Zompist's "Virtual Unrealities" rant

[Ares Land]

Didn't he eventually publish his own magazine?

Yeah, he did. The robots in Late Asimov are creepy, but I don't think he necessarily realized that.

If that's the case, then why wasn't the same true for what you might call "pre-classical" SF? The best-known SF writers of that period were Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, neither of whom, as far as I can see, was conservative.

Good question. Jules Verne's work is as apolitical as it gets. (Except that he hated the English, but what do you expect from a 19th century Frenchman?) I know he was involved in politics, as a moderate royalist or a not-entirely-convinced republican. (Which I guess would sort of translate as centrism.)

British science-fiction is, for some reason, very different from American SF. There are exceptions (Clarke, most notably) but it's often noticeably leftist, quite melancholy and it tends to lack the optimism about technology.

[Raphael]

Good question. Jules Verne's work is as apolitical as it gets. (Except that he hated the English, but what do you expect from a 19th century Frenchman?)

Huh? Arguably his best-known work was Around the World in 80 Days, which has an English protagonist.

I know he was involved in politics, as a moderate royalist or a not-entirely-convinced republican. (Which I guess would sort of translate as centrism.)

The TV Tropes page on him

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... JulesVerne

claims that the outlook of his individual works often depended on how much influence his long-time editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel could exert at any given moment, but I don't know how reliable that information is.

British science-fiction is, for some reason, very different from American SF. There are exceptions (Clarke, most notably) but it's often noticeably leftist, quite melancholy and it tends to lack the optimism about technology.

Oh, Clarke has the optimism about technology, but aside from that, I wouldn't describe him as right-wing. He seems to have been moderately left-ish, or perhaps he just looks like that when compared to Heinlein.

Edit: And Wells was, for most of his life, fairly optimistic about technology, too (he became desperate during his last years). Perhaps British SF has historically been more leftist because the British establishment traditionally, at least at the height of the Empire, tended to treat science as at least somewhat disreputable.

[Ares Land]

Good question. Jules Verne's work is as apolitical as it gets. (Except that he hated the English, but what do you expect from a 19th century Frenchman?)

Huh? Arguably his best-known work was Around the World in 80 Days, which has an English protagonist.

Oh, yeah, but there are a lot of unsubtle jabs at the English in other words, plus Captain Nemo who rams into any English ship on sight.