Category: Politics

I swear that I had planned to write something completely unrelated to politics for my second blog post. I’m a science fiction writer, after all, so I had planned to write about fiction. Or science, even. Incidentally, I had also planned to write my second blog post much earlier. But life, and the Dionysian orgy that is the “new normal” of our hectic news cycle kicked in, and… well… here we are. It’s been almost four months since my last post, and now that I’m finally writing again, I feel compelled to talk, against all polite judgment, about nuclear weapons.

In a certain sense, nuclear weapons are not political. They are bigger than politics. Anything that can, in one chaotic flash, obliterate with certainty all of human civilization, and with slightly less certainty, most advanced life on earth, is bigger than any nation or party or creed. Certainly, nuclear war is a topic far more massive in scope than the comparatively trivial, quotidian political differences between Hillary, Bernie, and “The Donald”—the political differences over which we spent most of 2016 in-fighting. Because of the laser-like precision with which nukes can be targeted at human infrastructure (including grain silos, water supplies, power plants, and your kids’ middle school), they are an even bigger threat than climate change. In fact, the word “big” doesn’t even cut it (neither, for that matter, does “yuuuge”). The word that comes to my mind when contemplating The Bomb—the one always written with a capital “B” and preceded by the definite article—is “awesome.”

I realize that every word choice comes with baggage, and this one is no exception. The word “awesome” today has a colloquial meaning situated somewhere between the pallid, ubiquitous “cool” and Homer Simpson’s “groin-grabbingly transcendent.” But its 17^th century meanings of “inspiring awe” and “appalling, dreadful, weird” (Oxford English Dictionary) are the meanings that come to mind when contemplating the power of atomic weapons.

In fact, if you google the phrase “awesome power of atomic weapons,” restricting your search to precise matches, 4,170 results will instantly pop up, including one straight from Joseph M. Siracusa’s excellent Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction. And, as of this writing, the online version of the Oxford dictionary even includes “the awesome power of the atomic bomb” as the first of its example sentences listed under the entry for “awesome.” There seems to be a widely-held perception, deeply-seated in the modern Western psyche, that nuclear weapons are, in the old sense, “awesome.”

This apparently widespread association between this old sense of “awesome” and the new (in historical terms) specter of nuclear annihilation cuts straight to my point. There is something great, and cosmically terrible, about such weapons that makes nearly all of our parochial political divisions seem petty by comparison. A similar point is made by Einstein’s oft-repeated quip that whatever weapons are used to fight World War 3, World War 4 will certainly be fought “with sticks and stones.” While most projections of the aftermath of a nuclear conflict do predict survivors—see, for example, the Medicine & Global Survival report, physicist Wm Robert Johnston’s model, and this paper by scientists from Colorado—their long-term prospects are hard to predict, and, in any case, the world such survivors would inherit would be a miserable mélange of fire, famine, pestilence, poison, and disease, along with a cold not seen since the last Ice Age. Even if the human race could continue to soldier on under these unenviable circumstances (and that’s a big “if”!), the human civilization we have collectively built over the past 5,000 years would be permanently and irrevocably wiped from history. The provincial political conflicts that consume us today will simply be meaningless when the earth has been reduced to an ice-cold, radioactive cinder.

All of this leads to one inescapable conclusion. We—the one with a capital “W” that means all of us—must struggle to ensure that such a war doesn’t come to pass. Doing so is the most important political imperative, over and above literally anything else. It doesn’t matter whether you were “with her” or wanted to “lock her up”; it doesn’t matter what you think of Putin or Trump or Kim Jong-un; it doesn’t matter if you’re a neoliberal capitalist, a Keynesian “Sandernista,” a die-hard Marxist, or a vegan anarcho-pacifist—hell, it doesn’t matter even if you’re a racist—the one thing we can, and must, all agree on is that none of these political differences matter if there is no world left to fight over. As Derrick Jensen presciently stated about environmental concerns (but is even more apt, I think, in this case): “Any option is a better option than a dead planet.”

And these days the threat of a catastrophic nuclear exchange—intentional or accidental—seems shockingly real in a way that it hasn’t since the end of the Cold War. As Eric Schlosser has made abundantly clear, the ever-present risk of an accidental nuclear war is already unacceptably high without the current rise in tensions between the US and Russia, on the one hand, and the US and North Korea (and, by extension, China) on the other hand. If you’re not up-to-date on this rise in tensions, I recommend the following pieces by Norman Solomon and John Pilger (older, but still insightful) as a sort of primer.

