Re: Marxism and science fiction

["Einde O'Callaghan" <einde.ocallaghan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 19:13:20 -0300
> From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Julio_Fern=E1ndez_Baraibar?= > <julfb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: RE: Marxism and science fiction
>
> What is the meaning of "dystopian". It is not in Babylon. I suppose it
> means
> the contrary of utopian, but I don't know.

Your guess is quite correct.

I'd like to thank Louis for posting this interesting piece.
Unfortunately, it seems to be limited to science fiction writing in
America. But it isn't just in the US that there has been a link between
science fiction and the left.

I just want to mention one important early British Marxist who not only
wrote what would now be called socialist science fiction but also had it
published in the party press. This was Engels's friend William Morris,
founder of the Socialist League along with Eleanor Marx. Whether Engels
approved of Morris's literary efforts I don't know, but they were
important for many socialists as providing a vision of what we were
fighting for (and even to a certain extent of how we should fight for
that future).

Morris's most famous foray into the "future" was "News from Nowhere",
which was first published in instalments in the "Commonweal", the paper
of the Socialist League. It was also conceived of as a Marxist reply to
Bellamy's "Looking Backward". The contrast between the visions of the
two writers is discussed by Hal Draper in his pamphlet "Two Souls of
Socialism" far more adequately than I can do so.

Another important work conceived in the same way was Morris's "Dream of
John Ball", which I suppose should be considered more of a historical
novel, but not all science fiction concerns itself with the present and
future.

Another strand of science fiction with connections to socialism is, of
course, Russian science fiction, which was hugely popular and had
enormous print runs - sometimes as many as 15,000,000 (yes, that's right
fifteen million) for really popular writers such as the Strugatski
Brothers. Many of the themes were drawn from Marxism and they often
depicted or were set in a hypothetical socialist, even communist, future
or concerned the transition from capitalism to socialism on other
planets. They are often a joy to read because they regularly attacked
things such as bureaucratism and authoritarianism - as experienced by
citizens of the Eastern Bloc in their everyday lives - but got round the
censors by projecting these things onto "capitalist" societies.

Most of this stuff has never been translated into English. I'm only just
beginning to tap into this goldmine from books published in German in
the GDR. Unfortunately, most of them are long out of print and you only
find the occasional rare gem among a heap of dross in second-hand
bookshops.

Regards, Einde O'Callaghan