Sci-Fi: a Radical Genre Leading to Libertarianism (and Even Non-theism)
(posted by Mona)
As a youngster, my far-right and oppressively Roman Catholic parents indoctrinated me to believe all manner of nonsense, and they monitored my television viewing according to criteria that were simply absurd. (Casper the Friendly Ghost ‘toons were out, because they were Communist-inspired.) But very oddly, they paid almost no attention to what I read, especially as I hit adolescence and the local library and bookstores. Thus it happened that at 13, I devoured A. E. van Vogt’s novel, Slan, and forevermore became hooked on the Sci-Fi (or speculative fiction, if you prefer) genre. Voraciously did I consume Asimov*, Robert Silverberg, Robert Heinlein, and Frank Herbert’s Dune series — and somewhat later the Niven/Pournelle collaborations, Greg Bear (especially Queen of Angels, which is way under-rated), and Vernor Vinge. Oh, and so many others, including Nancy Kress’s Beggars in Spain trilogy (which is so amendable to libertarians I learned of and ordered the first in the series from Laissez Faire Books in the 90s).
Now, some have criticized — excoriated, even — Heinlein as being sexist. All I can say is he opened my young female eyes to the idea that female libido and sexuality were healthy, and nothing to be ashamed of. Further, his character Valentine Michael Smith, as well as Herbert’s Paul Atreides and Bene Gesserit witches caused me to look at how religion arises — and can be manipulated — all according to locale and circumstances.
Thus, this article, A Political History of SF, resonates with me, and reflects my own experience of the genre:
Notably, the New Wavers broke the SF taboo on writing about sex in any but the most cryptically coded ways, a stricture previously so rigid that only Heinlein himself had had the stature to really break it, in Stranger In A Strange Land (1961) — a book that helped shape the hippie counterculture of the later 1960s.The Vietnam War broke it, at least for some. A mixed group of dissident classical liberals and anti-war radicals formed the Libertarian Party in 1971, repudiating both the right’s cultural conservatism and the left’s redistributionist statism.
This is worth noticing in a history of SF because the platform of the Libertarian Party read like a reinvented, radicalized and intellectualized form of the implicit politics of [John] Campbellian hard SF. This was not a coincidence; many of the founding Libertarians were science-fiction fans. They drew inspiration not merely from the polemical political science fiction of Ayn Rand — The Fountainhead (1943) [Mona adds: is any of Rand's fiction not purely polemical? I personally never had any use for it.]; Atlas Shrugged (1957) — but from the entire canon of Campbellian SF.
[...]
Heinlein’s personal evolution from New Deal left-liberal to Goldwater conservative to anti-statist radical both led and reflected larger trends. By the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1992, depictions of explicitly anarcho-libertarian future societies had begun to filter into non-political SF works like Vernor Vinge’s Realtime sequence (1985)…
The author of the article eventually inquires:
It’s worth asking, then: is the intimate historical relationship between libertarian political thought and SF a mere accident, or is there an intrinsic connection? And not worth asking merely as a question about politics, either; we’ll understand SF and its history better if we know the answer.
[...]
The power to suppress free inquiry, to limit the choices and thwart the disruptive creativity of individuals, is the power to strangle the bright transcendant futures of optimistic SF. Tyrants, static societies, and power elites fear change above all else — their natural tendency is to suppress science, or seek to distort it for ideological ends (as, for example, Stalin did with Lysenkoism). In the narratives at the center of SF, political power is the natural enemy of the future.
SF fans and writers have always instinctively understood this. Thus the genre’s long celebration of individualist anti-politics; thus its fondness for voluntarism and markets over state action, and for storylines in which . . . scientific breakthrough and free-enterprise economics blend into a seamless whole. These stances are not historical accidents, they are structural imperatives that follow from the lust for possibility. Ideological fashions come and go, and the field inevitably rediscovers itself afterwards as a literature of freedom.
