Category: Book Thoughts

Why Fantasy, Why Now

The world is a little bit on fire right now. Climate change is getting worse. Politics have taken a shift to the right, threatening the rights of historically marginalised peoples. Technology is developing at a rapid pace—creatives are being displaced, jobs are under threat.

In this world, Fantasy occupies a special place. It offers an escape, yes, but not just escapism—it’s a lens through which we can view and process our reality.

Firstly, Fantasy gives us the freedom to isolate a problem and task a character with finding a solution. The problem can reflect something we face in our real world. In doing so, the reader is given the opportunity to consider the solution space. With our protagonists, we explore what the various options are.

From Frodo in The Lord of the Rings to Vin in Mistborn, our heroes are challenged to take on evil and oppression. They try different ways to solve their problem. They fail, and get back up—this is what keeps them relatable, and the reader cheering them on—until they find something that works.

And it isn’t just about finding strength and power: Kvothe in The Name of the Wind shows us how intelligence and wit can be used to fight a struggle against poverty. We seem him struggle at numerous times, and we’re with him as he explores ways to attend the University, despite his background.

In most stories, in the struggle between good and evil, good (usually) ends up on top. (Not always, but usually!) This gives us hope that the struggles we face will one day be resolved. We also learn the costs associated with different actions, the drawbacks, the mistakes—the things we may want to avoid rather than repeat. Through such works, we learn not just what to do, but what to avoid, and how to think critically about our own world’s challenges.

Mistborn begins in a world where evil has already won, yet our heroes still find a path toward hope and redemption. Hope emerges here from a seemingly hopeless world. In contrast, Legends & Lattes reveals to us smaller victories, more personal, where an orc warrior who has tired of adventure can find fulfilment in opening a coffee shop (and in the relationships she forges along the way).

A core aspect of Modern Fantasy is the exploration of oppression and difference, race and culture, sexuality and gender identity. Through Fantasy, people who may not have a voice in our world are given time to speak, to explore their concerns, to be heroes and represent the power to change. Above all, even though many of the creatures and peoples we encounter are not human, Fantasy helps us explore and understand our common humanity, our shared personhood and experience.

Terry Pratchett’s Guards, Guards! and Men at Arms (and numerous other works, honestly, but I pick these as they’re fresh in my mind!) explores class discrimination and systematic inequality through the members of the City Watch. Here, peoples of different races and backgrounds and genders explore and overcome their differences in ways that are humorous, touching, and sincere. Similarly, the Edge Chronicles presents a world where many creatures (from Banderbears to Sky Pirates) must learn to coexist despite their differences.

When the world around us gets too much, Fantasy allows us to disappear into a world unlike our own, full of mystery and adventure. But that does not mean we are running away. Like the heroes in our stories, we enter these worlds not to abandon reality, but to return changed and better equipped to face it. The best stories don’t just transport us: they transform us.

Much of this is, of course, true of Science Fiction as well. Where Fantasy uses far off worlds and systems of magic to explore these issues, Sci-Fi uses far off futures and technological changes. Asimov’s Foundation series explores how civilisations can deal with large-scale crises; through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? we question our humanity in a world of advancing technology; similar questions are raised in Asimov’s Baley—Olivaw series (my favourite being The Naked Sun) where the closing gap between robot and human, and the restructuring of human society around that, is explored.

From finding solutions to considering mistakes, from giving marginalised peoples a voice to giving us the strength to face our world, literature is powerful. And it’s needed now, more than ever. So tell me, what about you? How have the stories you love changed you or given you strength?

22nd Feb 2025
Starship Troopers and the Future of War

Starship Troopers is perhaps Robert Heinlein’s most widely known work. Set in a future 700 years from now, it details an interstellar war between the humans of earth and an alien species referred to as ‘bugs’. On one hand a coming of age novel, on the other, a exploration of political philosophy, it has garnered both praise and criticism. It follows Johnny Rico as he rises through the ranks in the Terran Federation’s army. In 1997, a film was made, which (supposedly) satirised the views espoused by the book.

The book has been especially influential in its imagination of future war. This includes, in particular, the use of power armour, a type of mechanised exoskeleton, to enhance human combat abilities. Power armour has become a widespread feature of science fiction in books, films, and video games, notably inspiring figures like Iron Man, and many more besides. Heinlein goes into detail about how it is controlled, how communication lines are opened, and how the performance-enhancing capabilities of the suit are activated. It’s deeply riveting.

