Richardson: the SF field is very left, and drifting leftward steadily. Look at the list of 2010 Hugo nominees: in Best Novel there are five liberals and one avowed Marxist. In Best Novella, six liberals. In Best Novelette, six liberals again. In Short Story, three liberals, one (Mike Resnick) old-school liberal/libertarian, and one possible moderate. In Best Related Book, four liberals and one genuine, avowed conservative — who is in his nineties.
I don’t know of a single editor who is not at best a mainstream Democrat. And increasingly all the fan opinion leaders are liberals. Witness the WisCon debacle. Or just go to any convention and wait for the inevitable Two Minute Hate directed at Sarah Palin.
Science fiction has abandoned half its readership. Science fiction is shrinking as a publishing category. Hmmm…
Hey, Trimegistus,
If you’re dismayed at which books and stories are up for the Hugo award, let me point out that nominating and voting for the award is as simple as signing up for the Worldcon Convention. Although attending the convention is fairly pricy, nominations and voting for the books is only around $40, and in the last few years everyone who’s a member gets electronic copies of the various books, the sum total of which is worth more (IMHO) than the cost of joining up.
There’s a lot of folks showing up here in support of conservative authors – if they were all interested in trying, they could get something different nominated, I’m sure.
John
Most SciFi now days is current events wrapped up in spandex and techno babble with a bunch of CGI and winkin’ blinkin’ lights.
The recent Caprica which went from a good show to a final showing of all five episodes on one night all in a row was trying very hard blot out what ever turd was developed after the last season.
perhaps the genre can be rechristined as Socialism fiction.
Considering the overwhelmingly positive response here, it seems that some sort of nerve has been hit, or maybe, better yet, an ore body has been struck.
I sense here a real hunger for good, strong, SF. I know absolutely nothing about the publishing industry because the only thing I have had published is a few articles in a regional newspaper, but after reading all the excellent comments, suggestion, and links above, (excellent articles, Sarah) it seems to me that there just may be some sort of market for the old stuff that may be out of print. Or even the good new stuff that didn’t last long enough to make a second print run because of the vagaries of modern publishing.
Is there anyway for a publishing house to buy up the rights to these things and at least publish them electronically? I kind of hate e-reading myself, but I would be willing to consider it if I thought I could get ahold of some really good SF that way. And of course all the young whippersnappers just love to read on those newfangled screens. It would seem to be much cheaper to e-publish. Then again maybe not. As I say I don’t know anything about it.
To be quite honest, I had no idea that anything like Baen free library even existed. I was blown away by what I saw there yesterday and have plans to order several different series now.
I’m glad to hear you found the great repository that is the Baen Free Library. Awesome place!
Baen is collecting and publishing many of the best short stories from the golden age of sci-fi. Eric Flint has edited a number of collections of the works of Christopher Anvil and Baen has also published omnibus editions Poul Anderson and Jerry Pournelle in recent years. They are also releasing trade paperback editions of many of Heinlein’s works.
[comment cross-posted at Transterrestrial Musings, which had a link to this article.]
My own take on whether SF is getting more conservative is “no”, though I can’t claim to read widely enough in current SF to really given a supportable answer. On the other hand, I have been reading SF for 50 years, starting with the usual Heinlein/Clarke/Asimov/Norton juveniles (not to mention all of Tom Swift, Jr.), so I do have some historical perspective.
To use some sweeping generalizations, pre-1960s SF was largely (though far from completely) apolitical; if there were politics, they tended to be conservative or libertarian (again, with some exceptions). The “New Wave” movement of the 60s brought the liberal worldview front and center into SF, and it probably overpowered the conservative and libertarian worldview (in terms of volume) for 20 years or so. Then the rise of 2nd generation (post-Heinlein) military/conservative/libertarian SF started, in part encouraged and published by Jim Baen, and, from what I can tell, reached an equilibrium point within a decade or so. I suspect the political mix in SF has been relatively steady for the last 15-20 years.
Though I could be wrong. ..bruce..
