4 ms·

How can the Political Novel be dead? Isn't the 2019 Hugo Award Winner for best novel precisely a political novel? (The Calculating Stars is a novel about a woma

How can the Political Novel be dead? Isn't the 2019 Hugo Award Winner for best novel precisely a political novel? (The Calculating Stars is a novel about a woman attempting to become a female astronaut during 1952 America, in a setting where the earth is quickly becoming uninhabitable due to runway global warming.)

jandrese 7y ago
Weirdly, the politics takes a backseat to the protagonists personal problems, in particular her anxiety over public speaking. While the political elements are in there, they feel like they're in the background. The primary antagonist is motivated by a personal vendetta, not his political positions.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  I haven't read The Calculating Stars (yet), but from the description it sounds like the climate change in the story is caused by a meteor colliding with the Earth, rather than being caused by humans. That seems like an effective way to take climatic change out of its political context -- i.e., it's changing because of a deus ex machina, not because of anything done by any person or group of people. In our world, climate change is a political issue precisely because it's anthropogenic -- because it's something we're doing to ourselves so that some among us might profit. Why you'd want to take climate change out of its political context, I have no idea. Someone's who's read the book can speak to that better than I can. It seems like a weird choice, though.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Climate Change is mostly just the motivator to get the space program going earlier. There is some political commentary in the way the government officials and public at large can't seem to comprehend the idea of a changing climate, but it's not a major narrative in the book.
jammygit 7y ago
Let’s not forget the Game of Thrones books, which depict politics in a strikingly selfish and human way
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
Much of sci fi and fantasy is in fact commentary on our current world, often political. Almost everything Ursula Le Guin wrote was political. Kim Stanley Robinson talks fairly blatantly about the struggle against capitalism. Orson Scott Card writes a lot about nation state struggles. Margaret Atwood has a popular, political tv show on right now, watered down as it is, adapted from her very political novels. I don't know how you would describe Cory Doctorow without mentioning political struggle. Alan Moore is very, very political, and should be considered a novelist. And it goes without saying, most influential early sci fi was also political (Ray Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, Jack London, Frank Herbert, HG Wells). IMHO this article seems to be more about how the novel has left social consciousness entirely. That's a far less tractable problem than reading the many political novels in print now. Either that or the author is blind to how wide politics can be—pretty much all complex conflict has some political bearing.

jandrese 7y ago

Weirdly, the politics takes a backseat to the protagonists personal problems, in particular her anxiety over public speaking. While the political elements are in there, they feel like they're in the background. The primary antagonist is motivated by a personal vendetta, not his political positions.

smacktoward 7y ago
I haven't read The Calculating Stars (yet), but from the description it sounds like the climate change in the story is caused by a meteor colliding with the Earth, rather than being caused by humans. That seems like an effective way to take climatic change out of its political context -- i.e., it's changing because of a deus ex machina, not because of anything done by any person or group of people. In our world, climate change is a political issue precisely because it's anthropogenic -- because it's something we're doing to ourselves so that some among us might profit. Why you'd want to take climate change out of its political context, I have no idea. Someone's who's read the book can speak to that better than I can. It seems like a weird choice, though.
- jandrese 7y ago
  Climate Change is mostly just the motivator to get the space program going earlier. There is some political commentary in the way the government officials and public at large can't seem to comprehend the idea of a changing climate, but it's not a major narrative in the book.

jammygit 7y ago

Let’s not forget the Game of Thrones books, which depict politics in a strikingly selfish and human way

SomeOldThrow 7y ago

Much of sci fi and fantasy is in fact commentary on our current world, often political. Almost everything Ursula Le Guin wrote was political. Kim Stanley Robinson talks fairly blatantly about the struggle against capitalism. Orson Scott Card writes a lot about nation state struggles. Margaret Atwood has a popular, political tv show on right now, watered down as it is, adapted from her very political novels. I don't know how you would describe Cory Doctorow without mentioning political struggle. Alan Moore is very, very political, and should be considered a novelist. And it goes without saying, most influential early sci fi was also political (Ray Bradbury, Heinlein, Asimov, Jack London, Frank Herbert, HG Wells). IMHO this article seems to be more about how the novel has left social consciousness entirely. That's a far less tractable problem than reading the many political novels in print now. Either that or the author is blind to how wide politics can be—pretty much all complex conflict has some political bearing.