This fascinating list originally appeared at Fantastic Metropolis.

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Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read
By China Miéville
January 23, 2002
This is not a list of the best fantasy or SF. There are huge numbers of superb wor
ks not on the list. Those below are chosen not just because of their quality which
though mostly good, is variable but because the politics they embed (deliberately
or not) are of particular interest to socialists. Of course, other works by the s
ame or other writers could have been chosen: disagreement and alternative suggesti
ons are welcomed. I change my own mind hour to hour on this anyway.
Iain M. Banks Use of Weapons (1990)
Socialist SF discussing a post-scarcity society. The Culture are goodies in narrat
ive and political terms, but here issues of cross-cultural guilt and manipulatio
n complicate the story from being a simplistic utopia.
Edward Bellamy Looking Backward, 2000 1887 (1888)
A hugely influential, rather bureaucratic egalitarian/naïve communist utopia. Deal
s very well with the confusion of the modern (19th Century) protagonist in a world
he hasn t helped create (see Bogdanov).
Alexander Bogdanov The Red Star: A Utopia (1908; trans. 1984)
This Bolshevik SF sends a revolutionary to socialist Mars. The book s been critici
zed (with some justification) for being proto-Stalinist, but overall it s been mal
igned. Deals well with the problem faced by someone trying to adjust to a new so
ciety s/he hasn t helped create (see Bellamy).
Emma Bull & Steven Brust Freedom & Necessity (1997)
Bull is a left-liberal and Brust is a Trotskyist fantasy writer. F&N is set in t
he 19th Century of the Chartists and class turmoil. It s been described as the firs
t Marxist steampunk or a fantasy for Young Hegelians.
Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita (1938; trans. 1967)
Astonishing fantasy set in 30s Moscow, featuring the Devil, Pontius Pilate, The W
andering Jew, and a satire and critique of Stalinist Russia so cutting it is unb
elievable that it got past the censors. Utterly brilliant.
Katherine Burdekin (aka Murray Constantine ) Swastika Night (1937)
An excellent example of the Hitler Wins sub-genre of SF. It s unusual in that it was
published by the Left Book Club and it was written while Hitler was in power, s
o the fear of Nazi future was immediate.
Octavia Estelle Butler, 1947-2006
Octavia Estelle Butler, 1947-2006
Octavia Butler Survivor (1978)
Black American writer, now discovered by the mainstream after years of acclaim i
n the SF field. Kindred is her most overtly political novel, the Patternmaster s
eries the most popular. Survivor brilliantly blends genre SF with issues of colo
nialism and racism.
Julio Cortázar House Taken Over (1963?)
A terrifying short story undermining the notion of the house as sanctity and ref
uge. A subtle destruction of the bourgeois oppositions between public/private an
d inside/outside.
Philip K. Dick A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Could have picked almost any of his books. Like all of them, this deals with ide
ntity, power, and betrayal, here tied in more directly to social structures than
in some other works (though see Counter-Clock World and The Man in the High Cas
tle). Incredibly moving.
Thomas Disch The Priest (1994)
Utterly savage work of anti-clericalism. A work of dark fantasy GBH against the
Catholic Church (dedicated, among others, to the Pope )
Gordon Eklund All Times Possible (1974)
Study of alternative worlds, including an examination of hypothetical Left-wing
movements in alternative USAs.
Max Ernst Une Semaine de Bonté (1934)
The definitive Surrealist collage novel. A succession of images the reader is in
volved in decoding. A Whodunwhat, with characters from polite commercial catalog
ues engaged in a story of little deaths and high adventure.
Claude Farrère Useless Hands (1920; trans. 1926)
Bleak Social Darwinism, and a prototype of farewell to the working class arguments
. The useless hands workers revolt is seen as pathetic before inexorable technology. A
cold, reactionary, interesting book.
Anatole France The White Stone (1905; trans. 1910)
In part, a rebuttal to the racist yellow peril fever of the time a book about white p
eril and the rise of socialism. Also interesting is The Revolt of the Angels, whi
ch examines now well-worn socialist theme of Lucifer being in the right, rebelli
ng against the despotic God.
Jane Gaskell Strange Evil (1957)
Written when Gaskell was 14, with the flaws that entails. Still, however, extrao
rdinary. A savage fairytale, with fraught sexuality, meditations on Tom Paine an
d Marx, revolutionary upheaval depicted sympathetically, but without sentimental
ity; plus the most disturbing baddy in fiction.
Mary Gentle Rats and Gargoyles (1990)
Set in a city that undermines the feudalism lite of most genre fantasy. An untypic
al female protagonist has adventures in a cityscape complete with class struggle
, corruption, and racial oppression.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
Towering work by this radical thinker. Terrifying short story showing how savage
 gender oppression can inhere in caring relationships just as easily as in more ob
viously abusive ones. See also her feminist/socialistic utopias Moving the Mounta
in (1911) and Herland (1914).