Does this mean something called Night of the Blood Jihad would be a bestseller? I’m not sure I can stoop to that level…
On the bright side, everything will seem right-wing if all you read are Baen books.
I wouldn’t say all I read is Baen books, although it is a large proportion of the books I do pick up, not because I agree with all the authors. As noted above Eric Flint is a noted socialist, I doubt he and I would agree on much, and I love his books. But I think because Baen has good authors, and a culture of not canceling a guy’s contract simply because his first book didn’t sell well.
Baen figured out that if you create an audience for an author you’ll sell more books, so you have to give him a couple, three books sometimes.
Moreover, Baen, either by Jim Baen’s design or simply by serendipity, discovered another truth — if a publishing house has a stable of good authors consistently, SF fans, who are a loyal lot, will take note and start looking at the imprint as much as the author.
It was a smart business move and it’s served them well.
Patrick
Not sure on their quality. I read somewhere that Baen won’t ditch an author once they’ve published one of their works, and that explains Eric Flint’s works as well as some of John Ringo’s.
“I read somewhere that Baen won’t ditch an author once they’ve published one of their works”
Funny, I read somewhere that resident Obama is a Kenyan-born Muslim. I’ve also read that Sarah Palin is the true mother of Bristol’s baby (or was it that Bristol is Trig’s mother? These things get rather confused.)
I guess it is useful that one of the first things a SF fan learns is to not believe everything they read.
As everyone knows, Obama was born from a virgin test tube in a super secret lab somewhere in Siberia during the Cold War. His genetic makeup includes Lenin, Stalin, and Patrice Lumumba. The ovum was rescued from Rosa Luxemburg’s corpse by a dedicated member of the Spartakusbund who had been studying eugenics at Humboldt University in Berlin at the time. The ovum was frozen at the University but seized by Red Army troops on or about the 3rd of May, 1945. He was decanted sometime before the 4th of August, 1961, and the new baby brought to Hawaii by a special KGB-manned submarine, landed, and registered as native born. His notional mother was recruited expressly to raise him as a Red. She is not, in fact, dead but retired to a nice little dacha on the Black Sea. The cancer killed his grandmother story is a lie; George Soros had the poor old typical white woman killed lest she reveal the secret.
Ahem.
And you know, none of that nonsense is one whit more scurrilous than some of the absurdities directed at and about Sarah Palin.
I was fortunate enough to exchange a couple of emails with Allan Cole about 6 years ago, and I would say that he and the late Chris Bunch had libertarian leanings, as the Sten cycle had a humerus outlook on how absurd even an outwardly benevolent (at least by design) dictatorship was as a government for a large number of people.
The Sten series had numerous inside jokes, ranging from the names of key characters, to the challenge to the reader to figure out which works were the “sources of inspiration” (i.e. we stole the plot and made it ours!).
It’s indeed amazing to see so many of the Barflies here!
What a smash-hit article!
I raided my Dad’s SciFi collection when I was 4, I think. Mid-1960′s. I was hooked. However, 20 years later, I could not stand the stuff. I like a story where they offer just one or two basic points of disbelief: “If this were the case….” If a story requires too much suspension of disbelief, I cannot even finish it. I end up re-reading the same pages again and again trying to make sense of it. Cognitive dissonance.
The big failing is almost always in how people behave in certain circumstances. Human nature is what it is. If you get that wrong, the story falls flat. This is the failing of NeoLiberalism. For it to succeed, it requires a different kind of human, one which does not exist. It, too, always falls flat. Cognitive dissonance. This worldview injected into SciFi makes the story not work for me at all, except where they show a stagnant, or decaying society. When they portray it as enlightened, instead if the primitive, jungle, tribal rules that it is, it just falls flat.
Now and then, I’ll pick up a SciFi novel, trying to recapture that old magic, rarely with any success. Perhaps I will look into Baen books, then.
That’s funny. The view of the real world on the political Left and politically correct liberals is rather like a work of science fiction.
