Controversal SF

[YankeyMCC]

Interesting topic I think would be appropriate for a SF discussion group on a political site like DU.

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/006901.html

There has definitely been a resurgence of politically themed work from British writers like Reynolds and Ken MacLeod. And on the other side (of the Atlantic and political spectrum) Card and Crichton. Although I don't know that there's much much public controversy stired up outside SF fandom by these people.

RAH is interesting because some aspects of his work seem very far in the liberal side and much is very 'conservative', I guess that isn't unusual for a strick libertarian but I think he himself changed fairly dramatically in his outlook in both directions over the coarse of his life. I read "Stranger in a Strange Land" just a few months ago for the first time in well over 10 years and I found a lot more 'right wing' ideas in it than I remembered from the character of Jubal.

Kim Stanley Robinson provides another example with the Red/Green/Blue Mars books both political and ecological then there's the more recent books about coming ecological disaster.

[Orrex]

1. Philip K Dick had some interesting comments on this subject

Here's the relevant excerpt:

Question 9: To what extent do you think it is possible to detect a writer's viewpoints as to politics, religion, or moral problems through examination of his stories?"

If the writer is a good one, it's impossible. Only a bad writer details his personal viewpoints in his fiction. However, it is always possible that some good writing may be found in an "instructive" work. But at the moment I can't think of any (e.g., Ray Bradbury. There is no way, in reading his work, to tell really what his personal views are; the writer in this case disappears entirely, and his story reveals itself on its own. This is the way it ought to be.). It is one of the cardinal errors of literary criticism to believe that the author's own views can be inferred from his writing; Freud, for instance, makes this really ugly error again and again. A successful writer can adopt any viewpoint that his characters must needs possess in order to function; this is the measure of his craft, this ability to free his own work of his own prejudices.

From "The Double: Bill Symposium": Replies to "A Questionnaire for Professional SF Writers and Editors" (1969)
Printed in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick,, page 66 of the 1995 hardcover Pantheon Books edition.

IMO that's a pretty good summation, if a trifle idealistic. It's hard to read Ellison, for example, without getting at least a sense of some of his political views. Today it seems nearly impossible that a story with strong political themes could be expressed seriously without revealing the author's underlying view (at least generally). Perhaps that's a failure of the ability of current writers, or simply a failure of my choice of which writers to read.

In any case, we as a culture are obsessed with reading fiction through the lens of our perception of the author's biography, which is a disservice to the work.

[YankeyMCC]

2. I mostly agree with that

There is a quote from JRRT that says something similar, I don't have it handy sorry. But many have speculated about his LoTR story and what statement it was making about industrialization and war and in an interview (many times I'm sure) he was asked about what comment he was trying to make on those subjects with is LoTR stories.

He said something to the affect that he was just trying to tell a good story and when a writer is successful in telling a good story there will always be ways readers can see allogories to the real world although it can change with each reader and with the times it boils down to creating a world with believable, sympathetic human (or human relateable ) characters. The good plots and themes are timeless, the Odyssey and Iliad still speak to us, the most interesting myths told well can still be used as allogory to real world. So in that sense the writer's personal beliefs do disappear.

But writers are only human or no less than human and so biases will come out it's just a matter of how difficult to detect. And some writers who are not shy about sharing their personal beliefs and whoes stories clearly reflect those beliefs can still spin a good tale (Ken MacLeod and Alistair Reynolds come to mind though there are clcearly others, I love KSR but I will say some of the political stuff in the Mars series comes detracts a bit at times but not enough for me not to still love the series)

[Forkboy]

3. What a great read.

Some outstanding thoughts on SF and controversy in general.

Had to chuckle reading this...

I think the longest running, most controversial piece of speculative fiction is the Bible. It's had long-lasting appeal, incredible sales, and been the basis for not merely disagreements, but outright wars and nation-building. My wife wants me to define why I think the Bible is speculative fiction: it's got talking animals, rain for 40 days straight that was enough to cover the entire planet in water (and where did that water go afterward?), a guy living to be 969 years old, and it says the Earth is only four thousand and change years old. Oh, and where did Cain's wife come from?

I liked this one, too.

A book where every character of color is a stereotype and rape of the protagonist's girlfriend serves only to motivate him into action is much more problematic, in my opinion, because it says nothing about the issue while perpetuating the noxious cultural norms. Thoughtlessness in fiction (and while challenging books) is the enemy, not the perceived taboo content, and it is the mindless endorsement of the status quo that makes for poor reading.

And I only wish KSR's novels were considered controversial. Maybe then they'd get the notice they deserve.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

4. Neal Stephenson

frequently wrangles with controversy. In particular, his early book Zodiac: An Eco-thriller follows the career of Sangamon Taylor, an "eco-terrorist" who specializes in being one step ahead of polluting megacorporations and frequently re-directing their toxic waste right back at them. Why controversial? Because Stephenson explains, almost textbook-like, how Taylor accomplishes his actions. One example comes to mind: confronting a ChemCo. polluter which dumps its PCBs directly into Chesapeake Bay, Taylor and his crew work up a MacGuyver-esque fix to plug all the holes in the company's illegal pipes. Before they know it, the ChemCo's own PCBs are flooding their own property, and they have no recourse because they had been dumping illegally.

And then, for raw, in-yer-face controversy, there's Phillip Jose Farmer's A Feast Unknown (REALLY hard to find, and you can't borrow my signed edition) which features, among other things, an unauthorized Tarzan who can only get an erection when he's being spattered with blood from his latest kill; an omnisexual (and also unauthorized) Doc Savage buggering the aforementioned Tarzan; cannibalism, corpse abuse, bestiality, etc. etc. All in the rip-roaring format of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent.

Finally, I'll recommend Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic-novel opus, Watchmen (soon to be a big ol' motion picture), which wrangles with some very difficult issues.

[semillama]

7. Moore's Lost Girls

While I have yet to read it, the subject matter deals with the sexuality of the main female characters from Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

[Babel_17]

5. (Relative to when they were released) Bug Jack Baron by Norman Spinrad and ...

Memoirs Found In A Bathtub by Stanislaw Lem come to mind. Though Spinrad's was more conventionally controversial.

Dhalgren and Triton by Samuel R. Delaney were a bit controversial for their sexuality and other themes. Babel-17 was more intellectually/obscurely controversial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis

[TechBear_Seattle]

6. China Mieville

More a writer of "weird fiction" and steampunk than science fiction, but interesting. He is a member of Britain's Socialist Workers Party and has run for the House of Commons. His book, Iron Council, is particularly political.

As for Kim Stanley Robinson, his "Science in the Capital" series -- Forty Days of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below and Sixty Days And Counting -- are an excellent read.