The Best Political Science Fiction

[friendly_iconoclast]

Yeah, I *know* 90% of science/speculative fiction is crap (Sturgeon's Law), but the
good stuff hits home years or even decades later and is suprisingly relevant even as I
speak. I'll give examples that bear on recent headlines:

Frank Herbert_ The Dragon In The Sea, AKA Under Pressure. In an energy-starved economy,
governments use tanker submarines to steal oil from other nations' territory.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2949781

Joe Haldeman_ The Forever War. An endless, pointless war against a culture that didn't
actually attack us. Sound familiar? Also:

Forever Peace_ Follows a draftee forced to telecommute to the war zone.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2940896

The movie_The Andromeda Strain. A government lab nearly destroys life on Earth thanks
to bad design and organizational fuckups. Think Big Dig and/or I35W bridge.

Then of course, there's the classic The Space Merchants_Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth
where advertising agencies run society.

There are plenty of others, add the ones that you know!

[EstimatedProphet]

1. Philip K Dick's The Unteleported Man

A future society colonizes another planet by using teleportation. The hitch: it's a one-way trip. The agency working for the government supposedly receives 'reports' about how life is a new paradise in the colony, but in actually it's a slave labor camp, and there's no way to get the message back to the people of Earth about the truth.

[pitohui]

33. so much of pkd is about the little guy lost in capitalism or suburbia or advertising

hard to pick just one when you stop and think about it

[Jed Dilligan]

2. George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire"

Idiot boy king pursuing impulsive policies that bring about armageddon in the context of global climate change... And that series started in 1999.

[The Gunslinger]

44. Yes started in 1999

Any hopefully will be finished by...........2040. I can't wait for the next book.

[Jed Dilligan]

61. It's been a hard wait

The next one was supposed to be part of A Feast for Crows, but it was getting too long. It drove me crazy missing all those POV's!

The upside, I had a transatlantic flight right after I got the book. Spacecake for breakfast in Amsterdam, a bulkhead seat, and a new Martin book to read--and suddenly we were in SF. Truly magical!

[The Vinyl Ripper]

3. Actually it was originally Sturgeon's Revelation..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

And Sturgeon's law was "nothing is ever absolutely so".

Norman Spinrad..

The Iron Dream.. Hitler becomes a novelist and writes an SF novel.

Journals of the Plague Years.. Super AIDS leads to chilling changes in society.


Frank Herbert.

The White Plague.. A microbiologist creates a virus which kills only women, with vast political consequences.



Neal Stevenson

The Diamond Age.. Nanotech leads to vast changes in society.



Heinlein of course..

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.. Lunar colony revolts against Earth.

If This Goes On.. Novella about a fundamentalist takeover of the USA.

Starship Troopers.. Kind of a dystopia where only veterans get the vote.


Vernor Vinge.

The Peace War.. I'm not sure how to describe this one.

The Ungoverned.. Libertarian USA with privately owned nukes.


Greg Bear.

Darwin's Radio.. Human evolution accelerates greatly, lots of political consequences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_Radio

[aeronca7ac]

4. Many

"Search the Sky" by Pohl and Kornbluth; "Little Black Bag" by Kornbluth; "The Marching Morons;" "Earthblood" by Laumer; "The Forbin Project".

[paulk]

68. all the pohl/kornbluth collaborations are worth a read

some really devastating social commentary

[Mythsaje]

5. The whole original Dune series.

Without question.

[hootinholler]

72. Absolutely!

There's a lot of politicin in them.

-Hoot

[LeftishBrit]

6. John Wyndham's novel "The Chrysalids"

About the disastrous consequences of a "Tribulation" (= nuclear war) and also about the ways in which people who are 'different' get treated.

[ljm2002]

29. It was published in the US as "Re-Birth"

It was excellent!

[On the Road]

7. Paul Theroux's "O-Zone"

is intensely political and sociological.

In the novel, the gap between rich and poor has exploded, and NY is a walled fortress against illegal immigrants. The well-off have become anti-immigrant and racist, and form vigilante groups against illegals. Part of the midwest is off-limits due to a nuclear accident. Outside the cities, life continues but is almost invisible to the urban population.