It has social engineering experiments based on an almost religious faith in absolute equality together with global faith-based weather chaos, “uplifted” Haitians, President Kwisatz Haderach, Orwellian criminals who aren’t criminals but indirect victims of a faceless middle class who make people steal, political maps which have the diabolical power to create assassins, invading peaceful aliens who are in fact like the Ferengi and a Dept. of Education that doesn’t actually educate anyone.
Thers is, in fact, a great political divide in Science Fiction. Look at the current mainstream, i.e. the Hugo and Nebula awards or at Locus on line (http://www.locusmag.com). You are hard pressed to find even a single reference to any of the authors mentioned here, much less a review of one of their best-selling books. The only author known to have bridged this gap is Lois McMasters Bujold, whos SF novels are published by Baen and her Fantasies by Tor: she has a fistful of Hugos, all well-deserved.
Baen Books are well worth a look – and many are free!
The great cultural divide between those who embrace the “visions of the annointed” (Thomas Sowell’s term)and those who actually can process information about the real world is very wide – even in the ranks of SF.
All too many distopian futures are filled with quasi-christian fundamentalist governments or evil mega-corporations and are strangly short of Islamic holy dictatorships, hereditary socialist oligarchies and, most fearsome of all, unrestrained nanny states. I would run as far and fast as I could from the “perfect worlds” shown to us in Star Trek or Firefly and perhaps join Orion pirates or wear a long brown coat . . . .
It might have to do with Kratman, Ringo, Correia, Pournelle’s writing being of low quality, just saying.
That’s because Kratman, Ringo, Pournelle, et al, are hacks.
*blinks*
Pournelle is a hack? One of the legendary writers, a guy mentioned in the same breath as Clarke and Heinlein? A hack?
*chuckle*
OOOOKKKKK…..
Leaving aside his few well-regarded works, like Mote, which, incidentally, I hated and couldn’t finish, he also wrote crap like Footfall, Fallen Angels, Oath of Fealty, The Burning City, and The Gripping Hand.
Pournelle is a hack?
You mean the guy who co-wrote “The Mote in God’s Eye,” for which Robert Heinlein wrote the blurb, “Possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read?”
What Patrick said: OOOOKKKKKKKK
Yes, I mean that Pournelle. Mote wasn’t any good.
I don’t like Heinlein much either. I’ll stick with Harrison and Delany.
Art is definitely susceptible to subjectivity but such things don’t exist in a vacuum either. Without scope for success there can be no failure and vice versa.
Having said that, I’ve read just about every important novel and short story SF has to offer to the point “Mote” was written and a lot of the dregs, both happy and unhappy.
From Cummings’ wandering Wandl to Delany’s “HCE”, from “Gray Roger” to Trigger Argee, from the Master Monstruwacan to the Watcher of Roum and one gets a sense of where a work of SF distinguishes itself and where it doesn’t.
Proportion, perspective and comparisons aren’t everything but they are an awful lot. “The Mote In God’s Eye” stands as a great work among SF novels. To blithely state that it “wasn’t any good” is perhaps not so much a contrary opinion or one of taste as one of ignorance. That’s not very nice but neither is it very nice to withhold credit where it is due.
Harrison and Delany are fine in small and select doses but in no way measure up to a Heinlein. Who did what and when is very important to doling out credit.
Pournelle did not write “Footfall”, “The Gripping Hand” or “Fallen Angels” but was co-author as he was on “Mote”. Liking is one thing and what is good is another. Most of the time it is subjective but who blazed what trail is not. Had Moskowitz written about who he “liked” without putting it into an historical perspective it would have been worthless.
To jump from “I didn’t like it” to “it wasn’t any good” is to assert, with neither evidence nor reason, the superiority of one person’s judgment – a trollish sort of person who posts disagreeing opinions in deliberately disagreeable manner, incapable of recognizing that ipse dixit does not constitute an actual argument. To dismiss as “hacks” authors whose success the marketplace has proven requires definition of terms or suggests an individual so egotistical, so self-absorbed as to suggest their head is in a very dark place.
