Please suggest some left leaning sci fi to read

[ikojo]

I haven't really read any sci fi for a long time (I stopped when I was in college and it seemed everyone was trying to out Tolkien JRR Tolkien with all the series. Being a poor college student in every sense of the word, I couldn't afford to keep up with all the series).

I would really appreciate some suggestions of good left leaning sci fi. Preferably sci fi that addresses race and class issues.

Thanks for your help!

[Khephra]

1. Two of the more modern writers would be

Iain M. Banks/Iain Banks (he writes non-SF under the "M."-less name)

&

Ken Mcleod

Of the two, I'd say that McLeod is the more political.

(If you're interested in left-leaning fantasy, try China Mieville)

[NewHampshireDem]

7. I would second both recommendations ... Banks is awesome

as is Mieville--though I'd say he's closer to Steampunk than fantasy, myself. :shrug:

[YankeyMCC]

2. Kim Stanely Robinson

Red, Blue, Green Mars series

[Fleurs du Mal]

3. Ursula K. Le Guin

fits that bill imo.

[wickerwoman]

4. Octavia Butler's "Xenogenesis" series is brilliant.

It deals with our squeamishness about getting it on and having kids with alien races (a kind of allegory for inter-racial marriage).

Funnily enough, the main character is described as black in the book but the woman on the cover is a red-headed Irish lassie.

[lakemonster11]

5. If you're looking for something radical and totally bizarre,

I recommend *A.D.* by Saab Lofton.

It involves an alternate history of the 1990s, a strange not-too-distant future in which the former U.S. is divided into separate racially-segregated countries, and a distant utopian future in which the U.S. has come back together into a radically-left democracy in which almost everyone is multiracial and it's perfectly legal to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

It's Sci-Fi in a Trek sort of way, rather than a harder sort of Sci-Fi. It definitely deals with race issues, and there are some class issues dealt with in the last third of the book.

And it's not a series, so there's just one book to buy! ;)

[NewHampshireDem]

6. Jennifer Government by Maxx Barry

It's a satire about what a Libertarian "Utopia" would really be like. You might also try "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow--which I believe you can download for FREE from his site: http://www.craphound.com/

On edit, here is the direct link to the novel:

http://craphound.com/down/download.php

[realisticphish]

12. berry

he runs NationStates, right?

:hippie: The Incorrigible Democrat

[NewHampshireDem]

15. No, BARRY

http://www.maxxbarry.com/

Nothing worse than a know-it-all who is wrong.

<edit>
I went to nation states, and, well, geee ...

[phantom power]

8. just about anything by John Varley and Spider Robinson

[HawkerHurricane]

9. Second the Spider Robinson.

Callaghan's series is great.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. My latest novel

I kept resisting the temptation to toot my own horn, but then I remembered Damon Runyan's advice: "He that tooteth not his own horn, the same shall not be tooted."

Click on the link in my sig line for details.

[paulk]

11. Ken McLeod for sure

Kim Stanley Robinson also.

Two sci-fi books by mainstream writers I would recommend as having a liberal POV -

He, She, and It by Marge Piercy

The O-Zone by Paul Theroux

[semillama]

13. David Brin

start with "Earth" and dive into the Uplift Series. or the other way around. or start with "Kiln People"...

heck, just read everything he does!

[Walt Starr]

14. Wild Cards

Edited by George R.R. Martin.

Mosaic novels, outstanding pieces of work with dramatic political statements.

[robbedvoter]

16. Any Asimov book. Stay away from Bradbury - and even Orwell

it's Russia they rant about! (murikans are exempted)

[DavidDvorkin]

17. 1984 isn't directed at Russia

But at all police states.

[robbedvoter]

18. Sorry to disappoint, but if you read Animal farm is clear Orwell

was obsessed with Rusia. The fact that the shoe fits so well is a testament to his writing abilities and the sci-fi genre - but he obviously had communism in mind. Same for Bradberry - who, turns out - is a freeper. Sometimes, art can overcome the limitations of the writer. Ad Huxley's - "Brave new World" to that last crowd.
These books are actually extremely useful - as they are the only way - for those who didn't live in both - to realize the common traits of totalitarian right or left regimes.

[HawkerHurricane]

19. George Orwell was a disgruntled Communist.

He defended it in the 1930's, and when he found out what Stalin had done he turned to attacking it.
Being anti-Communist does not make you a right winger. Some of the greatest Liberals in this country were anti-Communists.

[DavidDvorkin]

20. Animal Farm, certainly. 1984 is a different matter.

I repeat, it's aimed at totalitarian regimes, including but not limited to Communism.

[HawkerHurricane]

21. I'm not argueing.

But I'll repeat: as a disgruntled communist, he had a particular hatred for Stalin.

The official policy of Oceanania? IngSoc; NewSpeak for English Socialism...

[shimmergal]

22. Norman Spinrad.

Not much of his work is directly political, but THE IRON DREAM is a tour de force supposedly written by Hitler as a SF writer. Shows the will-to-power mindset behind fascism. It'd be interesting to read today in light of the current situation.

Also, Spinrad's A WORLD APART is set on Pacifica, which is as neat a high-tech based planetary culture as any I've found in SF. The book may be hard to find, though...it's undoubtedly o.p. and wasn't considered a major work of his even at the time it was published.

[Bryan]

23. Fritz Leiber's _A Spectre Is Haunting Texas_

Written in 1969 and out of print for many years now, it is amazingly fresh, like a black-humored cousin of The Handmaid's Tale; a terrific satire of both the "special outcast becomes messiah of dystopian future" subgenre and the rise of what we now recognize as the neocon/fundie axis (it's set in a future where the United States has been subsumed into "Greater Texas", blacks and Mexicans serve as a feudal underclass, and the bored wealthy grow to enormous size by overdosing on growth hormones). Funny, sad, and sexy (if you're into BDSM, that is), it's worth hunting through any number of musty bookstores to find a copy.