# How much is political ideology dominating SFF?



## Fried Egg

I came across this post on Ian Sale's Blog asking: Is science fiction becoming more politically polarised?.

It's something I think about quite a lot having quite an interest in politics and economics. But what do you think? Is SF in your experience becomming dominated by poitical ideology? Is it becoming more left wing, right wing or just generally polarised in your experience?


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## alchemist

I haven't a clue, as I really haven't read enough to form an opinion, and I don't hang out in the virtual or real places where suvh things are discussed.
What I will say, though, is that I'd be wary of any SFF author who claims to be anything with the suffix -wing, left or right. Trying to divide the human race into two mutually exclusive categories, based on their opinions, might satisfy people's need for simplicity, but it hides a wide variation. Anybody who calls themselves L/R wing has got to be at the extremes of the curve, and that level of ideology doesn't make for great reading (IMO).


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## J Riff

Second that. Tolkien had to fend off attempts to politicize LOTR, he had to insist it was just a story, a harmless, fun fantasy, and IMO SciFi should stick to adventure and new ideas instead of joining the muckrakers.


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## Rodders

To be honest though, we'll always interpret things in a way that best suits or own perceptions.


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## digs

Interesting. It's not something I've given much thought to, and I probably don't notice it that much unless it's really overt - hi, Orson Scott Card - but I guess from the fantasy I've read (not sure about scifi) I would assume most of it is fairly liberal. That's not to say that all those books are 'dominated' by political ideology, more that they're influenced, however subtly, by it.


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## J Riff

Yeap. Haven't read much Orson here - is he left or right? - but anything preachy grates immediately. Still, impossible to write about future society without accounting for the politics of the era, and perfectly fine to write _about_ politics... just don't like it when it's snuck in there to promulgate the author's leanings. There's non-fiction and a million newspapers and journals for all that.


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## digs

J Riff said:


> Yeap. Haven't read much Orson here - is he left or right? - but anything preachy grates immediately. Still, impossible to write about future society without accounting for the politics of the era, and perfectly fine to write _about_ politics... just don't like it when it's snuck in there to promulgate the author's leanings. There's non-fiction and a million newspapers and journals for all that.


He's right-wing. He's a Mormon and a lot of his beliefs spill over into his writing, though to be fair I didn't pick up on any of it in his Ender's Game series.


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## Fried Egg

digs said:


> He's right-wing. He's a Mormon and a lot of his beliefs spill over into his writing, though to be fair I didn't pick up on any of it in his Ender's Game series.


Indeed, my impression after reading only "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead" is precisely the opposite, quite left wing if anything.


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## J-WO

Handled right, SF is a fantastic place for politics. One can explore political situations that are highly unlikely to occur right here and now, like the anarchy of Anarres in LeGuin's _The Disposessed_ or how technology might one day free humanity to fully live out the promise of the Enlightenment, as in Bank's Culture books.

Actually, I'll go as far to say that if SF stopped taking on politics it'd wither and die.


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## Fried Egg

J-WO said:


> Actually, I'll go as far to say that if SF stopped taking on politics it'd wither and die.


Indeed, but do you think SF is currently dominated by any particular ideology?


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## J-WO

Hard to say. UK SF seems a bit more lefty-sons-of-Orwell in outlook, or that might have something to do with our dystopia fascination. I haven't read any right wing UK SF, though I've heard it said Neal Asher leans that way (not that I've read any.).

Now that's not to say the US is without its leftwing writers, of course it is, but there is a greater acceptance of the right in SF over there, especially in the Millitary stuff. Liberarianism is a lot bigger over there than here (UK) too.

Well, thats my overly-generalising 2 cents, anyway.


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## J-WO

I think this is an interesting quote from a right leaning SF writer interviewed on the post Mr Sales alludes to-


He admitted that “a close debate may someday rage. It isn’t raging yet  because, for the most part, the leftist and rightist wings pretty much  ignore each other,” with the lefties “fairly well cocooned by the  magazines, the awards system, the reviewers, and no small number of  readers who read only them, and the right by — I think — smaller groups  of fans who are probably more loyal readers” than their opposite  numbers.


I'd say all the conventions I go to in the UK contain a majority of left-leaning people, though I've never done a census. Conversely, I've got one or two mates who read some of the Baen-type mil sf stuff who wouldn't generally be interested in the con-going life.

In this respect, Eastercon 2011 should be interesting in that David 'Honorverse' Webber will be there. A chance for both wings not to ignore one another. Had to happen sooner or later. Politics is likely to rear its head at one of these panels and the bar chat might differ too, given the presence of Webber and the theme of Millitary SF draws a different crowd.


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## clovis-man

digs said:


> He's right-wing. He's a Mormon and a lot of his beliefs spill over into his writing, though to be fair I didn't pick up on any of it in his Ender's Game series.


 


Fried Egg said:


> Indeed, my impression after reading only "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead" is precisely the opposite, quite left wing if anything.


 
I couldn't see much of any religious or political pedantry going on in the Ender books or even in the Alvin Maker series. But there is plenty of Mormon-like family emphasis in the Homecoming series (*Memory of Earth*,* Call of Earth*, etc.). So much so that I abandoned the later novels.

Couldn't begin to tell you if he's a lefty or a righty, but I suspect a conservative world view.

I don't think Heinlein was a wild-eyed liberal either.


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## Dave

I really can't see that present-day SF could be any more political than SF of the past. No, Robert Heinlein never struck me as a liberal either! There was much more polarisation of political views further back in the past - Central Planning, Communism, National Socialism and Fascism were all mainstream political views to hold - and it was under those times that HG Wells, George Orwell, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Aldous Huxley wrote.   

Also, if you broaden the field from books to TV and Film, then I'm paraphrasing Gene Roddenberry, but he privately told friends that he was actually modelling _Star Trek_ on Jonathan Swift's _Gulliver's Travels_, intending each episode to act on two levels: as a suspenseful adventure story and as a morality tale. He also said that how by creating "a new world with new rules, I could make statements about sex, religion, Vietnam, politics, and intercontinental missiles. Indeed, we did make them on Star Trek: we were sending messages and fortunately they all got by the network."

How old is _Gulliver's Travels_? 1726? If you count that as Fantasy (or proto-SF) it is also a satirical view of the state of European government at the time, and of the petty differences between religions.


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## Dave

I've been reading the posts in answer to the original question which was actually:
Is Science Fiction Getting More Conservative?

That's another question entirely. I'd say that SFF is always going to be a product of its time and place of origin. Certainly the authors mentioned in the reply posts like Harry Harrison and PK Dick were not as Conservative as the four authors contacted for their opinion, but then those four authors do not form a representative sample either.

Also, if the USA is more Conservative politically today, then it stands to reason that authors with Conservative views would be more popular. Whereas in the UK we are more Socialist and we get Iain M Banks' _Culture_ ipso facto.

Edit: Oh! And if you read the China Mieville interview right here at Chronicles, he says he is a Marxist.
China Mieville Interview


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## clovis-man

Dave said:


> Also, if the USA is more Conservative politically today, then it stands to reason that authors with Conservative views would be more popular. Whereas in the UK we are more Socialist and we get Iain M Banks' _Culture_ ipso facto.


 
If you read Banks' travelogue piece, *Raw Spirit*, you get a very good idea of his leanings. Not conservative. 

As far as contemporary U. S. writers are concerned, I don't see the ones I'm reading espousing any establishment views, i.e., Nancy Kress, C.J. Cherryh, Kage Baker. And to give the men credit: David Brin and even Joe Haldeman don't seem terribly conservative. Maybe I'm reading the wrong books.


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## J-WO

Dave said:


> Edit: Oh! And if you read the China Mieville interview right here at Chronicles, he says he is a Marxist.
> China Mieville Interview




Iron Council is probably the most marxist story I've ever read. Very refreshing actually, not the sort of thing that generally turns up in fantasy novels. The best thing is, though, is one could read it and never realise that, just read it as a good plot.


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## Fried Egg

Certainly as far as British SF is concerned, I don't think it is in any danger of becomming too conservative.


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## jojajihisc

I don't think so, but like most people I probably don't have a broad enough sample of books consumed to say for sure. There are lots of authors who I think I have a general idea as to what their political orientations are like Bradbury, Card, Heinlein, Ellison, Mieville and some others but whether those ideas make there way into their fiction I don't know. I'm not sure it'd be a problem if it did either. It's fiction after all and will be interpreted in a variety of ways.


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## thaddeus6th

It's a very interesting topic of discussion. What sprang to my mind was Dr Who (Old and New), whose writers seem more lefty. There was an Old Who story with an evil dictator (played by Sheila Hancock) who was a parody of Thatcher and brought down by a revolution, for example. 

There's also been a shift in the nature of evil and morality, from the absolute black and white of Lord of the Rings to more morally ambiguous stuff from the people such as Joe Abercrombie. It reflects the post-war era (when the Nazis were near perfect villains) to the more subtle evils of today (terrorism, which is not defined by land borders but ideology and the people involved don't wear uniforms).


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## Dave

I remember reading that news story last year now:
BBC scriptwriters tried to use Doctor Who to bring down Margaret Thatcher | Mail Online
Doctor Who attempted to overthrow Thatcher ? The Register
Doctor Who had anti-Thatcher agenda

At the time my thoughts were that Andrew Cartmel had a seriously over-inflated view of his power as a Doctor Who scriptwriter, but it does disprove, at least in the UK, any right-wing bias. The BBC is always being portrayed as a hotbed of lefties, so nothing is really new there.

Given that all these anecdotal stories I think do show that political ideology does indeed dominate SFF, I guess the only other question remaining is "Is this a good thing?"


J-WO said:


> Actually, I'll go as far to say that if SF stopped taking on politics it'd wither and die.



Now take a look at this:
Political ideas in science fiction

Now, does anyone feel able to argue against J-WO? I can't say I can. It is like the filling inside the sandwich. Without it, the stories would just be Fairy Tales.


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## Duncan

Much of SF seems to be pretty right of center.  Heinlein, Pournelle, and Niven are all obvious about it.  Military SF is going to be right wing by nature, it is natural to see Military SF be authoritarian or depict an authoritarian POV.  We have seen a decline in *Age of Wonder* style SF, a lot of SF nowadays is in the military sf genre.  There is a certain amount of satire in SF too.

*Jennifer Government *was a pretty satirical treatment of capitalism.  *Altered Carbon* and the rest of that book don't treat corporations kindly though in that world everything is noir, so ...
Walter Jon Williams recent works are post-cyberpunk and that whole genre is dystopian and noir but I don't think the works are overtly political, neither is Charles Stross' work.  

There are a number of overtly political SF authors out there, but their work tends to be so overt that it is unreadable.  I find that the few left of center authors are writing satire, or dystopian futures.

