 Oh man, look at this stuff! We've got Dune, Jules Verne, H.E. Wells, Frankenstein, Foundation. Buckle up guys, this is going to be lit. There's quite a bit of historical literature about fictional technology and its implications, but sci-fi developed into a form that we'd sort of recognize today around the 1930s, with the rise of serial short stories in pulp magazines. One of the first of these ever published, The Skylark of Space by Doc Smith is kind of to modern science fiction what Lord of the Rings is to modern fantasy, laying down a rich tapestry of tropes invoked and referenced by future authors, an interstellar spaceship propelled by a newly discovered element, a charming scientist slash pilot slash pugilist slash marksman slash engineer exploring new life and new civilizations boldly going where no man has gone before. Any of this ring of bell? In one of their adventures, the aforementioned hero, Dr. Seaton and the crew of the titular Skylark find themselves stranded on the planet Oznami, smacked out of the middle of a war between two civilizations, Condal and Martenale. After escaping from a Martenale prison, they meet the ruler of the Condal, a king, who assists in recharging their ship's power source with Element X. The crew of the Skylark are grateful for the Condal's aid and repay them with rare earthly minerals that will help them build unstoppable war machines. Let's read a little of the speech they give in thanks for Seaton's intervention. Not only have they given us a boon that will make their names revered throughout the nation as long as Condal shall exist, but they have also been the means of showing us plainly that our age old institution of honor is in truth the only foundation upon which can be built a race fitted to survive. At the same time, they have been the means of showing us that our hated foe entirely without honor, building his race upon a foundation of bloodthirsty savagery alone, is building wrongly and must perish utterly from the face of Oznami. These strangers have already made it possible for us to construct engines of destruction which shall obliterate Martenale completely. Fun fact, this speech is delivered at Seaton's wedding, and it moves both him and his new wife Dottie to tears. Happy tears. So, quick recap. Humans land on Oznami. One group of aliens tries to imprison them, they escape, a different group of monarchic aliens helps them fix their ship, and our heroes reward them with the technology they need to commit genocide. The Skylark actually fights in the final battle against the Martenale, destroying their entire military force. It's very dramatic and heroic in a World War I kind of way, but a modern audience might understandably have some reservations about how this whole thing has gone down. And I haven't even gotten into the racism or slavery bets. Now, to be fair, the Skylark of Space was written in the 30s, and it's pretty clearly a relic of its time. But it was a significant part of the initial canon of stories that established the vocabulary for science fiction, concepts that future authors would build on, and it sets up a trope that crops up a fair amount in modern sci-fi. Politics might be something that happens to the protagonist, or maybe around them, but it's a feature of the landscape, or an obstacle, not an important part of their interaction with the universe. When Dr. Seaton discovers the millennia-long race war on Oznami, he doesn't ask how it started, why it's still going, how it affects the people involved, or whether everyone on both sides of it is as invested as the rulers of these societies. When he meets the monarch of the condol, he doesn't ask how he got to be monarch, where his power comes from, what he does as monarch, or what his subjects think of his rule. These questions would be the lowest possible bar to act with any sort of awareness of the political forces in play, or likely political consequences of his actions. But Seaton doesn't concern himself with these matters. This might seem like a minor nitpick, after all, not every story has to be about politics. Still, the apolitical or even deliberately anti-political protagonist is a sci-fi trope that crops up repeatedly after the skywork of space, and, as we've seen, can sit uncomfortably alongside the genre's affinity for exploring radical departures from our current technological and social norms. This isn't to say that politics doesn't appear in sci-fi stories, but the genre trends towards an individualist or libertarian framing, focusing in on a competent protagonist, their problems, and how they solve those problems with science and technology. Andy Weir, author of The Martian, asserts as much in this interview. None of my books have any message. I never have, like, a moral or a deeper meaning or anything like that. For me, what's front and center is the science. If you confine yourself to the real physics, then that's hard science fiction. And it's considered even harder science fiction if the technologies used actually exist. I don't put politics in my novel because as soon as you can see the political slant of the author, you know that the universe of that book is going to conspire to validate the author's political viewpoint. In The Martian, the multinational group of scientists that work together to bring Mark Watney home operate outside the political apparatus of their states to make that