I\u2019ve said before that, for a genre that so often finds its writers dealing with big political ideas, relatively few science fiction authors demonstrate any sense that they have a clue about how politics really works. This leads to things like the sci-fi revolution and improbable conspiracies (sci-fi governments are good at keeping secrets, real governments are crap \u2013 politics is a career for people who love talking) and half-arsed characterisation.<\/p>\n
For someone who has been a political activist and worked on the edges of politics, uninformed ranting about politics sometimes makes me despair.<\/p>\n
Not, of course that sf writers are alone in this. Politics is one of those things \u2013 like music, art and sport \u2013 where the fantastically incapable, the never-bothered-trying and the wilfully ignorant feel perfectly happy in putting forth opinions that the expect to be taken seriously and pass judgements on those who have devoted time and effort to developing skills and experience in the area.<\/p>\n
People are entitled express their opinions \u2013 before anyone accuses me of siding with the experts against the plebs in the ongoing debate about professional versus amateur critics \u2013 in a democracy, people have the absolute right to complain about politics and politicians (and bands, artists and footballers) but opinions carry more weight when people bother to back up them up with research and experience and a modicum of intelligent thought.<\/p>\n
It is, therefore, a matter of delight for me to come across writing that at least skims the outer precincts of credibility when it deals with politics. Recently I\u2019ve read Sixty Days And Counting<\/em>, the last book in Kim Stanley Robinson\u2019s \u201cScience in the Capitol\u201d trilogy and Ken Macleod\u2019s The Execution Channe<\/em>l (which I\u2019ll come back to that in a future post). Both men are more than capable of getting the political part of their writing absolutely right \u2013 though both come from quite different angles.<\/p>\n Robinson has an honourable record of wrapping speculative fiction around the individual and ideological conflicts that make up politics. The thing that, for example, the Mars Trilogy never loses sight of is that politics isn\u2019t some machine that churns out governments and laws and rules \u2013 it is a personal business where individual personalities and individual relationships make a difference. That\u2019s my experience of the actual work of politics. It is neither the implacable working through of the forces of history and economics \u2013 although those surely place constraints on actions \u2013 nor the overwhelming agency of \u201cgreat men\u201d that drives political change \u00ad\u2013 though, again, very strong characters can have a disproportionate influence. But flowing around and through both are the patterns of cooperation and conflict between wonks, advisors, commentators, activists, journalists, pressure groups and the like. Individual characters and personal relationships can have a dramatic effect on how policy develops.<\/p>\n Robinson\u2019s Science in the Capitol<\/em> trilogy gets a lot of this right. The two main characters \u2013 Charlie and Frank \u2013 are policy wonks of one type or another. Charlie is a political advisor to Phil Chase, the man who will eventually become US President. That makes Charlie a very important man \u2013 very few people are lucky enough to have access to politicians at the highest level. Normally in fiction (both the stuff that\u2019s printed in novels and the stuff that\u2019s printed in newspapers) such advisors are Machiavellian fixers, power-crazed madmen and Peter Mandelson. Robinson, therefore, does something rare by making Charlie an ordinary guy with a family and a life and a genuine interest in doing good \u2013 which, hard though it may be to believe, is the basic starting point for almost everyone in politics – even most of the ones you disagree with. Charlie\u2019s journey through the novel is a shift from the conventional, aspirational Western lifestyle to a more green, more wild way of living \u2013 as personified in his baby son whose untamed wildness Charlie first frets over then, when removed, longs for its return.<\/p>\n Frank is the more unsettled personality. A scientist he has been unable to find peace in a world which he struggles to make fit to his empiricist worldview. Eventually, through engagement with a Buddhist sect driven from their drowned Asian home and the discovery of the work of American naturalist\/philosopher\/anarchist Henry Thoreau, Frank comes to adopt a more spiritual view of the world that enables him to (via a detour through a dangerous romance, spy story shenanigans and plot to overthrow democracy) come to terms with his life.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s a weakness in Robinson\u2019s trilogy it is that he can\u2019t extend the humanism of Frank and Charlie to their opponents. Those who oppose the environmental agenda at the heart of the book do so because they are stupid or venal or downright evil. There\u2019s no one in the trilogy who is allowed to present a contrary view from a position of honestly held differences in perspective.<\/p>\n Of course Robinson might argue that looking at the facts on global warming and environmental damage, there\u2019s no room for honest dissension \u2013 that only one viewpoint can be regarded as reasonable. But, because we never have that argument within the books, the reader is denied the opportunity to be wholly convinced. And by making the main \u201cvillains\u201d so one-dimensionally black-hatted, Robinson risks being accused of creating only straw men.<\/p>\n Worse, though, is the way the Washington trilogy teeters on the edge of saccharin liberal wish-fulfilment. All his protagonists are a little too earnest and too utterly without sin. And their leader, the honest, courageous, incorruptible President Chase also happens to be handsome and witty. There are echoes of The West Wing\u2019s<\/em> Josiah Bartlett (although to be fair, Robinson\u2019s president isn\u2019t quite as impossibly wise as Bartlett) and even Frank Capra\u2019s Mr Smith.<\/p>\n Yet, despite these flaws, the Washington trilogy is immensely enjoyable. It takes real political issues and engages with them with considerable thoughtfulness and dramatic flourish. Robinson is a very fine writer and he crafts a wide range of interesting characters even from those who might, elsewhere, have been mere window-dressing (the ex-girlfriend, the children, the Buddhist monks). It takes the mechanism of politics \u2013 the meetings, the turf-wars, the personalities \u2013 the working process that Bismarck described as being \u201cthe art of the possible\u201d \u2013 and uses it as the backdrop for a high-stakes thriller.<\/p>\n The Washington trilogy is immensely optimistic. It believes that concerted efforts to rectify our current plight are possible and that they can be done before the deluge, rather than waiting for disaster then jamming our fingers in the dyke. That, in itself, is a radical statement of Robinson\u2019s belief in the potential of politics. There is no shortage of writers who take for granted the failure of our current democratic systems and plenty too who relish the prospect of the tabula rasa that may come after.<\/p>\n Robinson has far more faith in his fellow man than the great majority of sf writers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve said before that, for a genre that so often finds its writers dealing with big political ideas, relatively few science fiction authors demonstrate any sense that they have a clue about how politics really works. This leads to things like the sci-fi revolution and improbable conspiracies (sci-fi governments are good at keeping secrets, real […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22],"tags":[69,43,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-jg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1780,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions\/1780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}