Book Review: David Forbes - The Old Iron Dream

I first encountered Forbes as a guest on Radio War Nerd episode #64, discussing the recurring strains of right-wing thought inherent to science fiction dating back to the Golden Age. That sci-fi isn't immune from fascism should be obvious, but it's surprisingly underappreciated, especially if, like me, you don't follow the contemporary science fiction scene very closely. Despite the genre's often-promoted public image as an inclusive outpost of forward thinking, many of its most famous practitioners have used it to advocate for hard-right viewpoints that wouldn't be out of place in the 1930s (or now, come to think of it). This short work is an extension of Forbes' argument in that episode which adds a bit more historical context, particularly around major figures like Robert Heinlein and John Campbell, explaining how a theoretically progressive genre can so comfortably accommodate extremely reactionary views. Science fiction is less a vessel for delivering a specific point of view than a vocabulary for expressing any point of view you could think of, so while it's unfortunate that an aspirationally utopian genre is still saddled with all the anxieties, resentments, and hangups of the present day, it's worth exploring what right-wing science fiction says about right-wingers, as well as the rest of us.

I grew up reading Golden Age authors like Clarke, Heinlein, and especially Asimov, but as a politically naive child I wasn't really aware enough pick up on most political subtext other than as a "neutral" grounding for the immediate story being told. Truth be told, I'm still not always aware of what's lurking behind the pages - I just read John Betancourt's publication of the extended edition of John Campbell's "Who Goes There?" earlier this year without thinking much about Campbell as a person other than "man, what a great suspense writer". I also don't follow contemporary debates over the politics of science fiction very closely, like the Sad Puppies vs N. K. Jemisin controversy that Forbes opens the book with (it's the tiresomely familiar outrage from conservatives that women and minorities expect their viewpoints to be treated fairly). Forbes explains that there's nothing really new about these debates, and that this is just the latest iteration of a very old battle with people who want to express in science fiction the worldview that Corey Robin so aptly chronicled in his book The Reactionary Mind:

From its beginnings, science fiction has harbored a powerful far-right constituency, not as a fringe element, not as a cultural offshoot, but as some of its most revered figures, who have incorporated right-wing ideas and assumptions into some of its classic works. Advocates for everything from eugenics to poll taxes to militaristic authoritarianism have found a home in science fiction, where such ideas have enjoyed a far longer political life than they have in the country's mainstream (not lacking in bigotry itself). Nor has this faction limited its espousal of these beliefs to fiction; many have engaged in political activism over the decades, playing a surprisingly influential role in the larger culture.... Its dream, increasingly archaic and made of brittle iron, is of a world where the social hierarchies of the past are preserved and extended out into the stars, forever.

To be overly simplistic, you might say that this debate is Star Trek versus Starship Troopers. The former posits that, in the absence of economic scarcity, humanity will no longer need many of the zero-sum, us-vs-them, competitive instincts that have played such a huge role in human cultural evolution; the latter posits that this is an illusion, and human societies will always need the whole complex of warlike hierarchical authoritarianism no matter how far in the future you extend our species' lifespan. Is it a mistake to think that we can ever leave our conditioned hatred of the outgroup behind, or is the real mistake in thinking that that hatred was ever truly necessary to begin with? Anyone who's seen Paul Verhoeven's brilliant film adaptation of Starship Troopers knows how easy it is to satirize, but the vast reach of Heinlein's novel should give a non-fascist reader pause. It's one thing to find Heinlein's reduction of humanity's potential down to the level of brute animals (competing strains of bacteria, really) depressing and wonder what would even be the point of recapitulating the endless genocides in our history on alien worlds; it's another to ponder where exactly the line between objectionable and non-objectionable content should be drawn. There's an important line in Starship Troopers that "All correct moral rules derive from the instinct to survive; moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level, as in a father who dies to save his children." How should a liberal respond to that?

