Posted on 01/25/2011 9:58:28 AM PST by Kaslin
Two legends and two newcomers weigh in.
I am a complete science fiction geek.
It started when I was little more than a toddler. One of my earliest memories: sitting in the basement with my parents as they watched Walter Cronkite narrate one of the Apollo missions as it rounded the moon. (Which one? I couldn’t have been more than three or four, and I was born in 1971. You do the math.) It left an impression. I’ve been a fan ever since.
In the last few years, I’ve noticed more and more that science fiction has taken a bit of a turn to the right. I’ve also seen more than a few reviews lambasting those authors for their views — which seems to matter not a whit to their sales.
So I emailed four of them — two relative newcomers and two legends — and asked why.
The legends, Dr. Jerry Pournelle and Orson Scott Card, need no introduction. But it bears mention that Ender’s Game, Card’s best-known work, is on the Commandant of the Marine Corps recommended reading list as a treatise on what it means to be a leader. The newcomers, Lt. Col Tom Kratman (Ret.) and Larry Correia, both write for Baen.
I asked them all three simple questions: Why do you think there has been a trend toward conservatism in mainstream SF over the last few years? What does this mean for the future of the genre? And: is this a good or a bad thing for science fiction, and why?
Being writers, their answers roamed freely — but revealingly.
Suggesting that part of the problem is defining “conservatism,” Dr. Pournelle isn’t sure there’s been such a drift.
“The problem here,” he said, “is that ‘conservatism’ means many things to different people — and many of those you call conservative would not call themselves that, nor would many conservatives call them that. There has certainly been a move toward the concept of freedom as a good thing, but that was always true of most science fiction writers.
“Meanwhile, planetary history has shown that vast powerful central bureaucracies don’t generally produce either general welfare or freedom or wealth, and science fiction writers have sort of noticed that — even as welfare liberalism has become a consensus among a large part of the literary elites in academia.”
Card noted that he wasn’t at all sure where the trends even stood in science fiction these days — because he had long since stopped paying attention. “I left SFWA [the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America] in 1987,” he said, “and haven’t looked back. I have very few friends among sci-fi writers and have no idea at all what their politics might be.”
“Back when I cared,” he continued, “most of the writers of my generation were so extremely leftist in their formal opinions, and so extremely elitist in their practices, that it would be difficult to discern where they actually stood on anything. It’s as if the entire Tsarist aristocracy fervently preached Bolshevism even as they oppressed their peasants. But that view is based on observations back in the mid-1980s. Since then, my only exposure to their views has been the general boycott of mine. In short,” he said, “I’m their Devil, but I have no idea who their God is anymore.”
Correia, author of the excellent Monster Hunter International books, said sci-fi writers are increasingly unafraid to speak out.
“I don’t really know if there are more of us or if we have just become less shy about it,” he said. “The publishing industry is primarily based out of Manhattan, which I’ve been led to believe is a completely paved island that doesn’t even have any shooting ranges. Of course us conservative types from fly-over country are going to seem odd to them. I’ve heard some real horror stories from other writers about the way they’ve been treated because of their personal politics.”
Correia also noted that most of the bad reviews he’s gotten have been from people who apparently objected to his politics.
“I’m primarily known as a contemporary fantasy author rather than a sci-fi author,” he said. “I’m usually writing about our current world with some fantastical elements thrown in.”
“I often get lumped into the genre ‘urban fantasy’,” he said. “Apparently, in urban fantasy it is really odd to have a main character who is a gun-loving, anti-authoritarian, stay-off-my-lawn libertarian accountant, who ends of working for a group of Alabama contractors that are constantly being harassed by petty regulations even while trying to kill monsters. I’ve received many negative reviews from people who don’t think it is realistic that I show the government as lumbering and bureaucratic at best, and cold-bloodedly ruthless at worst. This tells me that these reviewers have never worked with the government in real life. Ironically, every really scathing review I’ve gotten has felt the need to mention my personal politics.”
Dr. Pournelle cautioned that any discussion of an ideological drift would have to account for writers like Stanislaw Lem. While basically “socialist,” they thought that “individual liberty was a good thing,” if not always “easily achieved.” Norman Spinrad, for instance, “has always been for liberty, while embracing socialist economic ideas and often rather radical social beliefs.”