I have enjoyed Harrison but the Deathworld sequels and Stainless Steel Rat novels are unquestionably hackwork, with neither subtlety, literary virtue nor moral value.
They yet remain moderately entertaining stories.
Huh? Oh…
I meant M. John, not Harry.
I am guessing that you would call virtually every author published by Baen and Tor hacks. To each his own. I see most of the Hugo, Nebula et al winners of the last couple decades as hacks, very unentertaining hacks.
Actually writing something that people want to read is a skill, but the intelligentsia of “literature” who write stuff no one actually enjoy reading always scorn that with “hack” insults.
I love “hacks”.
*almost* a nice troll. You showed your hand by double-posting, though.
DFTEC
Dan Picaro belongs to that class of socially-retarded people who equate “I didn’t like it” with “the writer is a hack”.
eon; the author of The Bridge was D. Keith Mano, at the time a columnist for National Review. Note that at the end, the overthrow of the enviroscum was followed by something quite ugly.
What a coincidence, I believe in hard work, honesty and honor too. What’s not coincidental is that I’m a progressive liberal. Im confused why you would list those as strictly conservative values.
Great article though, I really enjoyed it. Ive noticed the same trend in SF, and it’s been an interesting phenomenon. As it relates to the real world, I think the conservatism of todays SF writers is just as much fantasy as the utopian socialized ideals of the previous generation. I think the few scifi writers that had a solid grip on possible future politics were writers like Philip K Dick, George Orwell, and Isacc Asimov (off the top of my head).
I’m not sure, but I think SF has only been getting more conservative at the same rate as the rest of U.S. Society. It has always housed more libertarians proportionately than the general populace, I think.
At SF Conventions it has seemed to me that there has always been an outspoken, strong libertarian group, and a quieter– if somewhat larger — liberal group. Moderates and Christian conservatives seemed, by contrast, to be relatively underrepresented. Perhaps they were only more soft-spoken….
Late to this party, but: Dune is explicitly anti-bureaucratic. At least as far as Dune, I read Herbert as hostile to big-state leftism: “Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class — whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy. Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual” also: “In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history. Show me someone who says, “Something must be done!” and I will show you a head full of vicious intentions that have no other outlet. What we must strive for always! is to find the natural flow and go with it. -The Reverend Mother Taraza, Conversational Record, BG File GSXXMAAT9″
Also, I was curious about Harry Harrison: I discovered the Stainless Steel Rat very early on. Are people saying that Harrison’s anti-authoritarian hero is in a liberal non-conformist vein? I saw him as a libertarian/freedom lover breaking the rules just because they exist.
Herbert also made mention of what the difference between a good administrator and a bad one is. “Five Heartbeats.” That is, a good administrator will make a decision on his own authority based on imperfect information and make it work somehow; they also don’t avoid responsibility for their actions.
A bad administrator will think about it and dither, and then begin to call for studies and committees and analysis groups – not with an aim towards actually solving the original problem. It’s all about spreading the responsibility, and hence the blame, around.
I have always found this to be true, and try to be the former category worker, not the latter.
“At SF Conventions it has seemed to me that there has always been an outspoken, strong libertarian group, and a quieter– if somewhat larger — liberal group.”
Funny, my experience is very different: The loudest (and most obnoxious) tend to be the liberals.
“Are people saying that Harrison’s anti-authoritarian hero is in a liberal non-conformist vein? I saw him as a libertarian/freedom lover breaking the rules just because they exist.”
Yes, I understand that Harry Harrison is very left-wing. I suspect that the reason for your confusion is that Harrison’s stories present a hero Fighting The System. Rarely or never does Harrison write a story about the sort of political system that he wants.
I have found that in order to sleuth out authors’ ideologies it is often necessary to pay very close attention to the details of what they write. Every now and then you may find a brief passage that suggests where the author’s wishes lie. This is, of course, a very tricky method, one that you have to employ very carefully, lest you jump to erroneous conclusions.