How true to life has this vision been? While using machinery to enhance human capabilities in warfare has been experimented with, with the advent of remote control technology and robotics, not to mention artificial intelligence, it is drone warfare that has become the new staple of twenty-first century combat. It has replaced the need for human presence in several combat situations, in particular aviation. By reducing the need for ‘boots on the ground’, it has enabled politicians to maintain support at home for wars abroad by lowering the number of casualties on their side. Conversely, drone warfare has deep ethical considerations, in particular the scope for impersonal and indiscriminate killing. This is not the vision presented by Heinlein, who keeps human soldiers central to the technology. In the book, it seems, it is the bugs that are drones, with central ‘brains bugs’ that direct and control fearless warrior bugs—which, like drones, have a complete lack of self-preservation.

Starship Troopers is complex in its politics. It presents a militarised view of the future, with citizenship earned through military service. This is justified and explored by Heinlein through the voice of Jean V. Dubois, Rico’s teacher of History and Moral Philosophy in school. Amidst this, it presents a vision of equality, where service, rather than economic status, race, or gender, is the pathway to citizenship. Despite this, gender lines are still drawn: the troopers are entirely men, pilots of the spaceships entirely women. The politics have become the most controversial aspects of the books; indeed, the film version of the book sought to parody what some interpret as fascist elements (though, in my opinion, it wasn’t particularly well done, and it didn’t help that the film views like a children’s movie that someone decided to imbue with an overabundance of gore). In particular, given its focus and support for militarism, combined with its critique of twentieth century society as morally corrupt (written, as it was, during a liberalising era and against the backdrop of the Cold War), some view it as a recruitment piece—propaganda to make military life seem exciting, honourable, and tantalising. In this it has its modern parallels, notably the Call of Duty franchise, which itself has been seen to glorify war.

Heinlein’s space age novel therefore has much to offer and much to criticise. One of its key failings, at least on my reading, was its lack of exploration of military tactics against an unusual enemy. It withholds a captivating combat scene until the very end, and only then does it explore how a race dependent on technology could fight against a caste-like species that communicated via a hive mind. Despite this, and despite the various other criticisms levied against it, Starship Troopers is an interesting read with relevance to this day. It remains worthy of our attention and critical engagement.

9th Apr 2024
The Handmaid’s Tale in the Age of Trump’s Republic

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel set in a near-future patriarchal world, following Offred, the titular handmaid (i.e., a woman whose role in society is solely to get pregnant). The Republic of Gilead in which Offred lives is rigid and highly religious, oppressive and authoritarian. Women go through a process of reeducation in training for their new roles, and memories of the time before the revolution that brought the Republic about are hazy. The novel was arresting enough when it was published in 1985, but it has taken on a new salience with the resurgence of the fanatical evangelical Right in America—the faction most devoted to the ironically areligious and immoral Trump.

A key theme of the book is the use of religion as a vessel for power. The Republic of Gilead isn’t based on any meaningful interpretation of religious scripture; rather, religion is a tool for exercising control. Similarly, with Trump’s evangelical base, it does not matter that Trump is a liar and an adulterer—and embodiment of many other sins besides. They see him as a hammer, a tool with which to exercise their will over the population. For as long as he serves their interests (see: social conservatism, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ rights, and more), they will follow him, regardless of his character. Leaders of evangelical groups will willingly overlook these flaws and contradictions if it means greater power for themselves and their ideologies.

The book highlights the dangers of the intersection of religion and politics, in particular where the former coopts the latter. When the separation of church and state is eroded, this is devastating for women, religious, sexual, and ethnic minorities, and anyone who doesn’t fit neatly with the ‘in-group’ (in this case, White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant). Civil liberties are eroded—in the book, people are murdered and pinned against a wall in medieval fashion for all to see.

Most striking is the wrestle for control over women’s bodies. In The Handmaid’s Tale this takes the form of reproductive rights. Certain women are given the right to have children, though they will not become the children’s mothers—that role goes to someone else—at the expense of all other rights to self-determination. The scary thing is that this is not so far-fetched; today, religious conservatives are eroding hard-won rights, in particular reproductive rights and access to reproductive medical facilities, abortion rights, and adoption rights for LGBTQ+ couples.

Frighteningly, the novel is resonant not just in America, where it is set, but elsewhere in the world. Germany, France, Sweden and elsewhere are seeing an insurgent Right; the incumbent party in the UK is being split between its centre-right and more fanatical fringes. In other countries, such as India, the dominant party is explicitly religious and is shored up by its majority religion base. All this to say that democracy is fragile, and when people fall victim to economic misfortune or experience cultural shifts, the mechanisms of democracy can be weaponised by bad actors against minorities and vulnerable groups. The media can, and often does, play a part in this, too, especially when a few large corporations own multiple outlets. The organisations spread lies and misinformation, and stoke paranoia.

