Welcome to Republibot!

Not a problem. I appreciate your explaining it and bringing us up to speed. Think of it as a learning experience for us to pick up the slang of an affiliated movement.

But I get what you're saying now, it's sort of like a Turing test ("If it answers questions so well that you can't tell if it's a human or a machine, it's sentient.") or even simpler, Vonnegutt's maxim, "We are what we pretend to be." The only L. Neil Smith I've ever read was "The Probability Broach," which I enjoyed, though I thought he kind of went a bit more screwball than he needed to in a didactic novel like that. I mean, when talking monkeys and citizenship for whales comes in, that's generally where a serious discussion of the matters at hand ends. Unless of course his purpose was to deliberately distract his audience and sneak in more ideas that way. I've seen that done from time to time - nail people with a ludicrous idea, and slide in the simpler ones once they've suspended their disbelief of the big one - it's a clever move if it comes off.

Based on my very limited knowledge of Ayn Rand, I'd say she wasn't a libertarian, and I've heard that she herself always attempted to distance herself from that association. We had a run-in with a Randian a few months back that didn't go well http://www.republibot.com/content/book-reviews-%E2%80%9Catlas-shrugged%E... which is a shame, I thought there was a lot I could learn from him. Oh well.

Poser to Poe is actually a good formation, since it means the same thing.

It started as a formulation of "Poe's Law" that someone pretending to be a creationist in a web forum is indistinguishable from a real creationist, then it evolved to include parodies of fundies being indistinguishable from actual fundies.

Since many anti-libertarians think that Libertarian fundies are exactly like the ones portrayed in Smith's work, at least what I have read of him - a novel about a kid on an asteroid with an Ayn Rand character and a Shirley McLain character, and the wonderful online comic "Rozwell, Texas" - and since I know differently, I figured Smith must be parodying what anti-libertarians believe about libertarians. (Seriously, what the heck does Ayn Rand have to do with libertarianism? Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations" without ever reading Rand novels.)

I'm sorry. I'm new. I'm used to playing in the same 2-3 sandboxes where everyone already shares the same context. Henceforth I shall endeavor to provide more background.

"L. Neil Smith" is a Poe? What? Since when has anyone (Aside from his 13 year old cousin/wife) had anything but the most unbridled respect for the immortal Edgar?

Oh, wait, you meant "Poe" as in short for "Poser," didn't you? I get it, I see what you did there...

He's a Poe, bigtime.

What I think he does more than anything is parody what anti-libertarians believe libertarianism is all about.

In that regard, he is pretending to be the libertarian your right- and left-wing friends warned you about.

Thank you, Andrew, and welcome. Your comments are very gratifying, particularly the ones about 'decorum.' We've gone to some lengths to avoid simply being reactionary naysayers, and keep our minds at least somewhat open, so it's nice to know whe've been sort of successful there. I really appreciate your kind words.

Welcome to the family!

It's very nice to see some other right wing science fiction fans. I also really enjoy the decorum displayed on this website, which is how true conservatives and libertarians should conduct themselves.

I took an undergraduate English course in science fiction this past year at a Canadian university. Although the instructor was good and I liked him as a person as well, he was your typical lefty English prof. Always analyzing the works in terms of gender, race, class, and power structures...which are valid viewpoints, but they somehow become fetishized in English departments. He also put down libertarianism when we were discussing the movie Serenity and the Firefly series: "Libertarians are basically Republicans who want to smoke pot." I was the only one who ever offered anything approaching a dissenting view, although I think most non left-wing students just kept quiet. Then again, having seven years of training in chemistry might have rendered my mind somewhat resistant to artsy ways of thinking.

Regarding a conservative and/or libertarian approach to science fiction: although some conservatives are indeed resistant to change, I have always though this to be a somewhat unfair categorization of the various strands of right wing thought. Of course, I am preaching to the converted here. We do have to be careful in accepting labels foisted upon us by the media and other cultural institutions dominated by left-of-centre views, even if the acceptance is unconscious. I just think that writers tend to be educated in the liberal arts, which tend to have left wing professors teaching impressionable young students, which nudges many students to the left, producing many left wing writers. S.F. is refreshing as a genre simply because many of its writers are trained in the sciences or engineering, which are usually much less politicized than the humanities and the social sciences, which churn out most of the writers of other genres.

Nice work folks. I will definitely be back in the future.

Not all that many are strictly-speaking liberal, either. It's interesting. Granted, there are a few transparently liberal SF authors - Brian Aldiss springs to mind, and Rudy Rucker - and there are some on the other side of the fence, too, but *most* of the SF authors I'm aware of in the US tend towards Libertarianism. Heinlein, for instance, would be the poster boy for that, but most American SF authors tend to skew that way to a greater or lesser degree.

