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December 19, 2006
We must fight the mediocre science-fiction authors on the beaches...
(Posted by John.)
It's certainly fun to ridicule the Orson Scott Cards and Michael Crichtons of the world, and I wouldn't dream of asking people to stop. But I would also recommend the quality left-wing SF authors out there - it's true, they exist.
My personal fave is Kim Stanley Robinson of the Mars Trilogy. He's got another trilogy about catastrophic climate change which will finishing up early next year, called Science in the Capital. Robinson is, however, most definitely not everyone's cup of tea.
Now it occurs to me that I can't really think of any SF author as explicitly left as Robinson. There's plenty of goof SF that can be read as leftish, but I can't name another socialist off the top of my head. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: Lots of good suggestions in the comments. Check them out.
December 19, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
China Mieville is very definitely socialist, though more fantasy/horror with occasional flashes of SF than actual SF.
Posted by: micah | Dec 20, 2006 12:05:26 AM
Oh, good grief.
Ken MacLeod.
Charles Stross. Cory Doctorow.
Iain Banks, one of the bestselling genre writers in Britain today, you ignorant idiot.
Maureen F. McHugh.
John Barnes.
Steven Brust, whose mother's death was memorialized on Trotskyite web sites all over the world.
Lots more. Do your own bloody research.
I'm completely out of patience with the ignorance displayed by the lefty blogosphere on this issue over the last couple of days.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden | Dec 20, 2006 12:13:58 AM
Ken MacLeod (another Brit) is a left-leaning libertarian who does fine work in SF with political overtones.
Posted by: David Wilford | Dec 20, 2006 12:15:13 AM
Intriguing point. Agreed, re Mieville. Also, Ken MacLeod, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, John Clute, Bruce Sterling, Bradley Denton, Steven Gould, Gregory Feeley, Jane Yolen, Cory Doctorow, and Joe Haldeman.
I don't know that they would all self-identify as socialists -- though I know MacLeod and Feeley explicitly do -- but are all progressives who are really fabulous SF writers, whose progressive outlook in one way or another informs their fiction.
I'll ponder this and if I can think of some more, I'll let you know.
Posted by: LauraJMixon | Dec 20, 2006 12:15:37 AM
And, for that matter, Laura J. Mixon.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden | Dec 20, 2006 12:17:25 AM
Posted while PatrickNH and DavidW were composing theirs. I can't believe I forgot Maureen McHugh, Steve Brust, John Barnes, and Iain Banks, too.
Posted by: LauraJMixon | Dec 20, 2006 12:19:20 AM
Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, Piers Anthony, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Philip K Dick and Harry Harrison come to mind right off the bat. If you add fantasy to the mix, several more come to mind. There are a lot of great, lefty, sci-fi writers out there.
Posted by: DuWayne | Dec 20, 2006 12:19:24 AM
:) , Patrick. I was going to list myself, but thought that might be too... whatever.
Posted by: LauraJMixon | Dec 20, 2006 12:20:22 AM
Heinlein was a very interesting writer -- not easy to put in a box. But he wasn't leftist by anyone's definition.
Posted by: LauraJMixon | Dec 20, 2006 12:21:18 AM
does Neil Gaiman count?
Posted by: akaison | Dec 20, 2006 12:22:45 AM
And while we're at it, Joanna Russ, Pat Murphy, James Tiptree, and Connie Willis have all written very powerful feminist works.
Posted by: LauraJMixon | Dec 20, 2006 12:24:04 AM
Hoooookay, I am (1) a big defender of the left-wing tradition in modern SF, and (2) a big old Heinlein fan who thinks that both his right-wing acolytes and his left-wing critics get him wrong, but it would never occur to me to adduce him as a "lefty sci-fi writer."
Although it's interesting to note that the author of Starship Troopers spent a big chunk of the 1930s working for Upton Sinclair's EPIC movement in California.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden | Dec 20, 2006 12:24:56 AM
I don't know Neil Gaiman's politics. Tasty writer, though.
Posted by: LauraJMixon | Dec 20, 2006 12:24:57 AM
FWIW, Orson Scott Card is a good fiction writer despite his politics. I don't think much of his political screeds though, as they miss the obvious problems in favor of misty-eyed sentiment. For instance, Card in the afterword of his latest novel Empire claims that the biggest problem we have in the U.S. is the lack of civility. Bull. The biggest problem we have is that President Bush lied and fecklessly misled us into a stupid war that he's still seeking to needlessly prolong in order to save his sorry ass for the next two years.
Posted by: David Wilford | Dec 20, 2006 12:26:27 AM
This is more fantasy than SF, but Philip Pullman is one of England's most famous atheists and wrote a (COMPLETELY AWESOME) trilogy of books that makes his atheism pretty clear.
Posted by: Isabel | Dec 20, 2006 12:27:21 AM
Laura, you forgot Eric Flint!
Who has explicitly identified himself as Trotskyist.
And while that may or may not be hyperbole, his obvious views about labor unions make at least the label "left-wing" stick.
He also has a damned fine grasp of history, right down to the nitty-gritty details, which he uses rather freely to inform his science-fiction.
Posted by: Charles Roten | Dec 20, 2006 12:27:25 AM
I'm completely out of patience with the ignorance displayed by the lefty blogosphere on this issue over the last couple of days.
This has been an issue?
Posted by: DuWayne | Dec 20, 2006 12:29:08 AM
Patrick, how would you classify, say Pohl and Silverberg? Nancy Kress?
The thing about SF is that it lets you explore social and political issues from very different angles than you could if you were bound to modern-day events and backdrop. So even if a writer is not trying to be explicitly political, their politics certainly inform their fiction.
Posted by: LauraJMixon | Dec 20, 2006 12:29:16 AM
Charles, I actually haven't read anything of his. It sounds as if you recommend him...yes?
Posted by: LauraJMixon | Dec 20, 2006 12:30:42 AM
I'm going to try and stay out from underfoot of the big heffalumps, but I'm surprised no one threw out the "Other Robinson"...Spider!
Posted by: LanceWeber | Dec 20, 2006 12:32:15 AM
P.S. Liked the Mars trilogy, loved The Years of Rice and Salt. Hated the first book of his new series, won't be touching the other two...
Posted by: LanceWeber | Dec 20, 2006 12:37:07 AM
Patrick, how would you classify, say Pohl and Silverberg? Nancy Kress?
Um, Fred Pohl has pretty clearly been a moderate left/liberal since his fan days in the 1930s.
Robert Silverberg is a classic case of rightward migration; in the early 1980s, he took great public pleasure in explaining to his friends why he'd started voting for Reagan. (Taxes. Zzzzz.)
I've never had a political conversation with Nancy Kress but the values expressed in her books are pretty obviously progressive.
The trouble with this kind of discussion is that it completely obviates the basic job of SF storytelling, which is to tell stories that begin with "Suppose that". Thus we jump to unwarranted conclusions about what particular SF authors think, based on the views expressed by their characters in worlds that never were. This isn't smart.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden | Dec 20, 2006 12:38:50 AM
The problem is not with the Science Fiction writers but that the lefty blogosphere is not all that lefty, and probably would not recognize what Flint is saying in 1632 unless he subtitled it "A Trotskyite Alternative"
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Dec 20, 2006 12:39:22 AM
Definitely Ken McLeod.
Posted by: Zeno | Dec 20, 2006 12:40:44 AM
Bob McManus: spot on. And yeah, I like what Flint is up to, a lot.
Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden | Dec 20, 2006 12:41:08 AM
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