happen. When they're hatching the plan, members of the Chinese National Space Administration explicitly say, if this becomes a negotiation by diplomats, it will never be resolved. We need to keep this among scientists. Space agency to space agency. Explicitly libertarian messages are also fairly common in sci-fi novels, as anyone who's read any Robert Heinlein can tell you. Has space-tuit world travel? The man who sold the moon? The moon is a harsh mistress. Heinlein's libertarianism suffuses his fictional worlds. There's actually a substantial back and forth between sci-fi and real-world advocacy for libertarian policy. Heinlein's initialism, T-A-N-S-F-A-A-F-L, used by lunar colonists as shorthand for, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, was adopted as a real libertarian campaign slogan. And there's an annual award ceremony by the Libertarian Futurist Society to promote works of science fiction that best reflect their values of individual freedom and autonomy. There are a number of reasons one might point to for why so much sci-fi treats politics and politicking with such reservation, if not outright hostility, why libertarian or anti-political messages appear so frequently. For example, many founders of the genre, including Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and John Wood Campbell, held similar views about governance and how it ought to interface with individuals. As little as possible. This might lend itself to a sort of genealogical explanation, where a random bunch of libertarians kicked off the genre, writing predominantly libertarian sci-fi, which influenced the politics of future writers who followed their lead. But there were also many early sci-fi authors who took opposite tax. Isaac Asimov's influential foundation series turns on notions of collective responsibility, political savvy, and shared social destiny. I'd like to advance a different possibility. Maybe there's something about science fiction as a genre that lends itself to libertarian apolitical storytelling. Not that you can't tell sci-fi stories that feature politics as a central element, but that there's a vibe that makes it particularly easy to tell sci-fi stories that don't. A central feature of sci-fi, part of what makes the genre so different from other literature, is plausible change, justifiable novelty. We take our universe, inject some new technology or scientific discovery or alien species, and we see what happens. These changes often provide fresh insight into our world as it is, but when we read a book with a spaceship on the cover, it's partially because we want to hear about a world that has become different from our own, driven by some sort of scientific or technological force that's not wholly outside the realm of possibility. If a sci-fi author is interested in getting the most mileage per unit of suspended disbelief, it makes any element of their world that resists that force of change, an obstacle for the story they want to tell. If the protagonists can't get their hands on the cool new gizmo, or if the aliens can't communicate, or if the brilliant scientists can't get funding for their research, these barriers must be overcome for any sci-fi to happen. We might indulge in a little dramatic tension building up to that point, but the payoff is always ultimately seeing just how much change we can ring out of some new fangled thingamabob. In that light, politics isn't just ticking up space that could be dedicated to telling us more about the awesome, cool future stuff. It's also a retarding force on the reach and power of that stuff to change things, which is kind of what we're reading it for in the first place. We want to see what awesomeness Dr. Seaton can manage after unlocking the power of Element X. If he starts ringing his hands about whether the condo government is politically just, or trying to establish some due process to ensure that he's acting in accordance with the wishes of the osnomians, or any such political nonsense, we're sacrificing some amount of that potential for plausible novelty, which is kind of like, insert your favorite metaphor for denied satisfaction here. This idea also plays well with the favorite setting of most science fiction, space, the final frontier. With a decent FTL drive, a boundless number of worlds to explore, and unlimited resources to exploit, it's much easier for the protagonists to exercise their scientific and technological power without social or political obligations they don't want. They don't have to worry about asteroid mining rights, or whether the neighbors will complain about the Dyson sphere they're building. They can always just hop in their ship and jet off to a new solar system if things get too crowded. Of course, none of this implies that other political ideas can't be explored in science fiction. It's a fertile ground for speculation about everything from anarchism to fascism to fully automated luxury gay space communism. But what do you think? Does the genre exert some anti-political or libertarian pressure on sci-fi stories to unchain science and technology from anything that might hold back whatever cool stuff it might do? Can you think of some science fiction that makes politics into more than an obstacle for the protagonists? Please, leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to above and subscribe while I share, and don't stop thunking.