LindyAF
Well-known member
So we have a thread on "woke" franchises which push leftist/progressive themes, on some level, I thought it might be interesting to have a based franchises thread- what franchises and other fiction oppose it, or push an opposite message?
I read and quite liked The Powers of Earth and Causes of Separation, by Travis J. Corcoran.
It's clearly inspired by Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and mirrors it in some ways, but it is its own story. It's of the genre of Sci-Fi that allows one "magic" device and explores it and it's consequences, in it's case this device is an anti-gravity drive. True anti-gravity, in that it replaces the force due to gravity with an equal force in the other direction. Here's a summary-
The author is an AnCap, which I am not, and the work is definitely political fiction, even utopian fiction. What I really liked about it though is that the author is willing to explore hard questions about his politics, even when he doesn't have a firm answer. It's an exploration of an ideology, one the author clearly agrees with and advocates for, but it's not an author tract. In fiction, since the author controls the world, it's easy for the authors of political fiction to consciously or unconsciously avoid questions that their ideology struggles with. Corcoran doesn't, and in some ways I think that makes it better than most works of political fiction.
There's a scarcity of whole franchises that incorporate explicitly RW messages the way some do leftwing ones, obviously, but there are still some that draw on RW themes. Probably I think the most based and popular franchise is Warhammer 40k. I don't think it's intentionally based, and in fact my guess was that a lot of the writers dislike some of the fandom that it attracts, but I think the premise of a fundamentally harsh, hostile universe sort of inherently leads to it unless it's intentionally counteracted. It also has sort of runs into the same issue I think the Starship Troopers film ran afoul of, a sort of satirical backfire in which any over the top parody of a militant xenophobic society is just unironically cool as hell. Let's just say that there's a reason plenty of 40k threads on certain other sites get periodic periods of people freaking out about how liking the Imperium is "fascist apologia." If you want to check it out but don't want to get into paying a dollar per plastic army man, I recommend the Eisenhorn and Gaunt's Ghosts series by Dan Abnett.
I read and quite liked The Powers of Earth and Causes of Separation, by Travis J. Corcoran.
It's clearly inspired by Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and mirrors it in some ways, but it is its own story. It's of the genre of Sci-Fi that allows one "magic" device and explores it and it's consequences, in it's case this device is an anti-gravity drive. True anti-gravity, in that it replaces the force due to gravity with an equal force in the other direction. Here's a summary-
Earth in 2064 is politically corrupt and in economic decline. The Long Depression has dragged on for 56 years, and the Bureau of Sustainable Research is hard at work making sure that no new technologies disrupt the planned economy. Ten years ago a band of malcontents, dreamers, and libertarian radicals bolted privately-developed anti-gravity drives onto rusty sea-going cargo ships, loaded them to the gills with 20th-century tunnel-boring machines and earthmoving equipment, and set sail - for the Moon.
There, they built their retreat. A lunar underground border-town, fit to rival Ayn Rand's 'Galt's Gulch', with American capitalists, Mexican hydroponic farmers, and Vietnamese space-suit mechanics - this is the city of Aristillus.
There's a problem, though: the economic decline of Earth under a command-and-control economy is causing trouble for the political powers-that-be in Washington DC and elsewhere. To shore up their positions they need slap down the lunar expats and seize the gold they've been mining. The conflicts start small, but rapidly escalate.
There are zero-gravity gun fights in rusted ocean going ships flying through space, containers full of bulldozers hurtling through the vacuum, nuclear explosions, armies of tele-operated combat UAVs, guerrilla fighting in urban environments, and an astoundingly visual climax.
The Powers of the Earth is the first book in The Aristillus series - a pair of science fiction novels about anarchocapitalism, economics, open source software, corporate finance, social media, antigravity, lunar colonization, genetically modified dogs, strong AI…and really, really big guns.
The author is an AnCap, which I am not, and the work is definitely political fiction, even utopian fiction. What I really liked about it though is that the author is willing to explore hard questions about his politics, even when he doesn't have a firm answer. It's an exploration of an ideology, one the author clearly agrees with and advocates for, but it's not an author tract. In fiction, since the author controls the world, it's easy for the authors of political fiction to consciously or unconsciously avoid questions that their ideology struggles with. Corcoran doesn't, and in some ways I think that makes it better than most works of political fiction.
There's a scarcity of whole franchises that incorporate explicitly RW messages the way some do leftwing ones, obviously, but there are still some that draw on RW themes. Probably I think the most based and popular franchise is Warhammer 40k. I don't think it's intentionally based, and in fact my guess was that a lot of the writers dislike some of the fandom that it attracts, but I think the premise of a fundamentally harsh, hostile universe sort of inherently leads to it unless it's intentionally counteracted. It also has sort of runs into the same issue I think the Starship Troopers film ran afoul of, a sort of satirical backfire in which any over the top parody of a militant xenophobic society is just unironically cool as hell. Let's just say that there's a reason plenty of 40k threads on certain other sites get periodic periods of people freaking out about how liking the Imperium is "fascist apologia." If you want to check it out but don't want to get into paying a dollar per plastic army man, I recommend the Eisenhorn and Gaunt's Ghosts series by Dan Abnett.