50 fantasy & science fiction works that socialists should read by China Miéville

[AncalagonTheBlack]

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

An interesting list.If i remember correctly,i have at least read the following from the above list -

Iain M. Banks — Use of Weapons

Emma Bull & Steven Brust — Freedom & Necessity

Philip K. Dick — A Scanner Darkly

Mary Gentle — Rats and Gargoyles

M. John Harrison — Viriconium Nights

Ursula K. Le Guin — The Dispossessed

Ken MacLeod — The Star Fraction

Gregory Maguire — Wicked

Kim Stanley Robinson — The Mars Trilogy

Gene Wolfe — The Fifth Head of Cerberus

Mikhail Bulgakov — The Master and Margarita

Mervyn Peake — The Gormenghast trilogy

How many have you guys read ?

[Larry.]

Read 23, own another 1. Too busy to list them all right now, alas.

[Seli]

I haven't read many of them, but some already are on the virtual perhaps-try-to-read list.

I did read:

Iain Banks - Use of Weapons

Mervyn Peake - The Gormenghast trilogy

Philip Pullman - Northern Lights

Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels

Alexei Tolstoy - Aelita

And I started, but never finished.

Mary Gentle - Rats and Gargoyles

[Theda Baratheon]

Oh my god I've only read three...I am in serious need of books now.

[polishgenius]

Five and a bit - I've only read Red Mars from Robinson, plus Use of Weapons, Northern Lights, The Master and Margarita, Wicked, and Viriconium. Plus a couple (Dick, Moorcock, Peake) that I tried and didn't like. As someone who's neither a socialist nor particularly prone to reading books for political content, I'm not hugely likely to make an effort to read through a list like that (though several are on my list)

I do wonder, though, how a list like that by Mieville would look like today, given that nowadays 1) he is a giant of fantasy in his own right and probably one of the two post-90s writers most influential on what's being published now, and 2) he appears to have softened a stance on Tolkienistic Medieval fantasy that was, at the time, highly scathing (and not necessarily accurate).

I would also love someone to have Mieville and Bakker engage in some manner of discussion on a public forum. I think things might spontaneously burst into flame...

[Old-Growth]

Fewer than I should have :-(. I have one correction to the list: Ursula Le Guinn says that she is a liberal Democrat rather than an anarchist; The Dispossessed does not reflect her political beliefs but rather her interest in anarchist thought (she says that she is fascinated by the same even tho' she does not believe it).

[Galactus]

I've read.

Ian M. Banks: Use of Weapons

Bulgakov: Master and Margarita

Ursula K. Leguin: The Dispossessed

Phillip Pullman: Northern Lights

Keith Roberts: Pavane

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels

I've read parts of/excerpts of:

Bellamy

The Iron Heel

[Old-Growth]

I would be inclined to add two to the list, both by Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt and Galileo's Dream. The former is an alternative history starting from the premise that the black death killed almost everyone in Europe, leaving the Muslims, Indians, East Asians, and Native Americans to carry on. Just to make things interesting, KSR introduces reincarnation, and the possibility that a small group of people called a Jati might be reincarnated together, with those interacting in each life cycle. A form of socialism emerges towards the end in---where else :)---China.

The latter follows Galileo back and forth between a dramatized version of his biography and his transport to the Galilean Moons in the future in which these are inhabited by a scientifically advanced human civilization that is capable of time travel. The biographical portion features a lively account of his astronomical discoveries and the resulting conflict with the church, another of his discovery of the principle of inertia, and the beginnings of experimental science, and another of his relationship with his daughter Virginia whom he put in a nunnery and who took the name Maria Celeste, the which KSR based on her letters to her father. The politics of the historical part are more liberal anti-clerical to be sure, but Italy in the first part of the 17th century was hardly a place in which socialist politics could exist, much less flourish.

[Galactus]

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised the Foundation series isn't on the list. What with it's materialist/determinist qualities, not to mention that utopia ends up as a hive-mind thing.

[sologdin]

+1.

i append this interview as worthy of one's attention.

[Sci-2]

Nice to see China finally putting socialism and fantasy together. ;-)

(Also, what? No Bakker?)

[Galactus]

Hmm, I also miss "Kallocain".

[Datepalm]

Hepfully, theres a goodreads list http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/5399.China_Mi_ville_s_Reading_List

(I've only read 3 - Use of Weapons, Red Mars and The Golden Compass, (and a bit of Iron Heel, IIRC), though Frankenstein is pretty much next on the to-read list.