Whether it is a combination of nature and nurture that predisposed me to accept the individualist politics that so pervades Sci-Fi, or whether the genre led me to such a place, is ultimately immaterial; the genre played a huge role in forming my political, philosophical and (ir)religious views. And I agree with the author of my cited and quoted article that those who mistake the genre as conservative “miss[ ] its underlying radicalism.”
*(Yes, I’m aware that Asimov was a liberal.)
May 12th, 2008 at 6:18 am
I agree on the role of sci-fi as a potential radicalizer. What Utopian literature used to be, sci-fi is often today. Unfortuntaely, Labeling someone “utopian” is usually considered a perjorative–a way to cavelierly dismiss someone’s ideas–but without ever addressing them seriously. Traditional utopianism, as a genre, has faded in the 20th Century.
Science fiction is the new utopianism–a way to address complex social issues, but to do so in hypotheticals. I grew up watching Star Trek and Twilight Zone reruns, reading Asimov (Foundaton and Robot series), Herbert (Dune), Heinlein, Clark, LeGuin, etc.
Whether it necessarily leads to libertarianism probably depends on who you read and what you take from it, but it surely opens one’s mind up to a world of possibilities.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:10 am
It’s worth asking, then: is the intimate historical relationship between libertarian political thought and SF a mere accident, or is there an intrinsic connection?
One strand of SF includes portraying libertarian futures - sometimes good, sometimes bad - because SF is in the business of portraying possible futures. You might just as well ask “given its roots with GB Shaw and HG Wells, the popularity of post-capitalist utopias such as “Star Trek”, and the current success of writers like Iain M Banks and Ken MacLeod, is there something intrinsically socialist about SF?” Or “given the popularity of kings, inherited power, class structures and empires in numerous works of SF, is there something intrinsically Tory about science fiction?”
For every example of “the genre’s long celebration of individualist anti-politics; thus its fondness for voluntarism and markets over state action, and for storylines in which . . . scientific breakthrough and free-enterprise economics blend into a seamless whole” I could cite a counterexample of central planning or even pure communism!
It’s particularly bizarre that you cite Asimov in this context, given the underlying theory of psychohistory - not very libertarian! - in the Foundation universe - not to mention the elitism of “Slan” for that matter.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:18 am
not to mention the elitism of “Slan” for that matter.
“Elitism” is not the message I took from Slan. It was that science and/or evolution held the potential for human beings to develop even greater intelligence and enhanced abilities, but that they might be persecuted for it by a fearful, majority populace not having the additional capabilities. That is also a central theme in Kress’s Beggars in Spain series.
May 12th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Ajay you should read the linked piece. ESR, at least, thinks of the socialist SF as a reaction to the natural libertarianism in SF. So it’s not a matter of quantity, but of priority.
I would add one thing to ESR’s take on libertarian in SF. SF is, among other things, fiction, and we all like good stories. But writing directly about large groups of people is inherently unsatisfying as fiction; we want individual protagonists, heroic or not, to identify with. SF solves this problem just as most other fiction does: with individual protagonists. Unlike other fiction, though, SF has the capability to have truly powerful men (or occasionally women) as its heroes. It can do this, of course, by empowering them via hypothetical technology.
SF can also physically empower characters via training, intelligence, etc, as can nonSF writers. And it does. But you still only get so much power from these means; who is the most powerful non-SF hero? For each James Bond, or Jack Ryan out saving the world in modern-day settings, SF has a Paul Atreides, or Valentine Smith.
To the degree that individuals are powerful, they are more independent, and independence as a natural condition is a libertarian one. Thus SF is inherently unfriendly to socialism. In this analysis, if some faction wants socialism in SF, the way to it is not to empower individuals, but to disempower them; you want a nobody, more or less, as your protagonist. Think of poor Winston Smith, or the nebbishes staffing the Foundation. It is certainly true that ordinary, powerless people can have interesting stories told about them, but the conceptual effort required of the author to do that is a lot harder than using the “heroic story” template.
May 12th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I was one of the folks that saw or what I thought I saw, the “conservative” side of Sci-fi. This is before I knew what Libertarianism or even Classical Liberalism meant. “Star Wars” was my intro into Sci-Fi, and knew there was something different about it, and it wasn’t coming from a “Leftist” mind set.
