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not politics but morality
Nov. 7th, 2008 10:41 pmBrief discussion by Kate Elliott of class politics and fantasy and science fiction, via ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sartorias.
She quotes Lois Bujold as commenting that writers and readers of SF often use it to validate their political opinions.
They do that, and there's also a perception of the inverse of this: that to praise authors is to endorse the political views in their books.
And while that's not always true - there's plenty of liberals who like Heinlein, for instance - there's some truth in it. Readers gravitate towards authors whose aesthetics and world-view they find congenial, and since much of the intellectual content of SF is political, political views will be an important part of this.
What's a mistake is to extend that specific equation to fantasy. Most fantasy is not political in the narrow sense that a lot of SF is. But apparently a belief that it is so drives the continuing spleen of China Mieville against genre fantasy. He believes that enthusiastic reading of these stories is some kind of endorsement of feudalism and hereditary monarchy, and sputters with indignation over this.
But if SF writers are asking you to vote for their political systems, fantasy writers aren't. What I'm endorsing when I read Tolkien is not his politics, but his morality. The key statements in The Lord of the Rings are not assumptions of Aragorn's inevitable kingship - which are in any case undercut by the fact that it's not inevitable, he has to earn it - but by declarations of moral principle, primarily that right and wrong are constant values, and may be used to decide on courses of action even in unprecedented or fluctuating circumstances. That outweighs any question of whether you're in a feudal, monarchial, or democratic society when you face those decisions.
sartorias.She quotes Lois Bujold as commenting that writers and readers of SF often use it to validate their political opinions.
They do that, and there's also a perception of the inverse of this: that to praise authors is to endorse the political views in their books.
And while that's not always true - there's plenty of liberals who like Heinlein, for instance - there's some truth in it. Readers gravitate towards authors whose aesthetics and world-view they find congenial, and since much of the intellectual content of SF is political, political views will be an important part of this.
What's a mistake is to extend that specific equation to fantasy. Most fantasy is not political in the narrow sense that a lot of SF is. But apparently a belief that it is so drives the continuing spleen of China Mieville against genre fantasy. He believes that enthusiastic reading of these stories is some kind of endorsement of feudalism and hereditary monarchy, and sputters with indignation over this.
But if SF writers are asking you to vote for their political systems, fantasy writers aren't. What I'm endorsing when I read Tolkien is not his politics, but his morality. The key statements in The Lord of the Rings are not assumptions of Aragorn's inevitable kingship - which are in any case undercut by the fact that it's not inevitable, he has to earn it - but by declarations of moral principle, primarily that right and wrong are constant values, and may be used to decide on courses of action even in unprecedented or fluctuating circumstances. That outweighs any question of whether you're in a feudal, monarchial, or democratic society when you face those decisions.