I would say that the current tendency is due to space opera and milsf mostly.


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## J-WO

There's been some talk of Vampires on another thread at present--and I didn't want to go all political over there--but it seems to me that the literary Vampire is very political in an insidious way. 

At their heart, the Vampire is form of social control. From the basic message of folklore ('Don't wander around at night, Peasant'), through to Bram Stoker's _Dracula_, ('Shun the Foreigner, British citizen/ Beware male sexuality, Girl) to Anne Rice's _Interview..._ ('If you are gay/ have aids you are cut off from society')  right up to _Twilight_ (erm... 'Beware male sexuality, Girl.')

I'm not saying that's the writer's conscious intent (though the jury's still out on Meyer...), but storyteller's are only ever the reflection of whatever culture they are living in.

Its no surprise Twilight went nova in the states at about the same time Virginity pledges got endorsed by government. As a general rule, the less moody fang-boy books there are on the market in any decade, the more young women can live their lives.


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## J-WO

DUNCAN- See what you mean about Millitary SF. Personally I'd love to read a left wing David Webber, a space Opera analogue of the Spanish Civil War for instance, though in the current climate it'd probably be celebrated as a Libertarian epic. How ironic that would be...


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## Heck Tate

I see politics more in science fiction than fantasy, mostly because it's pretty easy to take the ideologies you disagree with and weave a dystopia in which those views are held by the majority of the future population.  This is exactly what Ayn Rand did in Atlas Shrugged and almost everything else she wrote.  I don't see it too often in fantasy, but one notable series which ended up with a lot of political ranting was the Sword of Truth series.  Terry Goodkind (like Ayn Rand) ends up preaching against communism like it's the 11th plague.  

On a related note, the political message I got from the A Song of Ice and Fire books is that politics suck and get lots of people killed.


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## J-WO

Heck Tate said:


> On a related note, the political message I got from the A Song of Ice and Fire books is that politics suck and get lots of people killed.



Thats a valid message for a book to have.


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## Vertigo

Interesting discussion that I have completely missed somehow until now 

Does politics dominate SFF? I think the answer to that is broadly no, at least no more than any other genre. It is an important part of a large number of SF books as it will always be an important part of most other genres (except possibly Romance!). 

So I don't think SFF is dominated by politics but does use politics a lot to provide a deeper and more colourful backdrop and would be sadly drab without it. Of course one of the beauties of SFF is that it can play with different politics a lot more than many genres with experimental future or fantasy worlds that allow for very different approaches to politics. 

I don't think too much looking at individual authors is very helpful (at least not to the original question); there will always be some authors for whom putting across a strong political message is important and if well done that is just fine (thinking of books like 1984) but if it's not well done it's just tedious and probably most readers will dislike it and that author is unlikely to be widely successful. The question here seems more to do with the (impossible to define) average SFF book and here I don't think SFF is really any different to other genres.

So for me at least politics should be at least an interesting backdrop to books I read. I don't mind the some taking it much further but if it is absent altogether then I think you get a rather lacklustre book.

Having said all that I'll now pass a couple of comments on just one author!


> If you read Banks' travelogue piece, *Raw Spirit*, you get a very good idea of his leanings. Not conservative


 
Clovis, interestingly enough after I read Raw Spirit I found it impossible to imagine Banks living in his own Culture - I suspect he would have fought the authorities violently. If you think about the Culture; everyone is largely free to do whatever they want, but that is (bizarrely) within what is essentially a very authoritarian state.


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## Ursa major

I haven't read all the Culture books (please, no hissing), but I often get the feeling that the Minds keep the "humans" as we keep cats, as pets who are allowed their (more-or-less limited) freedom to roam and to do as they (mostly) please.


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## J-WO

Vertigo said:


> Clovis, interestingly enough after I read Raw Spirit I found it impossible to imagine Banks living in his own Culture - I suspect he would have fought the authorities violently. If you think about the Culture; everyone is largely free to do whatever they want, but that is (bizarrely) within what is essentially a very authoritarian state.




Oh, I dunno. They only get authoritarian when someone tries to do something that'll lead to someone else getting hurt. Its only the Minds nanny-like, 'told-you-so smugness that makes it seem authoritarian.

Banks could feasibly live in the Culture, its just whenever he'd drink single malt he'd tell Drones/ Minds to 'Pishhh Orfff...'


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## J-WO

Ursa major said:


> I haven't read all the Culture books (please, no hissing), but I often get the feeling that the Minds keep the "humans" as we keep cats, as pets who are allowed their (more-or-less limited) freedom to roam.



Yeah, I sense that. Though at other times I sense they actually respect the fact we created them and that its no real bother to aid us to live in comfort. Unlike in _The Matrix_, say, we (as a species) seem to have raised our AI 'children' with love and respect, and they have become adults we can be proud of.

In that respect, Banks displays the liberal belief that sentients (read people) are essentially good at heart and will definitely be so if you treat them so.  I've always thought The Culture make Asimov's 3 laws look rather sadistic in outlook.  The former would certainly find the latter to be so, at any rate.


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## Vertigo

You might say that but then look at how ruthlessly the Culture manipulates emerging cultures to ensure they end up with the "right" sort of politics and society.

And indeed you could argue that it ruthleesly controls all of humanity but in a way that mskes if feel like being pampered.


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## J-WO

Good point. Their foreign policy is markedly different to their home life.  Its certainly manipulative, occasionally ruthless, but I still wouldn't say authoritarian. They've never mounted anything like the Iraq war, for instance, or the Boer. There's the whole Idiran thing, of course, but that was self-defence one can argue.

But, hey, no one can say there's no politics in SF having read this thread!


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## Vertigo

Without wanting to go off on too much of a tangent, I wouldn't necessarily say authoritarianism is about wars and such like but more to do with control of the masses, by whatever means.


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## Heck Tate

vertigo said:


> without wanting to go off on too much of a tangent, i wouldn't necessarily say authoritarianism is about wars and such like but more to do with control of the masses, by whatever means.



soylent green is people!


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## J-WO

And boy is it tasty!

_(Chomp, chomp...)_


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## Ursa major

The Culture: herding cats for the greater good.


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## Connavar

Of course politics is important in SF and Heinlein books for example would be very boring without the different political idelogies involved. As long as you can make interesting story,themes out the politics in your novel and dont preach its very interesting.

I wouldnt say it dominates SFF maybe it did more of in Golden Age SF but not now.  Also SF today tend to be set in far future and you cant just copy in your political views from 2010 in 2525.

Politics in SF books i have read is just another element of many.


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## clovis-man

Ursa major said:


> The Culture: herding cats for the greater good.


 
Galactic social workers.


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## Vertigo

And aren't social worker just the most authoritarian group in existence


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## Null_Zone

Science Fiction has alway been political.

From my opinion British Sci-fi took a horrible leftist turn in the early 21st Century were communism suddenly worked with no reason given for how society and technology had changed to make it possible. Anyone to the Right of this made Hitler look like a bleeding heart liberal, there was no middle ground.

It's comming out of it thanks to Neal Asher and co which is restoring my interest.


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## soulsinging

J-WO said:


> He admitted that “a close debate may someday rage. It isn’t raging yet  because, for the most part, the leftist and rightist wings pretty much  ignore each other,” with the lefties “fairly well cocooned by the  magazines, the awards system, the reviewers, and no small number of  readers who read only them, and the right by — I think — smaller groups  of fans who are probably more loyal readers” than their opposite  numbers.



Yeesh, so even within the geeky SFF community, right wingers continue to suffer from the same delusional persecution fantasies they do in the real world?


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## thaddeus6th

Hey, I'm a rightwinger and I don't feel persecuted


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## J-WO

You will do when you see Michael Moore's fully operational deathstar!

(Oops. I'm not s'posed to talk about that...)


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## thaddeus6th

I see your Death Star and raise you a Sun Crusher


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## chrispenycate

Jerry Pournelle (already cited on this thread as a right wing inflence) has written an essay 
stating that the one dimensional right-left classification for politics has been too elementary since its inception, that no human society, even the one where it came into being shortly after the French revolution, where most dissidence had been disposed of (along with most of the dissidents) has ever been simple enough to specify with one measuring dimension. The idea that those who believe society more important than the individuals making it up will not all be technophile, change embracing, punishment-soft fuzzy animal lovers; nor will tradition-loving individualists all be rabid capitalists and paternalistic bible-beaters, embracing Darwinism as a means of slowing the rot and lack of respect in the lower classes.

He proposes a twin axis two-dimensional model, but I'm not even sure this is adequate; I could see a four or even five dimensional matrix as still being insufficient to describe a social structure. At any rate it is clear to me that declaring a particular story as left or right wing (let alone the author of said story, who might swing a completely different way in another tale) is not a useful classification for the vast majority of them. Even Fantasy, which has a tradition of "the rightful king" and well, tradition, can't be classified "right" (or wrong); how much less SF, which has a duty to be showing us alternatives, socially as well as technologically.

The Pournelle Political Axes


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## Stephen Palmer

Null_Zone said:


> Science Fiction has alway been political.
> 
> From my opinion British Sci-fi took a horrible leftist turn in the early 21st Century were communism suddenly worked with no reason given for how society and technology had changed to make it possible. Anyone to the Right of this made Hitler look like a bleeding heart liberal, there was no middle ground.


 
I think that might only have been a few authors...?


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## Vertigo

chrispenycate said:


> Jerry Pournelle (already cited on this thread as a right wing inflence) has written an essay
> stating that the one dimensional right-left classification for politics has been too elementary since its inception, that no human society, even the one where it came into being shortly after the French revolution, where most dissidence had been disposed of (along with most of the dissidents) has ever been simple enough to specify with one measuring dimension. The idea that those who believe society more important than the individuals making it up will not all be technophile, change embracing, punishment-soft fuzzy animal lovers; nor will tradition-loving individualists all be rabid capitalists and paternalistic bible-beaters, embracing Darwinism as a means of slowing the rot and lack of respect in the lower classes.
> 
> He proposes a twin axis two-dimensional model, but I'm not even sure this is adequate; I could see a four or even five dimensional matrix as still being insufficient to describe a social structure. At any rate it is clear to me that declaring a particular story as left or right wing (let alone the author of said story, who might swing a completely different way in another tale) is not a useful classification for the vast majority of them. Even Fantasy, which has a tradition of "the rightful king" and well, tradition, can't be classified "right" (or wrong); how much less SF, which has a duty to be showing us alternatives, socially as well as technologically.
> 
> The Pournelle Political Axes


 
Isn't that just the beauty of it Chris. It is absolutely right that ultimately you can't describe a book (or person, nation etc.) as just being left or right and that means that the possible permutations available to the SFF author are almost infinite. I don't really care whether a book presents me with politics that I agree with so long as they are plausible, well thought out, interesting and don't preach at me. I also don't care whether they are presented as utopia or dystopia - one person's utopia is another's dystopia.