I'm not sure if it's just a cultural thing, similar to being a freemason, ("Oh, you published a book? Well here's your sword and your secret handshake"), or if it's a case of having the kind of mindset that allows you to weigh issues independent of party dogma, or what, but there it is.

What I'm trying to do, personally, is just point out a somewhat different perspective when it appears. If Libertarian or a liberal writes a story that turns out conservative, that's good enough for me on a case-by-case basis, likewise if a conservative writes a liberal story, we can point that out as an anomaly compared to their corpus of work. I'm not so much about building fences, just pointing out different ways of looking at them, if that makes sense.

And it deserves a good answer.
If we find a conservative author, we'll bring him to everybody's attention.
But mostly, we will be looking at various s-f and determine whether a)they're any good and b)whether the ideology presented seems to coincide with conservative values.

But mostly, we provide an environment where conservative s-f fans are not ridiculed for being conservative.

Thanks for the question!

Do we know who the conservative SF authors are, or are we just judging the works and talking about them?

We should probably define ourselves as a "Science Fiction website run by conservatives" as opposed to "A Conservatvie Science Fiction Website". I know, I'm bandying semantics, but they're my semantics and I can bandy them if I wish.

First off: thank you thank you thank you for identifying "Atlas Shrugged" as an SF novel. I've gotten in huge arguments with people who refuse to admit it is entirely becuase of their own pretention. That drives me nuts.

I think you can have three kinds of "Conservative" science fiction, and I think it's been inherent since the beginnings of the book: You can have the Cautionary Tale, a sort of "If this goes on" warning for the audience. Frankenstein is the first example of this, and most Michael Chrichton novels fall in to the category as well - the idea that we shouldn't go mucking about with things we don't understand, or else those things will bite us in the ass and make our lives miserable.

Then there's the didactic kind of "Conservative" SF, which is actually kinda' rare, where some other party's politics are extrapolated in to the future where they're shown to be evil, nasty, wicked, and altogether bad for your skin. 1984 is an example of this, or Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We."

Then there's the kind where the future is cool and weird and interesting, and politics, when it arises at all, is simply the default position that people hold until there's some specific reason to change it. Babylon 5 would be an example of this. Another would be my short story, "Dog Days" http://www.republibot.com/content/original-fiction-dog-days-part-1

I think it's theoretically possible to write a story like the one you mentioned, and even make it interesting, but it's not something I'd want to do, and the concept doesn't appeal to me. I totally agree that attempting to do so probably be blasphemous, or at least EXTREMELY sacriligious.

As to the separation of Church and State, I believe it's a good thing. There are reasonably benevolent examples of state churches - England, for instance - but I don't think that's desireable, and it's probably even harmful to the religion itself. No one in the UK seems to take the official religion seriously, and many seem to think it's 'just another burocracy' within the government.

Thanks for all your feedback! We look forward to your continued presence on the site!

Dear bots 1 2 and 3, thanks for the warm welcome. I too have posted on IO9 frequently, but was dissatisfied with the articles and discussion boards for different reasons. Namely, that it is one huge advertisement for comic books, TV shows and movies. Any real discussion of science fiction literature or themes is very hard to find there. And also the focus is very narrowly American, there is a whole world of interesting science fiction out there, not all of it found in Hollywood or on the TV screen.

Regarding "Conservative" science fiction... May I challenge you by saying that the phrase is a contradiction in terms! Excuse me for questioning your raison d'etre, but I assure you the discussion will be interesting.

Good science fiction that has anything to say about politics, government or society ( I would put 1984, Brave New World, Atlas Shrugged, The Dispossessed in this category) is by its very nature at least progressive, and at the bleeding edge quite subversive. By setting characters and events in a far flung future, in another fictional domain, authors can criticize society without offending established opinion directly.

Finally, on the issue of religion, I must admit that I am opposed to established religions and churches, and a staunch supporter of secular politics. I can respect faith, however can not abide the idea of society being led by the faithful.

When it comes to science fiction and religion, I think religion is a proper subject for science fiction in so far as it is a proper subject for anthropology or sociology. But science fiction written to support a certain religious world view is "bad" art. Not only will "scientists prove the existence of Jesus" be a terribly boring story, but from my understanding of abrahamic theology, risks being idolatrous and blasphemous too!

I look forward to your comments, and good luck with your venture!

Cheers

Just to jump in here and to add my two bits, I agree with most of what Bot 3.0 has said in explanation of Liberal or Conservative Sci-Fi - it really is in the eye of the beholder for the most part. I think, though, where we believe we find our niche is in this poorly termed "blogosphere".

The absolute majority of sci-fi blog and fan sites approah the genre from a pretty rigid and dedicated liberal partisan position. IO9 being an especially good example - since they are for the most part openly derisive of anything politically conservative and even approaching insulting to people that maintain traditional christian values or belief.

That has created a very unwelcoming atmosphere for people of faith or people with strong feelings of a conservative political nature.

