I don’t know where I get the nerve for this, I really don’t. This Xmas looks set to roughly coincide with 1/ a global recession that will see everyone too skint to get anything for anyone else and 2/ my 24th birthday, which definitely seems too old to be writing Xmas lists. And besides, I really could do with some basic things like new trainers and slippers and jeans and all. But still, if anyone out there really insists on buying me something nice, here’s a few clues.
First of all, the it’s the last chance to order anything from the Socialist Worker appeal catalogue and still get it delivered in time for Xmas (not that I’m bothered about stuff arriving mid-Jan though, to be honest). Some of the T-shirts are really cool (I’m a big fan of the new “we are all the children of migrants” one in particular, as well as the “be realistic – demand the impossible”), and by getting something that goes into the party’s fighting fund you know you’re also helping to underwrite some of the stuff that’s most important to me.
Then there’s books. Last year I had a whole list of books prepared, and actually did pretty well in getting most of them. The way things are right now though, I’m not finding the time to devote to reading – at least, not to serious reading – and while I’d still appreciate maybe one or two heavy political, historical or theoretical tomes I’m not sure I could handle much more than that. I am short of bedtime reading though, and as it happens the author whose works have well and truly blown me away this year – China Mieville, the works in question being Perdido Street Station and its sequels – has compiled a list of the fifty science fiction novels that socialists should read. I’ve already read about ten of them, some of them I’ve long intended to read, and some of them fail to sound particularly exciting, but it’s a good place to start for ideas.
I do believe the best gift is not the gift of book, but the gift of cable as it empowers and connects us on a much higher plane. Em-powers. Cable. Lol.
I bought a cable today, love.
I had a look at the list, I’ve only read 7 or 8. I tend to think that pre-WWII SF rarely has that much to say, and although I like Spinrad’s “The Iron Dream” there are limits to what you can do with pastiche[or whatever if that's the wrong word], “Bug Jack Barron” is more of his masterwork.Again I like “A Scanner Darkly”, but it is less SF than much of Dick’s work. Many people might pick “The Man In The High Castle” if they had to pick one(it did win an award), I might choose “Galactic Pot Healer”[He really is the Kilgore Trout of Vonnegut novels]
You didn’t like War Of The Worlds? Frankenstein? And I’m just about to get into a copy of The Iron Heel I picked up cheap at a Bookmarks stall last week..
I read Frankenstein a little over 25 years ago. I did enjoy it but it was slow going, and I think it is generally only significant for its originality. I did go to a meeting on it at Marxism many years ago (I think given by Paul McGarr) where a convincing case was made that the monster stands for the working masses.
I think I haven’t read War Of The Worlds. I have read The Time Machine, again slow going. One of my earliest memories is of seeing the film of The Time Machine, and thinking what a terrible future mankind might have to look forward to.Again, with experience genre SF writers have been able to do more with the alien invasion thing. One classic is The Liberation Of Earth which is in the Peguin Science Fiction omnibus, where two alien races take it in turns to invade Earth until it becomes too messed up, the story ends with one of the remaining Terrans saying that Earth had been about as liberated as it is possible for a planet to be.
I haven’t read The Iron Heel. I did have a collection with Call Of The Wild, Whit Wolf and others. Like with history channels on cable, there has been a lot of If the Nazis had won writing, possibly the best of which is “The Man In The High Castle”. And “The Iron Dream” is very good. And “1984″ is very good in some ways, though as with another book on the list, Marge Piercy’s “Woman On The Edge Of Time”, I find Orwell’s ignorance of the conventions of genre SF sometimes means you can see the joins. (WOTEOT’s psychiatric hospital scenes seem convincing, but then I’ve never been a patient).
When Martin Prince stands for class president at Springfield Elementary[Simpsons], he proposes an ABC of science fiction, standing for Asimov, Bester and Clarke. While we could argue about whether the first and third have any particular standout novels, Bester produced “The Demolished Man” and “Tiger,Tiger” which stand comparison with just about anything. I think that Harry Harrison is about the most readable writer ever, I can see why someone might blanch at describing “The Stainless Steel Rat For President” as one of 50 to read (it’s that Kilgore Trout thing again), it is an prescient account of the Florida election debacle in 2000, when I read it in 1985 the eponymous anti-hero’s talk of Earth as a planet where “aging actors and proven crooks” had been president made me happy to know that there were Americans not taken in by Reagan.Others I’d take before most of the list would include Robert Sheckley, Roger Zelazny, William Gibson, Mack Reynolds (if you like pulp socialism)and Frederick Pohl.I didn’t like Lucius Shepherd’s “Life During Wartime”, I seem to remember that it sprawled too much( a bit like this comment), he did write an award-winning story (that may have been part of the fix-up of LDW, much better.
I realise that last list was very male, I could have mentioned Vonda N. McIntyre, Kate Wilhelm, other Le Guin novels.
I heard the same interpretation of Frankenstein a while back, although in China Mieville’s Marxism (2006? I think) talk he makes it more about the Enlightenment than the Proletariat. I prefer the former explanation – but the book is quite clearly a warning against losing control of what you’ve created, and in the context of the early C18th that could just as well be one or the other.
The Time Machine struck me as quite reactionary, even before I knew the meaning of the word. On the face of it I suppose it could be seen as progressive enough, just anger against the inequalities created by capitalism. But I dunno, the way it’s presented isn’t far off the Fabians’ worst theoretical forays into eugenics. However, War of the Worlds is a whole nother book. “They did to us what we had done to the people of India, Africa, Australia etc…” is very much the overriding theme.
I will look into Bester. Now you mention Zelazny, it does strike me that Lord of Light is notable by its absence.
Or “This Immortal”, aka “…And Call Me Conrad”. Ursula Le Guin rated “The Dream Master” highly enough to call a syndrome after one of the characters. I wasn’t so impressed.
Frederick Pohl wrote a story called “The Day After The Day The Martians Came” about nine-day wonders. And the name temporarily escapes me of the author of a story about aliens landing during the Superbowl, the player who fails to flee opening with “I welcome you in the name of the people of the United States and all mankind” and the alien replies “We want cocaine. Lots of cocaine.”Ursula Le Guin’s “The Word For World Is Forest” is a searing indictment of imperialism, I think a lot of alien invasion stories, whether of this planet or another are fables of colonialism. But maybe the style has improved over time.