Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Fifty Science Fiction and Fantasy Works that Socialists Should Read

07:20 / 18.02.05

Over at Fantastic Metropolis China Mieville has put together his "definitive" list of SF/F novels that have a socialist slant.

Any thoughts on the selections?

19:35 / 18.02.05

I saw this the other day on del.icio.us and immediately checked to make sure that The Disposessed made the list. It was there, so I'm gonna check out some of the others. I'm especially curious about the stuff from the early 1900's.
Anybody else see books they'd recommend? Anything that should be avoided like the plague?

I really liked The Dispossessed. It was recommended to me at the San Francisco Anarchist's Book Fair when I was asking a seller about recommendations on crime and punishment in an anarchist society. While The Dispossessed didn't really address this in the depth I'd have liked, the overall depiction of an anarchist society is well conceived, including showing how that society will eventually break down without proper vigilance. The way in which the foil society, capitalist and sexist, was written was perhaps a bit heavy handed, but I enjoyed this book both as a anarcho-socialist and as someone who enjoys a well-written book.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

04:01 / 19.02.05

That's very interesting. Glad to see Ken MacLeod made it in there. And Spinrad.

I've probably read about a quarter to a third of them- must check out some more, especially Alexander Bogdanov's "The Red Star", which he discussed in his recent Interzone interview and which really sounds fascinating.

Shame he didn't put himself on there (and that the list was done in '03)- I'd definitely have added "The Iron Council".

07:38 / 19.02.05

Interesting list. Great to see Max Ernsts fabulous Une Semaine de Bonté in there. I love that book to bits (of paper..ho ho).

No War of the Newts though?

09:37 / 19.02.05

Yeah, that is... *coff* interesting - sorry, I'm too hungover to think of a better way of putting it. Good list though. I think I've read about ten of those, heard of most of the others, but I'd no idea Max Ernst had written a novel, so that at least I'll be giving a go.

Having not read him at all, and based on recommendations here, I was thinking of trying out China Meiville the other day, and then I saw how much he'd written ( I gather he's, like, Twenty Nine or something, ) and I sort of wanted to crawl out the shop with my head hung in shame. I mean prolific I can live with, but that was just horrible. Slightly recovered a few minutes later though, I then thought 'Nah, can't be any good then... the twat,' as you do, but if I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt, The Iron Council, you think ?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:46 / 19.02.05

Probably more for the Mieville thread if this line of conversation takes off, but Iron Council, great though it is, works best when read in sequence, after Perdido Street Station and The Scar (it's not necessary, but I think you'd get more out of it- especially the politics, which don't come to the forefront until IC, but are given a grounding which makes them WORK so much better in IC- the struggle, on so many sides, the internecine feuding, all play out against the backdrop painted in PSS, and, to a degree, The Scar).
Read Perdido Street Station. I swear you won't regret it. The first few pages seem like it'll be heavy going indeed, but very soon you can't put the fucker down.

I think I already said in another thread somewhere that a panel including Mieville and MacLeod should discuss the role of socialism in skiffy... I'd pay LOTS to see that.

Although, on reflection, much as I love Banks's Use Of Weapons, I'd say Consider Phlebas was probably more worthy of inclusion- the whole idea is that the Culture is this socialist utopia... and, unlike UOW, Banks doesn't give us someone within it discovering its downside, he gives us his critique in the form of a protagonist who is actively fighting against it; exposing its flaws.

00:08 / 20.02.05

Not to be all... but shouldn't socialists read stuff with a definite non-socialist slant? You know, to get the other point of view?
If it's a list of books socialists should read, it doesn't seem complete without a few with a capitalist view.

unheimlich manoeuvre

00:58 / 20.02.05

doesn't it go without saying that the mainstream media portrays the dominant ideology?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:47 / 20.02.05

LykeX- why do you think "Atlas Shrugged" is in there?

14:20 / 20.02.05

' but I'd no idea Max Ernst had written a novel, so that at least I'll be giving a go.'

