There is a long tradition of science fiction/dystopian writers and texts that have "good" politics. A lot come to mind; Ursala LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson first and foremost. I also thought the non-simpleton reading of Dune had a very salient, anti-interventionist political point. Phillip K Dick certainly has a politics at the heart of his novels that question foundations of power and authority, as does Orwell. There is a lot of writing about H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft and their subversive body of work as a political statement against the status quo. Go all the way back to something like Gulliver's Travels which had a pretty palatable critique of society, it may even still to today's audience.
By good politics I mean a leftwing, democratic and human-centered politics specifically. There is probably a hefty volume of sci-fi writing devoted to reactionary, right-wing and maybe even fascist politics, but it doesn't seem like that's what breaks into the mainstream.
I'd like to make another entry in the sci-fi writers with solidly good politics category. I recently read Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky and was blown away not just by the fascinating world-building and character crafting needed to make a sci-fi novel, but the way it also manages to be a great and unobvious indictment of a multitude of modern industrial complexes and societal structures. All while being really fun to read.
The world-building that Tchaikovsky does so well is crafting a future civilization literally on top of our current civilization, form equalling content. Cage of Souls is set in the far, far future where the sun is bloated and dying, human civilization has been brought to the brink of extinction several times and the last remaining human civilization exists in a single city by the name of Shadrapar
The majority of the novel however takes place on the Island; a prison island where the inmates - the criminal and dissident element of Shadrapar - are forced to mine the swamps for various chemicals that help the singular city survive.
Stefan Advani serves as the narrator and fictional author of the book. Advani is an "academy boy" whose crime is discovered later in the story. As a narrator, he's somewhat reliable and very entertaining, as well as intentionally and hilariously annoying. As Advani's journey takes him to the deserts, the underground of Shadrapar, the jungles surrounding the island, and of course the island itself, Cage of Souls becomes many different kinds of novels itself.
Cage of Souls is a prison abolitionist novel, it is an anarchist novel, it clearly favors engineering and artificers and the power of the human mind as a tool for advancing good, it's a societal indictment, but it's also an ecological novel.
This last emergence surprised me. The entirety of civilization understands that the sun, as the novel is set so far into future, is in its final days. The sense of impending doom hovers over the whole narrative. In fact, much of the conflict arrives from the final vestiges of civilization, still possessing all the obsession with craven growth we hold today, meeting the end of the road, and still attempting to extract, grow, and profit. Did I mention Cage of Souls is Anti-capitalist?
None of this is to imply Cage of Souls is preachy or overt. The plot is such a mesmerizingly good time the theories and concepts at play are an afterthought, but they're there as a solid foundation to hang the genre necessary world-building and characterization on. It's a great and riveting story and it's got me excited to read Tchaikovsky again.
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