Heinlein the person is also a perfect case study for this investigation, since he was ideologically eclectic even in his mature phase: Starship Troopers might be an endorsement of the logic of fascism, but it's hard to argue that The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress or Stranger In a Strange Land, among many of his other novels, share its politics at all, even at the most abstract level. I would have liked to see more about Heinlein's political evolution, since, as Forbes says, "In his early stories, he doesn't come across as the most obvious candidate for a far-right writer. He was fascinated by New Deal social engineering and the Social Credit movement, and helped organize Upton Sinclair's EPIC campaign for a more left-wing government in California." But Forbes discusses "Coventry", one of his earlier short stories I haven't read, that's essentially a refutation of libertarianism, and makes an intriguing comparison:

It's interesting then, to note a similarity between 'Coventry' and Starship Troopers, tales that at first seem very different. Even though the society in Starship Troopers was founded in a coup d'état and does not allow citizens to vote, it is otherwise pretty similar to the sane state of Coventry: 'Many complain but none rebel; personal freedom for all is greatest in history, laws are few, taxes are low, living standards are as high as productivity permits, crime is at its lowest ebb.' But now, rather than societal progress occurring by democratic means, only veterans, who have 'demonstrated that [they place] the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage,' get a role in decision-making.

It's that part about group welfare that got me thinking. Fascism is of course a famously complicated cluster of concepts, like Umberto Eco pointed out 25 years ago, and it's not possible, especially in a book review, to define once and for all a bright line between "good" sacrifice for the collective and "bad". But it's uncomfortable to look at Forbes' description of Heinlein as a New Deal enthusiast and then criticize Starship Troopers, because most other contemporary New Deal enthusiasts probably would not have found much to object to about it, and in fact in many ways Starship Troopers is actually more progressive than the world around it (especially the movie, with its seamless racial and gender equality). Even today many 21st century liberals have an idealized vision of the Roosevelt administration, and I at least have a tough time accommodating the nobler parts of the New Deal with its extensive reliance on Starship Troopers-style rhetoric and even worse policy (Japanese internment is one example, but see also Ira Katznelson's excellent Fear Itself for a fuller treatment of how Southern racism shaped the foundations of the New Deal). Ideologies are often at their most interesting and revealing when they're in flux, so perhaps there isn't much point in demanding consistency between ideologies over the centuries, but Heinlein is only one of many liberals/progressives/leftists who veered right later in life, so it's worth wondering what the trigger points were for him and others.

Because, as Forbes shows, some of Heinlein's fellow right-wingers like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle had the trigger points of the Great Society. I read The Mote In God's Eye and The Gripping Hand, and younger me thought it was merely "an interesting thought experiment" about humanity dealing with an alien race which went through explosive demographic cycles. Then I read about their politics, and it's depressing to read these talented writers arguing obliquely in novels like Lucifer's Hammer that liberals trying to give black people the vote will demographically destroy American civilization. If we think of conservatism as responding to liberalism rather than the other way around, then it's easier to fit anti-New Deal right-wingers and anti-Great Society right-wingers into the same reactionary continuum, but for me the anti-communism of the 40s is less troubling than the anti-civil rights movement of the 60s. Forbes has a very revealing quote from Norman Spinrad, author of the excellent anti-fascist satire The Iron Dream, who "considers Pournelle a friend despite their drastically different politics. 'Jerry's a complicated guy,' he says, with a chuckle. 'He once described himself as a 14th-century liberal.'" Whatever that means, while it might be comforting to recognize in Pournelle's statement the implicit admission that he's knowingly backward, it doesn't make his ideology less objectionable.

I wish that Forbes had spent more time discussing how or if the non-fascist contemporaries of these authors responded to reactionary ideas in their own works. To name only two, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Frank Herbert's Dune series were able to handle feudalism, theocracies, militarism, progress, freedom, demographics, social change, and so on without ever delivering even an implicit hint of conservatism (the first 3 books of Dune are essentially a total rejection of the masturbatory teenage power trip fantasy that Spinrad's anti-fascism essay "The Emperor of Everything" describes as critical to the young proto-reactionary's embrace of right-wing ideas). What was their approach, and is there anything that modern authors can learn from it when they face what Jemisin did? Is it a good strategy to just read, say, the better of Orson Scott Card's novels and then ignore everything else about him? Since Asimov etc were just as unable to finally exorcise the fascist ghosts of science fiction as authors in every other genre at the time were, it's probably wrong to think that the problem lies with the genre itself instead of with what ideologies people find attractive, but it's good to be reminded all the same that modern authors seem to be fighting back, and perhaps that at least some of the individualist, progressive, emancipatory elements of Star Trek could come to pass, bit by bit.