One thing with some modern sci-fi shows is that it's more of a message with a disguise of a story rather than a story with a disguised message.
The writers justify the change by saying (correctly) that the message is important and that right now is the most important time to say the message. The message became more important than the vehicle that it travelled in so poor story writing is acceptable.
It's like Christian rock music, it's okay and if you are Christian you might enjoy it both for the message and the music but if you just want good music you are likely not going to enjoy it as much as regular "secular" rock.
But there's also rock music that everyone can enjoys which contains (not sure the word to describe it) non obvious but religious-adjacent themes.
Can someone give me examples of beloved, well written and respected sci-fi that was not overt political/social commentary to go along with all the discoloration of the above comment or is this just the standard "I like Rage Against the Machine because they're angry, but hate that they get political" nonsense?
Frankenstein: Political AF.
Asimov: So fucking political.
Dick: It's nothing BUT politics.
Anything in the cyberpunk genre: Why do you still need me to spell this out?
Asimov had plenty of stories with little to no politics, did you just read Foundation and skip his other works? Some of them are basically logic puzzles. Sure, Frankenstein has social and political commentary, but that's not what people remember it for (to me it's more philosophy than social commentary, but YMMV). Dick is more famous for being weird than being political, but that's just my own experience and how I was introduced to him, so again, YMMV. I’d say cyberpunk is in a similar position. Sure, it’s political, but you can enjoy the story without really engaging with the politics, and tbh, something like Snow Crash is so aggressively satirical and over-the-top that calling it a straightforward political statement feels like missing half the joke.
As for current stuff? The Martian has some politics w/ NASA and the cooperation with China, but it's certainly not what the book is about.
And I think you're not engaging with the actual complaint: poor, overly preachy writing is a terrible way to communicate a political point, much less persuade anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
I think we're disagreeing on what "politics" means, perhaps. I'm going with something to the effect of "Politics is the process by which people and groups make decisions, rules, and laws to govern society and share resources" and you seem to be thinking "the affairs of nation-states and how they, specifically, govern". For example, Frankenstein being "social commentary" firmly makes it political to me, but seems to somehow exclude it for you.
Also, the idea that "there's politics in the source, but you can enjoy it without engaging with them" is sort of proving my Rage Against the Machine example from my original post (I picked the most overtly political band I could think of for the ad absurdum of it): Just because you don't CARE or agree with the politics, doesn't mean it's not there. I'm not saying you need to like, or engage with the politics in anything, but denying that they exist is...a political act!
As for your refutations of the people I picked, I didn't see you citing an example of a story Asimov had without politics/social commentary (the man was prolific and I haven't ready everything he wrote, I picked him because his best known works are Foundation and Robots series which are both very very political), if you felt The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids... (or Flow my Tears, or A Scanner Darkly) were just "being weird" and not political, again, I think we're just using different definitions of the word.
In H2G2, Adams says that Vogons, the galactic bureaucrats and face of the space government, make the 3rd worst poetry in the Universe. Now if one wanted to, one can make that a silly joke, or one could interpret that as people who are dedicated to maintaining the systems of government are the among least creative creatures in existence . And the weird thing is, somehow, even if one came to the 2nd conclusion, one could still think Adams wasn't making a political statement. Now why am I suddenly thinking about Claude...
Part of the problem, as always, is what types of people and activities are defined as "political".
Particularly in an office or other "respectable" setting, you've got people who are white, and people who are political.
You've got people who are straight, and people who are political.
You've got executives who are men, and executives who are political.
And so on.
What and whom one chooses to include in stories, and what ones chooses to leave out—and, perhaps even more importantly, what one includes and leaves out without even thinking about it, are, by their very nature, political.
I'm also reminded of the Dungeons and Dragons group I heard about, whose DM made one very simple change to the published adventure path. The players were going through the towns, and finding them filled with women. The other adventurers were women. The blacksmiths were women. Even the prominent goblins in the dungeon were female! The taverns had a couple of men in them, but apart from that, there were seemingly nearly no men in the entire world. The players were convinced there was something deeply sinister going on.
But all that had happened was that the DM reversed the gender of every NPC written into the adventure. An adventure full of men, that no one would have batted an eye at, suddenly caused shock and suspicion when it had exactly the same percentage of women instead.
So: was the original adventure author "political" for the gender ratio they put into it?
Yup, this one gets the ambiguity in the word "political", and then uses the broadest possible definition to avoid the narrower point I was actually making about preachy writing lol
Again, I get it: you don't want to engage in the politics of the writing you like. That's fine. But you don't get to say the politics don't exist in the text.
I promise, the authors you speak of would not respect your analysis of their text (and you're probably fine with that) but your narrower point is...not worth making? Anyone can like or dislike whatever they want for whatever reasons they want, what they can't do is say "that red barn can't actually red because I hate red barns but I like that one, and my analysis is valid". I mean I guess a P.K Dick character could, but I don't think we're ready to have that discussion.