Bottom line - so long as they are interesting and don't start soap boxing on me then I'm happy!


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## Ursa major

I agree.

I don't really care what the underlying philosophy (left, right, wrong) is, as long as the author isn't preaching at me. In fact, I think subtly manoeuvring the reader into seeing that things aren't black and white (and that a system you dislike, or even despise, may have something going for it, even if outweighed by its downsides) fits one of my ideals for an SF story: it gets me thinking.


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## Vertigo

Absolutely Ursa - any story actually, not just SFF. Though I must confess that sometimes I like to sit down to a book (SFF or otherwise) that will absolutely not require any thought from me and just be pure entertainment, though such a story whilst enjoyable is unlikely to make it into my top ten list (not that I have one)!!!


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## Connavar

Ursa major said:


> I agree.
> 
> I don't really care what the underlying philosophy (left, right, wrong) is, as long as the author isn't preaching at me. In fact, I think subtly manoeuvring the reader into seeing that things aren't black and white (and that a system you dislike, or even despise, may have something going for it, even if outweighed by its downsides) fits one of my ideals for an SF story: it gets me thinking.



Thats why i dont understand readers of SF that dismiss quality books because they are too right,pro military or too left.

They also assume you cant like a book whose ideology,politics you dont agree with.


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## Toby Frost

I see Chris' general point, but I think whether for better or worse "left" and "right" are often inferred from story and setting as well as literal politics. Say for instance aliens invade Earth and mankind fights for survival. I think a lot of people would see this as a right-wing story, or at least a right-wing story waiting to happen. True, if you inserted some sobbing speeches about liberty and a few suitably crass 9/11 references, it probably would be. But the concept itself seems neutral to me. Similarly, a fantasy story more subtle than total goodies vs total baddies runs the risk of being seen as "left" (consider the recent article by the site Big Hollywood about Abercrombie). So by acknowledging that the world is as nuanced as Warcraft you're suddenly a raging left-winger. How does that work?

For some reason, some people do seem to see any moral sophistication (by which I mean realistic characterisation and plot) as a sign of leftist politics in the author. This strikes me as peculiar, as surely being right-wing and being intelligent and sophisticated aren't mutually incompatible.

(Incidentally, I particularly like the idiots who claim that _1984 _is about how we must destroy  Socialism before we all turn into the Gard-damn Commies. It was written by a Socialist.)


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## J-WO

Toby Frost said:


> (Incidentally, I particularly like the idiots who claim that _1984 _is about how we must destroy  Socialism before we all turn into the Gard-damn Commies. It was written by a Socialist.)



Yeah, that gets my goat, too. Its about the possible threat of 'a boot in the face of humanity forever' (to quote the book). Whichever boot used, left or right, is beside the point.

Its interesting what you say about politics being inferred from story and setting. Perhaps it says more about the failures of politics of recent years on either side- the Right's inability to engage with any detail (moral or otherwise) and the left's increasingly dissolving spine.


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## Ursa major

J-WO said:


> Yeah, that gets my goat, too. Its about the possible threat of 'a boot in the face of humanity forever' (to quote the book). Whichever boot used, left or right, is beside the point.


So when someone does attribute the authoritarianism to a particular ideology, all we can say is, "Cobblers!"


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## Toby Frost

Quite. Oceania is a mixture of fascist and Stalinist ideology (and it's likely that the other countries are either the same or Mao-meets-Tojo). 

The problem comes when people stop being reasonable about their political views. Take the article I mentioned, which is here:

Big Hollywood  Blog Archive  The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists

The article reads quite well until it ditches the flannel about critiquing literature and gets to the meat: Abercrombie is a "liberal" (whatever that means) and is therefore culturally vile. Personally, I see nothing left-thinking in The First Law at all: it has no politics beyond a slightly tiresome cynicism, which feels less like a political theory than an artistic pose. But, because The First Law isn't blatantly enobling, it has to be the work of a sick, decency-hating communist weasel etc. 

When one side is prepared to tar the other in this way, reasoned debate begins to seem pointless. And, sad to say, that sort of vitriol does seem to come from the right more than the left at present. Perhaps the loony right just shouts louder. Or perhaps, as J-Wo suggests, the mad end of the left is too spineless to shout about anything at all. I don't know.


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## Caledfwlch

I have never understood the mindset of people who won't read a book, now matter how good it may be, because of either the author's general political spectrum leaning, or because the book may favour either "side" 

For me, leaving aside where a book may have some garish attempts at "shocking" by using either uncomfortable/offensive subject matter or behaviour, for an extreme example, I am not going to read an SFF novel which has a main hero who is a rapist or paedophile, the specific meat and content behind the leanings of the Author are what can/could stop me trying the novel out.

People and situations like that growing or at least continuing breed of US Authors, hardcore Christian fundementalists, from scary churches, people who in the real world, as either themselves, or as the public "celebrity" face of such churches preach intolerance, bigotry, hatred, even if they manage to mask their vile nature within the novels themselves.

I have no intention of ever reading anything by L Ron Hubbard. the word Evil is too often bandied about or stuck to places where it sits uncomfortably, and can be devalued. So, I consider the Church of Scientology to be a reprehensible organisation. And so I will not read anything written by the what I find to be an unpleasant intellect that could create such an organisation, not put funds into its coffers by buying those books. The organisation and its related "issues" are far more worthy of their own thread.

But, I have read plenty of novels, both SFF and other genres which were to a point right wing in outlook, and dont really care, if its a balanced, normal persons "right leaning"

I have vague memories, that when the movie of Fight Club came out, thus attracting a wider audience than the at the time less well known novel, very left wing people in the US were screaming that it was an individualists, hardcore anti women right wing disgrace. The US Right, of your tea party type beliefs, were screaming that Fight Club was a left wing fascists hand book, and an attempt to undermine the US.

Me, I saw a film about a tired and burnt out office drone with issues finally having a mental breakdown, and taking out his frustrations with the consumer culture, and the fact that we are increasingly just the numbers of a credit card, or the brand logo on our trainers, individuals battered into conforming to what business tells us to confirm to, in the name of corporate profit.

And that is what I find interesting in it actually - The bold Individualist, thats quite a right wing concept to a certain degree. Self before society. And yet, Project Mayhem the plan to destroy the cities banking industry, to hit at the faceless corporations controlling our lives seems very left wing in a way. Your average normal right wing person afaik does not see big business or the banks as a "threat" to them or their individuality. And there is perhaps an irony/prophecy in a film that ends with the background shot of banks exploding into oblivion, considering the last 2 years or so. 

like another poster, I think that the very idea of imposing what are essentially Victorian concepts of a political spectrum, ideas and rigid structures created in a very, very different society and world, 100-120 years ago, onto the far more well read and educated political realities of 2011 to be completely ludicrous.

I would self define as left wing in most of my political beliefs, but happy to accept that some of them are more right wing. I have been accused or told I am politically "somewhere to the left of the Anarchists" whilst a New Labour supporter (so you know how left wing he wasnt)  accused me of being a hardcore Tory supporter. A Conservative/Tory poster in the same thread said he had assumed I was "one of us" but crippled with an "unfortunate" wishy washy collection of liberal ideas and a belief in things like social justice. It could make a chap somewhat confused as to where he is Politically 

Here is an example of a couple of my beliefs, to demonstrate how right/left is no longer fit for purpose. Prisons:
I believe Prison should be a punishment and a deterrent. They should be either slightly too cold, or slightly too hot, just to hammer home, what loosing freedom due to criminal actions is. Inside, every single room and hall should painted in the most boring colour imaginable. every single breaking of the prisons internal rules for Prisoners should be ruthlessly policed, enforced and punished. Prisoners with drug problems should be kept isolated, no contact with other prisoners, except through glass full floor to ceiling partitions, maybe segregate communal areas to facilitate this, so they do get some human contact, but no chance of receiving drugs. All Prisoners visits with family/friends to be through floor to ceiling glass partitions. The hug and kiss of a wife, or having ones hand held by a tearful mother are rights for law abiding people. The above sound like a Tory wet dream. 

But, I believe rehabilitation, to be as vital as punishment, and possibly more so, at least for a huge number of criminals. Education is vital, prisoners should be encouraged to study, to learn, to have access to all the books and learning media they desire. They should be encouraged to spend their sentence, bettering themselves as people, as citizens, and to enable them to move on to a law abiding life, when they get out. teach them skills, give them qualifications, those showing willing, as their sentances progress, can be given more access to their families and friends, remove the screens. And protect the inmates, stamp out and smash the people behaving as gang bosses inside prison, get the bullies, and so on. All of which is not terribly right wing thinking


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## thaddeus6th

Looong post, Caledfwlch (nice name, incidentally), but I had to reply after the early part.

I read somewhere that China Mieville is pretty leftish (I'm not). I didn't enjoy The Scar any less because of that, and it won't stop me getting any more of his stuff (it'll be a while but only because I try and buy lots of things). However, if a book had been essentially a party political broadcast ramming home a slanted view (from any angle, whether socialist or not) I would refuse to buy any more books from that author.

I don't think having a political view inform/influence a plot or character is necessarily bad, but when the plot/characters are subservient to a political message that can be too much. I buy fantasy and sci-fi and classical history for escapism, not to have someone try and convince me of their political perspective.

Must say that no good example springs to mind, which is one reason why I think the answer to the thread's question is No.


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## Caledfwlch

thaddeus6th said:


> Looong post, Caledfwlch (nice name, incidentally), but I had to reply after the early part.
> 
> I read somewhere that China Mieville is pretty leftish (I'm not). I didn't enjoy The Scar any less because of that, and it won't stop me getting any more of his stuff (it'll be a while but only because I try and buy lots of things). However, if a book had been essentially a party political broadcast ramming home a slanted view (from any angle, whether socialist or not) I would refuse to buy any more books from that author.
> 
> I don't think having a political view inform/influence a plot or character is necessarily bad, but when the plot/characters are subservient to a political message that can be too much. I buy fantasy and sci-fi and classical history for escapism, not to have someone try and convince me of their political perspective.
> 
> Must say that no good example springs to mind, which is one reason why I think the answer to the thread's question is No.



To an extent, the last 2 or 3 series of Classic Doctor Who, with Sly McCoy and by extension the Target novelizations of those stories has examples of both good and bad ways of trying to convince a reader to the authors way of thinking.

The Happiness Patrol - a political satire of Maggie Thatcher & Thatcherite Britain, with it's Helen A

Remembrance of the Daleks. The young and excellent author, being led astray by a script editor determined to score some blindingly obvious cheap points, and "educate the kiddies on racism" including crowbarred in references to Ace's friend in the "future" being badly burned by racist arsonist "white kids did it" Then there is the black guy working nights in the Cafe...

