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Radio War Nerd EP #64—Sci-Fi & Fascism (Patreon)

Published:
2016-12-27 00:55:43
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Guest: David Forbes, journalist and author

The War Nerd and David Forbes have an intense inside-sci-fi-nerd discussion about how sci-fi became dominated by far-right politics and narratives, Heinlein, Philip K Dick, and the newer wave of sci-fi writers breaking out of the traditional molds . . .

Afterwards, the Nerd and Ames discuss the World of Wars: New York Daily News columnist cheers assassination of Russian ambassador in Ankara and more Putin Derangement Syndrome . . . ISIS sympathizer's truck-murder spree in Berlin . . . Mosul offensive grinds to halt . . . Asia Pivot pivot . . . Kabila massacring demonstrators . . . 

Total Time: 2:36:36

Direct link  to this episode's mp3 here 

David Forbes is a journalist based in Asheville, North Carolina, who writes for the Asheville Blade ; and they're the author of The Old Iron Dream , a secret history of sci-fi's far right politics . . .  

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Comments

Ryan Mcnabb

Outstanding shows - thank you for all your work. #64 is particularly interesting. I bought "The Old Iron Dream" but can't find much else out there by or about David Forbes. He blog seems to be dead? Would love to read his stuff in depth. Thanks again - keep up the good work!

Papermoon

It's interesting comparing someone who cares about and enjoys the genre of science fiction despite disagreeing with a lot of the politics with someone who has such a pathological need to seperate it into the acceptable and unacceptable that he descibes the man in the high castle as a vaccine. When Forbes was talking about white men ranting online he wasn't talking about himself was he?

alejandro sosa

I'm not a big sci-fi fan, which I'm aware is to my detriment. I am, however, a rabid Mobile Suit Gundam fan (especially the original and Zeta Gundam), which is as much a political soap opera as it is about warring factions fighting in space and dealing with the meeting of technology and forced evolution. I highly recommend it, in part b/c there's a quote in the first series that is something like "technology has come so far that we've back to fighting hand-to-hand." It's an odd reflection of the way in which the same sorts of tropes repeat themselves, even in what ostensibly was an anime about a WWIII scenario fused with people taking to space.

xnfec

Great show. I love hearing about this stuff and the podcast format means I can listen to it over again for the bits I missed or mis-heard. I read a lot of Heinlein as a boy and loved it, so much so that I read Stranger in a Strange Land several times on the trot. However, there came a point in the 80's when I couldn't read his stuff any more. Farnhams Freehold should have caused me to raise an eyebrow, but I was into his fiction so much that I blotted it out of my mind. For a book that deals with societal collapse and how quickly it might happen, Alex Scarrow's "Last Light" is very good. He also wrote the Time Riders series of time travel books for teenagers which I found very enjoyable as an adult. For alternate realities, I enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinsons "The Years of Rice and Salt" I came across an interview with Daniel Suarez who has written some good scifi-ish thrillers (Daemon). His latest book is about drones and he says that the drone-operators are very much in the position of armoured knights in that they cannot be touched easily by enemies. That reminded me of a book by Ernle Bradford on the siege of Malta where he says that the knights if St John were almost invulneralble in their armour. I think there were a small number of actual knights at the start of the siege and only two left at the end. Their armour was good protection but they were not invulnerable, unlike the drone operators. I was thinking that the story of that siege might make a good episode.

John Hieronymus

Octavia Butler wrote a sequel to Parable of the Sower called Parable of the Talents that is also excellent and keeps on the same track of a honest depiction of apocalypse. Also The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi gives probably one the most believable depictions of a possible dissolution of the United States, and what a mega drought would do to the South West.

John Hieronymus

Also William Gibson's latest novel The Peripheral depicts life during and after -as he states "a multi-generational apocalyptic confluence of events" that seems like what we are currently hurtling towards...

