Posted on 01/31/2005 1:37:19 PM PST by EveningStar
I've been a science fiction fan for decades and it appears to me that the vast science fiction writers and fans are liberals/leftists. Am I imagining this?
Me too, exact ditto.
Sounds like JMS to me. :-)
"They tend to like guns" Liberals who like guns, kinda funny.
And where would sci-fi be without guns.
I would guess it's a power fantasy. Gee, now that they've lost the last two elections I wonder if we'll see a lot more film violence? Heheh.
That was my first guess, right of the top of my head.
One of my favorite books of all time is The Mote in God's Eye written by them.
:-)
Could just be the region too, this is the "old west" and this area (AZ, NM, and neighbors excluding CA) tends to be pretty friendly to guns on a very core level. Even Tucson, considered to be the liberal outpost of AZ, has shall issue CCW.
To quote the Duke: "That'll be the day."
There's a mix, as in all professions. I'm quite conservative, my editor is a red diaper baby NYC liberal, and I know authors from all over the spectrum. When we get together, we tend to talk books and ideas rather than politics - but I get along best with those on the conservative side. I agree with some of the others that if anything there's a libertarian streak to SF authors.
the original star trek would have no invasion of iraq.
superior cultures don't disturb primitive cultures.
Ping
Not science fiction but Russell Kirk -- arguably the founder of the conservative movement -- wrote great ghost stories.
Roddenberry died in '91. He never had a hand in DS9 or Voyager.
All ills since, and there's too many to count, can be laid on Berman.
I love Orson Scott Card. I just discovered him last year and am trying to get my teen to read him, but no sale so far. I've never been a sci-fi or fantasy fan prior to reading Card's books. I'm more the "bodice-ripper" type. (Just kidding...I read all genre; historical fiction being a fave.)
Another good introduction to fantasy would be "Under the Skin" by Michael Faber...but he's an excellent writter who is never locked into any one genre.
Review:
"The ensuing narrative is of such cumulative, compelling strangeness that it almost defies description. The one thing that can be said with certainty is that Under the Skin is unlike anything else you have ever read. Faber's control of his medium is nearly flawless. Applying the rules of psychological realism to a fictional world that is both terrifying and unearthly, he nonetheless compels the reader's absolute identification with Isserley. Not even the author's fine short-story collection, Some Rain Must Fall, prepared us for such mastery. Under the Skin is ultimately a reviewer's nightmare and a reader's dream: a book so distinctive, so elegantly written, and so original that one can only urge everybody in earshot to experience it, and soon. --Burhan Tufail"
I pretty much stopped watching B5 in the first season. I did see one or two later episodes. For the most part, I was unimpressed.
Heinlein and his proteges, Niven and Pournelle, are definitely libertarian/conservatives, though they may not have much tolerance for so called conservative twits like Pat Buchannen or Ross Perot. If you want to know who Heinlein was read Stranger in a Strange Land and study the character Jubal Harshaw. Definitely a libertarian. Pournelle was one of Reagans science advisors and helped come up with some of the better ideas for SDI, including some that Rumsfeld is bringing back.
Niven, Pournelle and Michael Flynn wrote a book called Fallen Angels that skewers as many liberal icons as they could possibly think of. Among other things it is the ultimate answer to global warming and Al Gore (Global Warming is real and it's the only thing keeping the ice age at bay, so if Al Gore and his greenies were to ever take over we'd be knee deep in glaciers inside of 20 years). One of the things they point out is that Science Fiction is largely for conservatives and fantasy is largely for liberals (greenies).
Baen books, one of the better "science fiction should be fun" publishing houses is full of conservative/libertarian authors, particularly John Ringo. A lot of their stuff is available for free as ebooks in their free library. They don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They tell you flat out that they're hoping you'll enjoy the stories they've released and decide to buy the rest of the author's books to continue reading the series. Ringo's Legacy of the Alldenata series is priceless for military types (he was Airborne and an Army brat and it shows). The line that compels most people to read the books when I tell them about it is "that's what you get for letting red necks paly with anti-matter." You HAVE TO read a book with a line like that in it.
And then their's Rick Cook's (some also free on Baen) Wiz series. There are three or four basic fantasy plots. Most lend themselves to liberal plot lines. Cook is an IEEE fellow and a computer geek from way back. He chose fantasy plot number 2: someone falls through a hole in reality and ends up in a place where magic works. The difference is that his hero, a computer wizard, finds out that he can write a magic compiler. For those in the business it is priceless. All of the jokes are computer jokes (geeks will love the "user interface" in book 2, Wizardry Compled) and i swear I was at the party at Comdex in book 5.
Rick Cook is the perfect SF/Fantasy author to address this question. Not an obvious liberal or conservative, but clearly a free thinker. His Wiz Zimualt would reject equally doctrinaire rantings from the left or the right, but I bet he'd enjoy FR. In fact, if you hang out here, Rick, I'd love you to Freepmail me. I want to see Wiz and Moira just one more time. I think I have a plot for you.....
Fallen Angels - read it. BTW, I'm a LASFS member although I haven't been to a meeting in ages.
Has it really been that long ago? Wow. Now I do feel old. I guess I didn't place the timing because they continue(d) to use his name. Even 'Earth Final Conflict' and some other show that now escapes me had his name on it.
There's plenty in TOS and TNG to convict him, though.. hehe
Hey, howya doin? I was going to ping you on this thread when I got home, but I see you made it.
That's okay. I can't remember a lot of things either. If memory serves, he died during year 5 (of TNG), and there was a little "in memory" blurb on a two parter that Leonard Nimoy did.
I think the "Final Conflict" thing has to do with some idea he had a long time ago, maybe even shopped around with no luck. His wife Majel runs his estate.
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