In the editor's clumsy determination to "make points to the kids" he sort of creates what he is trying to lecture against. The cafe worker, is a little bit.. stereotypical. He quite literally IS a token minority figure, who's only function is to stand on screen for a few minutes to make us feel guilty about Slavery. which is a shame because Andrew Cartmel is *not* a racist, he just ended up getting a bit too much up himself, and not realising his own fiddling was damn close to what he wanted to satire.

The novel of Remembrance i think is awesome. in some ways its Ben Aaronvitch's director cut to his vision of what he wrote. AND he gets the points about racism, and similarities between daleks and nazis right, and understands subtlety - less is more. From Ace furiously discovering the "No Irish, No Coloured, No Dogs" type sign common at the time, in Mikes mum's B&B, to Professor Rachel Jenson, a character, who like, the author Ben is Jewish, having flashbacks to to being a young women in WW2, the fear and horror of Nazi's, of when the death camps were liberated.

The Casting Crew for filming however did not get the Memo about Cartmel's unsubtle shoehorning, and Mr Ratcliffe's "Association" a clear parallel to the British Union of Fascists, or the later BNP has a black member amongst its number. And people who know a lot more than me, have said that Cartmel was absolutely furious about that. So again, accidently becoming what he was trying to make a point about.

The Sunmakers back in Tom Bakers day was also a parody of unbridled Capitalism and beaurocracy 

I love da vinci code type thrillers. A couple months ago, I found a new one by a guy called Ben Thor, and I had to stop reading. The guy seemed a little.... Tea Party in his politics, and it was coming across, through what his "hero" was saying. Not for me, I am afraid.


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## J-WO

I don't mind a right wing writer as long as his left-leaning characters aren't just straw dogs. And, now I think of it, Vice Versa. A writer has a duty to give the ideas he/ she opposes a fair hearing. 

Both Webber and Mieville, despite their better qualities, fail at that.


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## soulsinging

J-WO said:


> I'm not saying that's the writer's conscious intent (though the jury's still out on Meyer...), but storyteller's are only ever the reflection of whatever culture they are living in.
> 
> Its no surprise Twilight went nova in the states at about the same time Virginity pledges got endorsed by government. As a general rule, the less moody fang-boy books there are on the market in any decade, the more young women can live their lives.



Don't get me started on Twilight, which I think is the most blatantly manipulative work with respect to trying to scare women into sexual repression/submission since the horror cliches of the 80s.


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## Coops

I stopped reading James P. Hogan because he started to inject too much politics into his novels.  His early stuff was great hard SF but all of a sudden he got into political intrigue and climate change and gave up on nanotechnology, virtual reality, alien contact and time travel.

On the other hand, I liked Card's Empire books.  But Card was always more of a storyteller than a hard SF writer.


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## J-WO

I believe that a novelist who pushes a political viewpoint at the expense of story and character is essentially not all that different to a pornographer. They're both trying to get a simple reaction out of their audience at the expense of art. 

(If there's any pornographers reading this I'm sorry I compared you to Terry Goodkind)


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## Ursa major

Chicken!









​


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## J-WO

Ah, yes, Goodkind's chicken of total evil. I've heard of this legend.


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## Toby Frost

Is the political equivalent of a pornographer a propagandist?


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## thaddeus6th

I'd argue not.

The former wants your attention but doesn't use deceit or falsehoods (unless you're into wacky alien filth - "See Suruk's Mighty Chopper on page 7!!!"), whereas propagandists often distort the truth or tell outright lies. I'd rather photograph, er, lady persons than be a modern Goebbels.


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## J-WO

Toby Frost said:


> Is the political equivalent of a pornographer a propagandist?



Propagandist! That word would have saved me a rather laboured simile had I remembered it.


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## J-WO

thaddeus6th said:


> I'd rather photograph, er, lady persons than be a modern Goebbels.



I'm thinking we should put this one to a forum poll.


----------



## Ursa major

I'd rather not know how many Chronners want to be any sort of Goebbels, thank you very much.











​


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## Toby Frost

You're right, Thadeus. On second thoughts pornography is a far more honourable trade than propaganda (I am struggling not to use the phrase "get a rise out of the reader" in this post).

I think part of this discussion arises out of the problem that what constitutes left and right (especially in America, which in traditional terms doesn't actually have any left wing at all) has changed drastically. The rules seem to be becoming cruder and more drastic: it seems strange to me that to consider a war from both sides - that is, to be capable of thinking the issue before deciding on a side - makes one a spineless moral coward incapable of decency.

To go back to the article I mentioned earlier, I find it odd how, after damning Abercrombie et al over their use of torture, the writer doesn't mention a certain other author whose characters have been maiming and castrating their way through 10 books with gay abandon in the cause of the 'libertarian' right. Curious.


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## thaddeus6th

Mr. Frost, get a hold of yourself!

Ahem.

As well as left and right I think it's important to consider liberal and authoritarian views (as a y-axis, if you like). It was telling how big an overlap there was between the rightwing Conservatives and leftwing Lib Dems in the field of civil liberties (ie axing the ID card scheme).


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## Toby Frost

Ahem indeed!

The whole Y-axis thing is a good idea, especially in SF, where politics can be more theoretical (although I'm suspicious of writers who claim to be just throwing out ideas). Being able to plot "authoritarian" and "anarchistic" against each other would help to put people on the map, especially where you have thinkers who don't fit into the obvious categories - non-Marxist left wingers, say. I do think it's also affected by local terminology, too: in the US, a right-wing extremist would probably want to destroy the government, while in Europe he'd probably want to create a dictatorship.


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## tomposer

Hi, this is my first post here.

Personally one of my primary objectives when I read fiction (and science fiction in particular) is so that I _don't _have to think much about real world politics and the like, which we are for the better or worse concerned with when _not _reading .  Most fantasy/sci-fi authors make some effort to accommodate the likes of me (as there are lots of us).

If celebrated fiction authors are political or of political interest, they frequently are either pretty naive about it (say, Rudyard Kipling), or requires an historical perspective (say, George Orwell).  Or, it's predominantly comical (say, Terry Pratchett).

I can't think of many authors left over who write widely acclaimed works of science fiction and fantasy which are strongly politically motivated.


----------



## Southern Geologist

First of all, forgive the thread necro, but I thought this would be better than starting a new thread since there has already been some discussion here in the area that interests me.

I've noticed a trend in this thread noting that modern military sci fi tends to be conservative leaning.  I'm wholly ignorant of the state of modern military sci fi so I won't argue this point as being factually incorrect, but I am curious as to why.  Given the cynicism about war that's resulted from the last two and a half wars the US has engaged in--never mind memories of Vietnam--and the developments in psychology over the past 30 years or so, advancing knowledge of PTSD in particular, it seems that military sci-fi would be fertile ground for novels about the effects of war on soldiers on the battlefield and those returning home, the political machinations that lead to unnecessary wars, the long term psychological and economic damage resulting from wars, the reactions of those who have to deal with loved ones going off to war...that sort of thing.  Taking it as a given that this is _not_ the direction military sci fi has gone in, I have to wonder why not.

Any thoughts?


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## J-Sun

I personally don't mind thread resurrection - I don't see why it should be a problem and it's better than starting a new thread.

As far as the question, I'm not conversant enough with military SF to really say, either, but my impression is that it is a distinct subgenre with quite a few restrictions on what it can contain. It's basically action-adventure SF in a hierarchical structure. What you're talking about would not be "military SF" but "SF about the military" and there is a bit of that, Joe Haldeman probably being the most notable and applicable. A few military SF lists will include _The Forever War_ and so on, but Haldeman is not seen as a military SF writer in the way that much of the Baen stable is, for instance. The point of military SF is that it's supposed to be gung-ho. This isn't to say it couldn't be fairly realistic and portray negatives but I'm pretty sure it's always supposed to depict necessary conflict with positive outcomes. So a military SF novel about cynicism and PTSD and unnecessary wars is probably a contradiction in (subgenre) terms. Military conflicts can also result in economic benefits, in accelerated technological advance, and can build character, are often necessary to preserve a valued way of life, and so on, and that's just the angle the subgenre takes. There's just never been enough "anti-milsf" that was popular enough with readers and driven by writers focused enough to produce a competing subgenre or change the nature of the existing one. Pro-military readers like reading about the military and anti-military readers don't, so military SF will naturally be pro.

I dunno - those are some thoughts, anyway, though I don't know if they're _good_ thoughts.


----------



## Southern Geologist

In some places thread resurrection is something of a taboo, unless you have something serious to contribute to the topic, at least.

I don't know enough to know whether those are _good_ thoughts, but they're certainly _interesting_ thoughts.   Perhaps someone with more knowledge of military sci-fi can verify your observations.

By the way, J-Sun, I appreciate your willingness to jump in and make an attempt to help on virtually anything, even if you don't happen to be particularly familiar with the topic.


----------



## J-Sun

Southern Geologist said:


> In some places thread resurrection is something of a taboo, unless you have something serious to contribute to the topic, at least.



Well, I agree with that - I have seen threads bumped for no reason and that's no good but I meant in the sense you had - that "I've got something to say worth starting a new thread, but it's relevant to this thread that's already here".



Southern Geologist said:


> I don't know enough to know whether those are _good_ thoughts, but they're certainly _interesting_ thoughts.   Perhaps someone with more knowledge of military sci-fi can verify your observations.
> 
> By the way, J-Sun, I appreciate your willingness to jump in and make an attempt to help on virtually anything, even if you don't happen to be particularly familiar with the topic.



Hm. That can be taken a couple ways.  But, yeah, thanks, I'm glad to. I don't mean I haven't read any of it but just not enough so that I feel like I ought to underscore that I might be wrong even more than usual. But where there are interesting topics, I figure its better to, like you say, jump in and attempt to help and possibly provoke useful additions or corrections than to just lurk. The "better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt" is a good principle for many things but doesn't keep internet discussion boards hopping.


----------



## Dave

Southern Geologist said:


> Given the cynicism about war that's resulted from the last two and a half wars the US has engaged in--never mind memories of Vietnam--and the developments in psychology over the past 30 years or so, advancing knowledge of PTSD in particular, it seems that military sci-fi would be fertile ground for novels about the effects of war on soldiers on the battlefield and those returning home, the political machinations that lead to unnecessary wars, the long term psychological and economic damage resulting from wars, the reactions of those who have to deal with loved ones going off to war...that sort of thing.  Taking it as a given that this is _not_ the direction military sci fi has gone in, I have to wonder why not.


I haven't read very much 'military Sci fi', or else, like J-Sun, I'm not quite familiar with exactly the genre you mean either. I would believe you meant things such as Jerry Pournelle or Harry Turtledove?

