The Speculative Fiction Thread formerly Fantasy Thread

[Raphael]

Tolkien didn't even make these kinds of concessions; his characters are monarchists through and through. Aragorn rules by right of royal descent and that's it. Despite this, one of the biggest Tolkien fans I know also has the most outspoken radical politics of any of my friends.

I guess the appeal of Tolkien and similar works to people with left-wing politics might have to do with what foxcatdog calls the "mystique" of the genre. Besides, there has clearly been a fair amount of disenchantment with modernity in parts of the Left since at least the mid-20th century, and Tolkienesque fantasy clearly appeals to people who are disenchanted with modernity.

(Or perhaps all this has nothing to do with that friend of yours, and they simply don't see why they should have the same views on fiction as on reality.)

[Travis B.]

I'm a bit surprised to see fantasy described as right-wing. It's usually SF that gets that reputation. Whether it's deserved is another question.

"Hard SF" definitely has that rep. I'm not sure SF as a whole does any more in the wake of the whole Sad Puppies debacle.

Of course, there is definitely strongly left-wing "Hard SF", e.g. Kim Stanley Robinson's works.

[Torco]

*and* plenty of leftist soft SF, see the very good interdependency series by scalzi. I don't know if he's a leftist, but he feels like one as a writer, or at the very least progressive.

I think Orson Scott Card politics moved frankly to the right sometime in the early 2000s? His early work was a lot more tolerant (and also a lot more interesting IMO)

possibly, but he's always been a devout mormon. indeed his love of brazilian culture (*) was nurtured as a mormon missionary as a kid. so he probably didn't start very much to the left either way.

* see speaker for the dead, honestly a lot better than ender's game... actually almost all of his stuff is better than ender's game lmao

Small afterthought re: Heinlein: I haven't read him myself, for reasons I explained a while ago, but from what I've heard and read about him, I've got the impression that he was right-wing in the way that the platypus is a mammal: clearly a member of the group, but not necessarily a typical one.

absolutey, he's a weird guy. very very sexually liberal, so at odds with rightwingers there, but that not meaning progressive in the sense of like pro-gay or anything like that; his sexual libertarianism is, from what I gather <from time to time the fancy strikes me of reading a loot of heinlein, it's pretty good tbh> mostly fetishistic: which means mostly concerned with imagining a world where he could have as much sex as we would like with as many conventionally beautiful women as possible without poeple objecting, but I don't think there's a single homosexual event in his works, for example. Also very against racism, but not out of egalitarianism but, rather, from the notion that sure, some people are superior than others, but melanin or whatever is not a good indicator of that.

[Linguoboy]

*and* plenty of leftist soft SF, see the very good interdependency series by scalzi. I don't know if he's a leftist, but he feels like one as a writer, or at the very least progressive.

I used to read his blog and he's progressive to the point where he's a "leftist" by US standards, if not the world's.

* see speaker for the dead, honestly a lot better than ender's game... actually almost all of his stuff is better than ender's game lmao

I've read exactly one OSC book. It was not Ender's Game and it was absolutely terrible on most every level. I still don't know why I bothered finishing it.

absolutey, he's a weird guy. very very sexually liberal, so at odds with rightwingers there, but that not meaning progressive in the sense of like pro-gay or anything like that; his sexual libertarianism is, from what I gather <from time to time the fancy strikes me of reading a loot of heinlein, it's pretty good tbh> mostly fetishistic: which means mostly concerned with imagining a world where he could have as much sex as we would like with as many conventionally beautiful women as possible without poeple objecting, but I don't think there's a single homosexual event in his works, for example.

Which makes it even odder that one of my gay friends, a former academician and progressive activist, has a huge hard-on for his works. (He is a Boomer, though, and seems to be unreflectively drifting toward conservatism as he grows steadily more isolated and embittered.)

[hwhatting]

(Or perhaps all this has nothing to do with that friend of yours, and they simply don't see why they should have the same views on fiction as on reality.)

This. Since childhood, I have liked Classical myths, Germanic sagas, historical novels with knights and heroes, and for me, Tolkienesque fantasy is just an extension of that. But that doesn't mean that I want to live in such worlds or see them as a template for our world. Romantic fantasy is normally a bad guide to what to do in real life, but it can be attractive for temporary escapes.

[Travis B.]

(Or perhaps all this has nothing to do with that friend of yours, and they simply don't see why they should have the same views on fiction as on reality.)

This. Since childhood, I have liked Classical myths, Germanic sagas, historical novels with knights and heroes, and for me, Tolkienesque fantasy is just an extension of that. But that doesn't mean that I want to live in such worlds or see them as a template for our world. Romantic fantasy is normally a bad guide to what to do in real life, but it can be attractive for temporary escapes.

