Speculative fiction as a political act

I'm still reading Brave New Worlds. My reading pace is normally pretty slow. Throw on to my schedule a new workout regimen and my and my wife's new addiction to watching Dexter on Netflix means I'm way behind here.

The anthology is fascinating. It's been a long while since I read any short fiction, especially speculative fiction like this. I studied it formally in college years ago, and outside of that I had read a lot of science fiction short story classics.

I confess, I have forgotten how thick with political identity the speculative genre is. It's almost quaint to me to see how things have changed. That sounds more condescending that I mean it, though. I'm just fascinated to see so many of the stories in this collection featuring climate change as a key premise, for example.

The collection is, at least thus far, also heavy into themes surrounding gender issues, GLBT, and especially reproductive issues like abortion, fertility and population growth (or devastation on a couple cases). I have no quibble with the topics. Indeed, I don't think I can say I even have a quibble with the political positions these authors take.

But, I do find the conceits surrounding the oppression and the ruling powers of these dystopia are sometimes so bizarre as to be political farce. In one story, an evolved Catholic church conducts infanticide-by-baptism because the infants are diagnosed as infertile. In another, a new American theocracy resurrects a Green party pot smoker and then summarily cites imaginary George W. Bush era terrorism laws for his being a terrorist. To be fair, other stories go the opposite direction as political commentary, including troubling story of a matriarchy run amuck that imprisons violent men.

But, I will say there's precious little political viewpoint in this collection that isn't either left-leaning being self crticial or left-leaning criticizing the right. That's not really surprising; it's not even disappointing. That's not my point. It echoes my experiences and observations for current day geek subcultures, most of which at least acknowledge slightly left-leaning politics and at most extreme rant against race, religion or conservative politicies with their own shouting groupthink.

So, yes, I find some of the stories to be those kinds of screeds. Which I think is an odd reaction for me to have. Speculative fiction is a vast playground in which I like to think of myself as the open-minded adventurer, eager to explore unusual worlds and stretch the boundaries of settings, ideas, and themes. And, dystopian fiction is especially likely to present extreme, political landscapes and villains. Yet, I still find a small number of these stories to be careless. Stories in which the terror of dystopia isn't villainous, or even bleakly humorous, but trite and ill-conceived.

I think those kinds of stories do not stand the test of time, which is the bullshit way of saying they aren't very good stories.

Thankfully, Brave New Worlds is not full of such stories. They are the exception, not the rule.