Bryan Nicholson

Great episode! You guys might want to seek out Joe Haldeman for any future interview on the subject of Sci-fi and war. Haldeman has edited anthologies on military sci-fi (from an anti-war perspective) <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Study-War-More-Selection-Alternatives/dp/0380405199" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/Study-War-More-Selection-Alternatives/dp/0380405199</a> and is a lively interview subject (Wired, Real News Network) on war and futurism. He also has written a direct sequel to the Forever War and a few that could be considered indirect descendants.

alejandro sosa

Re: the Daily News editorial - NYDN is owned by Mortimer Zuckerman, who was domestically left of center but has moved increasingly to the right since 2008. He's also a fervent Zionist and has packed whatever passes for foreign policy commentary in that rag to Likudniks and neo-cons. It is a bizarre mix of NYC vaguely left populism domestically because it has to be in order to retain its readership, but is solidly hard-right on foreign policy.

Szass Tam

Very disappointed with your choice of guest this week. Did you not catch David Forbes pretty much calling for authors to be blacklisted because he doesn't like their politics? Does that sound familiar? People are getting tired of this SJW shit trying to worm its way into all media - now they want to ruin sci-fi too. Times are changing and people like Forbes are being taken less seriously and will soon go the way of the do-do.

Jakob Stenfalk

No, I heard him praise good work even when the author is a creep, and call for people to stop reading lousy hack jobs. But of course, if justice is "shit" to you, you might have a hard time telling the difference.

Szass Tam

So you are okay with McCarthyite blacklists then?

xnfec

Kubrik was an american. He lived in the UK though.

Brian Taulbee

What a great discussion. Thank you! I was a bit surprised that Orwell didn't come up in the discussion of liberals writing sci-fi in the dystopian/post-apocalyptic genre (or William Morris, whose novella "News from Nowhere" is an examination of a politically post-apocalyptic society that is almost unbelievably progressive and socialist to the point of anarchy). I'd also love to hear more discussion regarding Lovecraft, given his truly titanic (and apparently expanding) impact on sci-fi and horror. He had a very interesting take on these issues. Lovecraft clearly felt that society peaked in 18th century England and that New England WASPS were qualitatively superior to everyone else on this side of the pond (until, as you point out, towards the end of his life), but he was ruthless in his treatment of this class. They were often doomed to "degenerate" (see "The Dunwich Horror", "The Rats in the Walls"). More interestingly, they were often portrayed as being particularly clueless and just plain wrong about the nature of reality and the future. As Kenneth Hite points out, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is an inverted cargo cult story in which the "primitives" have the far more accurate and sophisticated myth-system and knowledge base than the "civilized" WASPS (and, incidentally, the protagonist ends up embracing and celebrating his true lineage as an inhuman creature, which is unique for Lovecraft). "The Strange, High House in the Mist" all but states that bourgeois values and beliefs are invalid.

Brian Taulbee

With respect to 2001, I'd point out that while the stewardess is pretty retrograde, the film has an interesting thing to say about gender roles elsewhere. When Dr. Floyd is waiting to board his shuttle to the moon, he meets and has a discussion with a group of Russians, three women and one man. Interestingly, all of the women in that group are legitimate scientists (the man is also introduced as a scientist, but it becomes clear as the scene progresses that he's actually in the intelligence community).

Factory Troll

The travel account newsletters are simply the best, but next time you might wanna lower your exposure to Serbian sandwich germs by flying wizz air Milan-Skopje directly, or vice versa. They fly twice a week for 10 euro + extras.

Fabian Destouches

Great episode. Since this was focused exclusively on Anglo-SF it would be great if you'd do a similar episode about Warsaw pact SF. The Strugatsky brothers and Stanislaw Lem would make for a great podcast.

xnfec

Regarding the position of science fiction in the american literature establishment, Pournelle recounted in his blog a few years ago how Vonnegut was once open to being associated with the science fiction community. However, someone (Farmer I think it was) wanted to write some Kilgore Trout stories and asked Vonnegut's permission, which was refused. The author went ahead anyway and the association with Vonnegut and, by extention, american letters, was lost forever. This was something Pournelle regretted.

xnfec

Wind-up Girl is also very good, dealing as it does with the consequences of global warming. It is also unusual in being set in Thailand and dealing with the politics of the region.