Well it is a surrealistic novel in collage so don't go expecting any words or anything (apart from the title pages. It's split into 7 parts, each one having aday of the week, an element and an example attatched to it. For example, Wednesday is the element of blood and give the example of Oedipus. It's a great exploration of Alchemy done as a comic.

21:40 / 20.02.05

Why is the Yellow Wallpaper considered a science fiction or fantasy work? Isn't it just a short story which evokes the oppression of Victorian women or even just a poe-lite horror story about hysteria? (and of course wallpaper)
Probably meant Moving the Mountain more specifically (even though it was only footnoted) which I know little about other than it was about a utopian society where men and women were equal, still hardly sci-fi now, although maybe there's a lesson to be learned there.
eh sorry to be pedantic but it clearly ain't sci-fi or fantasy.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:05 / 21.02.05

I must admit I was surprised to see The Yellow Wallpaper in there... I'm guessing it's because it's a top-notch horror story, and horror's often considered a subset of fantasy (well, in some bookshops, anyway), so...?

11:29 / 21.02.05

interesting too that my favourite socialista fantasy-read, the red book, has been missed off the list. probably too violent.

16:56 / 21.02.05

Too violent? For a list compiled by a guy who had a character
tied up by four ropes in a subway and left there to be hit by a train?

Hmmmm, intriguing, I must read this "Red Book"...

unheimlich manoeuvre

18:54 / 21.02.05

Gumbitch - are you talking about Chairman Mao's Little Red Book?

19:53 / 21.02.05

I must admit I was surprised to see The Yellow Wallpaper in there... I'm guessing it's because it's a top-notch horror story, and horror's often considered a subset of fantasy (well, in some bookshops, anyway), so...?

Just being pedantic and also suprised having felt that Moving the Mountain would fit the bill more..

Whisky Priestess

21:50 / 21.02.05

We is excellent (and I thought I was the only person in the world to have read it - gutted now.)

Gormenghast - OF COURSE!

Iron Dream I found rather more likely to be read unironically than otherwise, and thus constitutes disturbing propaganda rather than biting satire.

Kim Stanley Robinson - not sure how political it is, but a bloody good yarn nonetheless. Epic world-building - but if this makes the cut, where are Asimov's Foundation novels? They address a hell of a lot of interesting sociological questions.

Woman on the Edge of Time - WTF? One of the worst novels, sci-fi or otherwise - I have ever attempted to read. And I don't give up easily.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:52 / 21.02.05

LittleGod- I was describing this list (in terms of the things on it I'd actually read) to a friend today... he said "The Yellow Wallpaper? Why's THAT in there?" I gave it the whole "subset of fantasy" thing, to which he replied "yes, many booksellers are WRONG". Which I guess means he agrees with you, and at pub conversation level, my justification for CM's inclusion of it didn't stand up.

I haven't read "Moving The Mountain". Should I? Is it good? (I loved "Wallpaper"...)

Whisky Priestess

21:54 / 21.02.05

Alex - I think Mieville is more like 33. (Dangerous age for a messiah. He should watch out.)

22:29 / 21.02.05

I haven't read Moving the Mountain although I know its about a utopian society in which women have achieved true equality with men, which was extremely progressive for the time if you think about it and would fit in with the socialist ideal (I was also talking about this today and a friend who studied the era at college told me that one of the topical debates of the day was whether woman should have house keys and thereby to come and go without their husbands by or leave!).

Elaine R. Hedges is actually brilliant I really want to read Woman and Economics;(extract below)

That women are kept, like horses:

The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses. The labor of horses enables men to produce more wealth then they otherwise could. The horse is an economic factor in society. But the horse is not economically idependent, nor is the woman.

This paragraph somehow remind me of animal farm in an extremely unpleasant way.

22:12 / 22.02.05

why do you think "Atlas Shrugged" is in there?

My bad. Apparently I skimmed through it a little too fast.