Politics and Science Fiction - Tor's Worlds Without Death or Taxes

Don · Nov 13, 2008

Now that the elections are over, how about something a little lighter?

(I think this fits in P&CE, as you'll see if you read on. If not, will a mod please relocate appropriately?)

This article in Reason Online discusses Tor Books, referred to as 'the most successful science fiction publisher in the world.' Then they go on to back that up with a few facts, as well as noting their current position in the battle for the Prometheus Award.

Tor publishes between 110 and 120 new original titles each year, routinely topping the science fiction bestseller list compiled by the industry magazine Locus. For 20 years running, it also has won the highly respected Locus Award for the best science fiction publishing house. This year Tor earned yet another distinction when its authors claimed all five finalist spots for the Prometheus Award, the annual prize for best science fiction novel of the year handed out by the Libertarian Futurist Society.

As befits Reason, they explore the relationship between science fiction and libertarianism

Science fiction has long served as a kind of mad scientist’s basement lab for testing out different political,economic, and social arrangements. Tor’s success suggests that science fiction’s commitment to meditations on the importance of human freedom remains strong, as mainstream writers borrow more freely from the once-ghettoized genre, indulging in science fiction–style hypotheticals that probe both the outer limits of and existential threats to liberty.

“Libertarianism is very much part of the intellectual argument of science fiction,” says longtime Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. “It’s impossible to be a part of the argument of science fiction without engaging both broad libertarian ideas and also specifically the whole American free market intellectual tradition.”

They go on to discuss the impact of libertarian science fiction on the current political scene, including works by such notables as Cory Doctorow, Harry Turtledove, Poul Anderson, J. Neil Schulman, and Robert A. Heinlein.

Writers with a jumble of competing views, working with editors spanning the political spectrum, churn out books for the mass market that turn out to be surprisingly effective propaganda pieces for liberty and against government.

Scratch a civil libertarian, and you’ll often find a 15-year-old who read a lot of Philip K. Dick. Ask a college guy protesting censorship at his student newspaper for his inspirations, and there’s a good chance Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 will come up. Meet someone who thinks there might be an upside to anarchy, and you have probably found a girl who once read Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed or a boy who loved Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

Finally, my question to the forum.

Have particular science fiction books had an impact on your political beliefs?

My personal list is long, but at the top would be Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and in particular the "Jeffersonian Rational Anarchist" Professor Bernardo de la Paz.

Nivarion · Nov 13, 2008

i wrap my mind, and try to keep ideas that may have and effect on me out before i look at them sometimes it makes it a bit harder to read and enjoy.

but sometimes, yes it has.

dolores haze · Nov 13, 2008

Don said:
Have particular science fiction books had an impact on your political beliefs?

Absolutely. Orwell's '1984' and Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' are the two that spring to mind, but many other SF works have also influenced my political musings.

kuwisdelu · Nov 13, 2008

Not exactly a book, but Planet of the Apes has reminded me how important it is to treat our ape brethren with kindness and respect, lest they learn to treat us any differently in an alternate evolutionary future in which we are their minions.

fullbookjacket · Nov 13, 2008

Kurt Vonnegut's Cats Cradle, Slaughterhouse 5, Player Piano, and The Sirens of Titan all influenced me. They didn't turn me into a pointy-head, but they sure as heck solidified it.

Plot Device · Nov 13, 2008

Frank Herbert's Dune.

The spice must flow. Jihad. Desert power. The spice must flow.

kuwisdelu · Nov 13, 2008

JoNightshade · Nov 13, 2008

I am a child of Heinlein. For better or worse.

benbradley · Nov 13, 2008

Don said:
...
Have particular science fiction books had an impact on your political beliefs?

My personal list is long, but at the top would be Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and in particular the "Jeffersonian Rational Anarchist" Professor Bernardo de la Paz.

I was thinking of Starship Troopers (the book of course - I haven't seen the movie), where a citizen earns the right to vote by completing military service. But of course "Luna is a Harsh Mistress" also has many ~~lectures~~ lessons, a blatant one being "Don't try to dominate a society that's above you in a gravity well," and there's also the problem of not recognizing when a colony/outpost has become its own society.

JoNightshade said:
I am a child of Heinlein. For better or worse.

"Me Too."

Don · Nov 13, 2008

"Don't try to dominate a society that's above you in a gravity well." Yeah, that was a great lesson. The book is full of them, but they go down like candy.

Who else could write a page or two on out-of-the-box thinking on government structure, make it read like comedy, and leave you thinking 'hmmm...' for the next week?

What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing.

What?

maxmordon · Nov 13, 2008

Would Thomas More's Utopia count?

Don · Nov 14, 2008

maxmordon said:
Would Thomas More's Utopia count?

I don't see any reason to quibble over semantics. At the very least, Utopia was the precursor to a whole sub-genre of utopian and dysutopian fiction, which seems to largely fall under the science fiction label.

So I'd say definately, Utopia counts.

Ageless Stranger · Nov 14, 2008

A Brave New World and 1984. Both showed me the dangers of extreme politics.

Higgins · Nov 14, 2008

Don said:
Finally, my question to the forum.

Have particular science fiction books had an impact on your political beliefs?

My personal list is long, but at the top would be Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and in particular the "Jeffersonian Rational Anarchist" Professor Bernardo de la Paz.

It's nice that TOR is putting this quasi-counter-cultural spin on Sci-fi. Basically this sort of spinning of a limited set of historical models (the American Revolution and the Fall of the Roman Empire as about the only historical paradigms available) into a hazy, self-congratulatory set of dimly ideological glorifications of rocket club smugness...anyway that pretty much turned me against Sci-fi and toward fantasy about three decades ago. My model for my political stuff became U. K. LeGuin's the Lathe of Heaven...but since then I guess I have a guilty liking for Iain Bank's political dynamics (where Fascists always loose).