There are a lot of nice touches in this book. Theroux is known mostly for his great travel books, and incorporates a lot of his experiences in Africa and the third world into the portrait of the US in O-Zone. To my knowledge, this is Theroux's only sci-fi novel, which makes it unique.

[Lisa]

8. "The Cage", by Audrey Schulman: "Heavy Weather" (Bruce Sterling)

SF novels that look at global warming and its consequences. Schulman looks at the kind of world it will leave behind (focusing on a town in the Canadian Arctic); and Sterling talks about the psychological disruption faced by people evacuated from the weather disasters plaguing the US (this was long before Katrina ...). There is an interesting political discussion in one scene in "Heavy Weather", with the characters weighing in on "when did things start to go wrong", which oddly enough was (probably unintentionally) echoed in a DU discussion a while back.

Other dystopian environmental SF I've liked recently -- Ronald Wright's "A Scientific Romance", and Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake". I have met Dr. Wright and he's an awesome guy (very nice too).

[sciouscience]

12. Heavy Weather weas funny in 1996 or so...

i have excreted sh*t funnier and realer than anything M. Chrichton has ever written.

[Lisa]

14. ?? I'm not a Crichton fan either -- did he write a book of the same title?

If so, I didn't know about it.

This is the one I was referring to (Bruce Sterling, though he didn't work with Gibson on this particular novel)

http://www.sfreviews.com/docs/Bruce%20Sterling_1994_Heavy%20Weather.htm

[friendly_iconoclast]

22. I referrred to the movie version of Andromeda Strain

for a reason, the "oops, didn't put enough controls in for the nuclear bomb" subplot
wasn't in the novel, IIRC.

And "Twister" totally ripped off "Heavy Weather" and an earlier story by William
Walling called "Jill the Giant Killer". It appeared in Analog in the 1970's.

[Lisa]

53. thanks for the heads-up on the Walling story ...

I hadn't seen that one -- will try to look it up. I've been trying to make a collection of SF and F stories that have weather-related plots (like Theodore L. Thomas's "The Weather Man", which suggested what might happen if scientists actually could manage the weather). I did an article a while back, on how science fiction authors anticipated the research topics that scientists are studying, on connection with global warming impacts, especially the psychosocial stuff that was barely on the horizon back in the 1990s. Some of the related SF dates from the 1960s-70s, when there was a cooling trend, and some researchers thought that we'd be looking at another ice age -- Silverberg (Time of the Great Freeze) and McCullough (A Creed for the Third Millennium) examined the widespread social disruptions that could occur from a dramatic shift in climate.

Re: "Twister", I suspect that it's part of a whole sub-genre of movies that were influenced by "Heavy Weather" (and following the disaster movie model). There have been a bunch of B-movie knockoffs released in the past few years (and ones based on "The Day After Tomorrow", too).

I guess the responding poster decided to reply to both of us at the same time ....

[The Vinyl Ripper]

9. John Barnes

Mother of Storms

Release of methane from arctic subsea clathrates accelerates global warming leading to superhurricanes.

Lots of political consequences.


Heinlein yet again.

Methuselah's Children. Humans bred for long life face persecution when they reveal their existence.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. Here's one

That's one of my all-time favorites. That could be because I wrote it:

http://www.dvorkin.com/bizstars

In which a cute little monkey becomes a sinister president of the U.S.

[sciouscience]

11. well, obviously (but nice choice!) The Unteleported Man, but what about...

EVERYTHING written by PKD. Please folks, don't judge or even note PKD's books by Hollywooden's interpretations. Pulp, yes but Ben Affleck (Paycheck) AND Nicolas Cage(Next)??????????????????????????????????????? What the fuck. sic. etc.

Blade Runner (file dir. - Ridley Scott) or, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is quite relevant and I hate to say it but, Dr. Bloodmoney is the inevitable future.