So, please: do your part to save the world—do what you can to avert nuclear holocaust. The world quite literally depends on it.

Here are some small first steps you can take:

• Call or email the offices of your elected officials and say something like this:

“I’m contacting your office to ask that you oppose any escalation of tensions between the US and other nuclear powers. I want my representatives to work against any use of nuclear weapons by our government, and for the abolition of nuclear weapons globally.”

Find your representatives here: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Find your senators here: https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

• Consider signing the following petitions:

Roots Action: Block War Funding

Roots Action: Tell Congress to Say No to Nuclear Madness

• If you’re able, form a local group to engage in direct actions. “Direct action” can mean a wide range of things; it can include forms of protest (marches, vigils, banner drops etc.) to raise awareness, forms of education (like reading/discussion groups and movie series), and forms of civil disobedience (blocking arms shipments, chaining yourself to fences, etc.). Obviously, not everyone is able to do all of these things, and I wouldn’t ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t do myself. But given how unfathomably destructive a nuclear conflict would be, any morally-defensible act of resistance to such a conflict would be justified.

That’s it—I’ve said what I had to say. Tune in next week (that’s my optimistic goal) for something less political, more artistic, and hopefully more fun. –OAB

Important Further Reading:

Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth and The Abolition

Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety and this piece in The New Yorker: “World War 3, by Mistake.”

Dystopian novels like 1984, Brave New World, The Handmaid’s Tale, and It Can’t Happen Here are currently selling like the proverbial hotcakes, apparently fueled by peoples’ fears of the authoritarian tendencies of Mr. Trump and company. Of course, dystopian SF has been in vogue for a while—just think of the Hunger Games or Divergent franchises—and we could spend a lot of time discussing why that might be, ranging from concerns about rising inequality to anxieties over climate change. For me, though, this surge in popularity of dystopian SF futures should remind us of one simple, and more basic, fact: science fiction as a genre is inherently political. It always has been, and it probably always will be.

I realize that not everyone wants to accept this fact. A few months ago, I got involved in a social media debate about anti-capitalist thought in science fiction. As almost always happens in these sorts of discussion, someone got a bit flustered and wrote something like “why are we trying to make sci-fi political? Does everything have to be about politics? Can’t we just enjoy the stories?” A few others chimed in to enthusiastically agree. Science fiction stories, they said (along with fantasy epics, Westerns, and romances), are a form of escapism, a temporary reprieve from the dull and depressing world of everyday reality. Why would we let politics intrude onto that hallowed ground?

I understand the desire for escapism, and I certainly don’t claim to be immune to it. For me, it takes the form of binging half-hour TV sitcoms. I find it strangely comforting how sitcoms manage to resolve all plot conflicts (no matter how intractable), rectify all moral dilemmas (no matter how thorny), and preserve the lives and wellbeing of all the main characters (no matter how idiotic, venal, or self-serving—I’m thinking of Seinfeld or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia here)—all within the allotted time span! I understand that for a lot of people, SF can play a similarly-comforting role. This is especially true when the SF in question is more pulpy and simplistic, and consequently less “literary,” complex, and (most relevant here) political. Sexy androids, sinister aliens, and epic space battles are often best enjoyed with a minimum of philosophical undertone and character development.

Nevertheless, I would argue that all SF, even the pulpiest variety, is haunted by political concerns, even if these are sometimes inadvertent. I love the SyFy network show Dark Matter, for example, and I would consider it anything but simplistic/overly-pulpy. But in spite of its intricate plots and well-developed characters, Dark Matter isn’t described by most media reviewers and blogosphere critics as a particularly-political offering. Yet think of all the political issues and questions it brings up (WARNING: mild, thematic spoilers to follow):

• The future of corporate capitalism and the inherent conflicts between democracy and corporate power
• The nature of criminal guilt and rehabilitation—When has a person atoned? When are they a “new person” and no longer a criminal?
• Will racism, sexism, and other bigotry persist in the future? Is the future of civilization multi- or mono-cultural?
• What is the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter?
• Is there such a thing as a “just” war?
• Will intelligent machines, if they ever exist, have human rights?