What I can say is that Joe Haldane deals with exactly what you mentioned in _The Forever War_ and then in _Forever Peace_ (different story, different universe, similar views.)

However, the military is right now experimenting with 'mind wipes' in order to cure ex-service personnel of PTSD. That is like a real life _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_. I could be wrong, but I agree with you that I would expect more to have been written about the results of that. It does seem like a very fertile ground for stories, but I know of none.


----------



## Abernovo

SG, I'm not much of  fan (or reader) of mil sf. Gung-ho machismo doesn't do much for me, although the Honor Harrington series doesn't seem as bad, being more Naval romp set in space.

However, much of what you're asking about - the psychology, economics, and politics, and the effects of war on those who come back, and those who are left at home - would perhaps fall under social sf.

As to why mil sf has gone the route it has, I think it might be due to readership and publishers. If it's not going to sell to the dedicated readers, then it might exist, but not be marketed as military science fiction.

The only tiny quibble I'll raise with you is regarding your comment:


> ...the cynicism about war that's resulted from the last two and a half wars the US has engaged in...


Plenty of wars have been fought by (and certainly in) nations other than the US, and both the readership and writing extends past the borders of that country. So, I'd say your question doesn't go far enough. What I'd also like to see (but, again, it's social sf) is the effects on the 'little' people, who get affected, either directly or indirectly (such as by the destruction of infrastructure), by the wars fought on behalf of self-serving politicians.

But then, I'm more interested in 'real' people than the big names who strive for 'glory'.


----------



## Southern Geologist

Abernovo said:


> The only tiny quibble I'll raise with you is regarding your comment:
> 
> Plenty of wars have been fought by (and certainly in) nations other than the US, and both the readership and writing extends past the borders of that country. So, I'd say your question doesn't go far enough.* What I'd also like to see (but, again, it's social sf) is the effects on the 'little' people, who get affected, either directly or indirectly (such as by the destruction of infrastructure), by the wars fought on behalf of self-serving politicians.
> 
> But then, I'm more interested in 'real' people than the big names who strive for 'glory'.*



To be clear, I used those wars as an example because they've received attention from critics around the world (on the internet, at least) and are arguably the 'biggest' wars that have been fought since, say, Vietnam.  For that matter, World War 2 seems to be the last war that the world viewed as a 'good war' (for lack of a better term), and future generations have become more cynical about the issue of war in general.  That's the point I was trying to get across.  That said, yes, I could have addressed the issue in less America-centric terms and still made my point.

By the way, I wholeheartedly agree with everything I've placed in bold.  I love *Firefly* (the show) and that focus on the real people who got caught up in things bigger than them is one of the many reasons why.  I believe Joss Whedon stated his intent for the show--paraphrased--as making a series about the people that history forgot.


----------



## Abernovo

Yes. Sorry, SG, I think that was one of my curmudgeonly git days.  I suspect we're pretty much on the same page in what we'd like to see.

Share the love of Firefly.


----------



## Nerds_feather

Southern Geologist said:


> First of all, forgive the thread necro, but I thought this would be better than starting a new thread since there has already been some discussion here in the area that interests me.
> 
> I've noticed a trend in this thread noting that modern military sci fi tends to be conservative leaning.  I'm wholly ignorant of the state of modern military sci fi so I won't argue this point as being factually incorrect, but I am curious as to why.  Given the cynicism about war that's resulted from the last two and a half wars the US has engaged in--never mind memories of Vietnam--and the developments in psychology over the past 30 years or so, advancing knowledge of PTSD in particular, it seems that military sci-fi would be fertile ground for novels about the effects of war on soldiers on the battlefield and those returning home, the political machinations that lead to unnecessary wars, the long term psychological and economic damage resulting from wars, the reactions of those who have to deal with loved ones going off to war...that sort of thing.  Taking it as a given that this is _not_ the direction military sci fi has gone in, I have to wonder why not.
> 
> Any thoughts?



I think the reason military SF leans right is because it's mostly attractive (in terms of both readers and authors) to people with a militarist perspective, and many of them are right-wing. But you are right--it is fertile ground for all the things you state. There are some classic examples, like *The Forever War* and *Life During Wartime*. I also think Scalzi's *OMW* books explore some of this, albeit in a darkly humorous way.


----------



## Southern Geologist

Nerds_feather said:


> *I think the reason military SF leans right is because it's mostly attractive (in terms of both readers and authors) to people with a militarist perspective, and many of them are right-wing.* But you are right--it is fertile ground for all the things you state. There are some classic examples, like *The Forever War* and *Life During Wartime*. I also think Scalzi's *OMW* books explore some of this, albeit in a darkly humorous way.



Well, I have to admit that this is a common sense explanation for the nature of the genre as it stands today.

I wonder when Terry Goodkind is going to start writing military SF....

*The Forever War* was actually something I had in mind when I was thinking/hoping that a section of military SF would have changed directions.  It seemed that a seminal work like that may lead to a sea change.  I guess that was just me being a romantic.


----------



## Nerds_feather

Have you read the *OMW* books? If not, I recommend them. They are light reading, but have some serious things to say about warfare. Others I enjoyed include Iain M. Banks' *Use of Weapons* and Peter F. Hamilton's *Fallen Dragon*. I wouldn't go so far as to say any of these are "left-wing" or "pacifist" books (Banks' books strike me as less clearly left-wing than his stated personal politics), but they do treat war, colonization and black ops as reasonably complex, morally questionable and implicitly disturbing subjects.


----------



## Southern Geologist

I haven't read any of those yet and will keep those suggestions in mind.


----------



## Jonathan C

Southern Geologist said:


> I wonder when Terry Goodkind is going to start writing military SF....


 
Well, he's an Objectivist, so he's probably pretty much against the whole concept of an established military.  

As said earlier on the thread, the Left / Right divide is awfully simplistic. Terry Goodkind is Right-Wing, but that doesn't mean he is pro-military even if other right-wing guys very much are.


----------



## Nerds_feather

There are different kinds of "left wing" and different kinds of "right wing." I like the 2-dimensional model better, where one axis is "social libertartian vs. authoritarian" and the other is "economic left vs. right." You can take the test here.


----------



## Southern Geologist

Jonathan C said:


> Well, he's an Objectivist, so he's probably pretty much against the whole concept of an established military.
> 
> As said earlier on the thread, the Left / Right divide is awfully simplistic. Terry Goodkind is Right-Wing, but that doesn't mean he is pro-military even if other right-wing guys very much are.



Interesting.  I was informed by a reader that one of his books was a parable for why the Iraq war was a great idea.  Apparently they got it wrong.

And yes, I agree that the left/right divide is simplistic given that by some standards I classify as right wing and anti-war.


----------



## Jonathan C

Southern Geologist said:


> Interesting. I was informed by a reader that one of his books was a parable for why the Iraq war was a great idea. Apparently they got it wrong.


 
Well, I haven't read his books, so I wouldn't say they got it wrong _per say. _Its just that Objectivists in general are suspicious at best and contemptuous at worst of strong state military systems, putting their faith instead in private military companies, militias, and the option of nuking the hell out of whoever messes with you. Objectivists aren't (supposed to be) big fans of state power in any form preferring either a minimalist state where they aren't outright anarcho-capitalists.

But with any political stance, when it comes to a case by case basis things get more complicated. Its possible to be an Objectivist and still be in favour of the Iraq War, if you think it protected your interests in the long run. But again, haven't read his books.


----------



## mosaix

Nerds_feather said:


> There are different kinds of "left wing" and different kinds of "right wing." I like the 2-dimensional model better, where one axis is "social libertartian vs. authoritarian" and the other is "economic left vs. right." You can take the test here.



*Economic Left/Right: -6.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.46

*The problem with the test is that there isn't a "don't know" option.


----------



## Mirannan

Southern Geologist said:


> To be clear, I used those wars as an example because they've received attention from critics around the world (on the internet, at least) and are arguably the 'biggest' wars that have been fought since, say, Vietnam.  For that matter, World War 2 seems to be the last war that the world viewed as a 'good war' (for lack of a better term), and future generations have become more cynical about the issue of war in general.  That's the point I was trying to get across.  That said, yes, I could have addressed the issue in less America-centric terms and still made my point.
> 
> By the way, I wholeheartedly agree with everything I've placed in bold.  I love *Firefly* (the show) and that focus on the real people who got caught up in things bigger than them is one of the many reasons why.  I believe Joss Whedon stated his intent for the show--paraphrased--as making a series about the people that history forgot.



I would say that Gulf War I was a fairly good example of "just war" in that it was a war against an enemy who had started it first, by an unprovoked act of aggression. (Gulf War II is less clear.) Of smaller conflicts on the world stage, although it was important to the belligerents, I would also nominate the Falklands War.


----------



## Southern Geologist

Mirannan said:


> I would say that Gulf War I was a fairly good example of "just war" in that it was a war against an enemy who had started it first, by an unprovoked act of aggression. (Gulf War II is less clear.) Of smaller conflicts on the world stage, although it was important to the belligerents, I would also nominate the Falklands War.



Forgive me for my clumsy statement.  I was a child during the time the of the first Gulf War and  completely blanked out about its existence.  I have no knowledge of it other than memories of cheap computer games using the Gulf War as a setting, p) so I have no business arguing whether that was a just war or not.  I was thinking of the two wars Bush Jr. started, in particular, and should have stated that clearly.



Jonathan C said:


> Well, I haven't read his books, so I wouldn't say they got it wrong _per say. _Its  just that Objectivists in general are suspicious at best and  contemptuous at worst of strong state military systems, putting their  faith instead in private military companies, militias, and the option of  nuking the hell out of whoever messes with you. Objectivists aren't  (supposed to be) big fans of state power in any form preferring either a  minimalist state where they aren't outright anarcho-capitalists.
> 
> But with any political stance, when it comes to a case by case basis  things get more complicated. Its possible to be an Objectivist and still  be in favour of the Iraq War, if you think it protected your interests  in the long run. But again, haven't read his books.



You make a good point.  That said, I jumped to that conclusion because the reviewer had made it quite clear that she was getting very sick of his Objectivism prior to making that comment, which made me wonder if she misread him.



mosaix said:


> *Economic Left/Right: -6.62
> Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.46
> 
> *The problem with the test is that there isn't a "don't know" option.



The last time I took the test my economic left/right was +3 point something and my social libertarian/authoritarian was -7 or so.  I agree that it should have a 'don't know' option.


----------



## Nerds_feather

Is "objectivism" the Ayn Rand thing? If so, I have a hard time seeing the attraction. Those books are terrible.


----------



## Southern Geologist

Nerds_feather said:


> Is "objectivism" the Ayn Rand thing? If so, I have a hard time seeing the attraction. Those books are terrible.



