...but not nearly as much as you would think.
One of the things to come out of the modern polarized world of politics and righteous voters is the idea that only members of your chosen political belief system should be allowed to write and influence society.
That includes journalists, politicians, entertainers, writers, musicians, etc. ad nauseum.
Everyone else (outside of your selected political viewpoint) who influences society should be rounded up, tried and convicted as traitors, and then hang by the neck until dead to protect society from their evil heretic ideas.
Or at least, that is the impression I get from some righteous conservative voters.
For instance, some people think that the new Star Trek series is too political....because what was going on in the real life political world influenced their story lines.
Basically, if you don't agree with their politics, you are not allowed to write anything about politics--fiction or otherwise--scream conservatives. Or anything else for that matter because you might influence people away from good wholesome conservative values (which includes harvesting the organs of dead poor people to buy for tax breaks for the rich who are the true heroes of society).
No, Star Trek is not a liberal Chinese Communist conspiracy to drive the bestest President ever--Donald "Jesus" Trump--from office.
The Star Trek writers employed the device of science fiction, asked "Wouldn't it be wild if a society was like this?"--then wrote some science fiction.
It is not their fault if their story lines ended up looking like something that mirrors the descent of our own society. No, that would be the fault of our society...which by the way also includes you.
Science fiction writers write stuff that they think will be interesting, and will result in them getting more paychecks. It is all about the ratings.
If you want conservative science fiction, you need to encourage conservative science fiction writers (buy their stuff!!! share links to their stuff!!! encourage others to buy their stuff!!!)--it is that simple. If there is boatloads of money to be made writing conservative science fiction, conservatives will write science fiction. You don't need to organize boycotts, or petition Congress to outlaw liberal science fiction, you just need to f***ing support conservative science fiction writers. The free market system, which you as good conservative should believe in totally (especially if you are a Trump supporter), will take care of the rest.
You end up with liberal science fiction because it gets better ratings (and makes more money) than conservative science fiction.
And for the record, Star Trek has always been political. A lot of science fiction is.
Examples of political science fiction include: The original tale of Atlantis, The Time Machine (H.G. Wells), Starship Troopers (Robert Heinlein), 1984 ( George Orwell), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams), Disc World (Terry Pratchett), The New Testament (fan-fiction written by the fans of the greatest science fiction writer ever, that dude called Jesus)...etc.
By conservative standards all these writers should be burned at the stake because they did not openly support a society ran by a reality TV star who cares more about his ratings than actually doing the job that Presidents are supposed to do (hint, the word sounds like "Unity), and where poor dead person organ harvesting helps the government give big tax breaks to those who really need them--aka those who are making over a hundred million a year. Of course, you will have to employ a time machine to kill them; but hey I keep getting told that conservative science is the bomb, and far more advanced than liberal science (which believes in false ideas like human caused global warming), so you should have no problem.
(If you know some interesting conservative science fiction writers, outside of the Great Gherkin himself, feel free to mention them in the comment section. I would mention some...but I can't think of a single one outside of the Great Gherkin [who himself is a work of fiction] and the current Republican administration.)
 |
| But never mind that---burn all Star Trek writers as liberal Chinese Communist traitors!!! |
Posts
3 comments:
Orson Scott Card. Larry Niven. Jerry Pournelle. Frank Miller. Conservatives all.
Overnight, I realized that both Robert Heinlein and George Orwell were probably conservatives--or at least, they were anti-Communist.
(Heinlein was definitely anti-Communist; the insects with their hive mind in Starship Troopers were Communists. Of course why Heinlein wrote Troopers is an interesting story onto itself, especially when you remember that he took a break from Stranger in a Strange Land to write it.)
Between them and your list, I must admit that I have read science fiction by conservatives, and really don't care about their political position (the fact that I don't know that they are conservatives says something about me--I don't care about a writer's background as much as I care about interesting stories).
But as I said in the post, some people do care...because they are more concerned about a person's politics than whether or not, the stories are entertaining.
There is no way to determine Heinlein's politics from his fiction. Just from my immediate memory, different books contained functionalism, women's liberation, revolution, pro-taxation, anti-taxation, polyamory, polytheism, pantheism, atheism, agnosticism, reincarnation, free love, lower case "r" republicanism, lower case "d" democracy, traditional families, nontraditional families, bisexuality, pansexuality, homosexuality, asexuality, etc. Like pulp writers of the day he wrote for anyone who would pay him.
Hell, neo-pagans still use the words he coined: "Thou art god", "Never thirst".
Post a Comment