Wednesday, March 06, 2013

China Mieville's List of SFF Books Every Socialist Should Read

China Mieville offers this list of 50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read:
Iain M. Banks—Use of Weapons (1990)
Edward Bellamy—Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (1888)
Alexander Bogdanov—The Red Star: A Utopia (1908; trans. 1984)
Emma Bull & Steven Brust—Freedom & Necessity (1997)
Mikhail Bulgakov—The Master and Margarita (1938; trans. 1967)
Katherine Burdekin (aka “Murray Constantine”)—Swastika Night (1937)
Octavia Butler—Survivor (1978)
Julio Cortázar—“House Taken Over” (1963?)
Philip K. Dick—A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Thomas Disch—The Priest (1994)
Gordon Eklund—All Times Possible(1974)
Max Ernst—Une Semaine de Bonté (1934)
Claude Farrère—Useless Hands (1920; trans. 1926)
Anatole France—The White Stone (1905; trans. 1910)
Jane Gaskell—Strange Evil(1957)
Mary Gentle—Rats and Gargoyles (1990)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman—“The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892)
Lisa Goldstein—The Dream Years (1985)
Stefan Grabiński—The Dark Domain (1918–22; trans. and collected 1993)
George Griffith—The Angel of Revolution (1893)
Imil Habibi—The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist (1974; trans. 1982)
M. John Harrison—Viriconium Nights (1984)
Ursula K. Le Guin—The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)
Jack London—Iron Heel (1907)
Ken MacLeod—The Star Fraction (1996)
Gregory Maguire—Wicked (1995)
J. Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon)—Gay Hunter(1934, reissued 1989)
Michael Moorcock—Hawkmoon (1967–77, reprinted in one edition 1992)
William Morris—News From Nowhere (1888)
Toni Morrison—Beloved (1987)
Mervyn Peake—The Gormenghast Novels (1946–59)
Marge Piercy—Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)
Philip Pullman—Northern Lights (1995)
Ayn Rand—Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Mack Reynolds—Lagrange Five (1979)
Keith Roberts—Pavane (1968)
Kim Stanley Robinson—The Mars Trilogy (1992–96) (I didn't finish the trilogy.)
Mary Shelley—Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818)
Lucius Shepard—Life During Wartime (1987)
Norman Spinrad—The Iron Dream (1972)
Eugene Sue—The Wandering Jew (1845)
Michael Swanwick—The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (1993)
Jonathan Swift—Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Alexei Tolstoy—Aelita (1922; trans. 1957)
Ian Watson—Slow Birds (1985)
H.G. Wells—The Island of Dr Moreau (1896)
E. L. White—“Lukundoo” (1927)
Oscar Wilde—The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888)
Gene Wolfe—The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972)
Yevgeny Zamyatin—We (1920; trans. 1924)
He says they were selected "not just because of their quality —which though mostly good, is variable— but because the politics they embed (deliberately or not) are of particular interest to socialists."

The few I've read are in bold print. I'll be looking for the public domain ones online to read soon.

2 comments:

  1. I've only read 4 of them. Gulliver, Frankenstein, Atlas Shrugged, and Wicked.

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  2. i haven't even heard of a lot of these!

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