Yes, it is Rand's philosophy.


----------



## iansales

Mirannan said:


> I would say that Gulf War I was a fairly good example of "just war" in that it was a war against an enemy who had started it first, by an unprovoked act of aggression. (Gulf War II is less clear.) Of smaller conflicts on the world stage, although it was important to the belligerents, I would also nominate the Falklands War.



The first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, was an allied army which repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It was good inasmuch as it liberated the country from its invaders. And stopped at the border. It was not so good in that similar situations around the world did not result in coalition forces leaping in to battle the invaders.

Gulf War 2 was driven by the US Administration's desire to hand over Iraqi oil resources to US corporations. The invasion of Iraq was allegedly to shut down WMDs, but none were ever found and any claims beforehand that any existed were revealed to be lies. The war broke international law, but neither Bush nor Blair have ever been charged with war crimes. They should have been.

The Falkands War was a response to the annexation of the islands by the Argentineans, who wanted to extend their territoriality out to the supposed oil field in the region. (There is no oil there; later surveys proved as much.) From the UK perspective, no one cared about the Falklands - the Argentineans could have them. But Thatcher used it as a way to rally support among the electorate. It was a "good war" for her, but it didn't need to be fought.


----------



## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> The first Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, was an allied army which repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It was good inasmuch as it liberated the country from its invaders. And stopped at the border. It was not so good in that similar situations around the world did not result in coalition forces leaping in to battle the invaders.



What similar situations? There are other, worse examples of state and military violence, and several cases where a state is illegally meddling in the affairs of another state or territory, but I can't think of a lot of recent examples of a sovereign state straight-up annexing another sovereign state like what happened in Kuwait. Maybe I'm forgetting something...

I'd argue the bad part of Gulf War 1 was that, even though there were clear limitations to what the coalition sought to achieve, there was no clear sense of what should come afterwards. The no-fly zones + sanctions didn't really do much to dislodge Saddam Hussein or liberate the oppressed Kurdish north and Shia south, but did cost a lot of money and also hurt Iraq's civilian population. I don't pretend to know what the perfect solution would have been, but this wasn't a good one. 



iansales said:


> Gulf War 2 was driven by the US Administration's desire to hand over Iraqi oil resources to US corporations. The invasion of Iraq was allegedly to shut down WMDs, but none were ever found and any claims beforehand that any existed were revealed to be lies. The war broke international law, but neither Bush nor Blair have ever been charged with war crimes. They should have been.



I opposed this war from the beginning, but I think it was a little more complicated than just grabbing Iraq's oil reserves--the neoconservative architects of the war actually believed they could initiate a sort of democratic domino-effect throughout the Middle East, which of course would produce more access to oil, but would also produce a friendlier environment for Israel and eradicate radical Islamism. A complete and utter pipe dream, but many of the leading neoconservatives were converted Trotskyists, so this kind of blinded revolutionary thinking isn't out of the ordinary. 



iansales said:


> The Falkands War was a response to the annexation of the islands by the Argentineans, who wanted to extend their territoriality out to the supposed oil field in the region. (There is no oil there; later surveys proved as much.) From the UK perspective, no one cared about the Falklands - the Argentineans could have them. But Thatcher used it as a way to rally support among the electorate. It was a "good war" for her, but it didn't need to be fought.



Don't know as much about this one, but this sounds like a fair assessment.


----------



## iansales

Nerds_feather said:


> What similar situations? There are other, worse examples of state and military violence, and several cases where a state is illegally meddling in the affairs of another state or territory, but I can't think of a lot of recent examples of a sovereign state straight-up annexing another sovereign state like what happened in Kuwait. Maybe I'm forgetting something...



How about Grenada?



Nerds_feather said:


> I opposed this war from the beginning, but I think it was a little more complicated than just grabbing Iraq's oil reserves--the neoconservative architects of the war actually believed they could initiate a sort of democratic domino-effect throughout the Middle East, which of course would produce more access to oil, but would also produce a friendlier environment for Israel and eradicate radical Islamism. A complete and utter pipe dream, but many of the leading neoconservatives were converted Trotskyists, so this kind of blinded revolutionary thinking isn't out of the ordinary.



Iraq was a secular state. It won't remain one. Iraq had no links to Al-qaeda or radical Islamism. Iraq had no WMDs. It _did_ have a terrible human rights record, but that hardly makes it unique in this day and age. And if the US was serious about righting such wrongs, there's a long list of countries they can invade... including parts of their own nation.


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## Ursa major

The reason no-one cared about the Falklands was simply because no-one in the UK knew about them (apart from in a couple of UK ministries, the Foreign Office and the MoD). Outside of the pages of the Grauniad**, people _did_ care once they knew what was happening. I doubt whether Thatcher could have survived the islands' permanent loss, particularly when that well-known war-monger, Michael Foot rolleyes was calling for the forces of the then-fascistic-and-military-led government of Argentina to be sent packing.


As for oil, speculation about the presence of it arose in the 1960s. The UK administration at that time didn't seem at all bothered about this, hence their apparent view of the Falklands as more of a nuisance than a possible source of wealth. (Presumably, had the Falklanders looked "rather less pale" rolleyes than they do, the islands would have been handed over there and then.)



** - The Grauniad has a history of posting articles*** which seem to back the Argentinian case: it must be the potent mix of self-hate and faux anti-colonialism that get the editorial team's juices flowing. (Faux, because unlike the mainland, where the indigenous peoples were systematically hunted down and killed, no-one had set foot on the Falklands until the British found and named it in 1690. The French (from St-Malo) were the first to arrive and settle - in 1764 - calling it the _Îles Malouines_, from which the Argentinians' name, Islas Malvinas is derived.)

*** - I don't know about the position in the past, but I suspect that this is also to do with getting clicks: the articles draw in a lot of comments, the vast majority of which support self-determination for the islands, whose population is assumed not to want to be controlled from Buenos Aires; solid evidence (about this assumption, not the Grauniad's trolling) will come from this year's referendum on the matter.


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## Venusian Broon

Ursa major said:


> (Faux, because unlike the mainland, where the indigenous peoples were systematically hunted down and killed, no-one had set foot on the Falklands until the British found and named it in 1690. The French (from St-Malo) were the first to arrive and settle - in 1764 - calling it the _Îles Malouines_, from which the Argentinians' name, Islas Malvinas is derived.)


 
And I believe, just to complicate it even more, the period of history that the Argentines did have a colony on the island (albeit a _penal_ colony) they were ejected from it by the _USA_, because it was engaging in piracy against US shipping. Perhaps they were getting a bit of practice in. 

We Brits then stumbled across the island, again empty and devoid, and probably thought 'what the hell, we need sheltered spots for our global maritime reach...'


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## iansales

Legend has it a Canadian was worried about an impending nuclear war. So he spent 6 months researching the spot most likely to survive one... and then promptly moved there. To the Falkands Islands. In 1982. He's only been there a couple of months when the Argentineans invaded...


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## Southern Geologist

Nerds_feather said:


> A complete and utter pipe dream, but many of the leading neoconservatives were converted Trotskyists, so this kind of blinded revolutionary thinking isn't out of the ordinary.



I didn't realize that Christopher Hitchens qualifies as many of the leading neoconservatives.

Seriously, though, this is fascinating information--because the average neo-conservative would never, ever admit to having been a Trotskyist at any point in their life, if nothing else--and I would love if you could name some of those converted Trotskyists so I could look up some information.  

By the way, I am glad that I rebooted this thread.  Fascinating discussion going on here.


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## Nerds_feather

iansales said:


> How about Grenada?



A different kind of situation. The US invasion deposed a revolutionary government that had taken power by force of arms because it deemed that government "unfriendly." Regardless of how one feels about the coup government (I'm not particularly sympathetic, but don't see them as all _that_ bad either), the decision to invade was based on trumped-up charges that a new airport being built constituted a "military threat," which several US officials sent on a fact-finding mission had already dismissed. 

The US invaded, deposed the revolutionary government, re-installed democracy and left. Not defending the military action, as it was not justified by law or any serious humanitarian concerns (and was, as such, a violation of the principle of state sovereignty), but I don't see this as being all that similar to the first Gulf War, which was precisely the kind of traditional invasion/annexation that doesn't happen all that often anymore. The only other examples I can think of in the past few decades would be Israel's unrecognized annexations of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and Indonesia's also unrecognized annexation of East Timor.



iansales said:


> Iraq was a secular state. It won't remain one. Iraq had no links to Al-qaeda or radical Islamism. Iraq had no WMDs. It _did_ have a terrible human rights record, but that hardly makes it unique in this day and age. And if the US was serious about righting such wrongs, there's a long list of countries they can invade... including parts of their own nation.



I'm not disputing any of that, as should be clear from my previous reply. No WMDs, certainly no meaningful connections to al-Qaeda or 9/11, and certainly no _casus belli_. 

But that doesn't mean the reason they wanted to go to war was "oil." To be frank, I think the "oil grab" theory is a major oversimplification. Sure, gaining access to an off-limits supply of oil was attractive to some, but a close look at the neoconservative movement in the 1990s and early 2000s shows some significantly different sets of motivations for going into Iraq, neither of which were explicitly or primarily about oil.

Ideological/Philosophical Motivations (e.g. Wolfowitz and Perle)

Saw freedom is a "natural" aspiration for humankind
Believed that democratic states don't fight wars with each other (see: Democratic Peace Theory in International Relations)
Were certain that Middle East societies only hated the US and Israel because their authoritarian regimes were using anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism to deflect attention from their own shortcomings (see: things that sound smart but aren't really very smart)
Thought democracy did not need to emerge organically, but could be installed by a vanguard movement (see: Trotskyist roots of neoconservative movement; oversimplification of US history)
Believed military action could install said vanguard movement (see: Trotskyist roots of neoconservative movement; oversimplification of Second World War history)
Bought into "domino theory" (see: oversimplification of Cold War history)
Also believed that by "winning" the Cold War, the US had become an "exceptional" power tasked with the mission to spread democracy (see: Trotskyist roots of neoconservative movement)

Power Political Motivations (e.g. Cheney and Rumsfeld)

Saw Iraq as a threat to American interests, including but not limited to oil supply
Saw Iraq as a threat to primary  and secondary American allies in the region (Israel and Saudi Arabia)
May have believed Iraq had a giant stockpile of WMD, but had either taken it as an article of faith rather than as a conclusion drawn from data or figured it would be a good excuse to trot out
Wanted to test theory of winning a conventional war on the small/cheap 
Wanted to "send message" to other "enemy states" such as Iran, Libya and North Korea (and ultimately, to China and Russia)
Also bought into "domino theory"
Saw oil as a way to pay for it all (and boy were they wrong about that), and saw no conflict in giving all the major contracts to US companies


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## Gordian Knot

Nerds_feather said:


> There are different kinds of "left wing" and different kinds of "right wing." I like the 2-dimensional model better, where one axis is "social libertartian vs. authoritarian" and the other is "economic left vs. right." You can take the test here.