Then I started reading Heinlein, and more into the “indy” comic book scene. Let me tell ya, it was all over from there. But the book that really got me was “The Illuminatus Trilogy”. Wow, if I thought I was atleast “normal”, after reading that book I went off into “La La Land”. Hence, why I’m a Libertarian today.
Thanks for pointing out the artical Mona. This is my first time posting here, but have been a reader for a while. You guys do amazing work here. And please keep up it.
Oh and Mona, my parents are “Right-Wing Catholics” as well. But, my mom always encouraged me to think for myself. And still to this day, I go to church every Sunday. Funny thing about it is, my Catholic faith, helped me to become a Libertarian as much as Sci-Fi and comics. Both huge influences in my beliefs.
May 13th, 2008 at 8:38 am
“Elitism” is not the message I took from Slan. It was that science and/or evolution held the potential for human beings to develop even greater intelligence and enhanced abilities, but that they might be persecuted for it by a fearful, majority populace not having the additional capabilities.
So these superintelligent, enhanced humans… you wouldn’t call them, you know, an “elite”, then?
ESR, at least, thinks of the socialist SF as a reaction to the natural libertarianism in SF. So it’s not a matter of quantity, but of priority.
HG Wells was reacting to a trend in SF that happened thirty years later? Well, I suppose he did write “The Time Machine”… but seriously, this is not even what the article says: instead ESR acknowledges that SF had been socialist, or, rather, there had been socialist SF, long before the rise of US libertarianism…
“Something rather similar had happened in the late 19th century, when Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward From The Year 2000 (1887) and various other works of utopian fiction now forgotten had helped shape the thinking of early Socialists. ”
Let me put it this way. There is without doubt a strong libertarian streak in modern SF, and has been for decades. No doubt, too, a lot of libertarians have been inspired by SF. This would be nothing new - a lot of liberals were inspired by great liberal authors, from Dickens, Beecher Stowe and Hugo through to Steinbeck.
But saying that there is something intrinsically libertarian about SF as a genre is
a) not backed up by the political history of SF
b) not backed up by the present state and ideological diversity of SF
c) daft on the face of it; is there something intrinsically libertarian or anti-libertarian about any other genre of novel? The police procedural, perhaps, or the Regency romance?
SF is a literature of ideas - and one of those ideas is, yes, libertarianism. But there’s no closer link than that.
May 13th, 2008 at 10:16 am
What a thought-provoking article. Chalk me down as another libertarian scifi reader. Darko Suvin defined science-fiction as the literature of cognitive estrangement, and for me this is very close to saying that it is a literature of freedom, but a freedom configured in significantly broader terms than just the political. Nevertheless, while I’ve read my fair share of Asimov and Anderson, I’ve tended to think that the conservatism of hard sf lies mainly in its occasionally repressive commitment to positive science, which is perhaps why I view the literature of the various “revolutionary” periods (and the challenges they represented with relation to the hegemony and commercial success of hard sf) not in terms of an ideological co-optation of the genre, but rather as manifestations of the radical energy that pervades the genre as a whole. I find nothing inherently libertarian about positive science; it’s not the only antidote to religion and to see it as such is to make of it merely a substitute for religious habits of thought. (Die Science…ist das Methadone des volkes.) A novel like Roger Zelazny’s _Lord of Light_, I think, demonstrates just that.
Oh, and in response to ajay’s claim that the underlying theory of psychohistory disqualifies the Foundation series as a libertarian text, I’d say that one of the most interesting things about the series is that the claims of psychohistory (i.e. while individual actions are spontaneous and unpredictable, the actions of great masses of people can be predicted) are to some extent belied by the fact that the novels nevertheless present us with a history of Great Men (and to a lesser extent, Great Women) who shape history through the exercise of their creative liberty.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
So these superintelligent, enhanced humans… you wouldn’t call them, you know, an “elite”, then?