On the other hand, if the author has a personal blog you may have innumerable opportunities to see him write very specifically about his partisan leanings. (Did you know that Tea Party folks are not freedom-loving individuals but mere dupes of the Reblicakkkan BushHitler secret masters bent on enslaving and impoverishing us all? Gosh, neither did I until I read the ravings of Fred Pohl.)
Ah, you libertarians are just so FUNNY! – the way you shake your widdle fists and bellow on about liburty and freedim while slurping down gallons of corporate slime. Yeah, liberals are just SO obnoxious – I wonder why so many shootings and assassinations on mainland US are carried out by Repub sympathisers? Tsk tsk, lemme see now…
Not that I’m a libertarian, but by all means, since you wrote “lemme see now” why don’t you show us now, eh?
Don’t forget to add to your list:
McKinnley, killed by an anarchist.
Kennedy, killed by a pro-Castro communist.
Truman, whom left wing Puerto Rican separatists attempted to kill.
Ford, whom leftist sypathizer Sarah Jane Moore attempted to kill.
And then, just for grits and shins, go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States
and note the number of terrorist incidents emanating from the left.
By the way – just FYI – tacitly attributing an inability to spell or pronounce to people on the opposite end of the political spectrum (“liburty”…”freedim”) doesn’t say much about them, but does say something not too favorable about you.
Well played. But he wasn’t really worth a (figurative) bullet.
It may not have come out in the interview, Fred, but I positively _enjoy_ pissing on the left. Only reason I bother getting up in the morning, some days…
Ah, in that case I quite understand. Sport shooting is another thing entirely.
Mike,
Perhaps before you try using multisyllabic constructs (sorry, I should have said “big words”) such as “libertarian” you should first take the time to learn what the term actually means since liberals often subsribe to libertarian ideas when it comes to social goals. Of course, your post readily identifies you as someone who has not yet developed a personal and internally consistent set of beliefs and further indicates you are operating from an affilitative viewpoint which results in attacking those who you are told are different. I hope one day you decide to stop being a follower and decide to think for yourself. When you get there you will find that there can actually be productive, reasoned discourse between individuals with massively different beliefs and that the ones who are obnoxious are defined not by political/social/economic views but by a lack of maturity and such lack of maturity crosses all political boundaries.
Lessee: ridicule, ad hominem criticism, smugness and sanctimony coupled with eschewal of responsibility, assertions without support either evidential or logical … I’ve gotta concede, the argument that “liberals are just SO obnoxious” is well made and amply supported.
Lemme see now, just how “many shootings and assassinations on mainland US are carried out by Repub sympathisers?” Since 1960 I don’t think there’s been a single one. On the other hand, targeted violence to achieve political ends is openly advocated by such Liberal eminence grise as Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Van Jones, Jeremiah Wright and Frances Piven.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned Neal Stephenson. Buried in a middle chapter of “Diamond Age”, his strangely moving nanotechnological Bildungsroman (and 1996 Hugo Award winner), there is one of the most articulate and convincing defenses of the importance for children of maintaining structure/discipline/standards that I have ever read anywhere; so much so that it probably permanently changed the way I think about those issues.
I’m one of those folks who was watching Star Trek when it was first run…in the 60′s, and grew up reading science fiction and military books. I happened to enjoy the stories by David Weber (got hooked on him after picking up Insurrection at a PX in Dhahran during Desert Storm), David Drake, Fred Saberhagen, Orson Scott Card, John Ringo, Tom Kratman and Robert Heinlein. I also enjoyed the libertarian views that were very much a part of Firefly. The conservative authors always seem to put a lot of thought into their arguments as to how liberalism eventually destroys the society and the people that it pretends to protect. The left-wing stories end up making assumptions that just don’t hold up very well. I’m also one of those people who is suffering from Honorverse withdrawal symptoms. Is science fiction literature becoming more conservative? I darn well hope so. If I am fortunate, I will soon be joining the ranks of published military science fiction authors…helping share my stories with all of you hopefully.