OK, OK So I am a paranoir. TRU-NUFF. But come on, friendly_iconoclast, just read Solar Lottery or the Simulacra to guess who's next????

[friendly_iconoclast]

30. PKD claimed the goverment went after him after "Faith of Our Fathers"

was published in "Dangerous Visions"

[EstimatedProphet]

62. Yes, even his non science fiction works were often political

The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike had reference to genetic throwbacks to Neanderthals in existence, who were waiting for their time to come back and assert their dominance again. and it's really hard to pick a PKD scifi book that didn't have a political bent in some way. the politics of colonizing Mars in 3 Stigmata, the society built on differing viewpoints in Maze of Death, the neverending war with an alien insect race in Now Wait for Last Year - the list goes on and on.

[Oeditpus Rex]

13. 'Fail-Safe,' of course

Six supersonic bombers, five of them each with 40 megatons of nukes, are en route to Russia at the height of the Cold War. You're the president. What do you do? What do you do?

BTW — I think you miss a bit of the point in "The Andromeda Strain" when you say "bad design." If you mean the core gaskets, there's no way that could've been foreseen. If you mean the missing substations for canceling the self-destruct mechanism, that just made it more dramatic.

[minkyboodle]

15. Ursula K. Le Guin The Dispossessed

always one of my favorites.

[friendly_iconoclast]

23. Ursula K. LeGuin has had several political works

"The Dispossesed" gained a lot more resonance with me after I learned about the life
of Andrei Sakharov. She's had a few more, including:

"The Word for World is Forest"
"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"
"Sur"
"SQ" (also quite funny, BTW)

[Lisa]

54. also, "Always Coming Home"

It can be kind of difficult to get into, because there isn't a continuous plot -- it's more like a collection of writings from a hypothetical future society, and it helps to approach it as if you're a literary scholar or an anthropologist, trying to figure out what's going on by reading between the lines. There are a couple of major stories that lay out a historical account and a travelogue, respectively -- but it's mostly LeGuin asking us to imagine what it would be like to live in a society very different from our own. (I think the closest parallel might be some of today's traditional aboriginal societies, like the Hopi or Inuit.) At points she does get quite political (most obviously in the story where one of her characters is transported to modern-day California and is horrified by the confusing, polluted, duplicitous landscapes).

LeGuin's father was the famous Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber -- she might have gotten some ideas from him.

I've noticed that the later Earthsea books became much more political -- especially regarding feminism. In the first book, she put in a line "weak as women's magic", and didn't really address it until later (I suspect that she got some criticism from readers who wanted to know if she really did believe it). Later on, she does have strong female protagonists, including female wizards (and an abused little girl who turns out to be a supernatural being in disguise).

[hedgehog]

58. Left Hand of Darkness is an eye opening meditation on gender

identity, sexuality and freedom.

[Forkboy]

16. Kim Stanley Robinson's latest trilogy about Washington and global warming.

[paulk]

64. another trilogy!

guess I just haven't been paying attention. I started a reread of "years of rice and salt" just the other day. Guess I'll have to put that down and start in on this.

[Forkboy]

66. No no no! Don't put down the Years of Rice and Salt.

That's my favorite book of his.I've already read it twice.It gets better and better as it goes,and by the time you're done you can only shake your head in amazement at the scope of ideas he just threw at you.It's the least sci-fi of all his books,but I personally have gotten so much from it.The segment on The Four Great Inequalities is worth the price of admission,and the ending was very satisfying.It'll give you a lot to think about when you're done.

Start the others when you finish that one. ;)

[AnnieBW]

17. Robert Heinlein's "Revolution in 2100"

About the revolution against a theocracy in America. He says that he didn't want to write how the theocracy took over because it was too depressing.

[baldguy]

24. No Nehemiah Scudder story, because Heinlein hated him so.

[gulliver]

18. Brazil n/t

[Pyrzqxgl]

19. "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury

[SalmonChantedEvening]

20. The Night Watch subset of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels

Guards! Guards!
Men at Arms
Feet of Clay
The Fifth Elephant
Jingo
The Truth
Night Watch


:)

[Hekate]

38. Jingo! Pratchett is an acute observer of human nature and human folly

Sometimes he takes my breath away, as in Reaper Man, when Death (or DEATH) takes the old lady for a dance -- and he can make me laugh.