Like Dr. Pournelle, Col. Kratman — perhaps best known for his collaborations with John Ringo and his solo work such as A Desert Called Peace — was not entirely certain there has been a drift to the right, but perhaps for different reasons.
“I’m not sure that’s the way to describe it. If there has been such a drift,” he said, “I sense — and it’s only a sense — that it’s been more of a drift away from socialist Utopian science fiction. The whys of the thing are probably rather complex,” he warned, “and my understanding of them, such as it is, is no doubt colored and clouded by my being very America-centric.”
“Still,” he went on, “surely the collapse of communism in the former USSR, and the revelation of communist crimes so starkly that only loons can deny them — and rejection of the reality while retaining the name in China — have something to do with it.” For Kratman, “previous generations of heavily left-wing sci-fi have probably motivated some conservative writers.”
Motivated him? “No, not so much. I tend to take my motivation from leftist thought outside of science fiction, though I admit to urinating on the glib sci-fi staple of monocultural, unified, peaceful planets wherever possible. We probably ought not discount the growing and obvious failure of the social democratic state and liberalism-slash-progressivism, either.”
As for the future of science fiction, Pournelle submitted that “science fiction will always be just a bit out of the mainstream of political thought.”
The authors weren’t quite in agreement as to whether this move to the right — assuming it exists — was a good thing.
“The thing is, I write what I know,” said Correia. “I’ve been a small business owner, firearms instructor, and a military contractor. That’s the perspective that I have. Some people absolutely hate that I dare to have a worldview that differs from theirs. On the other hand, conservatives are used to being able to overlook the politics of the entertainer we’re watching/reading/listening to, because if we weren’t, we sure wouldn’t be able to watch very many movies.”
“The thing is,” he told me, “all of us red-staters read books too, and though we are used to being constantly beaten over the head about how everything we believe in is wrong by Hollywood and Manhattan, it is really refreshing for us to be able to be entertained while not being bludgeoned about the dangers of global warming, mean capitalists, or whatever the liberal cause of the day is. There is a huge market of people that just want to be entertained, without being personally slighted, and not to be preached to.”
Kratman took a more cynical position. “What does it mean? Probably not much.” Any shift is “probably neutral,” he said. “Some more or less conservative-leaning readers may join or come back to sci-fi. But there will still be enough progressive and socialist pap to feed the — ahem — ‘enlightened cravings of the masses.’”
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.
“In any case,” Kratman concluded, “nobody converts anybody; we, as a society, are way past that. Right and left don’t share basic assumptions, don’t use the same words with the same meanings, and generally just talk past each other.”
Correia was more optimistic. “It is kind of like how most of the mainstream news outlets can’t figure out why they’re getting lousy ratings and Fox is getting such good ratings,” he said. “When the population is divided in half, and ten outlets are competing for one half, and one outlet is competing for the other half … well, duh. If openly conservative writers sell well, then there will be more writers that aren’t afraid to be open about what they believe in.”
Warning that entertainers shouldn’t “go out of their way to offend any of their potential market,” Correia insisted that more conservative science fiction authors “should write what we’re passionate about and not have to sulk in the shadows. Just because I believe that I shouldn’t have to give half of my income to pay for ACORN’s Honduran sex slaves doesn’t make me a bad person. I’m lucky in that my publishing house doesn’t care what their authors’ politics are. We’ve got actual socialists all the way to people just to the right of Genghis Khan, as long as they write entertaining books.”
In the end, all four men seemed to see science fiction as a place where ideas like individual freedom could be freely examined and explored.
Me, I just got to talk to four of my favorite authors.
You could say I’m over the moon.
Bit of a discrepancy in the author’s comments, unless I misunderstood. Said he was born in 1971 but remembers his parents watching an Apollo lunar mission when he was very young. The last flight to the Moon was Apollo 17, in Dec 1972. Either he could remember things from a very young age or he is thinking of something else. Apollo-Soyuz maybe? That did not go to the Moon.
Unless it was River in Serenity.
Best waif kicking monster butt in the movies.
Would LOVE to know how agents fit into the mix. I wrote a novel with a strong, traditional male lead and I swear 90 percent of the rejections seem to be somehow associated with the fact that (guessing based on gender of agents listed in “Writers Market”) 75% of the agents are liberal females.
That's because EE Knight is a FReeper. Or at least he was a couple of years ago.