I do not get why people think that one's views of fantasy must relate to one's views of the modern, present-day world. Just because one enjoys romantic fantasy does not mean that one must be a reactionary monarchist in Real Life. And frankly, I doubt this is the case in reality anyways, or else we would have far more reactionary monarchists today than we actually do.

[Linguoboy]

I do not get why people think that one's views of fantasy must relate to one's views of the modern, present-day world. Just because one enjoys romantic fantasy does not mean that one must be a reactionary monarchist in Real Life. And frankly, I doubt this is the case in reality anyways, or else we would have far more reactionary monarchists today than we actually do.

I don't think humans are good enough at compartmentalising to completely separate them either. The recent death of QEII revealed to me just how many people I know are, if not reactionary monarchists, good enough with monarchism to unreflexively celebrate one of its most successful ever brand ambassadors.

Fantasies, even if they are just "temporary escapes", do reveal something about what you're willing to tolerate and what you aren't. I don't think many people here would be comfortable with openly racist ones even when they're framed as pure escapism. But it's different when it comes to economic justice and it's interesting to ask why that is.

[Travis B.]

I do not get why people think that one's views of fantasy must relate to one's views of the modern, present-day world. Just because one enjoys romantic fantasy does not mean that one must be a reactionary monarchist in Real Life. And frankly, I doubt this is the case in reality anyways, or else we would have far more reactionary monarchists today than we actually do.

I don't think humans are good enough at compartmentalising to completely separate them either. The recent death of QEII revealed to me just how many people I know are, if not reactionary monarchists, good enough with monarchism to unreflexively celebrate one of its most successful ever brand ambassadors.

Fantasies, even if they are just "temporary escapes", do reveal something about what you're willing to tolerate and what you aren't. I don't think many people here would be comfortable with openly racist ones even when they're framed as pure escapism. But it's different when it comes to economic justice and it's interesting to ask why that is.

One thing to consider is the difference between what something depicts and what something advocates. Take Game of Thrones for instance - it depicts a thoroughly, ruthlessly, brutally reactionary monarchistic world, but by no means advocates that we should replicate this in our world. Many openly racist works, on the other hand, effectively advocate that racism is right and correct, and thus that we should replicate this in our world.

[Travis B.]

I should also note that not all works that incorporate racism in their worlds necessarily advocate for racism. Take Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for instance - it is very much set in a highly racist world and incorporates racist characters who very often use racist language - but it does not advocate for racism (even though some modern people are blind to this and have challenged the book simply on the use of the n-word even though it is very much appropriate for the time and place in which it was set).

[Raphael]

Fantasies, even if they are just "temporary escapes", do reveal something about what you're willing to tolerate and what you aren't. I don't think many people here would be comfortable with openly racist ones even when they're framed as pure escapism. But it's different when it comes to economic justice and it's interesting to ask why that is.

Good question.

(Indirectly related to this, I've found that I am a lot less accepting of characters simply being big assholes - no matter from which, if any, political angle - than most other fiction consumers, which is why a lot of the TV produced in this century so far leaves me cold.)

Thinking a bit more about your question, I wonder whether it might be partly because Westerners from countries other than Britain, rightly or wrongly, see the Ancien Régime as a "solved problem", in a way in which modern capitalism and racism aren't.

One thing to consider is the difference between what something depicts and what something advocates. Take Game of Thrones for instance - it depicts a thoroughly, ruthlessly, brutally reactionary monarchistic world, but by no means advocates that we should replicate this in our world.

I'd say GoT, for all its flaws, doesn't really have the same kind of political outlook as Tolkien. Tolkien really was a reactionary monarchist. GRRM, whatever else you may think about him, probably isn't.

[Raphael]

OK, letting my thoughts run a bit wild, starting from the previous posts here: am I right to assume that the cyberpunk genre is beloved both by libertarians and by decidedly anti-capitalist people, with the former seeing it as an instruction manual and the latter as an eloquent indictment of the world we live in?

[Travis B.]

OK, letting my thoughts run a bit wild, starting from the previous posts here: am I right to assume that the cyberpunk genre is beloved both by libertarians and by decidedly anti-capitalist people, with the former seeing it as an instruction manual and the latter as an eloquent indictment of the world we live in?

I had my cyberpunk phase, and I always saw the world it depicted as both an indictment of our current world and a warning about what the world may turn into if we let things continue as they have been.

[WeepingElf]

OK, letting my thoughts run a bit wild, starting from the previous posts here: am I right to assume that the cyberpunk genre is beloved both by libertarians and by decidedly anti-capitalist people, with the former seeing it as an instruction manual and the latter as an eloquent indictment of the world we live in?

I had my cyberpunk phase, and I always saw the world it depicted as both an indictment of our current world and a warning about what the world may turn into if we let things continue as they have been.