I read Jingo in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, and had to keep checking the pub date to assure myself it hadn't been written just for that occasion.

Hekate

[SalmonChantedEvening]

40. Good Ol' Bill Door

Each book has it's own moment of wonder like that, it's own belly laugh and a dozen other wry smiles to accompany it, pure evil, great goodness, and the choice taken between the two.

I sometimes think Ronnie Rust is alive and well in every GOP spokesmoran you see on TV ;)

Sam Vimes has to be my favorite character, and based on the dozens upon dozens of great ones he's created, from Rincewind, to the Bursar, to Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, he gets the nod by a nose. Make that a nosehair. ;)

SCE

[Lisa]

55. YES!

Pratchett does a great job of examining contemporary issues like gun culture, policing, multiculturalism, the role of journalism in a democratic society, exploitation of labour, the romance (and myths) surrounding revolutions, and international geopolitics over resources (the "fat mines of Uberwald" being a thinly-veiled reference to petroleum). And a bunch of other stuff besides!

I love the Nightwatch subset, but I also enjoyed "Small Gods" -- the fanatical fundamentalist Vorbis bears such a striking resemblance to the "tortured" mindset of the Bush Administration that I have to keep reminding myself that it was written years before George W. appeared on the national scene!

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

[SalmonChantedEvening]

60. I loved Small Gods!

Interesting Times is great as well for exploring the minds that would control us, as is Pyramids. I still have THUD!* to read, I am shamefully behind in my Pratchett. Bad SCE, bad bad SCE.


^The Battle of the Valley of Koom: The only war in history where both sides claim they were ambushed. :rofl:

Pratchett in a nutshell ;)

[alfredo]

21. "Fahrenheit 451"

"Stranger in a Strange Land" was very anti military. It was banned on our Army post.

[friendly_iconoclast]

25. Here's a few more-"Gattaca", for one

What is society like when your DNA is used as a caste indicator?


A comic about a Second Civil War, with Manhattan as "No Man's Land"
Most graphic novels leave me cold, but this packs a wallop:

"DMZ" by Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli. Collected as "DMZ: On The Ground", and "DMZ: Body Of A Journalist".

And of course, "V for Vendetta" (book and movie)!


And some SF writers with a political bent:

Ken MacLeod
Nancy Kress
Joanna Russ
Suzy McKee Charnas
Gregory Benford,

amongst many others

[baldguy]

26. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy

[baldguy]

27. Norman Spinnard "Bug Jack Barron"

[friendly_iconoclast]

28. And KSR's earlier Three Califonias Trilogy

AKA, Orange County Trilogy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Californias_Trilogy

[pitohui]

32. the orange county trilogy and the mars trilogy are my favorites

the orange county trilogy is particularly disturbing, we counted the birds in acres

try counting birds in acres now in orange county

and we see a similar political process in the mars story

powerful, tragic, the environment is forever changed

[ljm2002]

31. The Weapon Shops of Isher

by A E Van Vogt, 1951. Exploration of 2nd amendment issues as played out in a future society.

[Arkham House]

43. "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free..."

...good choice. And simply as a novel, "Isher" is just so much of a goddam head trip...

[ljm2002]

52. Thanks! I enjoyed it a lot...

...and am glad to know that someone else found it a great read.

This is a great thread, too. Bookmarking, will use to update my reading list...

[Kingshakabobo]

34. Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure

[Odin2005]

35. Many of Kim Stanley Robinson's novels.

A lot of his novels promote very Libertarian Socialist views.

[heart of darkness]

36. Surprisingly, no one mentioned

Aldous Huxley-Brave New World

George Orwell-1984

Both classics I would qualify as Sci-Fi. Both frighteningly accurate.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

41. What's really frightening is that they _both_ are accurate.

You see many elements from both books in society today.