Lisa Goldstein The Dream Years (1985)
A time-slip oscillating between Paris in the 1920s, during the Surrealist moveme
nt, and in 1968, during the Uprising. Uses a popular fantastic mode to examine t
he relation between Surrealism as the fantastic mode par excellence and revoluti
onary movements (if nebulously conceived).
Stefan Grabinski The Dark Domain (1918 22; trans. and collected 1993)
Brilliant horror by this Polish writer. Unusually locates the uncanny and threat
ening within the very symbols of a modernizing industrialism in Poland: trains,
electricity, etc. This awareness of the instability of the everyday marks him ou
t from traditional, nostalgic ghost story writers.
George Griffith The Angel of Revolution (1893)
Rather dated, but unusual in that its heroes are revolutionary terrorists. Very
different from the devious anarchist villains of (e.g.) Chesterton.
Imil Habibi The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist (1974; trans. 1982)
The full title is much longer. Habiby was a member of the Palestinian Community
Party, a veteran of the anti-British struggle of the 40s, and a member of the Kn
esset for several years. This amiable, surreal book is about the life of a Pales
tinian in Israel (with surreal bits, and aliens).
M. John Harrison Viriconium Nights (1984)
A stunning writer, who expresses the alienation of the modern everyday with terr
ible force. Fantasy that mercilessly uncovers the alienated nature of the longin
g for fantastic escape, and show how that fantasy will always remain out of reac
h. Punishes his readers and characters for their involvement with fantasy. See a
lso The Course of the Heart.
Ursula K. Le Guin The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)
The most overtly political of this anarchist writer s excellent works. An examinat
ion of the relations between a rich, exploitive capitalist world and a poor, nea
rly barren (though high-tech) communist one.
Jack London Iron Heel (1907)
London s masterpiece: scholars from a 27th Century socialist world find documents
depicting a fascist oligarchy in the US and the revolt of the proletariat. Elsew
here, London s undoubted socialism is undermined by the most appalling racism.
Ken MacLeod The Star Fraction (1996)
British Trotskyist (of strongly libertarian bent), all of whose (very good) work
s examine Left politics without sloganeering. The Stone Canal, for example, feat
ures arguments about distortions of Marxism. However, The Star Fraction is chose
n here as it features Virtual Reality heroes of the left, by name a roll call of g
enuine revolutionaries recast in digital form.
Gregory Maguire Wicked (1995)
Brilliant revisionist fantasy about how the winners write history. The loser who
se side is here taken is the Wicked Witch of the West, a fighter for emancipator
y politics in the despotic empire of Oz.
J. Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon) Gay Hunter (1934, reissued 1989)
By the Marxist writer of the classic work of vernacular Scots literature A Scots
Quair, and Spartacus, the novel that proves that propaganda can be art. This is
great science fiction. Bit dewy-eyed about hunter-gatherers perhaps, but superb
nonetheless. As an added bonus, it also has a title that sounds amusing today.
Check out his short fiction, which includes a lot of SF/Fantasy work.
Michael Moorcock Hawkmoon (1967 77, reprinted in one edition 1992)
Moorcock is an erudite Left-anarchist and a giant of fantasy literature. Almost
everything he s written is of interest, but Hawkmoon is chosen here in honor of Mo
orcock having said about it: In a spirit consciously at odds with the jingoism of
the day, I chose a German for a hero and the British for villains. There are als
o plenty of satirical references and gags about 1960s/70s politics for the reade
r to decode.
William Morris News From Nowhere (1888)
A socialist (though naively pastoral) utopia, written in response to Bellamy (ab
ove), that unusually doesn t shy away from the hard political question of how we g
et the desired utopia-proletarian revolution. See also The Well at the World s End
and his other fantasies.
Toni Morrison Beloved (1987)
It s well known that Beloved is a superb book about race and slavery and guilt, bu
t it s less generally accepted that it s a fantasy. It is. It s a ghost story that wou
ldn t have half the charge without the fantastic element.
Mervyn Peake The Gormenghast Novels (1946 59)
An austere depiction of dead ritualism and necessary transformation. Don t believe
those who say that the third book is disappointing.
Marge Piercy Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)
A Chicano woman trapped in an asylum makes contact with a messenger from a futur
e utopia, born after a full feminist revolution .
Philip Pullman Northern Lights (1995)
Pullman let us down. This book is here because it deals with moral/political com
plexities with unsentimental respect for its (young adult) readers and character
s. Explores freedom and social agency, and the question of using ugly means for
emanicipatory ends. It raises the biggest possible questions, and doesn t patronis
e us that there are easy answers. The second in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, i
s a perfectly good bridging volume and then in book three, The Amber Spyglass, so
mething goes wrong. It has excellent bits, it is streets ahead of its competitio
n but there s sentimentality, a hesitation, a formalism, which lets us down. Ah wel
l. Northern Lights is still a masterpiece.
Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Know your enemy. This panoply of portentous Nietzcheanism lite has had a huge in
fluence on American SF. Rand was an obsessive objectivist (libertarian pro-capital
ist individualist) whose hatred of socialism and any form of collectivism is visib
le in this important an influential though vile and ponderous novel.