I have always seen cyberpunk as a left-wing critique of the world as it was in the early 80s, by showing what horrors may result from letting the market forces wheel on too freely. And it hasn't lost relevance since then - the problems are still urgent, to the point that it is not hard to set a story like Neuromancer in the present world, with some relatively minor changes. While there is no such thing as a Freeside space habitat, its role as a combination of a holiday resort and a tax haven can easily be taken over by some Caribbean island, which puts us in precisely the right region for the Rastafarian pirates from whose ship Case attacks the Wintermute AI. Gibson himself has shown how a cyberpunk novel set in the present may work out in Pattern Recognition.

[Linguoboy]

(Indirectly related to this, I've found that I am a lot less accepting of characters simply being big assholes - no matter from which, if any, political angle - than most other fiction consumers, which is why a lot of the TV produced in this century so far leaves me cold.)

Same. Succession is one of the most popular series on television right now and, from what little I've seen of it, it seems to consist entirely of horrible people behaving horribly. I can see why that would be entertaining and perhaps even cathartic for some people, but for me it has the same appeal as a gorefest. It's just nastiness for nastiness' sake.

Thinking a bit more about your question, I wonder whether it might be partly because Westerners from countries other than Britain, rightly or wrongly, see the Ancien Régime as a "solved problem", in a way in which modern capitalism and racism aren't.

I'm sure that plays a role. It's far easier to romanticise the aristocracy when you don't have one. But the sort of income inequality and lack of meritocracy that an aristocratic monarchist society embodies is anything but a solved problem in the West.

One thing to consider is the difference between what something depicts and what something advocates. Take Game of Thrones for instance - it depicts a thoroughly, ruthlessly, brutally reactionary monarchistic world, but by no means advocates that we should replicate this in our world.

I think that's a false binary. Between objectively depicting a particular worldview and actively advocating for it, there lies normalising it. I grew up in a world where, for instance, the British monarchy was completely normalised. The media was filled with positive depictions of the Windsors (Charles and Diana were married when I was 11 and wedding coverage saturated USAmerican media to the point where I even saw pictures of it in Discover magazine) and there were no strong anti-monarchist voices around me. Then I learned about the French Revolution in high school and what a very good thing it was that France (and, as a consequence, most of Europe) had eliminated its monarchies. That's when the cognitive dissonance began to set in and it's never completely gone away.

Similarly with Huck Finn. It's certainly anti-slavery and--to the extent that it humanises Jim by making him a sympathetic central character--anti-racist to a degree. But it also traffics heavily in racial stereotypes, to the point that Hemingway said it "devolves into little more than minstrel-show satire" after Jim is recaptured. In those chapters, Jim sacrifices his freedom in order to save one of the white protagonists[*], which is depicted nobly instead of tragically, and I'd argue that that reflects and promotes a worldview where Black lives don't matter as much as white lives.

[*] A sacrifice which Twain then renders moot via a deux ex machina.

[Raphael]

I have always seen cyberpunk as a left-wing critique of the world as it was in the early 80s, by showing what horrors may result from letting the market forces wheel on too freely. And it hasn't lost relevance since then - the problems are still urgent, to the point that it is not hard to set a story like Neuromancer in the present world, with some relatively minor changes. While there is no such thing as a Freeside space habitat, its role as a combination of a holiday resort and a tax haven can easily be taken over by some Caribbean island, which puts us in precisely the right region for the Rastafarian pirates from whose ship Case attacks the Wintermute AI. Gibson himself has shown how a cyberpunk novel set in the present may work out in Pattern Recognition.

Frankly, my own problem with cyberpunk is that, pro- or anticapitalist, it usually presents a world - future or present - in which the only people who really matter are cutting-edge techies, and everyone else, if they get mentioned at all, only ever gets to be a bystander. Since, although I'm fairly geeky, I've never been a cutting-edge techie, this really bugs me. For some reason that I don't really understand myself, it even bugs me a lot more than the glorification of old-school aristocracy in Tolkienesque fantasy.

[Travis B.]

Thinking a bit more about your question, I wonder whether it might be partly because Westerners from countries other than Britain, rightly or wrongly, see the Ancien Régime as a "solved problem", in a way in which modern capitalism and racism aren't.

I'm sure that plays a role. It's far easier to romanticise the aristocracy when you don't have one. But the sort of income inequality and lack of meritocracy that an aristocratic monarchist society embodies is anything but a solved problem in the West.

The fact that things like the Ancien Régime are in the past, and that the remaining absolute monarchies and authoritarian states are not in the modern West gives people the false image that these things are at least less acute, if not solved.

One thing to consider is the difference between what something depicts and what something advocates. Take Game of Thrones for instance - it depicts a thoroughly, ruthlessly, brutally reactionary monarchistic world, but by no means advocates that we should replicate this in our world.

