I haven't watched Firefly in quite a while, but I generally agree with your criticism. I think the western-ness could have been really interesting if the show had more to say about colonialism, but it doesn't. The show makes fairly milquetoast observations about the west and does very little with them. They're just a cool backdrop to Wheadon. Sci-fi as a genre is one of the few genres I do not think normal libs are capable of writing well. Sci-fi is based in rejecting the status quo, dreaming of a new, better future. Post-modernist irony has essentially ruined lib's abilities to do this. They recognize the American war machine as awful, they recognize a million different issues in the world. But we're widely met by snarky apathy on these subjects, where what's wrong in the world is an unchangeable constant that we shouldn't exert energy fighting against. Plus, being within the imperial core takes away from their ability to even percieve persecution. They can imagine vaguely dystopian future, but can't imagine good enough backing to make the world anything more than a YA book like Divergent. All they make is a hellish world with very little resolve, with no real solutions. The lack of resolve can work, but libs generally don't like it in their stories. I could get into signifiers at this point, but I don't want to.
George Lucas is actually a good example of this. While I don't think he's a socialist, the rebellion fighters of the Star Wars universe were apparently modeled after the Vietnamese fighting American invasion. For all of the questionable implications made throughout the movies, one thing is clear. The imperialists are the bad guys, people fighting for self determination are the good guys. Even though the empire is almost an unstoppable force the rebels will pretty much never take down, Star Wars argues that fighting that hell is the resolve and it is worth it. True freedom in the Star Wars universe isn't making peace with the unstoppable force, or just arbitrarily overthrowing it with good guys. It's about fighting for your stake in the world around you. There is still a resolve here. There is still understanding of who would be on the bottom or top in the sci-fi realm
Let's compare this to what I'd call bad lib sci-fi. Divergent is fucking ASS. People are arbitrarily split into 5 groups based on a single personality trait from birth, but there are some people who have all 5 personality traits and they're DANGEROUS!!! It's arbitrary sci-fi, there's no world where this makes sense. Classes are completely arbitrary, almost ignored. Race is also ignored. In divergent, scifi becomes an aesthetic, a signifier of what it really is. It fundamentally misunderstands what sci-fi is at its heart and leans into what people think sci-fi is. I think this is why Wheadon moved onto Marvel
The Hunger Games and its consequences. That series is pretty good for YA and gets dangerously based at times, but it kickstarted a trend of fiction featuring arbitrarily segregated societies but not doing anything with them
I actually quite like Hunger Games as well. But God were the copies so bad. Divergent will always be one of the shittiest things I ever got tricked into reading.
It's like the YA novel equivalent of what Final Fantasy VII did for JRPGs for a generation or two, everyone kept trying to copy it often without understanding what made it good
Or like the whole genre of YA "romance with a hot supernatural creature" novel (plus film adaptations!) that sprung up trying to recreate the success of Twilight
It was a bit of a trope structure for just-add-water dystopias. the Uglies series was incredibly popular and, I'd argue, really popularized that idea in YA.
Unfortunately, if I remember right, it tries to pull the "violent rebellion is as bad if not worse than fascism" card, and so naturally the protagonist turns against the rebellion at the very last second.
The revolution itself isn't really portrayed as bad, just elements within it like Coin. Everything about her characterization screams deep state neolib ghoul, and I see Katniss's assassination of her as recognition that prim and proper "rules based order" liberals are just as dangerous as more obviously evil fascists, and can't be trusted
Someone here must be able to point me to a sci-fi where Earth's socialist and capitalist nations expand out to the stars and then solidify as 2 or 3 competing intergalactic societies, written by a marxist, from the point of view of a citizen of the socialist sphere
Not written by a marxist, but the TTRPG setting Transhuman Space, has essentially this within the Solar System. By 2100, advanced biotech and AI allow space colonization, with China dominating Mars and Weird Space AnCaps infesting the asteroid belt to do biological crimes. It manages to be fairly neutrally presented.
