Left wing fantasy fiction… May 6, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
This came up tangentially in comments a week or two back, but any suggestions of actual left-wing, overtly or at least evident left-wing fantasy? China Mevielle – been there. Richard Morgan’s A Land Fit For Heroes – done that. But what of others? How about Marxist and anarchist fantasy?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
In my youth,I always found “the beano” to be very “anti authoritarian”. Does that count?!
LikeLike
According to this, yes:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/27/beano-legend-leo-baxendale-dies-aged-86
LikeLike
Ken MacLeod “The Cassini Division”
LikeLike
Also don’t know it it’s exactly “leftwing”, but at least it avoids many of the irritants in mainstream fantasy: Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles (a warning though, the bugger hasn’t published the 3rd in the trilogy yet and it does not seem as though it’s coming any time soon). Anyway, it’s IMO among the best-written “high” fantasy of recent years.
LikeLike
The Kingkiller Chronicles is a prime example of how much disdain publishers have for readers of fantasy novels. The whole thing was one book which Rothfuss’ publishers convinced him to pad out and turn into three novels.
LikeLike
Part one was as good as Sum Guy describes. I could barely finish the second, but I thought that was just me.
LikeLike
Cheers for those. I’m particularly interested in high fantasy because I’m rereading the Lord of the Rings at the moment – or rather reading it aloud to someone. And while there’s bits I like there’s others that really grate on me.
LikeLike
This interesting quote from Farah Mendlesohn book ” Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature”in a piece about the reactionary politics of much commercial fantasy:
“…a number of fantasy writers—Michael Moorcock,
M. John Harrison, Michael Swanwick, China Miéville, and most recently Steph Swainston—have tried to write left-wing fantasy..”
https://books.google.ie/books?id=qZLdAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA111&dq=%22left-wing+fantasy%22&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22left-wing%20fantasy%22&f=false
Other Left Wing Fantasy Writers…there’s Angela Carter, whose work features explicit feminist themes, and Steven Brust, who calls himself
a Trotskyist :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brust
LikeLike
William Morris?
LikeLike
Of course. I think it was Edward James who states that
Morris’ “The House of the Wolfings” has an anti-imperialist subtext (heroic Goths fighting the Romans).
Quite a large number of fantasy writers are active feminists, one thinks of Ursula Le Guin, Nancy Springer, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Pamela Dean, N. K. Jemisin and Phyllis Ann Karr.
LikeLike
Of course. I think it was Edward James who states that
Morris’ “The House of the Wolfings” has an anti-imperialist subtext (heroic Goths fighting the Romans).
I know I’ve said it before, but George Martin probably counts as well. Feminist, non-homophobic and deals extensively with the effects of events on the lower classes. His ‘Dunk’ prequel stories feature a working-class protagonist trying to make his way in a world where the rules are loaded against him.
LikeLike
Not to mention James Tiptree Jr.
LikeLike
There are certainly Marxist or Anarchist leanings in many fantasy/sci-fi heroes but it seems like much of the time, even if they “take down” the antagonists, we never get to see exactly how the new system works.
Criticisms of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism are common but actual endorsements of alternative systems are relatively few (AFAIK).
GRRM could be considered left wing but I’d say he’s not exactly a fan of collectivism at least in its more extreme forms. He would oppose any overly zealous movement.
LikeLike
“we never get to see exactly how the new system works.”
It’s a problem for actually existing socialists as well as fantasy/sci fi writers.
If we could show and tell how the new system works, we might persuade more people to get on board for the revolution?
LikeLike
That’s one of the reasons I’m all for many left systems being experimented with.
LikeLike
How about the United Federation of Planets? Seems relatively socialist.
LikeLike
Very socialist. No more money!
LikeLike
I suppose The Forever War is a bit leftist- or at least anti-militarist
LikeLike
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy certainly has anarchist/feminist visions of the future. Good read.
LikeLike
“My Friend, Mr. Leakey” by J.B.S. Haldane. A children’s fantasy book by the famous Marxist biologist:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/j-b-s-haldane/my-friend-mr-leakey/
Also, even though he does the annoying “I don’t write fantasy/ science fiction” guff, Green Party supporter Philip Pullman did write the “His Dark Materials” fantasy series.
LikeLike
Some “magic realist /surrealist” fantasy novels by left-wing writers would include “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka (always struck me as an attack on torture), “The Wild Goose Chase” by Rex Warner
and “The Lost Traveller” by Ruthven Todd
(two Kafka-influenced anti-fascist allegories).
LikeLike
He may have defined himself as a liberal, but you have Fritz Lieber and his great Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories (Lankhmar is probably the most realistic city in fantasy) were pretty progresdive and became increasingly socially responsible as the went on. They even have the added bonus of the characters marrying instead of just wenching!
LikeLike
It’s funny, I’ve never read the Farhrd and the Grey Mouser stories – though I really like Lieber’s The Big Time an in particular the Wanderer (that was one of the first SF books I read way back in the 70s and although it has its flaws I reread it a year or two back and still found it stood up). I’ll have to check them out GoK.
LikeLike
Great names already mentioned – and of course one spark for the current alt-right was the vile encroachment on their spaces of “social justice warriors”, loosely defined.
The whole of Ken Macleod’s first 4-book series (Trots in space) is great though more SF than fantasy. Never read Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwards but it was an (apparently bad) left SF novel which provoked Morris to write News from Nowhere.
Kim Stanley Robinson and Iain M. Banks are both left SF writers, for different values of left obviously. Stephen Brust, mentioned above, co-wrote Freedom & Necessity with Emma Bull: worth a read.
In Ursula le Guin’s many good books, worth mentioning her Malafrena books, set in an alternate Austro-Hungarian empire in the runup to and aftermath of 1848. Like The Dispossessed, she did her homework and gets it right. The Telling, with echoes of colonised Tibet, and Four Ways to Forgiveness, on slavery, are both extraordinary.
In fantasy, worth mentioning Starhawk’s linked books The Fifth Sacred Thing (a revolution in near-future California) and Walking to Mercury (a semi-autobiographical backstory to the first, much better on grasping the flavour of radical activism than most novelist accounts, left or otherwise).
Lastly a propos magic realism Italo Calvino had been a partisan and stayed a PCI member until 1956.
Of course we could ask if anti-colonial aislings count, or for that matter we should count Cúirt An Mheán Oíche as proto-feminist…
LikeLike
Karel Čapek’s ‘War with the Newts’ (yes he coined the word ‘robot’)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/before-the-flood-karel-capek-and-the-destructive-drift-of-history/#!
LikeLike
Recommended by by leftwing friend. Access with f/b or google passwords. https://leeds.academia.edu/JaneSusannaEnnis.
Tolkien and JK Rowling claimed William Morris as an inspiration. Saw article recently, in French, that Morris was an author of fantasy fiction, liked by both Tolkien and JK Rowling.”The other major fantasy author of this era was William Morris, a socialist, an admirer of Middle Ages, a reviver of British handcrafts and a poet, who wrote several fantastic romances and novels in the latter part of the century, of which the most famous was The Well at the World’s End. He was deeply inspired by the medieval romances and sagas; his style was deliberately archaic, based on medieval romances.[35] In many respects, Morris was an important milestone in the history of fantasy, because, while other writers wrote of foreign lands, or of dream worlds, Morris’s works were the first to be set in an entirely invented world: a fantasy world.[36]”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fantasy?fbclid=IwAR2mGs4Q4Ucqdk3Rghx8QqhGU-D6e_MA59YgLYWZaJNyUV1k2pD-AjiuLCU
LikeLiked by 1 person