This article got me thinking…and I recalled a few things I read from Jack L. Chalker years and years ago.
I dug out “Midnight at the Well of Souls” and “River of the Dancing Gods” and re-read them….and a strong Libertarian streak runs through them both, poking up here and there.
“Midnight…” is a fantastic little story. I highly recommend it, even if you don’t read anything else he wrote.
Has anyone else noticed this? I hadn’t heard him mentioned in the discussion.
Come to think of it, Clifford W. Simak also had some fairly good ideas too, here and there, in this vein.
I am not a sci-fi fan, but I have read the entire Ender series and find that Orson Scott Card’s ideas conform very closely to traditional liberal theory. Why is he considered conservative?
OK, we’re probably talking about specific issues and the stands taken by politicians and pundits on these issues. But if you take at a political philosopher’s approach and define your terms before arguing your points, you might reach a different conclusion. Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested one way to look at the difference between these two political philosophies. In his schema, conservatives believe that culture, not politics, determines the success of a society. Liberals, on the other hand, believe that politics can save a culture from it’s own worst excesses.
From this conceptual foundation it follows that when Card has Peter Wiggin establish a world government with the creation of the Free People of Earth, thereby ending wars and oppression, he is writing a traditional liberal fantasy.
“find that Orson Scott Card’s ideas conform very closely to traditional liberal theory. Why is he considered conservative?”
Because he was an orthodox Mormon who is very vocal in his opposition to Gay Marriage and finds himself annoyed at the “Dogma” of evolution dominating origin science
The way I see it, science-fiction is becoming more libertarian than anything. I don’t generally like the term “conservative” because it really does mean 1,000 different things to different people. I feel that today’s liberals and mainstream conservatives are working towards the same thing – though at a slightly different pace. The government always gets larger and more intrusive and our freedoms are becoming fewer and fewer and many people fail to see that. Some are even fine with it. Whether it is our money or our social identity, both major parties want more control over it. What I see in science-fiction is a general disdain for large powerful governments. It is very common that the primary adversary in the stories are dictators of some sort.
I realize I’m late in coming to this conversation, but I just stumbled across it while googling for info on good SF writers of a conservative or Libertarian slant.
Since most of the posters above have covered all the basics, or more accurately, the most well known and common SF authors. I’d like to add that the gatekeeping within the publishing industry is quite harsh and currently only leftist ideas are being entertained.
Authors like the openly communist China Mieville are winning the awards, getting the spotlight, and thus being touted as the “New Wave” of SF/Fantasy to the unsuspecting youth of the new generation.
Currently the best new conservative and libertarian SF/Fantasy stories are coming out of the Indie industry.
The biggest problem with that is not knowing how good, or bad, the product is prior to purchasing it.
Unless you’re buying from a retailer that allows a digital look inside the book (like Amazon for example).
Going through the slush pile of Indie books can be a hassel that many readers don’t want to bother with, and I can understand that.
However, I do take the time to read through the samples of many of the new Indie books as they come out on Amazon.com.
I’ve found one recently that stands out as uniquely conservative/libertarian in a way that is rare IMO.
It’s called the Stygian Conspiracy by Kodai Okuda.
The prologue alone piqued my interest, and it appears this person actually had the novel professionally edited as I didn’t find any grammatical mistakes (yet).
It’s very common to find pro-UN SF out there, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across an anti-UN book before, or one that is so openly pro-Western culture.
Conservatives and Libertarians (like myself) may want to check this book out.
The hardcover seems a bit expensive, though the book is 700+ pages.
I bought the kindle version as it was pretty cheap, and thus far the story has me captivated.
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Ben Bova’s Privateers felt like a celebration of capitalism. The Soviets were the bad guy and the hero was a businessman who was constantly being hassled by the “powers that be.”
What I see in science-fiction is a general disdain for large powerful governments. It is very common that the primary adversary in the stories are dictators of some sort.