Thanks muchly! for that link, N. I found it to be quite a fascinating experience. It makes sense to me that there is no "Nor Sure" option. Too many such responses would have rendered the quiz meaningles. By forcing everyone to answer with the one that most closely mirrors their views, it forces everyone to make some tough decisions; and gives a more accurate assessment of where you stand.

I'm curious. Those of you who took the test. Did you end up somewhere near where you figured you would be? Somewhere NOT so near where you thought you would be? Or NOwhere where you thought you would be?

I'm not asking anyone to give out their position according to the test. I am more interested in how close the results came to where you believed you would stand.

For example I found where I landed on the left vs right scale to be about right where I would have expected, but I ended further towards the authoritarian side than I would have thought.


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## Nerds_feather

Southern Geologist said:


> I didn't realize that Christopher Hitchens qualifies as many of the leading neoconservatives.
> 
> Seriously, though, this is fascinating information--because the average neo-conservative would never, ever admit to having been a Trotskyist at any point in their life, if nothing else--and I would love if you could name some of those converted Trotskyists so I could look up some information.
> 
> By the way, I am glad that I rebooted this thread.  Fascinating discussion going on here.



Christopher Hitchens, by 2001, was definitely a full-on convert to neoconservatism. 

But most of the others had their conversions in the 1960s. Francis Fukuyama, who at one time had been a fellow traveller, wrote a brilliant essay in the _NYT_ a few years ago about neoconservatism's ultimate failure. The section on the Trotskyist roots of the movement:



> It is not an accident that many in the C.C.N.Y. group started out as Trotskyites. Leon Trotsky was, of course, himself a Communist, but his supporters came to understand better than most people the utter cynicism and brutality of the Stalinist regime. The anti-Communist left, in contrast to the traditional American right, sympathized with the social and economic aims of Communism, but in the course of the 1930's and 1940's came to realize that "real existing socialism" had become a monstrosity of unintended consequences that completely undermined the idealistic goals it espoused. While not all of the C.C.N.Y. thinkers became neoconservatives, the danger of good intentions carried to extremes was a theme that would underlie the life work of many members of this group.
> 
> If there was a single overarching theme to the domestic social policy critiques issued by those who wrote for the neoconservative journal The Public Interest, founded by Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell in 1965, it was the limits of social engineering. Writers like Glazer, Moynihan and, later, Glenn Loury argued that ambitious efforts to seek social justice often left societies worse off than before because they either required massive state intervention that disrupted pre-existing social relations (for example, forced busing) or else produced unanticipated consequences (like an increase in single-parent families as a result of welfare). A major theme running through James Q. Wilson's extensive writings on crime was the idea that you could not lower crime rates by trying to solve deep underlying problems like poverty and racism; effective policies needed to focus on shorter-term measures that went after symptoms of social distress (like subway graffiti or panhandling) rather than root causes.
> 
> How, then, did a group with such a pedigree come to decide that the "root cause" of terrorism lay in the Middle East's lack of democracy, that the United States had both the wisdom and the ability to fix this problem and that democracy would come quickly and painlessly to Iraq? Neoconservatives would not have taken this turn but for the peculiar way that the cold war ended.
> ...
> The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in two ways. First, it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would crumble with a small push from outside. The model for this was Romania under the Ceausescus: once the wicked witch was dead, the munchkins would rise up and start singing joyously about their liberation. As Kristol and Kagan put it in their 2000 book "Present Dangers": "To many the idea of America using its power to promote changes of regime in nations ruled by dictators rings of utopianism. But in fact, it is eminently realistic. There is something perverse in declaring the impossibility of promoting democratic change abroad in light of the record of the past three decades."
> 
> This overoptimism about postwar transitions to democracy helps explain the Bush administration's incomprehensible failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that subsequently emerged in Iraq. The war's supporters seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform. While they now assert that they knew all along that the democratic transformation of Iraq would be long and hard, they were clearly taken by surprise. According to George Packer's recent book on Iraq, "The Assassins' Gate," the Pentagon planned a drawdown of American forces to some 25,000 troops by the end of the summer following the invasion.


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## Southern Geologist

Nerds_feather said:


> Christopher Hitchens, by 2001, was definitely a full-on convert to neoconservatism.



Thank you very much for the link and the quote from the essay.  I made the crack about Hitchens simply because he was the only Iraq war supporter/neo-con that I could picture admitting to being a former Trotskyist.



Gordian Knot said:


> I'm curious. Those of you who took the test.  Did you end up somewhere near where you figured you would be? Somewhere  NOT so near where you thought you would be? Or NOwhere where you  thought you would be?



In my case it ranked me pretty closely to what I expected to see.  When I took it for the first time several years ago I was in for a surprise, though.  (My political positions and self-knowledge have shifted since then, fortunately.  )


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## HareBrain

Did it really need six pages of complex questions?

I probably fit into the political category of "can't be arsed", though I shall never know.


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## Nerds_feather

Southern Geologist said:


> Thank you very much for the link and the quote from the essay.  I made the crack about Hitchens simply because he was the only Iraq war supporter/neo-con that I could picture admitting to being a former Trotskyist.



True, but I don't think he ever really owned up to being a neoconservative!

I forgot to add there's a connection to Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who was a socially liberal but super-hawkish democrat. If I remember correctly, several of the major neoconservatives worked for his office in the 1970s.


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## Nerds_feather

Of course, this makes me think...what are some examples of neoconservatism in SF?

Oddly, and despite his personal leftist convictions, there are times when Iain M. Banks' culture novels remind me of neoconservatism. For example, the fact that the Culture thinks it's always "for the best" when it intervenes in the affairs of foreign states. I don't think he actually is arguing for a positive take on neoconservative...rather, I've always felt he was just exploring some of the darker moral implications of a society that views itself as politically and sociologically superior, and makes free use of its rather fearsome military.


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## Southern Geologist

Nerds_feather said:


> Of course, this makes me think...what are some examples of neoconservatism in SF?
> 
> Oddly, and despite his personal leftist convictions, there are times when Iain M. Banks' culture novels remind me of neoconservatism. For example, the fact that the Culture thinks it's always "for the best" when it intervenes in the affairs of foreign states. I don't think he actually is arguing for a positive take on neoconservative...rather, *I've always felt he was just exploring some of the darker moral implications of a society that views itself as politically and sociologically superior, and makes free use of its rather fearsome military.*



I haven't had a chance to start on the Culture series yet, but you're certainly making me look forward to digging into the volumes I have on hand.  The part in bold is a theme that fascinates me.


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## Mirannan

iansales said:


> Legend has it a Canadian was worried about an impending nuclear war. So he spent 6 months researching the spot most likely to survive one... and then promptly moved there. To the Falkands Islands. In 1982. He's only been there a couple of months when the Argentineans invaded...



Grimly amusing. I recall a slightly similar case of a British couple who had gone on a long holiday to Australia, only to be stuck indoors for 2 weeks because of a series of wildfires. They decided to change their plans and make it a round-the-world trip - only to arrive in LA about 4 hours before the earthquake.

Another one in the same vein is the Japanese man who was on the fringe of the blast area of the Hiroshima bomb, and decided to visit family friends to recuperate. Guess where they lived?


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## AE35Unit

HareBrain said:


> Did it really need six pages of complex questions?
> 
> I probably fit into the political category of "can't be arsed", though I shall never know.



Lol me too! IMO politics has no place in sf. It spoils things for me.


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## Nerds_feather

Southern Geologist said:


> I haven't had a chance to start on the Culture series yet, but you're certainly making me look forward to digging into the volumes I have on hand.  The part in bold is a theme that fascinates me.



My advice: start with *The Player of Games*. It's the second book in the series, but reading *Consider Phlebas* first (an inferior novel that puts some people off the series) isn't necessary.


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## AE35Unit

Nerds_feather said:


> My advice: start with *The Player of Games*. It's the second book in the series, but reading *Consider Phlebas* first (an inferior novel that puts some people off the series) isn't necessary.



Inferior novel? I thought Cobsider Phlebas was superb, and Im hard to please sf wise


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## Nerds_feather

I think it's good, but considerably weaker than *The Player of Games*, *Use of Weapons* and *Excession*, and a worse introduction to the series for a lot of readers. Some of that is personal taste, but it's something a lot of others have expressed in conversations with me as well, and in stronger terms that I would have used. 

Plus, since it isn't necessary to read it in order to understand the later books, I usually advise new Banks readers to save it for later on.


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## AE35Unit

Nerds_feather said:


> I think it's good, but considerably weaker than *The Player of Games*, *Use of Weapons* and *Excession*, and a worse introduction to the series for a lot of readers. Some of that is personal taste, but it's something a lot of others have expressed in conversations with me as well, and in stronger terms that I would have used.
> 
> Plus, since it isn't necessary to read it in order to understand the later books, I usually advise new Banks readers to save it for later on.



well CP is the only Banks book Ive read so far so it would seem Ive got good things in store for me!


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## J-Sun

AE35Unit said:


> well CP is the only Banks book Ive read so far so it would seem Ive got good things in store for me!



Ditto. I started with _Consider Phlebas_ and, while I hated a bizarre chapter and found some of the set-pieces overextended, I liked it overall. I've already got _The Player of Games_ and _Use of Weapons_ in the "going to get to it any day now - next couple of months tops!" little pile.


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## Ursa major

I've never got that far into _Use of Weapons_, not helped by losing my first copy in Brussels, but I shall get to the end one day.

Of the _The Player of Games_, _Consider Phlebas_ and _Excession_, the first is (to me) the best, but I liked the other two as well.


----------



## AE35Unit

J-Sun said:


> Ditto. I started with _Consider Phlebas_ and, while I hated a bizarre chapter and found some of the set-pieces overextended, I liked it overall. I've already got _The Player of Games_ and _Use of Weapons_ in the "going to get to it any day now - next couple of months tops!" little pile.



I have those two on my shelf next to CP, more bookmooch freebies. I have to decide which to read first. I must say he gives his characters weird names!


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## Jonathan C

Nerds_feather said:


> Of course, this makes me think...what are some examples of neoconservatism in SF?
> 
> Oddly, and despite his personal leftist convictions, there are times when Iain M. Banks' culture novels remind me of neoconservatism. For example, the fact that the Culture thinks it's always "for the best" when it intervenes in the affairs of foreign states. I don't think he actually is arguing for a positive take on neoconservative...rather, I've always felt he was just exploring some of the darker moral implications of a society that views itself as politically and sociologically superior, and makes free use of its rather fearsome military.