I do wonder, though, how a list like that by Mieville would look like today, given that nowadays 1) he is a giant of fantasy in his own right and probably one of the two post-90s writers most influential on what's being published now, and 2) he appears to have softened a stance on Tolkienistic Medieval fantasy that was, at the time, highly scathing (and not necessarily accurate).

Well, the criteria is "the politics they embed (deliberately or not) are of particular interest to socialists", which doesn't really strike me as a question of doctrinal purity or whathaveyou. Its possible that classic Epic Fantasy, that isn't a parody or a deconstruction, has an a-political sort of surface and rarely engages directly with political issues.

Anyway, he invites argument, and it's been a while since the list was written besides - how 'bout Pratchett? And GRRM, for that matter? Adam Roberts? Cat Valente? Geoff Ryman?

(Also, what? No Bakker?)

Shut up.

[polishgenius]

Well, the criteria is "the politics they embed (deliberately or not) are of particular interest to socialists", which doesn't really strike me as a question of doctrinal purity or whathaveyou. Its possible that classic Epic Fantasy, that isn't a parody or a deconstruction, has an a-political sort of surface and rarely engages directly with political issues.

To a point you're probably right, but I always got the distinct impression that, in his early years as an author especially, Mieville's dislike of such Tolkienite fantasy was built on a reactive dislike that prevented him from engaging with it at all, in agreement or debate - the interview solo linked to bears that out to my mind (like the bit about Tolkien's views on happy endings, which answer never once takes into account that whatever he said in On Fairy Tales, that mindview doesn't seep into Middle-Earth much at all. That he's since written almost the opposite - point 2 in that piece- is one of the reasons I get the impression he's softened a bit). In other words, he wouldn't have any way of especially knowing if there were books in the subgenre worth placing on such a list because (even if he read them) he was automatically compartmentalising all of it as a conservative, backward-looking genre not saying anything interesting politically, therefore not looking at it to see if that was wrong.

Anyway, he invites argument, and it's been a while since the list was written besides - how 'bout Pratchett? And GRRM

Those two being a fair part of my point there. :P Martin wasn't as famous then as now, but he was certainly known. Whereas Pratchett is and was then, in British fantasy, a massive presence second only to Tolkien, and even back then (before Night Watch, which would almost certainly be the most likely Pterry book to make the list now) had several books engaging with the sorts of subjects being given as reason for inclusion on that list. Either of them could easily have made it.

I'm aware I'm doing an awful lot of jumping to conclusions about Mieville's thought processes there, and may be entirely wrong about his reasons for not including such-and-such a writer on the list. But then, as you say, he invites argument, and I've always felt the urge to argue strongly with the sort of sentiment he expressed there (though it's been a lot more irritating it when other writers have continued such fantasy-is-twee assessments at a time when it couldn't be less true, and I'm glad that Mieville's stopped)...

[Old-Growth]

Honestly, I'm kind of surprised the Foundation series isn't on the list. What with it's materialist/determinist qualities, not to mention that utopia ends up as a hive-mind thing.

But it is not a hive mind: each member retains his or her individuality whilst at the same time being a part of the whole. The society is egalitarian in a way that ought to be pleasing to socialists. The irony is that the person who chooses this as humanities' fate does not himself want to live in the future he has himself set in motion :) A second irony is that Asimov, who was seriously anti-communist, imagines this as the future.

[Old-Growth]

Datepalm: how is that you have not read Green Mars and Blue Mars? Don't you want to know what becomes of Maya, Nadia, Sax, Anne, Hiroko, Vlad, the Coyote, et al?

[Datepalm]

I think I've read one of them but don't remember which :)

Anyway I think years of rice and salt is the really interesting ksr book

[Galactus]

Honestly, I didn't like YRS. It was way too simplistic, and the reincarnation thing just felt superfluos.

[sologdin]

i'd like to see the contrapositive list by an authoritarian capitalist.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I'm scratching my head as to why he picked the Hawkmoon series as Moorcock's representative effort. Yes, Moorcock has a bit of fun making the British the villains (and in doing so, they're far more interesting than any of the heroes), but the series is fluff: Moorcock has said he wrote the books in a handful of days in order to pay the rent. The Oswald Bastable series would be a better bet.