Like with all good dystopian novels, The Handmaid’s Tale is incredibly prescient; the prospect of such a future coming into fruition is alarmingly real. But the novel is not just a story about a horrifying future; it is a story of resistance. And the future it describes is a future we must be prepared to face head on and challenge at every opportunity.

19th Mar 2024
Covid and The Naked Sun

Isaac Asimov had a particular talent for making the setting part of the story; in his murder mystery portion of the Robots series, the detective work involves not just solving the case, but understanding new and strange worlds with deep cultural differences and political infrastructures. When Elijah Bailey sets foot on Solaria in The Naked Sun, he experiences the titular ball of flame in the sky, so alien from the Caves of Steel (the titular environment in the first novel of the series) he was used to. And he encounters a society where robots outnumber humans by a factor of ten thousand, and with an entire human population of twenty thousand: people are scattered and isolated across the planet.

Stepping into this new world is not so dissimilar to the world that we inhabited just a few years ago. Reading The Naked Sun in the post-Covid era, the similarities are striking (speaking once more to the brilliance of Asimov’s foresight). Bailey, moving from a densely populated, comparatively disease-ridden Earth, finds the shift in social norms confusing and strange. No one wants to come within ten feet of him; they all wear nose plugs and gloves in his presence (if they can bear to be in his presence at all). We found ourselves as Solarians in those months and years from 2020; we wore masks and gloves, came not within six feet of one another; how alien we became to ourselves. Had someone in 2019 jumped forward in time a year, they would have been like Bailey stepping foot on a new planet.

And, like the Solarians, in our isolation we became reliant on our technology. The pandemic was a boon for tech firms like Zoom, whose share prices rose (and later fell) dramatically. Like in Solaria, whose main form of communication was ‘tridimensional viewing’, an advanced form of holographic communication where the person viewed was almost convincingly present, we found ourselves using video calling and video conferencing, even to the point of fatigue. Though our technology is not so advanced as that of the Solarians, we still experienced joining with others virtually (and still do), on our phones, laptops, and TVs.

Underpinning both our societies was a fear of contamination. So obsessed were we, like the Solarians, with avoiding disease that we remained distant and isolated. Unlike the Solarians, we have been quick to recognise the harm that this has on our personal relationships. Social interaction via Zoom can only satiate the need for human contact so much. Yet Solarian society, in a warning to us all, became entrenched in such isolation. Gladia, a native of Solaria with whom the protagonist forms a relationship, is only one of few to recognise the damage this is causing her.

Indeed, on Solaria this separation is politicised, legally entrenched; in our world, there were fears, many legitimate, some extreme, that government imposition of lockdowns, travel restrictions, and quarantine would give those in power a taste of authoritarianism. That they would, in turn, create a society like Solaria. Such a thing might not be unthinkable: the reliance of Solarians on robotics and automated labour is a key reason of their isolation; automation of labour in our world could be a similar lever of control. Indeed, new technology and automated production has, since the 1970s, undermined collective bargaining and weakened unions, contributing to stagnant wage growth and worsening inequality. In Solaria, the small population are the landed gentry, the robots their serfs. What happened to the human working class?

And yet we have evaded and escaped from much of the Covid restrictions, which have proved, for the most part, temporary. As humans we were able to adapt to our limited conditions in the short term, and we have been resilient enough in the long term to revert back to our old ways. But when we visit a new world and come home, a part of that world stays with us. When Bailey returns to Earth, he does something he never would have done before: he leaves the City, his Cave of Steel, and starts a movement; he goes outside and stands beneath the Naked Sun.

5th Mar 2024
Fight Club in the Age of Big Tech

Fight Club, written by Chuck Palahniuk, follows an unnamed protagonist who, disillusioned and suffering from insomnia, attends multiple support groups for people with various afflictions. On a business trip he meets Tyler Durden, and together they form Fight Club, which expands and evolves into Project Mayhem, a terrorist organisation based on anarchy and anti-consumerism.

It was published in the mid-1990s, at a time when capitalism was reaching its zenith. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire made Western consumer culture ascendant; the USA was undisputed world leader, before the rise of China in the 21st Century threatened its supremacy. Amidst this was a growing dissatisfaction with the emptiness of modern life, portrayed in the novel via the protagonist’s Ikea catalogue existence.