 
Well, whenver asked the question, "would you like to live in the Culture?", he claims that his response is always along the lines of, "Of course! Why would anyone _not _want to live in the Culture?", sometimes adding something like "unless you are a reactionary / anti-humanist etc.".

So, while he might be detailing its dark points, I don't think he disapproves. Nonetheless, that wouldn't make him a neoconservative, since that implies that left-wing writers / thinkers etc. are against interventionism, while if anything that was the Trostkyist influence on the neo-cons. Stalinism wasn't anti-interventionist either; Stalin just thought Russia should sort itself out before taking over the world (and he constantly meddled in the affairs of foreign Communist parties, (read: bullied/ controlled / summoned leaders to Moscow for re-education). Could probably come up wth a dozen other examples.


----------



## Nerds_feather

Jonathan C said:


> Well, whenver asked the question, "would you like to live in the Culture?", he claims that his response is always along the lines of, "Of course! Why would anyone _not _want to live in the Culture?", sometimes adding something like "unless you are a reactionary / anti-humanist etc.".
> 
> So, while he might be detailing its dark points, I don't think he disapproves. Nonetheless, that wouldn't make him a neoconservative, since that implies that left-wing writers / thinkers etc. are against interventionism, while if anything that was the Trostkyist influence on the neo-cons. Stalinism wasn't anti-interventionist either; Stalin just thought Russia should sort itself out before taking over the world (and he constantly meddled in the affairs of foreign Communist parties, (read: bullied/ controlled / summoned leaders to Moscow for re-education). Could probably come up wth a dozen other examples.



Agreed on the Trotskyism connection, neoconservatism being basically the Trotskyism of the right. 

...and yes, those on the far-rungs of the political left often resemble those on the far-rungs of the political left in a number of meaningful ways, propensity towards the indiscriminate use of violence principle among them. 

But I don't think that's the case--at all--for the kind of quasi-socialist Euro-leftism Banks exemplifies in his personal politics. They tend to be reflexively anti-intervention and anti-colonial (though the center-left that actually gets into power is often much less so).  

For me, I've always felt as if he'd like to lionize the Culture as all that's well and good, but he's too clever to actually do so. I feel as if we're supposed to get uncomfortable when thinking about how the Culture treats other societies, and it's supposed to make us think of real world examples of "civilizing missions" and other neocolonialisms--precisely because in most other respects the Culture is the ideal society. That's one of the things that's always attracted me to the series.


----------



## Jonathan C

Nerds_feather said:


> Agreed on the Trotskyism connection, neoconservatism being basically the Trotskyism of the right.
> 
> ...and yes, those on the far-rungs of the political left often resemble those on the far-rungs of the political left in a number of meaningful ways, propensity towards the indiscriminate use of violence principle among them.
> 
> But I don't think that's the case--at all--for the kind of quasi-socialist Euro-leftism Banks exemplifies in his personal politics. They tend to be reflexively anti-intervention and anti-colonial (though the center-left that actually gets into power is often much less so).
> 
> For me, I've always felt as if he'd like to lionize the Culture as all that's well and good, but he's too clever to actually do so. I feel as if we're supposed to get uncomfortable when thinking about how the Culture treats other societies, and it's supposed to make us think of real world examples of "civilizing missions" and other neocolonialisms--precisely because in most other respects the Culture is the ideal society. That's one of the things that's always attracted me to the series.


 
Well, I only use Trostkyism and Stalinism as examples. In truth, its hard to find _any _political ideology that cannot justify interventionism of one kind or another if it feels it has to. Ideologies change over time- nationalism, for example, is considered right-wing today, but it used to be left-wing-, and pragmatism tends to trump principle more often than not. Regardless of the reflexive stance of his personal politics, he could probably find good reasons if he wanted to.

Besides, just as how neo-cons are often old Trotskyists, Banks is only a Euro-leftist due to the current circumstances. At heart, if the Culture represents his heart, he seems more like a futurist-social-libertarian of some sort. I don't doubt that Christopher Hitchens and others like him would have much preferred to live in a Communist utopia than a liberal-capitalist democracy, but with the decline of the Soviet Union they went with what they saw as the more pragmatic and mature alternative- and most likely, hoped that their politics today would pave way for the utopia in the distant tomorrow. In the same way, Banks is perhaps a Euro-leftist now because the Culture is far away in the future, but he thinks his current politics represent the smoothest path towards it. 

I agree with the last part.


----------



## Dave

Jonathan C said:


> Nationalism, for example, is considered right-wing today, but it used to be left-wing-, and pragmatism tends to trump principle more often than not.


Actually, it has always been a bit moveable. Consider, Sir Oswald Moseley, who began as a Conservative and had some not unreasonable protectionist ideas and corporatist economic policies, then crossed the floor to the Labour Party, joined the very left wing Independent Labour Party, then formed his own national socialist Party, allied himself to the Fascists in Germany and Italy, and took on a lot of their nonsense ideas including anti-semitism. He might have been a leader of either Conservatives or Labour, but he instead became a discredited British Fascist.

BTW I read _Player of Games_ first, _Use of Weapons_ second. I still think they are the best two Culture books.


----------



## J-Sun

Nerds_feather said:


> My advice: start with *The Player of Games*. It's the second book in the series, but reading *Consider Phlebas* first (an inferior novel that puts some people off the series) isn't necessary.



Well, as I said, my first Banks was _CP_ and now that I've just finished reading _PoG_, I have to say I completely disagree. I mean, that's okay - different strokes and all - but, for me, starting with _PoG_ would have been disastrous and I'm still not sure it hasn't done Banks lasting harm in my book. 

But, yeah, he's definitely portraying the Culture as an interventionist "cuz we're better" society but also shows himself to be a non-capitalist bleedin' heart, for what it's worth. But I think this was pretty clear from _CP_, as well.


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## Nerds_feather

Dave said:


> BTW I read _Player of Games_ first, _Use of Weapons_ second. I still think they are the best two Culture books.



Agreed. I'd actually say *Use of Weapons* is the very best, but that it makes sense to read *Player of Games* first because it has a narrower scope and is the book that most clearly outlines what the Culture is, how it differs from its neighbors and how it acts towards them. 

Btw, mild tangential question: I have both *Matter* and *The Hydrogen Sonata*, but have not yet read either of them. Is there any great advantage to reading *Matter* first or can I read them in reverse? (*THS* was a gift, so I'm keen to read it soon and share my thoughts with the friend who got it for me).


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## Nerds_feather

J-Sun said:


> Well, as I said, my first Banks was _CP_ and now that I've just finished reading _PoG_, I have to say I completely disagree. I mean, that's okay - different strokes and all - but, for me, starting with _PoG_ would have been disastrous and I'm still not sure it hasn't done Banks lasting harm in my book.
> 
> But, yeah, he's definitely portraying the Culture as an interventionist "cuz we're better" society but also shows himself to be a non-capitalist bleedin' heart, for what it's worth. But I think this was pretty clear from _CP_, as well.



Why has it possibly done Banks "lasting harm" in your book? I think it's a fantastic book, so I'm curious.

As for the politics, yes well he's definitely left-wing. "Bleeding heart," though, seems like a term better reserved for "guilty liberals"; Banks' leftism is a bit harder than that, to say nothing of the Culture's rather uncompromising politics.  

If that's all there was to it, though, I think I'd be able to stomach the books about as much as I can stomach libertarian hard SF (i.e. not much). I'm fairly allergic to novels that are really just dressed-up political tracts, and particularly the ones that present an overly simplified view of the world. 

The thing that makes Banks' culture novels so brilliant in my book, and this is true of *Consider Phlebas*, *Player of Games* and *Use of Weapons* to varying degrees, is that we are made deeply uncomfortable by the way the Culture acts on the galactic scale. They are not simply presented as "good guys doing right," which would bore me to tears. Even in *Player of Games*, where Azad is is such a nasty version of a caste society--and it gets much more murky in *Use of Weapons*.


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## AE35Unit

^ So many people say that the author feels this or leans this way. But surely thats not the author talking, its his or her characters. Its a work of fiction.


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## Nerds_feather

AE35Unit said:


> ^ So many people say that the author feels this or leans this way. But surely thats not the author talking, its his or her characters. Its a work of fiction.



He's quite open about his personal politics. But I think his novels are rich and complex, politically, and defy easy categorization. This is one reason why I love them.


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## J-Sun

Nerds_feather said:


> Why has it possibly done Banks "lasting harm" in your book? I think it's a fantastic book, so I'm curious.



Probably better for the other thread as it's a bit off-topic here but, simply, it wasn't a good book (IMO) and makes me think less of Banks and less eager to read his next one. But not so much that I won't read his next one and, if it's good, everything will be fine.



> As for the politics, yes well he's definitely left-wing. "Bleeding heart," though, seems like a term better reserved for "guilty liberals"; Banks' leftism is a bit harder than that, to say nothing of the Culture's rather uncompromising politics.



I used it in a sort of joking way rather than intending any specific connotations but what prompted it was the lame section I mentioned where Gurgeh's outraged that some people were misused by others. This leads to the great section where Gurgeh misuses another. 



> If that's all there was to it, though, I think I'd be able to stomach the books about as much as I can stomach libertarian hard SF (i.e. not much). I'm fairly allergic to novels that are really just dressed-up political tracts, and particularly the ones that present an overly simplified view of the world.



But this was a dressed-up political tract, really. As was CP, though a much more entertaining one. But I agree that (a) they're more complex than is usually the case and (b) the politics permeate the story which seems to move in own right and aren't totally foreground with a plot that feel like it's just illustrating a point. But putting up a liberal, happy, easy-going society with an artificial and politically correct language up against a traditional, aggressive power-principle society and basically saying that "war and aggression are bad unless we're doing it" are definitely political statements.



> The thing that makes Banks' culture novels so brilliant in my book, and this is true of *Consider Phlebas*, *Player of Games* and *Use of Weapons* to varying degrees, is that we are made deeply uncomfortable by the way the Culture acts on the galactic scale. They are not simply presented as "good guys doing right," which would bore me to tears. Even in *Player of Games*, where Azad is is such a nasty version of a caste society--and it gets much more murky in *Use of Weapons*.



Agreed that simple "good guys" would bore me. That was part of what made CP so brilliant - possible spoilers, I can't remember when it kicks in and what impact it's supposed to have - the protagonist is the "bad guy" _opposed_ to the Culture.


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## AE35Unit

Nerds_feather said:


> He's quite open about his personal politics. But I think his novels are rich and complex, politically, and defy easy categorization. This is one reason why I love them.



Im quite anti-politics to be honest. I dont see that side of a story. Maybe thats why I dont get certain works like Blish's A Case of Conscience. Politics is strong in it and I couldnt enjoy it.


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