10 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Works Every Conservative Should Read

[AncalagonTheBlack]

In response to China Miéville’s “50 Sci Fi and Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read” , The American Conservative has come out with it's list -

1.David Brin - The Postman

2.Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

3.William Gibson and Bruce Sterling - The Difference Engine

4.Robert Heinlein - Starship Troopers

5.Joe Haldeman - The Forever War

6.Aldous Huxley - Brave New World

7.Robert E. Howard - Conan stories

8.H.P. Lovecraft - anything really, but particularly the “Cthulhu cycle”

9.Walter M. Miller, Jr. - A Canticle for Leibowitz

10.Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

http://www.theameric...ve-should-read/

I've only read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Forever War.

[SkynJay]

Not even conservatives claim Good kind, huh?

[BookWyrm]

By modern standards, isn't it a bad move to politically align oneself with the likes of Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard?

[Crazydog7]

Not even conservatives claim Good kind, huh?

Well I am sure thats for the next list "10 books every stark raving lunatic should read"

Funny because at least three of those books have a "war reallly sucks" message.

[SkynJay]

I won a copy of The Difference Engine a year ago, ought to read it sometime.

[Darth Richard]

Conan.....whaaaat?

[Stanczyk]

This...is a strange list. Only Starship Troopers is overtly conservative. A Canticle for Liebowitz might do it for you if you're a Catholic, conservative, I guess? Lovecraft was a fascist sympathizer, but nothing except the racial theory comes across from that in his stories.(and I thought conservatives label fascists as socialists these days?). Robert E. Howard's Conan stories come across as the rejection of political systems entirely, and Howard himself was a supporter of the New Deal.

Not to say that Mieville's choices weren't also odd. His list just came across as "50 books China likes".

[The Marquis de Leech]

By modern standards, isn't it a bad move to politically align oneself with the likes of Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard?

Well, Lovecraft at least was conservative, in the classical sense of the term (he regarded himself as being born two hundred years too late, and was annoyed at the American Revolution).

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Yeah, The Forever War seems like a strange one for conservatives to claim, as well.

[sologdin]

post-apocalyptic stories might be said to appeal to individualist/survivalist types, who make a fetish of the return to a hobbesian war of all against all. there generally no states, or only very weak states.

haldeman's narrator presents military ethos as positively as heinlein's, but haldeman's narrator survives centuries of social evolution wherein his world gets leftwing, which is regarded negatively. heinlein's narrator by contrast lives in a freikorps utopia.

i've never regarded dick's as rightwing, but am willing to submit to enlightened opinion there. huxley strikes me as a eugenicist dystopia, but the savage displays a certain individualist streak, similar to the post-apocalyptics, dystopia and post-apocalypse do overlap quite a bit, both tending to lack dicernible story; dystopia at least attempts to develop setting, though.

miller displays a hyperliteracy, preferring to save books rather than persons in the end. it is the ultimate commodity fetishism, and. thoroughly arriere garde.

[BookWyrm]

Well, Lovecraft at least was conservative, in the classical sense of the term (he regarded himself as being born two hundred years too late, and was annoyed at the American Revolution).

Is that a nice way of saying, "by our standards. he was a bigot"? :leer:

[Durckad]

Some of those are odd, but...

Why the fuck is Snow Crash on there?

[Darth Richard]

Oh wow, I missed Liebowitz the first time I looked at that list.

That makes no sense.

Most conservatives I know tend to think of education as a waste of money. Plus I can't think of a more anti-war book.

[The Marquis de Leech]

My attempt at a top ten for conservatives (bearing in mind that I'm left-wing myself):

1. The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion (Tolkien)

2. The Chronicles of Narnia (Lewis)

3. The Cthulhu Mythos (Lovecraft)

4. Paradise Lost (Milton)

5. Melmoth the Wanderer (Maturin)

6. Dracula (Stoker)

7. The Book of the New Sun (Wolfe)

8. Conan (Howard)

9.The Divine Comedy (Dante)

10. Frankenstein (Shelley)

A surprising number are also horror, but horror lends itself to conservatism.

[The Marquis de Leech]

I left out Heinlein because I don't think he should be inflicted on anyone, including right-wingers.

[Eponine]

Some of those are odd, but...

Why the fuck is Snow Crash on there?

Anarcho-capitalism.

[Ormond]

Oh wow, I missed Liebowitz the first time I looked at that list.

That makes no sense.

Most conservatives I know tend to think of education as a waste of money. Plus I can't think of a more anti-war book.

This list was put out by "The American Conservative" magazine. If you look at their self-description, they certainly think that being for peace and education are "conservative", and they reject the idea that the "right wing" is a synonym for "conservatism."

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/who-we-are/

[The Marquis de Leech]

Is that a nice way of saying, "by our standards. he was a bigot"? :leer:

Lovecraft was a bigot by the standards of the 1920s. But he was a comparatively harmless bigot (his anti-semitic rants didn't stop him from having a Jewish wife, and his later works are less overtly obsessed with race). He did remark that he wished he could have been around in the eighteenth century, when he'd have been a loyal subject of King George.

[Durckad]

Anarcho-capitalism.

A satire or glorification of?

[BLU-RAY]

A lot of this depends on the strain of conservatism. With socialists for Mieville's list, you know what you're getting... but Paradise Lost is a kind of terrible choice for a religious conservative, but fits decently with Libertarianism.