An example from the setting encyclopedia:
Nanosocialism
This was a political philosophy developed (under then name “information socialism”) by the Australian academic Kyle Porters in 2034. Originally from the left-anarchist tradition, Porters felt that the vision of a pure anarchosocialist society was unrealistic. Nevertheless, he observed that although modern civilization was utterly dependent on information technologies, the central notion of “intellectual property” often gave rise to significant injustice. He believed that only the state could properly reward innovation, while still distributing the benefits of such innovation fairly to all.
Infosocialism thus began with the premise that “information needs to be free,” but redefined freedom as the nationalization of intellectual property and its free distribution by the state. Thus, the government does not award patents, but subsidizes research and creative endeavor. This is less absurd when one imagines a “university” rather than “corporate” model of research and development.
Infosocialist doctrine failed to take hold in the hyperdeveloped nations and instead took root in less-developed nations, many of whom felt that they were being exploited by wealthier corporations’ locks on major genetic patents, nanotechnology designs, and software systems. Infosocialism – later known as nanosocialism – gained power in Peru, Indonesia, and Thailand.
One of the policies of nanosocialism was an end to the enforcement of international copyright agreements and trademarks. The sanctions that resulted provoked a backlash, and helped weld the nanosocialist countries into a tighter (and increasingly paranoid) bloc. This culminated in the Pacific War and the overthrow of nanosocialist governments in Vietnam and Thailand.
Despite that reverse, nanosocialism remains an important factor in world politics. There are infosocialist or nanosocialist parties and sympathizers in most nations. Although Thailand was forcibly separated in the aftermath of the Pacific War, nanosocialist strength is growing in South America and in India. At present, the situation is one of “cold war.” The issues that led to the Pacific War have not yet been resolved. Meanwhile, the world has seen its first outbreak of total war since 1945 – and most nations have become uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable they are to the destructive potential of the Fifth Wave.
I haven't watched Firefly in quite a while, but I generally agree with your criticism. I think the western-ness could have been really interesting if the show had more to say about colonialism, but it doesn't. The show makes fairly milquetoast observations about the west and does very little with them. They're just a cool backdrop to Wheadon. Sci-fi as a genre is one of the few genres I do not think normal libs are capable of writing well. Sci-fi is based in rejecting the status quo, dreaming of a new, better future. Post-modernist irony has essentially ruined lib's abilities to do this. They recognize the American war machine as awful, they recognize a million different issues in the world. But we're widely met by snarky apathy on these subjects, where what's wrong in the world is an unchangeable constant that we shouldn't exert energy fighting against. Plus, being within the imperial core takes away from their ability to even percieve persecution. They can imagine vaguely dystopian future, but can't imagine good enough backing to make the world anything more than a YA book like Divergent. All they make is a hellish world with very little resolve, with no real solutions. The lack of resolve can work, but libs generally don't like it in their stories. I could get into signifiers at this point, but I don't want to.
George Lucas is actually a good example of this. While I don't think he's a socialist, the rebellion fighters of the Star Wars universe were apparently modeled after the Vietnamese fighting American invasion. For all of the questionable implications made throughout the movies, one thing is clear. The imperialists are the bad guys, people fighting for self determination are the good guys. Even though the empire is almost an unstoppable force the rebels will pretty much never take down, Star Wars argues that fighting that hell is the resolve and it is worth it. True freedom in the Star Wars universe isn't making peace with the unstoppable force, or just arbitrarily overthrowing it with good guys. It's about fighting for your stake in the world around you. There is still a resolve here. There is still understanding of who would be on the bottom or top in the sci-fi realm
Let's compare this to what I'd call bad lib sci-fi. Divergent is fucking ASS. People are arbitrarily split into 5 groups based on a single personality trait from birth, but there are some people who have all 5 personality traits and they're DANGEROUS!!! It's arbitrary sci-fi, there's no world where this makes sense. Classes are completely arbitrary, almost ignored. Race is also ignored. In divergent, scifi becomes an aesthetic, a signifier of what it really is. It fundamentally misunderstands what sci-fi is at its heart and leans into what people think sci-fi is. I think this is why Wheadon moved onto Marvel
The Hunger Games and its consequences. That series is pretty good for YA and gets dangerously based at times, but it kickstarted a trend of fiction featuring arbitrarily segregated societies but not doing anything with them
I actually quite like Hunger Games as well. But God were the copies so bad. Divergent will always be one of the shittiest things I ever got tricked into reading.