Sci-fi and Speculative fiction, are, always political. Just like how romance is always about love, and mysteries are always about solving a puzzle. You were responding to my point, so I get to set the terms of engagement. Thems the rules of discourse.
I'll just come out and say it, your ability to analyze texts really comes into question when you say CYBERPUNK (of ALL the subgenres) can be anything but political. Again, if you really only want "political" to mean "involving governments" and not the LITERAL definition of the word, I don't know how we can talk to each other because we're speaking different languages (or rather, using language in entirely different ways).
thinkingemote · · focus · HN ↗
The writers justify the change by saying (correctly) that the message is important and that right now is the most important time to say the message. The message became more important than the vehicle that it travelled in so poor story writing is acceptable.
It's like Christian rock music, it's okay and if you are Christian you might enjoy it both for the message and the music but if you just want good music you are likely not going to enjoy it as much as regular "secular" rock.
But there's also rock music that everyone can enjoys which contains (not sure the word to describe it) non obvious but religious-adjacent themes.
danaris · · focus · HN ↗
Because apolitical they were not. Like, emphatically. Sometimes they were subtle, other times they were pretty heavy-handed.
Sci-fi has never, ever, been apolitical.
moate · · focus · HN ↗
Frankenstein: Political AF. Asimov: So fucking political. Dick: It's nothing BUT politics. Anything in the cyberpunk genre: Why do you still need me to spell this out?
ChickeNES · · focus · HN ↗
As for current stuff? The Martian has some politics w/ NASA and the cooperation with China, but it's certainly not what the book is about.
And I think you're not engaging with the actual complaint: poor, overly preachy writing is a terrible way to communicate a political point, much less persuade anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
moate · · focus · HN ↗
Also, the idea that "there's politics in the source, but you can enjoy it without engaging with them" is sort of proving my Rage Against the Machine example from my original post (I picked the most overtly political band I could think of for the ad absurdum of it): Just because you don't CARE or agree with the politics, doesn't mean it's not there. I'm not saying you need to like, or engage with the politics in anything, but denying that they exist is...a political act!
As for your refutations of the people I picked, I didn't see you citing an example of a story Asimov had without politics/social commentary (the man was prolific and I haven't ready everything he wrote, I picked him because his best known works are Foundation and Robots series which are both very very political), if you felt The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids... (or Flow my Tears, or A Scanner Darkly) were just "being weird" and not political, again, I think we're just using different definitions of the word.
In H2G2, Adams says that Vogons, the galactic bureaucrats and face of the space government, make the 3rd worst poetry in the Universe. Now if one wanted to, one can make that a silly joke, or one could interpret that as people who are dedicated to maintaining the systems of government are the among least creative creatures in existence . And the weird thing is, somehow, even if one came to the 2nd conclusion, one could still think Adams wasn't making a political statement. Now why am I suddenly thinking about Claude...
danaris · · focus · HN ↗
Particularly in an office or other "respectable" setting, you've got people who are white, and people who are political.
You've got people who are straight, and people who are political.
You've got executives who are men, and executives who are political.
And so on.
What and whom one chooses to include in stories, and what ones chooses to leave out—and, perhaps even more importantly, what one includes and leaves out without even thinking about it, are, by their very nature, political.
I'm also reminded of the Dungeons and Dragons group I heard about, whose DM made one very simple change to the published adventure path. The players were going through the towns, and finding them filled with women. The other adventurers were women. The blacksmiths were women. Even the prominent goblins in the dungeon were female! The taverns had a couple of men in them, but apart from that, there were seemingly nearly no men in the entire world. The players were convinced there was something deeply sinister going on.
But all that had happened was that the DM reversed the gender of every NPC written into the adventure. An adventure full of men, that no one would have batted an eye at, suddenly caused shock and suspicion when it had exactly the same percentage of women instead.
So: was the original adventure author "political" for the gender ratio they put into it?
moate · · focus · HN ↗
ChickeNES · · focus · HN ↗
moate · · focus · HN ↗
Again, I get it: you don't want to engage in the politics of the writing you like. That's fine. But you don't get to say the politics don't exist in the text.
I promise, the authors you speak of would not respect your analysis of their text (and you're probably fine with that) but your narrower point is...not worth making? Anyone can like or dislike whatever they want for whatever reasons they want, what they can't do is say "that red barn can't actually red because I hate red barns but I like that one, and my analysis is valid". I mean I guess a P.K Dick character could, but I don't think we're ready to have that discussion.
Sci-fi and Speculative fiction, are, always political. Just like how romance is always about love, and mysteries are always about solving a puzzle. You were responding to my point, so I get to set the terms of engagement. Thems the rules of discourse.
I'll just come out and say it, your ability to analyze texts really comes into question when you say CYBERPUNK (of ALL the subgenres) can be anything but political. Again, if you really only want "political" to mean "involving governments" and not the LITERAL definition of the word, I don't know how we can talk to each other because we're speaking different languages (or rather, using language in entirely different ways).
ChickeNES · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]