I have a well-above-average IQ and hold an advanced degree. I am thus a member of an elite cohort, but I am not an elitist. The Slan were not elitists; they were persecuted by those who lacked their abilities, out of fear, not because the Slan were elitists. Same theme wrt to Nancy Kress’s “Sleepless”; a group of humans who required no sleep and tended to high intelligence, and so could get much more done than the non-Sleepless. The Sleepless protagonaist did not want to lord it over or separate from the rest of humanity, but the rest of humanity made it hard not to do so — thus, some Sleepless do become very separatist out of a sense of self-defense.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
SF fans as the unrecognized elite had been an element of sf for years, and has long since moved into parody. Slan, as I’m sure you know, became a shorthand for that sort of thinking, the hopeful lament of the self-styled unrecognized genius.
I mostly agree with ajay here, but that said, it could be fun to interpret the dominant themes, if you can pick them out, to the times they were written. (I was thinking recently of the emergent fantasy fiction that sprouted in the 1930s as a response to a questionable success of industry, Tolkien, of course, and there was T.H. White, and, um, then I stopped. Steinbeck was writing then too, and Pearl S. Buck, and the lost generation gang. The outlook in 1950s, on the other hand, would be much different with regard to science and industry.) Anyway, this seems to be what the article is about, and I’m off to read it.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Keifus, no, I’ve never heard of “Slan” as a shorthand for an “unrecognized elite ” of Sci-Fi fans. And in any event, ajay wasn’t referencing the fans — he labeled the novel itself as “elitist.” It isn’t.
I read through about 25% of whatever that pdf doc is you linked to, and saw no point to it vis-a-vis this discussion.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Oh, that’s kind of embarrassing. The link was meant to be a google search for “fans are slans,” which has been kind of an in-joke among fans, or at least it was ten years ago. The Wikipedia article on the book sees fit to mention that, and it’s usually the first thing “slan” makes me think of. Never actually read Van Vogt’s masterpiece.
The other was just a story I wanted to read. My cut and paste skills are rather mundane, I’m afraid.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I would argue that any story in which the heroes are an elite unjustly persecuted by the rest of the mundane world is inherently elitist… but I think this is getting close to a mere uninteresting squabble about definitions.
As for “Foundation”, it’s pretty obvious that Asimov’s own views on psychohistory underwent changes over the four decades it took him to write the series. But in the first volumes at least, there is story after story of a Campbellian hero - or even antagonist - whose struggles are ultimately seen to be predictable, and all part of the Great Plan.
Hober Mallow, Salvor Hardin, even Bel Riose - all of them fight their lone battles and exert their mighty brains and sinews, and at the end Seldon pops up from the grave to say “well, of course, I knew it would end up like this because of the Inevitable Operation of Historical Forces”. The first three volumes of “Foundation” are effectively not just non-Campbellian but anti-Campbellian science fiction.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Ajay,
It’s probably about time for me to re-read the first trilogy. I guess it’s been about 8 years. But I was referring to the first three volumes; in fact, I never read past the fourth book in the series.
I suppose it was imprecise for me to say that the claims of psychohistory are disproved by the individual actions of Salvor Hardin et al, but we ought to be clear that psychohistory is not at all about the “Inevitable” operation of historical forces, but rather the “Probable” operation of historical forces.
I thought it could go without saying, but Seldon, despite his uncanny genius, was not God, but a human scientist. So when you invoke “The Great Plan,” keep in mind that it’s not a matter of the perspective of eternity or perfect knowledge. Seldon may have looked like an oracle to the citizens of the First Foundation (and to you), but the citizens of the Second Foundation, the psychohistorians themselves, knew better. The Great Plan was being perpetually revised. Let’s also not forget the premise of the series, which is that Seldon’s calculations predicted an extended interregnum, and so his establishment of the First and Second Foundations were not in any sense dictated by psychohistory, but by Seldon’s personal choice to do what he could to shorten the coming dark ages.
Psychohistory, ultimately, is not about denying free will, it’s about informing it.
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