[Swede]

37. 1984 by George Orwell,and The Time Machine by HG Wells

The Omega Man and Planet of the Apes movies.

[frustrated_lefty]

39. Nancy Kress Beggars series

[Arkham House]

42. Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"

This has certainly been the most *influential* American SF novel...one of the major texts of libertarianism. It's also a masterpiece, arguably the best SF novel ever. Compared to Heinlein, whether you agree with him or not, all other SF writers seem like children when writing about politics...except maybe Dick...

[hedgehog]

57. I was reading down through the thread to list this book.

A sentient computer helps organize a revolution because it allows communitcations that can't be traced. Kind of a precursor to the Net, I would think.

[OxQQme]

45. Ernest Callenbach's

Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging!

<snip from a review>
In Ecotopia Ernest Callenbach describes a society based on the alternative principle that there is a very real limit to the carrying capacity of Planet Earth. Callenbach envisions a society dedicated to the fundamental ecological and political goal of creating "stable-state life systems" in which humans live sustainably within the constraints and renewable resources of their environments. This society, the nation of Ecotopia, is born in 1980 when the citizens of Washington, Oregon, and northern California respond to the developing, industrializing, polluting, exploiting, extracting, militarizing behavior of the United States by seceding from the union. Cutting off all communications with their former nation, the Ecotopians embark on a grand experiment in sustainable living. By the time of Ecotopia, the novel, twenty years of silence, punctuated by occasional wild rumor, are all that the remaining United States know of the left coast. On the eve of the 21st century William Weston, ace reporter from a major East Coast newspaper, journeys to Ecotopia on a six week assignment to "explore Ecotopian life from top to bottom." Weston�s dispatched columns and personal journal entries are the stranger-in-a-strange-land device through which Callenbach displays his ecological utopia.

What does Weston find strange about Ecotopia? The food (sugar free, unprocessed, unpackaged), the shelter (large, communal houses that evolve in keeping with the families using them), the clothing (natural fabrics cut for maximum comfort and minimal upkeep), and everything in between.. The Ecotopians have eliminated automobiles, and land which formerly served cars as pavement now is in service to people. The streets of San Francisco are quiet, greenbelt pedestrian malls with bike lanes and minimal paved passage for public transit and delivery vehicles. Most strange are the Ecotopians themselves, transformed by twenty years of eco-living. They have eliminated the conspicuous consumption lifestyle, by choice owning little; a few pieces of clothing, a musical instrument, gifts made by family and friends. Consuming less, they are able to work less to support their needs. Cooperative work groups set a relaxed pace for an average of twenty hours per week. Responsibility is decentralized and personalized. Each worker signs his or her product so that comments and also any complaints can be directed appropriately. Life in Ecotopia is reminiscent of a highly evolved small town -- everybody knows everyone else, and their business, but instead of gossiping they have spontaneous group interventions whenever a situation develops that wants resolving.

[The Vinyl Ripper]

46. Harry Turtledove and Orson Scott Card.

Just about anything by Turtledove is political.

His "World War" series for instance.

Orson Scott Card

"Ender's Game" and several others.

[OxQQme]

47. Sheri S. Tepper

The Gate To Women's Country

[donsu]

50. as an aside: Teppers shapeshifter series would make wonderful

movies or TV series. Hollywood is missing out on big bucks and happy viewers.

[donsu]

48. Lois McMaster Bujold's books

nt

[The Vinyl Ripper]

56. They say great characters make great books

That's quite true with Miles Vorkosigan

[donsu]

63. Miles, a character to love

and the large 'made' woman warrior, with a short life expectancy, that helped save the kids. a 'made' woman to love.

[n2doc]

49. Seriously? Here's a few:

"The Sheep Look Up" by John Brunner. Read it and aside from the outdated lab science it is all coming true.

Many books and stories by Harlan Ellison "Strange Wine", "Deathbird Storries" are a couple to read. His essays are equally potent.

Stephen R. Donaldson's "Gap" series. Suicide bombers, corporations controlling the military and selling out the human race for profit. All written 2 decades ago.

