I have a hard time with RW SF

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Sun Jan 29, 2012, 09:48 PM - Edit history (2)

Growing up I read every word Heinlein had ever written. Everything. Very few authors I've done that with.

Today I can hardly read a page without laughing. Yes, he's a great and influential writer, indespensible to the hisory of SF. But his work is like a Newt Gingrich ambien rant.

Enders Game and Ender's Shadow are great books, but Card is just not a serious person. A clown, in fact. A brilliant clown.

A. E. Van Vogt is a fascinating paranoid artist, but clearly some sort of Jungian Monarchist. (A whole new category, that.)

Michael Crichton was a great tech-thriller writer (as a kid Andomeda Strain was he first book I read in one sitting), but it is problematic to read hard SF from a global-warming truther.

I am confident that The Mote in God's Eye is the finest classic SF novel I have ever read, and I've read and loved most Niven in genral, but I wouldn't piss on Niven or Pournelle if they were on fire. The RW bullshit just pours off of them in waves. (I was laughing out loud reading The Legacy of Heorot recently. It was the ultimate Didck Cheney masturbation fantasy where all the civilized people spend half the book wailing "Why oh why didn't we listen to the military guy? We are so effete and liberally..." And I fear Oath of Fealty... I'm guessing it's about defnding a gated community against Saul Alinsky.)

I LOVE the Heinlein without the Heinlein guys -- Haldeman, Varley, others. But the Niven novel factory is Heinlein with an extra helping of Heinlein.

A general observation about these guys

The RW thread in American SF is libertarian and/or objectivist. I am not hostile to the libertarian angle except as political science, where it becomes foolish. And objectivist gibberish is a good artistic frame for hero stories, which most genre fiction is one way or another.

But what amuses the hell out of me about Heinlein and his progeny is that their careers are about creating fantasy realms so bizarre that their political ideas appear sensible. Ys, maybe if you are on a space ship it makes sense to summarily execute someone for water theft after a five minute trial. And maybe society should be organized to weed out the unfit who can't read the airlock instructions if you happen to live on the moon. And maybe martial law is the way to go when your planet is infiltrated with alien shape-shifters. And perhaps it makes sense for military service to be a precondition of voting if you are at war with a galaxy of giant insects that shoot plasma out of their butts.

And maybe some offensive old John Birch society crack-pot should rule the world with an iron fist and tell how many babies the women-folk should have... if his bomb shelter was pushed through a time warp into a vacant furutre Earth. (The plot of Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold, which reads like a novelization of Ron Paul's newsletters.)

BUT THOSE ARE NOT REAL THINGS.

1) Here is the belief set that quiets my deep neurotic insecurities.
2) Here is a bizarre fantasy world where my delusions would be more rational than actual rationality.
3) See how useful my ideas are? See? Doncha see!?

Anyway, I'm just ranting along here...

Thoughts?

[mzteris]

1. agreed.

Won't read Orson Scott Card again. Ever.

Most "scifi" is very right wing. We "like" to triumph over the "other guy". We "like" to be forced to be a "bad ass". . .


Here's some suggestions - female authors.

And I know for a fact that John Kessel is anything but right wing. His "stories for men" are actually an interesting take on a female-based society.

[quakerboy]

3. Indeed

I really enjoy Cards ability to create a character. But its just not worth it. And it seems like his newer stuff is kinda preachy. So I will chose to take my book buying dollars elsewhere.


Then there is John Ringo. I read and enjoyed the council wars series. then I started on other series, and got disgusted quickly. Under my book buying/history list(yeah, I keep a list, what of it?) his name is down under "libertarian/nazi" in the not reading any more of this crap section.

[dem644555il]

14. well said

[eppur_se_muova]

2. What, nothing to say about L. Neil Smith ? :^D

In his Libertarian Utopia, chimps and dolphins can talk, because that's just the sort of thing that happens when scientific progress isn't impeded by all those darned regulations.

If you've passed your twelfth birthday and haven't read Pallas, don't bother -- it's too late for you.

http://www.lneilsmith.org/

For the more comic version, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Neil_Smith

[TygrBright]

4. oooooooo, betcha you don't spend much time in the "Honorverse"! n/t

[SheilaT]

5. How true, how true.

I'm old enough that I used to be thrilled every time a new Heinlein novel came out. Then, I was young enough not to question, or even notice the underlying assumptions of his novels. As I got older, and as a woman, I got so I wanted to strangle him.

I've had some interesting arguments with males about his take on females. He does an incredibly insulting thing of seeming to praise women for their strong points, and yet every single major female character wants only to get pregnant and have babies, lots of babies as soon as possible.

Now, I happily had a couple of kids and even more happily was a stay-at-home mom while they were growing up, but I get totally crazed at the idea that that's the ONLY thing a woman wants. Heck, I even get why some women want nothing at all with that scenario.

He also pre-loads all of his right wing arguments so that his take on things is the only logical or possible take on those things.

Maybe the question we should be asking is: If RAH were still alive today, who would he be campaigning for.