The thing that I find most interesting, especially since the Wired.com story, is the amount of people that really struggle with the idea that people of a conservative political bent are somehow philosophically incapable of appreciating science fiction. Contrary to liberal popular opinion the Right is not exclusively filled with religious fundamentalists. Sure there are a lot of weirdos, but no more, really, than there are on the left.

Our political make-up on our Republibot board or whatever you want to call the three of us are pretty varied on our belief systems with Bot 2.0 being the farthest to the right as it is traditionally defined, Bot 3.0 being fairly moderate, and me being relatively apolitical to libertarian.

What we are trying to build here is a place to talk about the things we are passionate about without having to wade through political vitriol - and our promise is that if you are visiting from the left, you won't have to either, unless there is a particularly easy laugh to be made on it.

The original Trek was considered liberal in it's day, but actually seems pretty conservative nowadays, what with the inference of an economy, a degree of respect for religion, and a grudging defence of the Vietnam War. TNG, by comparison, was rigidly leftist, with their essentially communist society (Remember, the Ferengi were intended to be the bad guys for the series, and they're capitalists), fairly rigid atheism, sloppy allegories in favor of Abortion and Gay Rights, etc. Once Rodenberry passed on, DS9 started veering back towards the right a bit, with the re-introduction of Money and Religion in to the Trekiverse.

Likewise, a lot of people consider Larry Niven's known space stories to be fairly conservative, but I never got that from them. Everyone's a swinger in Known Space, the world government is intimately involved in whether or not people can have babies, and the decisions are made eugenicaly. Most people on Earth in the Known Space stories seem contented with this situation, and it's never treated as a dystopia, there's no agenda working in those stories.

Babylon 5 was intended to be quite liberal, but I think it ended up being far more conservative than anyone connected to the show really intended. I don't think Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (T2.5 for short) can really be considered a 'conservative' show, but it is interesting that they made a point of portraying a Christian with traditional beliefs in a positive fashion, and never made him out to be a fool or fundamentally misguided, so some people take that to be a republicanesque show.

So I think to a large degree, whether you consider SF to be liberal or conservative depends on the perspective of the viewer/reader going in to it. If you want to look for something that reflects your own views, you'll find it, and if you're looking for something to be offended by, you'll eventually find that too.

Of course there *is* some definite agenda-driven SF out there. Heinlein's thoroughly awful didactic novel "For us the living," and L. Neil Smith's whole "North American Confederacy" series, for instance, which is flag wavingly libertarian.

I had not thought to put sci-fi into a category before so I thought I would ask:

What sci-fi would you consider "conservative"?

Without thinking about it too hard, I would think both Star Trek ("technology is good") AND Star Wars ("Down with big government!") would appeal greatly to a conservative.

If that's true then that's the "big two" right there. One might think it would be liberals who would feel a little "left" out.

Of course I'm sure liberals can find much to love with both Star Wars and Star Trek too (hence their popularity).

"What do you guys mean by " too liberal" ? From what i understand of american politics it can mean being pro abortion, pro affirmative action or being pro gay rights... how do any of those policy issues relate to science fiction?"

When we say 'too liberal', it's not aimed at people who've come to their own conclusions through rational thought processes-- more like those people who believe in the whole agenda (You mention abortion, affirmative action and gay rights, but there are tons more) as a matter of faith, not reason. The lockstep ideologues who don't see the inherent contradictions in their positions and have drunk the party-line Kool-Aid* , who stridently shout down their opposition with focus-group tested slogans,are those who we see as 'Too liberal'. Those who believe government is god and want to control our actions for 'our own good', are too liberal.

I realize that 'liberal' is a loose label (as is 'conservative')- unfortunately, that's the current linguistic hand that we've been dealt. In some parts of my life, I'm very liberal. I believe in liberal arts (but not Liberal Arts)(See, it's not MY fault, it's the language!), I believe in liberal self sufficiency... do you see the trap here?

I'm working on a piece right now that I'm hoping will redefine the 'right-left' dichotomy, and maybe give us a new bit of nomenclature to help with this unfortunate vocabulary issue.

Stick around, it's bound to get really interesting!

hey all,

Im new here and not American, so don't describe myself as either liberal or conservative.

What do you guys mean by " too liberal" ? From what i understand of american politics it can mean being pro abortion, pro affirmative action or being pro gay rights... how do any of those policy issues relate to science fiction?

Or does your opposition to "liberal " science fiction related to issues of faith and religion?

cheers!

Hope you enjoy the site!
If you don't mind my asking, how did you find us?

rb2

Happy to have you. Welcome aboard!

Finally got fed up with IO9. Just to liberal of a site. Looking forward to being part of the community.

Is there a way to direct/private message each other in general, or the 'bots in particular? If so, I'm not seeing it.

It would appear it does. Shiny! Good Job, Republibot 2.0!

Testing this to see if it works