Iain M Banks "Excession"

[leeroysphitz]

51. Max Barry "Jennifer Government"

A farcical detective story set in a near future corporatist dystopia where "Taxation has been abolished, the government has been privatized, and employees take the surname of the company they work for.".

[eppur_se_muova]

59. Several of Ken McLeod's books are essentially "future politics" more than SF.

The whole "Fall Revolution" series is all politics.

At least the Miocene Arrow series had dueling librarians!

[Love Bug]

65. Babylon 5

The rise of fascism in EarthGov on Babylon 5 was eerily prescient considering the series was written and filmed during the Clinton years.

[paulk]

67. Three that I would recommend

all written by more "mainstream" writers than those usually identified with Science Fiction. descriptions from Wiki

"He, She, and It" - Marge Piercy

He, She and It (published under the title Body of Glass outside the USA) is a feminist science fiction/cyberpunk novel by Marge Piercy, published in 1991. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction in the United Kingdom, it examines gender roles, human identity and AI, political economy, enviromentalism, and much more through a suspenseful story set in a postapocalyptic America of the romance between a human woman and the cyborg created to protect her community from corporate raiders.

"Oryx and Crake" - Margaret Atwood

Returning to the dystopic themes of Atwood's earlier novel The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake presents a very different scenario than that novel's religious theocracy. However, in both novels the collapse of civilization quite noticeably echoes current events. Oryx and Crake critically examines developments in (medical) science and technology such as xenotransplantation and genetic engineering, particularly the creation of transgenic animals such as "wolvogs" (hybrids between wolves and dogs), "rakunks" (racoon and skunk), and "pigoons" (pigs and humans, for organ transplants)<3>. This society, which not only tolerates but promotes such extreme commercialization and commodification of life, has also produced an exacerbated gap between rich and poor, as well as the commodification of human life and sexuality in prostitution and online child pornography. Oryx and Crake does not depend on imagining new scientific or technological discoveries; the novel merely extrapolates on the basis of technologies that are, in principle, available today and carries current social and economic developments and their attendant ethical choices to their radical conclusions. However, this still does not exclude it from science fiction, since the genre has long accepted such "extrapolitive" works within its canon. The work would fall within the sub-genre of social science fiction, which is not heavily concerned with gadgets and space opera for their own sake.

"O-Zone" - Paul Theroux

described upthread



A lot of other great books in this thread, also.

[LeftishBrit]

69. 'Waterbound' by Jane Stemp

Supposedly a young adult book, but of interest to anyone, about a future world where disabled people are banished or worse as drains on the economy.

Declaration of bias here: the author is a friend of mine. But I still think it's well worth reading.

[blindpig]

70. Iron Council, by China Meiville

I believe the sub-genre is steampunk, very weird(on a level with Lovecraft)and a hard core socialists message. Perdido Street Station and Scar are also damn good. Here'sa list of Mieville's must read books for socialists:

http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/i/50socialist

[donsu]

76. I really dig China Meiville's books

nt

[ljm2002]

71. "Earth" by David Brin n/t

[Forkboy]

75. I liked that one a lot.

Neat premise and a neat ending.

I'm hit or miss on some of his other stuff,but I liked Kiln People too,though it was pretty out there.

[friendly_iconoclast]

73. How could I have forgotten Frederik Pohl?

Been writing for 50+ years, and deservedly won a Grand Master Nebula

Thing is, he is often quite funny and quite satirical at the same time.

Stuff like (and this only a little of his output!):

"Man Plus"

"Jem"

"Gateway"

"The Years of The City"

"The Gold at Starbow's End"

"We Purchased People"

"Fermi and Frost"

"Chernobyl"

and lots more. I would recommend "Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories"
to anyone who likes SF at all. He also collaborated with Jack Williamson
and C.M. Kornbluth.

[provis99]

74. Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut

Society as dominated by crazed totalitarian machinery; sort of a mix of the movie Metropolis, combined with Brave New World. Or, if you're a lurking freeper, Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein, for that little fascist crawling in each freeper's dark soul.