It's like the YA novel equivalent of what Final Fantasy VII did for JRPGs for a generation or two, everyone kept trying to copy it often without understanding what made it good
Or like the whole genre of YA "romance with a hot supernatural creature" novel (plus film adaptations!) that sprung up trying to recreate the success of Twilight
the sequels to the hunger games got worse though
It was a bit of a trope structure for just-add-water dystopias. the Uglies series was incredibly popular and, I'd argue, really popularized that idea in YA.
Unfortunately, if I remember right, it tries to pull the "violent rebellion is as bad if not worse than fascism" card, and so naturally the protagonist turns against the rebellion at the very last second.
Assuming you're referring to the ending,
spoiler
The revolution itself isn't really portrayed as bad, just elements within it like Coin. Everything about her characterization screams deep state neolib ghoul, and I see Katniss's assassination of her as recognition that prim and proper "rules based order" liberals are just as dangerous as more obviously evil fascists, and can't be trusted
Someone here must be able to point me to a sci-fi where Earth's socialist and capitalist nations expand out to the stars and then solidify as 2 or 3 competing intergalactic societies, written by a marxist, from the point of view of a citizen of the socialist sphere
anyone?
There is a comic book based on an unused spec script from aliens 3 that has this premise.
You should write it.
Idk if this is sarcastic or not but I'd be down to read a book like this.
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Lancer's pretty lib tbqh, even though it thinks it isn't.
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Someone I follow and respect on tumblr has a lot of posts about it so I'm gonna be lazy and link to one of their posts rather than typing out a long thing. I can post screenshots instead if that's easier, lmk, it's been a while since I've looked at tumblr not logged in
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As with two others there is a ttrpg that examines some of these things: https://eclipsephase.com/
Not written by a marxist, but the TTRPG setting Transhuman Space, has essentially this within the Solar System. By 2100, advanced biotech and AI allow space colonization, with China dominating Mars and Weird Space AnCaps infesting the asteroid belt to do biological crimes. It manages to be fairly neutrally presented.
An example from the setting encyclopedia:
Nanosocialism
This was a political philosophy developed (under then name “information socialism”) by the Australian academic Kyle Porters in 2034. Originally from the left-anarchist tradition, Porters felt that the vision of a pure anarchosocialist society was unrealistic. Nevertheless, he observed that although modern civilization was utterly dependent on information technologies, the central notion of “intellectual property” often gave rise to significant injustice. He believed that only the state could properly reward innovation, while still distributing the benefits of such innovation fairly to all.
Infosocialism thus began with the premise that “information needs to be free,” but redefined freedom as the nationalization of intellectual property and its free distribution by the state. Thus, the government does not award patents, but subsidizes research and creative endeavor. This is less absurd when one imagines a “university” rather than “corporate” model of research and development.
Infosocialist doctrine failed to take hold in the hyperdeveloped nations and instead took root in less-developed nations, many of whom felt that they were being exploited by wealthier corporations’ locks on major genetic patents, nanotechnology designs, and software systems. Infosocialism – later known as nanosocialism – gained power in Peru, Indonesia, and Thailand.
One of the policies of nanosocialism was an end to the enforcement of international copyright agreements and trademarks. The sanctions that resulted provoked a backlash, and helped weld the nanosocialist countries into a tighter (and increasingly paranoid) bloc. This culminated in the Pacific War and the overthrow of nanosocialist governments in Vietnam and Thailand.
Despite that reverse, nanosocialism remains an important factor in world politics. There are infosocialist or nanosocialist parties and sympathizers in most nations. Although Thailand was forcibly separated in the aftermath of the Pacific War, nanosocialist strength is growing in South America and in India. At present, the situation is one of “cold war.” The issues that led to the Pacific War have not yet been resolved. Meanwhile, the world has seen its first outbreak of total war since 1945 – and most nations have become uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable they are to the destructive potential of the Fifth Wave.