Oh, and on another note: in 2007 I attended the Heinlein Centennial thing in Kansas City. Fascinating on many levels. The most interesting was one workshop I attended (can no longer recall the topic) in which one attendee talked at the end of meeting RAH and Virginia and talking about what right-wing nut-cases they were. There was absolutely NO response from the panel. It was as if he'd spoken into a literal vacuum (no sound there). After, I went to him and gave him sympathy and support.

What bothered me the most about that entire thing was that RAH was being absolutely deified, and it simply wasn't right. I think I'm just as glad that I won't be around for the RAH bicentennial.

[cthulu2016]

6. His view of women is the

Howard Hawks woman (the film director), which is an ultimate little boy fantasy of a woman who isn't silly like girls (ewwww...) but is one of the guys. But then a real man... the right man... can turn her into a woman and she melts and becomes a baby factory.

These tough-guy women (who now dominate mass media) are described as "strong women" but they're really just masculinized.

I assume you know all about the RAH v. Judith Merrill, Fred Pohl, Asimov, at al over the Vietnam ad wars. But for folks reading along here, Heinlein assumed that all science-fiction fans and writers were anti-communist militarists because he was. He (and others) took out an ad supporting the Vietnam war in one of the 1960s digest SF magazines and was shocked to see a rebuttal ad paid for by the Pohl/Merrill axis. Hilighted a left/right schism in SF that few folks had even realized was there.

If I am misrembering the story, c'est la vie.

Anyway, the reason Canada had the first accademic science fiction archive was because Judith Merrill moved there over the Vietnam war and her papers and collection were left to a Canadian university.

[SheilaT]

7. I didn't know about the ad thing,

but I do understand that Joe Haldeman's novel The Forever War was written as a direct reply to Starship Troopers because Haldeman felt that Heinlein had glorified war in a way that simply wasn't real.

It's very important, I think, to keep in mind that Heinlein never saw battle. He gets all kinds of points for having gone to Annapolis and served in the peacetime navy, but as far as I'm concerned he's really just a chickenhawk, no better than people like Cheney and Gingrich and practically every other Republican out there who carefully avoided military service.

And yes, I know that Heinlein was invalided out, but that does not change the fact that he never served in war.

[cthulu2016]

8. I would stop short of chickenhawk

but I know exactly what you mean. I think missing WWII (through no fault of his own) created an insecurity in him that made him think exactly like a chickenhawk.

The difference between RAH and Cheney/Gingrich/Limbaugh/etc. is that RAH was compensating for not having been able to serve in WWII versus refusing to serve, but, as you say, the need to compensate for not seeing combat plays out the same way psychologically. (That one can somehow make up for not serving in combat by sending others to their deaths.)

[salvorhardin]

11. June 1968 Galaxy Magazine

One of the reasons why I'm always puzzled by people who claim Asimov was a right winger. Just because that's how Newt Gingrich chooses to interpret him, doesn't make it so. You'll also notice that many of the writers listed in the pro-Vietnam War ad are right wingers that even the mainstream GOP establishment would consider far left these days; Heinlein and Niven most notably.

I was rather surprised to see Marion Zimmer Bradley's name on the pro-Vietnam War ad though.

If you're looking for Fred Pohl's name, you won't find it on either list. That's because he was editor of Galaxy at the time. He deftly skirted the argument by running a contest for the most constructive solution to the Vietnam War instead. The winner was announced in the November 1968 issue -- Poul Anderson. I've never seen his solution though, and I don't know if it was ultimately ever published.


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[ChazInAz]

19. Ah, yes.

I well recall that. Notice that the authors opposed to the war are still well-regarded today. Most of the pro-war group are forgotten.

[friendly_iconoclast]

9. I respectfully disagree about "The Mote In God's Eye"

It had interesting aliens, granted- but the human characters were (as someone once said about Rendezvous with Rama) made from high grade cardboard.

For example: The lead female character Sally transforms from tough prison camp survivor to simpering arm candy for the hero, Rod.

[cthulu2016]

10. In saying "finest classic SF novel"

I meant the best realization of the old school genre -- better Heinlein than Heinlein, that sort of thing. Not the best SF book by any measure -- I doubt Mote is in the top 100 by some other criteria.

I was using classic as a term-of-art and probably should have said old-school or 1940s-1950s style instead of classic, which is broad.

It's an impressive homage. (And what you note about Sally, as well as the whole puritanical culture they exist in, is very 1950s, which is why it doesn't trouble me in a work I assume was conciously written to be the ultimate 1950s SF space opera.)

[ChazInAz]

20. Hated that book.

The characters were indistinguishable from one another, they were so flat. Even though they were given tack-on distinguishing characteristics, such as being a Muslim or having the cute name of "Whitebread", I still couldn't tell them apart. Yet forty years and more later, I can still remember characters such as Harlan Ellison's Bedzik or Fritz Leiber's Franz Weston and Scully Crocket LaCruz.

[MrModerate]

12. But all those things *do* take place in fictional universes . . .

With precisely the plot drivers you mention.