Classical liberalism has nothing to do with today’s liberalism. The former actually had something to do with a concept called liberty, freedom from an overbearing control freak government. Classical liberalism is today’s conservatism.
I knew I had his FReeper handle somewhere.
I agree w/ qam1 in some respects as to the trend of having 110 lb girls annihilating full-grown men as being a tad overdone, like in Buffy and in BSG w/ Starbuck. But I think Adama, Helo and others more than made up for that.
I also agree that I don’t like that in No Ordinary Family the father figure is so weak, but I think qam1 is missing some good examples which contradict his theory:
Firefly/Serenity — Mal Reynolds and Jayne
Iron Man — The Iron Man character, not Tony Stark
Angel — After he left Buffy
The most recent Star Trek Reboot — James T. Kirk
The most recent Batman reboot
The Cape
Anyway, we could go on and on citing exmples and counter-examples, but Summer Glau was great in both Firefly/Serenity and the Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. That I do not mind watching, ha ha ha.
Tons and tons of cheesy, derivative swords-and-magic fantasy.
Tons and tons of vampires, zombies, werewolves and vampire/zombie/werewolf crossovers (although I did like "World War Z" a lot).
Tons and tons of TV/movie spinoff books.
Yeccch. When I was in high school and college I belonged to the Science Fiction Book Club, they had 20-30 new science fiction titles every month. Picked up their current flyer recently and I doubt that there were ten new SF books, but tons and tons of all the above.
Thanks for this Post!
But we only liked Starbuck when she was being bad-ass, and only liked Apollo when he finally manned-up. And Adama refused to be the president's bitch. But the best thing, notice the president's do-gooder liberalism didn't survive her confrontation with hard reality.
That was an interesting series that explored various aspects of our culture. It was the only one espousing conservative principles, although it did go a bit soap opera in the middle.
If you compare them to Pournelle's individual works, you will realize that Niven is the "lefty" of that duo.
Heinlein was libertarian not liberalHe started out as a Democrat/Socialist. He helped manage Upton Sinclair's run for Governor of California.
Volume 1 of his official biography came out a few months ago, and is a must-read for any serious Heinlein fan.
Based on that, it seems to me that he got quite a bit of his political beliefs from the women in his life. His 3rd wife, Virginia, seemed to be responsible for his turn away from Socialism.
I’ve read some of Pournelle’s collaborations with Larry Niven. Based on those, I’d say he leans right...Dr. Pournelle has described himself as "somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan."
He (like Heinlein) seemed to start out quite far to the left, and moved to the right as he matured.
FYI, Pournelle was Barry Goldwater's California campaign manager in 1964.
“FYI, Pournelle was Barry Goldwater’s California campaign manager in 1964.”
Interesting.
So far, all I’ve read are Niven/Pournelle works. Might have to seek out some Pournelle solo work...
Hoban 'Wash' Washburn: "Start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a 90-pound girl 'cause... I don't think that's ever getting old." - Serenity
Great Series, his dragon series wasn't bad either. Try John Ringo's Live Free or Die if you want to read a sci-fi book that will make a liberal's head explode.
Read Starship Troopers then or the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Starship Troopers is my all time favorite, I’ve read that book probably 7-8 times now and still enjoy it. Don’t compare the movie to it...no where near the same.
Pretty awesome!
That is why i referenced as “Classical Liberal” not the usurptation of the word Liberal by the Progressives. What the word Liberal meant to someone living over 100 years ago.Heinlein was libertarian not liberalmy tagline ["an armed society is a polite society" Robert A. Heinlein] says it all...
I have done a little research . . .
At the start of the Twentieth Century the term "liberal" meant the same in America as it still does in the rest of the world - essentially, what is called "conservatism" in American Newspeak. Of course we "American Conservatives" are not the ones who oppose development and liberty, so in that sense we are not conservative at all. We actually are liberals.But in America, "liberalism" was given its American Newspeak - essentially inverted - meaning in the 1920s (source: Safire's New Political Dictionary). The fact that the American socialists have acquired a word to exploit is bad enough; the real disaster is that we do not now have a word which truly descriptive of our own political perspective. We only have the smear words which the socialists have assigned to us. And make no mistake, in America "conservative" is inherently a negative connotation just as surely as marketers love to boldly proclaim that the product which they are flogging is NEW!
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