
Is the Political Novel Dead? - samclemens
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/24/is-the-political-novel-dead
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smacktoward
_> Even now, there are still a few novelists who set out to grab the reader by
the lapels. Seaton commends Dave Eggers’ urgent Silicon Valley satire The
Circle (2013) for crystallising concerns about social media in the form of a
thriller and causing ripples in the worlds of tech and politics._

Oh God, I hope not. I read _The Circle_ and found it to be a mess, making
flawed arguments about subjects Eggers seems to not fully understand. (A
review I wrote at the time goes into more detail on this:
[https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2015/06/book-review-the-
circle/](https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2015/06/book-review-the-circle/))

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jhbadger
Yeah, It reminded me (not in a good way) of Cory Doctorow's works in the sense
that even when I agreed with the general sentiment, I was infuriated by how
much the "good" characters were winning by arguing against cartoonish
villains.

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kazinator
_Nineteen-Eighty Four_ is the _Nineteen-Eighty Four_ of our time.

It's visionary. For example, even in this sense: we are just entering the age
when you not only watch screens, but they watch you.

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inflatableDodo
I'd say that Neuromancer, though it is not commonly regarded as a political
novel, is more useful as a metaphor, given it predicts the explosion of
players and political complexity created by the inability of any one group to
exercise control over technology, which is a theme pretty much absent from
1984.

As to whether the political novel is dead, it is always kicking about in
science fiction, where fashions have their own undercurrents that are much
less subject to the whims of what can be regarded as literature. Science
fiction, probably to its benefit, being rarely regarded as literature in the
first place.

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0xdeadb00f
I own a copy but haven't read it yet. Heard very mixed things about it, from
it being a masterpiece to it being boring or overrated. I'd like to hear your
(and anyone else who's read it) opinions on it, maybe without any significant
spoilers. Obviously I'll read it and come up with my own conclusion as to
whether it's good or bad, but I'm curious.

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opsiprogram
Everything depends on taste but I love Neuromancer, it's really good at
building a complicated world that isn't overburdened and I find the notion
that it is "boring" kind of crazy! It almost reads like a thriller.
Immediately one of my favorite books when I picked it up. It's certainly of
our time, one of those books that you won't believe was written when it was.
And it doesn't really feel dated, we might still be heading towards the world
it portrays, hard to say... haha

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0xdeadb00f
Thanks for the reply. I read _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep_ , by Philip
K. Dick and had almost the exact experience you describe with world building.
I'll definitely give Neuromancer a read when I finish the three or so books
I've started but not finished (it's not an issue of boredom - I'm just very
busy at the moment).

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notus
A lot of YA fiction tends to be pretty political. Many of them have dystopian
settings where this is conflict with authoritative rulers. What I feel that we
are missing is writers like Kurt Vonnegut.

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lazugod
Could you describe what missing elements Vonnegut had?

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SolaceQuantum
How can the Political Novel be dead? Isn't the 2019 Hugo Award Winner for best
novel precisely a political novel? (The Calculating Stars is a novel about a
woman attempting to become a female astronaut during 1952 America, in a
setting where the earth is quickly becoming uninhabitable due to runway global
warming.)

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jandrese
Weirdly, the politics takes a backseat to the protagonists personal problems,
in particular her anxiety over public speaking. While the political elements
are in there, they feel like they're in the background. The primary antagonist
is motivated by a personal vendetta, not his political positions.

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smacktoward
I haven't read _The Calculating Stars_ (yet), but from the description it
sounds like the climate change in the story is caused by a meteor colliding
with the Earth, rather than being caused by humans. That seems like an
effective way to take climatic change out of its political context -- i.e.,
it's changing because of a _deus ex machina_ , not because of anything done by
any person or group of people. In our world, climate change is a political
issue precisely _because_ it's anthropogenic -- because it's something we're
doing to ourselves so that some among us might profit.

 _Why_ you'd want to take climate change out of its political context, I have
no idea. Someone's who's read the book can speak to that better than I can. It
seems like a weird choice, though.

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jandrese
Climate Change is mostly just the motivator to get the space program going
earlier. There is some political commentary in the way the government
officials and public at large can't seem to comprehend the idea of a changing
climate, but it's not a major narrative in the book.

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Mountain_Skies
It's simply been renamed Fantasy & Science Fiction.

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paulddraper
Really?

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mynameishere
A book about _The Troubles_ doesn't seem like it would be terribly apt today,
would it? I don't know. No mention of one of the more (genuinely) important
political novels, Submission by Houellebecq.

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greenie_beans
Um, no. Not at all. I’d argue that it’s the exact opposite. There are so many
new novels that are very political, almost too many that I don’t care to read
anymore political novels. Especially in the Trump age. All the writers feel
compelled to resist Trump through their writing/art.

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opsiprogram
Ironically on your point, a book seems like a poor way to send a message to
this particular president...

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greenie_beans
lol...very true