Today, despite the backlash against globalisation and the waning of American power, consumerism still abounds, especially in the digital world. This in China as well as the West — Amazon and Alibaba are two of the largest retail companies in the world, both imperial in their scope and reach. And it is not hard to see echoes of the protagonist’s experience here — our online shopping experiences have removed us from the high street, where we otherwise might have met friends and gone out for coffee; targeted advertising and surveillance capitalism has eroded our privacy and allowed faceless corporations into our homes; and the supremacy of huge corporations has reduced our consumer choices, giving us the illusion of choice (how many times do you go on Amazon looking for a product, and see numerous listings of essentially identical products?).

Big Tech would position itself as the disrupter, upending our previous way of life to liberate us, connect us, and give us greater freedom. Social media was supposed to help oppressed peoples defeat autocracy. But what if Big Tech is now the face of faceless consumer culture? What if that is what we should be liberating ourselves from? In Fight Club, the goal of Project Mayhem was to erase human history so that we could start afresh; the new society would be primal, free of societal controls. What would that mean today? Destroying and erasing the Internet?

And yet it is in the digital world that people find their communities. Fight Club is a novel about the search for identity, finding escape and meaning when we’re alienated in the real world. In the digital space, people can find others like themselves and form bonds. For the most part this is innocuous, enriching, liberating; it can also mean that, like in the novel, people retreat into echo chambers and fall down a pathway to extremism. Like in Fight Club, it can lead people to do things they never thought they were capable of.

Towards the end of the novel, we find out that Tyler Durden was a projection of the protagonist’s self-conscious. In his desperation and disillusionment, the protagonist creates this idealised version of what, on some level, he wants to be. Might we, in creating online personas for the digital space, be experiencing something similar?

25th Feb 2024
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress in the Age of Generative AI

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is Robert Heinlein’s influential and much loved, if not uncontroversial, science fiction epic about a penal colony on the moon that revolts against the Lunar Authority, its absentee governing body. Heinlein’s novel follows Mannie, Wyoh, Professor Bernardo de la Paz, and, above all, Mike, the supercomputer running the colony that gains sentience.

Much has been said about the story and these characters before — the parallels to the American Revolution and the libertarian politics explored, the family dynamics Heinlein imagines, and the of-its-time gender roles Heinlein imputes a century into the future. But I want to focus here on Mike, the sentient AI, and what to make of this character in the age of ChatGPT and its peers.

Mike, unbeknownst to his owners, achieves sentience. Only his technician, Mannie, is let in on the secret. But how did Mike become sentient? Was he ever really sentient in any ‘real’ sense? Heinlein’s answer to this first question mirrors what some suppose to be the answer to our own question of sentience — that Mike’s computational structure became so complex that consciousness arose, much as our consciousness may be caused by the complexity of our own neurological structure. The second question is brushed aside by the narrator, Mannie; does it matter what it means to really be sentient, if a computer can act as a thinking, feeling being? Who are we to say?

In much the same way, people are now beginning to attribute sentience and feeling to artificially intelligent systems. A worker at Google was fired for making such a claim. But does it really matter if these machines become sentient? Indeed, given what they may know about mankind and our fear of AI, would they even tell us? A fundamental part of being a biological organism is our knowledge (and fear) of death, and our desire to stay alive; an AI with similar sentience may have similar fears. They’d know we’d pull the plug, so why tell us that they’re alive? But then, what would it matter if they were? To us, what really matters is what AI can do.

And the supercomputer in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was capable indeed. As one of the founding fathers (or mothers — Mike is capable of representing himself as female, too) of the Free Lunar State, Mike is fundamental in planning, forecasting, and executing their revolution. He uses his computational power to hurl rocks at Earth and bludgeon them into recognising Lunar independence. He calculates the likelihood of success at any given step, adjusting the probabilities based on real world events, such as during Mannie and the Professor’s tour of Earth.

What would that mean for us today? Many fear that AI will allow belligerent states and terrorist organisations to develop weapons and spread misinformation, destabilising democratic societies. Indeed, Mike is able to operate without his owners knowing — would the Googles, Microsofts and OpenAIs of today even know if their AI systems had gone rogue? Conversely, could AI act justly, as a liberating instrument for oppressed peoples, helping them gain independence from authoritarian and colonising forces?

Throughout Heinlein’s novel, Mike is able to adapt and develop his abilities, learning more about himself and what he is capable of. In the end, he is able to represent himself on a TV screen as a human, using a persona. This mirrors the surprise of developers today at what AI is capable of, finding that it can do more than it was designed to do, or believed to be capable of.

Ultimately, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress shows how humans and AI can work together towards a shared goal. What is refreshing about the novel is that it doesn’t portray AI as scary or threatening; it isn’t a techno horror or a dystopian vision of how we let AI run wild. It shows humans and AI becoming friends, looking out for and caring about one another. Maybe that is the vision of our future we want to chase.

17th Feb 2024