Mack Reynolds Lagrange Five (1979)
Reynolds was, for 25 years, an activist for the U.S. Socialist Labor Party. His
radical perspective on political issues is reflected throughout his work. This b
ook examining a quasi-utopia without sentimentalism is only one suggestion. Also of
huge interest are Tomorrow Might Be Different (1960) and The Rival Rigelians (19
60), which explicitly examine the relation between capitalism and Stalinism.
Keith Roberts Pavane (1968)
These linked stories take place in a present day where Elizabeth I was assassina
ted and Spain took over Britain. This examines life in a world where a militant
feudal Catholicism acts as a fetter on social and productive functions. Though R
oberts was no lefty at all, and you could probably power France on the energy fr
om his spinning grave at being included in this list.
Kim Stanley Robinson The Mars Trilogy (1992 96)
Probably the most powerful center of gravity for Leftist SF in the 1990s. A spra
wling and thoughtful examination of the variety of social relations feeding into
and leading up to revolutionary change. (It s also got some Gramsci jokes in it.)
Mary Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818)
Not a warning not to mess with things that should be let alone (which would be a r
eactionary anti-rationalist message) but an insistence on the necessity of grapp
ling with forces one unleashes and the fact that there is no innate nature to peop
le, but a socially-constructed one.
Lucius Shepard Life During Wartime (1987)
Horrific vision of a future (thinly disguised Vietnam) war. Within the savage ex
aminations of the truth of war and U.S. foreign policy, Shepard also investigate
s the relation between SF, fantasy, and magic realism , and uses their shared mode
to look back at reality with passion.
Norman Spinrad The Iron Dream (1972)
A SF novel by Adolf Hitler Spinrad s funny, disturbing and savage indictment of the
fascist aesthetics in much genre SF and fantasy. What if Hitler had become a pu
lp SF writer in New York? Not a book about that possibility but a book from it. B
y the same author: Triumph of the Will and Lord of the Swastika. Brave and nasty.
Eugene Sue The Wandering Jew (1845)
Huge book by radical socialist Sue, about the adventures of the family of the Wa
ndering Jew of legend. Symbolic fantasy elements: the Jew is the dispossessed la
borer and his partner is downtrodden woman. Marx hated Sue as a writer (not with
out reason less, for Sue, is not in more) but hell, it s an important book.
Michael Swanwick The Iron Dragon s Daughter (1993)
Great work that completely destroys the sentimental aspects of genre fantasy. Fr
om within the genre fairies, elves, and all Swanwick examines the industrial revolut
ion, the Vietnam War, racism and sexism, and the escapist dreams of genre fantas
y. A truly great anti-fantasy.
Jonathan Swift Gulliver s Travels (1726)
Savage attack on hypocrisy and cant that never dilutes its fantasy with its sati
re: the two elements feed off each other perfectly.
Alexei Tolstoy Aelita (1922; trans. 1957)
Distant relative of the other Tolstoy. The revised version is less good, written i
n the stern environment of Stalinism. A Red Army officer goes to Mars and foment
s a rebellion of native Martians. Good rousing stuff, but also interesting in te
rms of exporting revolution. See also the superb avant-garde film version from 192
4.
Ian Watson Slow Birds (1985)
Left-wing author whose short story collection above includes a cold demolition o
f Thatcher and Thatcherism. His take on oppression cognitive and political informs a
ll his rather austere, cerebral writing.
H.G. Wells The Island of Dr Moreau (1896)
Like a lot of Wells s work, this is an uneasy mixture of progressive and reactiona
ry notions. It makes for one of the great horror stories of all time. A fraught
examination of colonialism, science, eugenics, repression, and religion: a kind
of fantasy echo of Shakespeare s The Tempest.
E. L. White Lukundoo (1927)
One of the most utterly extraordinary (and almost certainly unconscious) express
ions of colonial anxiety and guilt in the history of literature.
Oscar Wilde The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888)
Children s fantasies by this romantic, socialist author. Marked by a sharp lack of
sentimentality, a deeply subversive cynicism, which doesn t blunt their ability t
o be intensely moving.
Gene Wolfe The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972)
Wolfe is a religious Republican, but his tragico-Catholic perspective leads to a
deeply unglamorized and unsanitized awareness of social reality. This book is a
very sad and extremely dense, complex meditation on colonialism, identity and o
ppression.
Yevgeny Zamyatin We (1920; trans. 1924)
A Bolshevik, who earned semi-official unease in the USSR even in the early 1920s
, with this unsettling dystopian view of absolute totalitarianism. These days of
ten retrospectively, ahistorically, and misleadingly judged to be a critique of
Stalinism.
With many thanks to Mark Bould, Brian Stableford, and the members of the Interna
tional Association for the Fantastic in the Arts email list (IAFA-L) for their s
uggestions. I take full responsibility for the final selection
Copyright © 2001 by China Miéville.