I think that's a false binary. Between objectively depicting a particular worldview and actively advocating for it, there lies normalising it.

Of course it's not a binary. Something can advocate things to varying degrees, and as mentioned in the case of cyberpunk, different people can read the same thing differently.

I grew up in a world where, for instance, the British monarchy was completely normalised. The media was filled with positive depictions of the Windsors (Charles and Diana were married when I was 11 and wedding coverage saturated USAmerican media to the point where I even saw pictures of it in Discover magazine) and there were no strong anti-monarchist voices around me. Then I learned about the French Revolution in high school and what a very good thing it was that France (and, as a consequence, most of Europe) had eliminated its monarchies. That's when the cognitive dissonance began to set in and it's never completely gone away.

Disclaimer: in the below I am referring to what I have heard others express about the following, not my own personal views.

About the French Revolution, the impression I always got from others was that it was started with good intentions, but soon turned into a gorefest with Robespierre et al beheading everyone they did not like (and not just the Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette but even their fellow revolutionaries), and eventually led to Napoleon. Even then, many seem to be of the view that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were deserving of being on the receiving end of the National Razor.

I have heard similar views of the Russian Revolution, that it started with good intentions and even though it turned utterly rotten and finally led to Stalin and his many crimes, Tsar Nicholas II et al were still deserving of what they got.

About the modern British monarchy, the impression I've always gotten from others was that they are basically benign aside from being an absolutely royal waste of taxpayer pounds. When people do bring up things that they do which are rotten, it is usually things like driving Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to leave the UK. People do not seem to equate the modern British monarchy with the Ancien Régime or the Russian tsars or the Saudi monarchy or like. If anything, they seem to equate it with the other European constitutional monarchives, but bigger.

Similarly with Huck Finn. It's certainly anti-slavery and--to the extent that it humanises Jim by making him a sympathetic central character--anti-racist to a degree. But it also traffics heavily in racial stereotypes, to the point that Hemingway said it "devolves into little more than minstrel-show satire" after Jim is recaptured. In those chapters, Jim sacrifices his freedom in order to save one of the white protagonists[*], which is depicted nobly instead of tragically, and I'd argue that that reflects and promotes a worldview where Black lives don't matter as much as white lives.

[*] A sacrifice which Twain then renders moot via a deux ex machina.

Oh Huck Finn is by no means perfect, and I have seen it analyzed multiple ways myself. It itself is a product of its time, no doubt.

[zompist]

I guess the appeal of Tolkien and similar works to people with left-wing politics might have to do with what foxcatdog calls the "mystique" of the genre. Besides, there has clearly been a fair amount of disenchantment with modernity in parts of the Left since at least the mid-20th century, and Tolkienesque fantasy clearly appeals to people who are disenchanted with modernity.

What I find odd is that leftist/leftish people often love Tolkien and hate C.S. Lewis— people whose were best of friends in RL and wrote rather similar books from a similar point of view.

In both cases I think a major factor is that people tend to discover them as kids. Then they grow up and learn that Aslan is (spoiler) a very thinly disguised Jesus, and they feel betrayed, as if religion is not allowed to tell stories that people like. Tolkien by contrast is incredibly coy about God— as one reviewer pointed out, there's more overt Catholicism in Harrow the Ninth than in LOTR.

Then there's the hippie factor. LOTR became a craze in the '60s, precisely when The Youth, like the elves, wanted to hug trees and disdained industrialism.

I'd also note that in the 80s at least, fantasy came to mean Tolkien and his imitators. The idea that fantasy is mostly medieval kingdoms, wise or evil kings, dark lords, and dragons is mostly Tolkien. By sheer volume, the most-published works before him were sword 'n sorcery, which took a decidedly cynical view toward its own world— Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were no monarchists, and their world is mostly urban. Something like Gormenghast doesn't exactly glorify its weird, dissipated nobles. William Morris was a socialist. E.R. Eddison makes Tolkien look like Karl Marx, but he doesn't really imagine a medieval world... he doesn't really imagine a world at all, only heroes battling or intruiguing for the hell of it.

[Travis B.]

People remember C. S. Lewis for his Christian apologia, and forget that it was Tolkien who converted C. S. Lewis to Christianity.

[Raphael]

and forget that it was Tolkien who converted C. S. Lewis to Christianity.

Really? I didn't know that. Why did Lewis become an Anglican rather than a Catholic then?

[Travis B.]

and forget that it was Tolkien who converted C. S. Lewis to Christianity.

Really? I didn't know that. Why did Lewis become an Anglican rather than a Catholic then?

Apparently Tolkien was disappointed when Lewis became a Protestant rather than a Catholic, so I hear. And yes, I would too have expected him to have become a Catholic.