All of these issues/questions (and more that, for reasons of space, I haven’t mentioned) explored in Dark Matter are political, in the sense that they pose challenges to society and government, either as they exist now or as they may exist in the (possibly near) future. Whether these speculative sociopolitical forays are intentional or just a byproduct of the speculative subject matter is a separate question—the point is that they are there.

For a more literary example, consider Isaac Asimov’s first trilogy of Foundation novels, which may eventually be adapted into an HBO series. When I read them as a preteen, before I developed a mature interest in political questions, I enjoyed them as a rousing adventure story replete with mystery, suspense, and drama. Re-reading them this year, I found that, in addition to all of the above, they also offer a profound reflection on both the powers and limitations of the capitalist system, along with piercing insights into bourgeois culture and governance (economist Paul Krugman seems to agree, at least in part). Not many people discuss Asimov as a political writer, but the concerns are there, if you take a minute to look for them. There are other examples—hell, even Star Wars can be argued to have a vague anti-fascist standpoint—but even this brief discussion shows that SF often entails exploration of political ideas as an unavoidable (even if secondary) part of its speculations on technology, the future, and the limits of human knowledge.

It’s also important not to overlook all of the SF that is openly and unabashedly political. Of course, nobody wants to read dry propaganda or didactic morality plays–unless, of course, you’re a nostalgic Stalinist or a time traveler from the early Middle Ages. But there is a wealth of well-written, complex, and still-quite-engaging SF that is undeniably concerned with political questions. In movies, think of District 9, They Live, or the Matrix trilogy for some obvious examples. In terms of literature, remember not only the dystopian novels mentioned earlier, but also the work of Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, N. K. Jemisin, Alan Moore, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Phillip K. Dick, Joanna Russ, Samuel Delaney, Kurt Vonnegut, and much of Robert Heinlein and Robert Silverberg (again, just to name a few shining examples). Notice that these writers fall all over the political spectrum—DeConnick, for example, is, as far as I can tell, a progressive feminist; Heinlein has been accused of fascist tendencies, although I’d class him more as a variety of right-leaning libertarian; while Le Guin is some kind of leftwing pacifist anarchist—but they all write excellent SF of some variety with varying degrees of political thought woven seamlessly into the narrative.

All of this raises the question: what is it about SF that lends itself so well to social thought experiments and political theorizing? I would argue, as I hinted at above, that it’s a by-product of the very nature of the genre. To explain what I mean, I’ll need to make a brief comment on terminology. The reason why I prefer the abbreviation “SF” is that it can stand for both “science fiction” and “speculative fiction.” The latter term, which I (and many genre writers, I think) prefer is somewhat broader, and can encapsulate everything from space opera, to most fantasy, from the almost-realist (e.g. the movie Her) to the mind-bendingly surreal. Of course, nearly all fiction is speculative in some sense—that’s part of what makes it fiction rather than, say, journalism—but by “SF” I mean work that features speculative musings as a central concern or as a driving motivation of the narrative.

A key element of much SF is imagining how future scientific and technological advances will affect human civilization. Another, closely related, element is extrapolating contemporary technology into the future to see how things will turn out if we keep going in the current direction. But what are governments, cultures, and economic systems if not particularly large and impressive forms of human technology, designed by human minds to solve specific human problems and accomplish human goals? One current dictionary definition of “technology” is the “practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area.” Of course this definition fits the obvious examples—toothbrushes, iPads, combustion engines, and electron microscopes. But why stop there? Legal codes, constitutions, kinship systems, monetary policies. borders, markets, and trade deals also fit this definition, in a broad sense. So even if we insist on the limited conception of SF as literature that speculates about the effects of current and future technology, then government, economics, and politics are fair game. This simple insight, more than any other, explains why much SF, especially the best SF, takes politics very seriously.

It’s also related to why I’ve chosen “politics and science fiction” as the topic of my inaugural blog post. In this time of heightened conflict and political polarization, we collectively face immense threats and (hopefully more) immense opportunities. It’s important that SF writers—whose vocation is artful speculation, philosophical exploration, and critical probing—contribute to the broad social discussions and debates taking place. I plan to make my own limited, tiny contributions to this vast dialogue. But because many people still see SF as “mere escapism,” I felt that a few words of explanation were in order. And since discussing politics is likely to offend some people, and even lose me potential readers, I’d like to apologize in advance to those who might take umbrage, and to ask them to ponder the following crude appropriation of Diogenes: Of what use is a speculative fiction writer who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?