Science fiction goes political

[RamboLiberal]

From the buzz I've seen for this on some gun websites - I think this is their new "Turner Diaries".

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-weigel19dec19,1,7484175,print.story?coll=la-news-comment

Be afraid, conservatives. If you survived the victory speeches of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and allowed yourself to think, "Things can't get any worse," get over it. They can.

Two years from now, terrorists under the banner of the "Progressive

Restoration" will take over Manhattan in a larger attempt to overthrow the government. Thirteen years later, President Chelsea Clinton and Vice President Michael Moore will haul out the good White House china for Osama bin Laden's state visit. By fiddling with your radio, you may be able to catch an underground broadcast by Sean Hannity. If you own a radio, that is; folks living in states that are under Sharia law won't even be that lucky.

These aren't my fantasies or nightmares. All of these vignettes are ripped from science fiction thrillers that have hit shelves in just the last 18 months. Sharia comes to the United States in Robert Ferrigno's potboiler, "Prayers for the Assassin." In Joel C. Rosenberg's "Last Jihad" trilogy, a steel-spined U.S. president nukes Baghdad, then combats a Russo-Iranian axis, all in fulfillment of Scripture (or so we're told in the nail-biting third book, "The Ezekiel Option"). Hannity and his stone-jawed sidekick, G. Gordon Liddy, battle the Clinton restoration in Mike Mackey and Donny Lin's comic book, "Liberality for All." The Second American Civil War is breaking out in Orson Scott Card's "Empire" (book out now, video game on the way).

If it all sounds a little strange and crazed, that's because it is. The right's sleep of reason is bringing forth dark, futuristic political thrillers.

[ThoughtCriminal]

1. There was a National Lampoon comic back around 1974

"Gordon Liddy - Agent of C.R.E.E.P." that was actually similar and hilarious. Right Wingers are so far beyond parody now that our best satirists have trouble keeping up.

[Miss Chybil]

2. Maybe it's the Oxycontin... nt

[madrchsod]

3. boy oh boy,a shit wagon full of bad writing

but the audience it`s aimed at could`t comprehend anything more complex

[Kali]

4. Sci fi has always been political.

:shrug:

[rwenos]

5. Cyberpunk

My favorite sub-genre, is marked by little people, stoners, gamefreaks, and keyboard jockeys, pursuing or being pursued by corporate-controlled Artificial Intelligences. The state has withered, the big corporations control all the security software, but the People are fighting back. William Gibson said it best: "We're coming in under their radar."

Left wing science fiction is for sure nothing new. How about the forces of the "Old Republic" fighting "The Empire" in Star Wars? Heavy anti-fascist subtext.

Why else read it???

[Hardrada]

6. That's for sure. You can go back to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells

to find stories that are for progressive forces and against war and reactionary elements. And just go on up to 1950's SF ridiculing consumerism, conformity, the advertising business and so on. A lot of great stuff in that genre. Not to mention Robert Anson Heinlein and Margaret Atwood, in their own ways, warning of a future theocracy!

[eppur_se_muova]

7. These guys can't hold a candle to Fred Pohl.

You want political/social commentary, go back to "Merchants of Venice", "The Midas Plague", and other classics.

OOPSIE, meant to respond to OP. OF COURSE I meant the new hack writers, not Verne et al. :blush:

[Hardrada]

9. Don't forget his writing colleague Cyril Kornbluth.

Fred Pohl's a great guy and was a great SF editor too. In his youth, he was something of a rad. And that is also too his credit.

[Porcupine]

8. I'll take Ecotopia any old day thank you.

There terrorists secede California, Oregon and Washington by threatening the rest of the nation with nuclear weapons and then go on to have a relaxed nation with plenty of sex, exercise, sex, fresh air and sex.

If you want to read more recent and also good science fiction with a political undertone try "Dies the Fire" or "Conquistador" by S.M. Sterling.

Of course if conservatives try to read anything more complicated than Terry Pratchet their little heads explode. Given something like "Excession" by Ian M. Banks and they would just quit.

Or we could lock Bush in a concrete box with nothing but "The Confusion" to read. That would be fitting.

[Cheap_Trick]

10. >hack< >hack

sorry, must be the weather.

[Cheap_Trick]

11. the notion that rebublicans are heroes

HAS to be in the realm of science fiction, because it sure isn't reality.

[Beausoleil]

12. Doesn't sound like real sci-fi

to me. It's really speculative fiction, probably of no better quality than "Team America". But spec-fi does unfortunately get lumped in with sci-fi.

[Frank Cannon]

13. I thought that science fiction was always political

Particularly televised science fiction. Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry both discovered early on that they could couch controversial political issues in the speculative forums of "The Twilight Zone" and "Star Trek" that the networks and their sponsors would normally NEVER allow to see the light of day.

[MrCoffee]

14. let us not forget PKD.

[leftyclimber]

15. And Kim Stanley Robinson.

[eppur_se_muova]

19. OK, I gotta a plug his description of Bu**sh** -- excuse me, I mean

a FICTIONAL American pResident -- in his "Forty Signs of Rain". It's a dead-on analysis of his personality.

[Beausoleil]

16. Sometimes I feel like we are really living

"The Man in the High Castle"

[MrCoffee]

17. it's the Black Iron Prison, friend.

The Empire never ended.

[Beausoleil]

18. Yes!

n/t