Roger J Carlson · Nov 14, 2008

Heinlein, absolutely. Especially his juveniles. The theme that underscored them all was self-reliance and personal accountablility.

mscelina · Nov 14, 2008

Madeline d'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time.

Albedo · Nov 14, 2008

I agree with Higgins. The Reason article is a little self-congratulatory, especially the bit about

“Libertarianism is very much part of the intellectual argument of sciene fiction,” says longtime Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. “It’s impossible to be a part of the argument of science fiction without engaging both broad libertarian ideas and also specifically the whole American free market intellectual tradition.”

I guess 'engaging' is a neutral term. But there are a lot of authors who specifically reject the above. I don't write to any American intellectual tradition, and neither I suspect do any non-American writers who aren't deliberately aping the gee-whiz, atomistic age stuff of Heinlein and Co. I freely read and enjoy their works, but that's different to sharing their argument. MY future is firmly social-democratic.

shawkins · Nov 14, 2008

Ditto on the Heinlein.

mscelina said:
Madeline d'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time.

Oooh, yeah good one. Is it just me, or does North Korea remind you of Camazotz?

robeiae · Nov 14, 2008

The Mote in God's Eye.

Friggin' aliens...

But I'm with you all on Heinlein. Though for some reason, Friday is in the center of it.

And then there's Zelazny. Nine Libertarian Princes in Amber, right? Well, six of them were libertarian, at any rate...

Higgins · Nov 14, 2008

robeiae said:
The Mote in God's Eye.

Friggin' aliens...

But I'm with you all on Heinlein. Though for some reason, Friday is in the center of it.

And then there's Zelazny. Nine Libertarian Princes in Amber, right? Well, six of them were libertarian, at any rate...

It's true. Finding a backwater world where you can assemble vast subhuman armies that think you are a god is pretty libertarian. If they
didn't want to follow you to die in a foreign cosmos they shouldn't have been quite so subhuman, right? They could have just been Americans and
signed the Constitution and the Bill of Rights properly and you would have
left them to their simple lives. But oh nooo....they had to fall for your
I am a god trick and as we all know that is the fault of the believer not the fake diety. It says so in the fine print on the back of my copy of the Fake Deity's Guide to The US Constitution.

Don · Nov 14, 2008

robeiae said:
The Mote in God's Eye.

Friggin' aliens...

But I'm with you all on Heinlein. Though for some reason, Friday is in the center of it.

And then there's Zelazny. Nine Libertarian Princes in Amber, right? Well, six of them were libertarian, at any rate...

Ah, yes... Friday. It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Friday's hawt, on all levels, would it? Sexy, intelligent, strong, inquisistive, independent... yet with just a soupcon of vulnerability.

Albedo · Nov 14, 2008

I find it interesting that several times in recent years the libertarian Prometheus Award has gone to writers with a left bent (e.g. Charles Stross) or even out socialists (Ken McLeod). Perhaps the fields from which right-libertarian SF writers grow are not as fertile as they used to be.

robeiae · Nov 14, 2008

Don said:
Ah, yes... Friday. It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Friday's hawt, on all levels, would it? Sexy, intelligent, strong, inquisistive, independent... yet with just a soupcon of vulnerability.

Nah, I think it's the sick culture and bad manners bit:

Heinlein said:
What are the marks of a sick culture?

It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.

A very bad sign. Particularism. It was once considered a Spanish vice but any country can fall sick with it. Dominance of males over females seems to be one of the symptoms.

Before a revolution can take place, the population must loose faith in both the police and the courts.

High taxation is important and so is inflation of the currency and the ratio of the productive to those on the public payroll. But that's old hat; everybody knows that a country is on the skids when its income and outgo get out of balance and stay that way - even though there are always endless attempts to wish it way by legislation. But I started looking for little signs and what some call silly-season symptoms.

I want to mention one of the obvious symptoms: Violence. Muggings. Sniping. Arson. Bombing. Terrorism of any sort. Riots of course - but I suspect that little incidents of violence, pecking way at people day after day, damage a culture even more than riots that flare up and then die down. Oh, conscription and slavery and arbitrary compulsion of all sorts and imprisonment without bail and without speedy trial - but those things are obvious; all the histories list them.

I think you have missed the most alarming symptom of all. This one I shall tell you. But go back and search for it. Examine it. Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms as you have named... But a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than a riot.

This symptom is especially serious in that an individual displaying it never thinks of it as a sign of ill health but as proof of his/her strength. Look for it. Study it. It is too late to save this culture - this worldwide culture, not just the freak show here in California. Therefore we must now prepare the monasteries for the coming Dark Age. Electronic records are too fragile; we must again have books, of stable inks and resistant paper.

[my boldface]

Don · Nov 14, 2008

robeiae said:
Nah, I think it's the sick culture and bad manners bit:

Dammit, rob, I say something playful, and you go all serious and highbrow on me. Fantastic quotation.

It might be fun to use that quote as a thread-starter, perhaps titled 'Are we a Sick Culture?' :popcorn:

kuwisdelu · Nov 14, 2008

What Higgins and Albedo said.

“It’s impossible to be a part of the argument of science fiction without engaging both broad libertarian ideas and also specifically the whole American free market intellectual tradition.”

Now I don't write a lot of speculative stuff, but it's where I started out, and I'm pretty sure I never did that.

Politics and Science Fiction - Tor's Worlds Without Death or Taxes

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