Small Government Book Fan Club discussion

This is something that has intrigued me for a while. I find that nowadays fantasy/sci-fi genre is more or less the last refuge for quality small-government inclined fiction. Somehow even authors who are liberal, when they write fantasy, seem to include libertarian or conservative themes in their work. Harry Potter is the most obvious example, but there are others. Possibly it's because in writing fantasy, the authors are free to explore universal truths instead of tying themselves to the current political issues. On the other hand, there's a strong antipathy on the part of many conservatives against fantasy. I'm not talking about the silly protestations against "witchcraft," but the complaint that in hiding behind magic and superheroes we somehow fail to recognize the value of "regular" people (most notably the military) and the importance of current real-life issues. What do you guys think? Does anyone else see the same trend out there and what do you think it means?

I agree with all of this, and that's why I personally love fantasy. I just wonder sometimes if fantasy is now the ONLY place where we can see tales of good vs. evil without moral ambiguity and/or anti-American, anti-capitalist overtones.

The superhero comment came from a bighollywood column I read a while ago where the author was complaining of the juxtaposition of tons of superhero movies and a large number of films portraying real life military in an unflattering way. So by implication, the only place true heroes can exist is in fantasy.

Andrew Klavan has addressed this as well in his interviews about the Homelander series, that he set out to create a hero who is very real and recognizable, and who relies only on his physical abilities, faith and friends to fight the (again, real and recognizable) terrorists. There's something to be said for that- those types of books are few and far between, but IMO very necessary, especially for the young generation.

Well, I think the people who want us to worry about current "real life" issues are wrong. Big time. When dealing with art, the most important issue is making the story timeless.

I love the military and the people in it, but jumping into action is always misconstrued as what being a hero is. Greg House, putting aside his flaws, is a great hero. He saves lives, but he does it for selfish reasons. Why is this guy not considered a hero? Because he doesn't wield a gun and have super powers? The number one trait of a hero should be his mind. All else follows. Integrity. Courage. Honor. Yes, it is important that Men of the Mind do jump into action when called for. First and foremost, a man should independently evaluate a situation and then take action. This is why 24 is one of my favorite shows. Not only are the military, terrorists fighting personnel on the show intelligent, they act on that intelligence and show no moral regret.

All these anti-military films are ridiculous for one major reason. They do not reflect reality in anyway, and they turn art forms into anti-romantization .

If the purpose of art is to take some important wide abstraction from reality and concretize it to give it more immediate meaning, than these films fail utterly. To boil the human condition down to depraved violent actions is to tell a lie. It is to ignore a major narrative that underlies the reality function. And they wonder why "kids these days" don't have the capacity to function and think analytically. Someone needs to tell them that it is a result of the confluence of thinking required to uncreate reality in the way they do. How is one to think when one is told that the human condition is this set of isolated facts and that wider abstractions of reality leading to heroism instead of depravity is merely a happenstance to be ignored or made ignoble.

Thus the disintegration of the mind and the programming of the "next generation" into an n-dimensional set readied for the unreality algorithm.

Execute.

House is not considered a hero by most people because he is flawed as a person (another consequence of the superhero-trained generation, so there!) But, he is one for saving lives at whatever cost. The last two seasons the show lost me a bit- too much introspection and soap opera for my liking, but that's not relevant here. 24 lost me completely once they started going towards moral equivalency and self doubt (including apologetic PSA's), which is too bad but inevitable.

Any story can be timeless if well told. It's easier to make fantasy timeless because you are not constrained by the current world. I am a little concerned that the young people look at the fantasy heroes and admire them, then turn around and think, "but this is not possible in reality." Like Joss Whedon, after filming a great scene where the hero shoots a baddie in the head, feels compelled to say in the commentary, "That's not how it works in the real world." No? If school kids are held hostage and you have a gun and a direct shot, you wouldn't shoot? Really? So what we need, I think, is not less fantasy, but more integration between art- of all kind- and the real world.

I think that (for some reason) there has always been a sort of "ingrained" resentment among some people against science fiction or fantasy. Some of it comes from people (many very intelligent and creative) who just don't get it. Look at the TV series Firefly (a series that simply dripped individual rights, libertarianism and so on even though it's writers, producers and many of it's more liberal fans deny this vehemently and will till their dying breaths) is still one of the most popular TV shows out there. It barely lasted a season but the DVD sales are out the roof and the Science channel still runs it. The people who canceled it just didn't get it. They are network executives and so on, but their minds just didn't go that way. The same sort of thing happened back in the '60s with Star Trek. The "ratings" are said to have been awful, but it seems a lot of people were watching (my mother who didn't know science fiction fiction from linguine would never miss it). The people who weren't watching and didn't get it were in the high rise offices in New York.

So, when people who write what they like to consider literary fiction look at what they call "genre" fiction it's almost required that it be "dissed". If an exceptional fantasy comes to light, the "literary fiction crowd" appropriate it and say something like "well, this isn't really fantasy" of possibly "this transcends fantasy".

Personally I like fantasy and science fiction and am glad when I see themes that I also agree with in them.

You mentioned superheroes. If you go back and read the progression of Captain America (my favorite hero as a kid and youth, I collected the books he was in) you'll see that going into the '70s and then in the '90s and across the turn of the century the writers (who were of course products of the indoctrination....err, I mean education system, less and less know what to do with him. They went so far once as to try and show a group that was a thinly veiled shot at the Tea Party rioting. They had to apologize for that one. They finally killed Cap off for a while (though they brought him back.). Most think it was simply a marketing ploy, I'm not so sure...

Oh well, my point is, if you don't like or don't "approve of" science fiction and fantasy in general, you'd then rather ideas were expressed in other types of lit.

I heard that about Captain America! It seems the comic book universe is owned by the left nowadays, but fortunately the superhero movies don't reflect it.

My ultimate point (I think) is that while I love sci-fi and fantasy, I'd like the ideas that work so well in imaginary world to get more credit in the real one. Why is abstinence glamorous for sparkly vampires but lame for "real" teens? The principle should be the same across genres.

I hate sparkly vampires....I hate friendly, romantic, nice vampires. Stake 'em and move on!

Sorry, lost my head there for a minute, someone mentioned sparkly vampires...does it to me every time.

Dany wrote: "Edward sparkles so nicely."

So he does. But Angel is the one for me...***drools on the keyboard***

I have a quote for you....

“I blame it on Twilight. In real life, vampires only sparkle when they're on fire"

Larry Correia in Monster Hunter Vendetta

LOL!

The actor who played Spike on Buffy says his niece refuses to watch Buffy re-runs because of Twilight. In fairness, 99% of Twilight vamps are still "bad," even though they sparkle.

I repeat, stake em' and move on.