That's why Heinlein doesn't drive me insane, although if he had gone into politics in real life (which he apparently contemplated doing) he might have mutated into an atheist version of Nehemiah Scudder himself.

And Niven doesn't drive me batty for the same reason: context.

And you don't have to bend reality too much for such libertarian or authoritarian or "Darwinian" notions to work, at least as fiction. For that matter, look at just about any action-adventure movie (of which there are thousands), and deconstruct its political or moral leanings, and you'll be depressed all over again. Sadly, alternate reality has a well known illiberal bias, and also features explosions and car chases.

On the other hand, I can't stomach Pournelle or Card (partly because they are distinctly lesser writers and weaker storytellers), precisely because the universes they create don't sustain their rather creepy notions how people ("people" in the broadest possible sense) can, should, and must manage to live with each other.

Crichton is pure story and whatever philosophical elements present just as shallow as everything else he churned out, so that even Disclosure, his most odious book, ends up being odious-lite.

For myself, I'll forgive a good storyteller a lot; an inferior storyteller, not much at all.

[Odin2005]

13. You forgot Poul Anderson.

Lots of Libertarian BS there.

And Niven is a wing-nut? NOOOOOOOO!!!

[Moe Shinola]

15. Anyone ever read J. Neil Schulman's Alongside Night?

Sort of a "1984" for Agorist Anarchists. Also, there are both RW and LW POVs in Norman Spinrad's Agent of Chaos, but the prize in that book goes to Robert Ching, who changes the game on everybody.

[bemildred]

16. A few comments:

1.) You ought to mention "Stranger in a Strange Land" -- Heinlein, it suffers from all of his flaws, esp. fatuous female characters, but is certainly competitive with "Mote in God's Eye" in terms of influence, of breaking new ground. "Can you grok it?" One of the first to break into the mainstream.

2.) It was all pulp to start with, so it's mostly "pulpy", and this is still true, I'm reading through Kim Stanley Robinson now, who is definitely "modern", and I am jarred all the time by the product placements and little commercial bits littered about, and other things too, but you are going to see that with any author who is doing mass-market work.

3.) Everything changed in the 60s, and it has kept right on changing. Prior to that, what we call right wing was just about all there was.

4.) But yeah, I agree, Ayn Rand in Space, a lot of it.

[Fumesucker]

17. And yet Heinlein's very first story ever, Lifeline, takes a huge swing at the insurance industry..

Indeed, it also takes a big swing at government that is captured by the insurance industry in order to maintain its profit structure in the face of new technology that renders it obsolescent.

Heinlein's first novel, For We the Living, has the basics of life, food, shelter and so on, provided as a matter of course by the government. Indeed it is more a treatise on the Social Credit movement than a fully fleshed out novel. Heinlein revisited the theme in his second novel Beyond This Horizon and early in the story it is revealed in almost a throw away line that the necessities of life, food, shelter, medical care and so on are provided as a matter of course by the government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit

The government in Heinlein's juveniles isn't really mentioned a great deal but doesn't seem particularly right wing, Tunnel in the Sky, Have Spacesuit Will Travel and so on don't have that wingnut feel to them from what I recall.

It's my understanding that Virginia Heinlein, Robert's second wife, is the one who pushed him so far to the right, his early stories don't show as much of a right wing bent as his later works.

Niven isn't nearly the right winger that Pournelle is, the government structure in Mote was taken from Pournelle, not Niven because Pournelle didn't buy Niven's remarkably socialist State and his Long Peace that was ended by contact with the Kzinti. Niven's Amalgamated Regional Militia or ARM was in the technology suppression and rewriting history business because they were trying to create a peaceful utopia..

Of course Niven comes from old money and never depended on his writing for income while Pournelle is to an extent one of his own protagonists, at least in his own mind anyway.

[Odin2005]

18. Fred Saberhagen had a sci-fi novel mocking the Sexual Revolution

I can't remember the name of it at the top of my head.

I can;t get my head around Van Vogt, his stuff is just bizarre.

[Fumesucker]

21. I enjoyed "The War Against the Rull" back in the day

Had a hard time getting through "The Weapons Shops of Isher" though..

[mjrr_595]

22. i'm with you 100%

[SheilaT]

23. I just got back from MileHi Con in Denver.

I want everyone who reads this to know that a very large percentage of current s-f writers and their fans are quite liberal, to the point of being left wing. I saw any number of Obama buttons being worn by attendees, including some of the major authors.

David Dvorkin, who posts here, was there, and I had the great pleasure of talking with him several times.

Science fiction has come a long way since the 1950's, and even since the 1970's.

[jambo101]

24. I've been reading Sci-Fi books for the last 50 years

And one thing i've never done is contemplate whether the author was politically left or right leaning.To read a sci-fi novel with the idea of reading between the lines as to the authors political motivations for any given segment in a story is rather missing the point of sci-fi .
As an example if Asimov was a rightwinger and the reader a left winger would that leftie not read/enjoy the Foundation trilogy? would seem like a waste not to read such a great scifi trilogy just because the author may have differing political views.
When i start a new scifi book i couldnt care less about the authors private life,just give me a good story.