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I'll say again, I'm very concerned by the language and attitudes that this discussion is being couched in, as I'm percieving them to be largely unexamined. First, the topic abstract:
Is my liking for military sci-fi justifiable, or have I been seduced by the dark side and its glorification of violence and the military?
Justifiable to whom? Yourself? Your acquaintances? An anti-war protester who sees you reading military SF on the bus? Other Barbelithers? Your own sense of moral rectitude? I'd be interested as why you think you have to justify reading a particular type of fiction, to anyone.
There's also an unstated assumption here that military SF by it's very nature 'glorifies violence and the military'. Says who? If we take All Quiet on the Western Front and the themes presented therein, and set it on Mars, is that glorifying violence?
Second, your definition:
science fiction that focuses on future wars and the future military, generally focussing on characters within the military chain of command and detailed descriptions of the conflict, strategies and tactics.
Any space opera written in the last fifty years meets those criteria - that's an incredibly broad swathe of fiction. I have a feeling you are focusing the majority of your attention on the kind of mass-market barely-SF novels that Forbidden Planet in London helpfully shelves under 'Men with Guns and Girls' (no kidding). These books are, frankly, badly written, with horrendous production values and cover art straight out of the 1950s. They are echoed in the militaristic game-based novels that come out of the wargaming world. And they are most definitely where the Nazis in Spaaaaaaaaaace genre comes from. We can all agree, I think, that those books represent masochistic, obsessive wish fulfilment for some very suspect ideology at worst, and a poor taste gedankenexperiment at best.
But for me, that's not an issue here. You have represented those books as the real extreme ends of the spectrum, and said that you don't read them. So why are they being used to frame the debate?
Now, as for the Drakes, Webers and Pournelles of this world, and their 'dodgy ideology' - I take issue with the idea that it's possible to deduce an author's ideology solely from his written works. If you have access to hir private bank records so you can track any political donations, biographical works and ephemera from ze's life to confirm the kind of person ze was, then yes, you can probably make a valid assumption about who they were as a person. Anything otherwise is reading between the lines.
I'm interested that there's also an assumption that 'mainstream fiction' wouldn't 'touch this ideology with a 10ft pole'. As evidence, I give you Jack Reacher, avidly discussed in this thread. Do we assume that Lee Child is a fascist? No? Well, why not? Reacher is the definition of a 'man's man'. He's an ubermensch come to life, despising those weaker than him, cutting a swathe through the bad to save the good. He beats people to a bloody pulp regularly. So, what's the diff between Jack Reacher and the toned and rippling muscles of the 3rd Alpha Centauri Light Infantry? None that I can see.
I'm also disappointed that the other responses in this thread amount to little more than 'don't worry Mr Liberal 'Lither, reading trashy militaristic SF doesn't make you a crazy right-winger that we we won't associate with.' Legba makes the point that he enjoys the work of Dante, but doesn't share his views. Fine, fair point.
But I take massive issue with this statement:
Apart from that, are any of these authors actually, you know, fascists, in a way that exists outside of their sad little heads? Are they involved in unpleasant activities that sales of their books might be funding? If so, you should probably buy the things second hand or steal them.
Woah there. I think there's an unexamined assumption here. It's fiction. They make it up. Or are we assuming that they have latent racist, authoritarian tendencies because most of the authors in this genre are a) white and b) American. Sure, maybe a few SF authors who write about death n' destruction in the future are sitting cackling over their laptops as they describe the retribution that will be wreaked in the future by their steely-eyed legions, but not all of them. Not by a long chalk.
My fundamental issue is that we seem to be focusing solely on the pulp end of the spectrum in this discussion, which is equivalent to trying to discuss fiction concerning historical or current conflict by only looking at Andy McNab novels or Commando comics. |
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