Jan Meyer

I do not know if i find the idea of ostracism and discounting someone as a 'Ron Paul fanboy' any more appealing than white suburbia in space.

Jan Meyer

I always liked Sci-Fi and fantasy for the exploration and i think there a legitimate case can be made against feminism and explored. And i would like to read that and see whether it convinces me or not. And the same goes for pretty much any other thing written. What this little exchange and the in part the podcast reminded me of was the rather disturbing trend of people perceiving themselves as left to distance themselves froim democracy post-trump because it was unable to deliver the 'right' results. Progression is not an absolute good and societies have the right to refuse certain kinds of it for no other reason than a instinctual dislike of it. Remember, Nazism and Stalinism where all new and shiny and progressive and 'new voices' as well once.

radiowarnerd

Ah, interesting! I didn't know about that. I never quite got the Kilgore Trout thing. Heard he was supposed to be PKD but I still don't get the joke.

radiowarnerd

Yes that's true. I was thinking that as we talked. Bulgakov too. Heart of a Dog, The Fatal Eggs--both hardcore SF, and brilliant.

radiowarnerd

Then there's Anglo-or-is-it? Flan O'Brian, The Third Policemen 'Did you know the atomic theory is at work in this parish?'

radiowarnerd

Good point! I forgot that scene. I have Kubrik problems, that's the bitter truth. I like my sadistic pedantry my way, not his way.

radiowarnerd

You're right about Orwell, it just didn't occur to me. And I suppose there's been so much about him that it seemed more interesting to get into Wells's Shape of Things to Come. TBH, I was afraid Lovecraft wasn't SF enough, more of the /F, which we weren't supposed to be discussing. And News from Nowhere (mumbles) haven't read it.

radiowarnerd

I know he is but I thought he had some rule that he would not leave the UK to film on location.

radiowarnerd

Yeah, I think Max Blumenthal uses the acronym PEI -- progressive except for Israel -- to describe this stance.

radiowarnerd

Thanks. I've read that sequel! But asking Haldeman for an interview never occurred to me. It's my becoming modesty that everyone mentions.

radiowarnerd

You're absolutely right about the siege! I research it intermittently but so far the context, which is very dense, is not fully in my grasp. One thing that's struck me doing RWN is that anglo readers have basically faced a wall of silence about the amazing military history of the Mediterranean. It has a lot to do with plain ol' Papist-hating bigotry from the people who write our stories. It's no accident that Chesterton is the only source most of us have for the battle of Lepanto.

radiowarnerd

Ah good! I'm collecting SF where hand-to-hand is revived in high-tech environments, so thanks!

Brian Taulbee

Yeah, Lovecraft is an odd one. His early stuff seems blatantly fantastic in the vein of Machen or Dunsany, but then he goes and recasts his entire body of work as science-fiction in "At the Mountains of Madness" (although there were hints of that direction already in "The Dreams in the Witch-House", where extra-dimensional space is accessed through higher mathematics). It opens the door to describing the magic and weirdness in his other stories as Sufficiently Advanced Technology.

alejandro sosa

It was originally named and partly based on Theodore Sturgeon, who was Vonnegut's friend before either became well-known.

xnfec

According to Wikipedia, the name Kilgore Trout was for his friend Theodore Sturgeon which makes sense at least. Trout's stories lacked the scariness that PKD could achieve.

Enre

Ever thought about doing an episode on the 'Song of Ice and Fire' series? Pretty interesting take on a lot of the topics you discuss"

John Hieronymus

You need to stop hyperventilating that people have different taste and politics than you do. The past year has been very instructive in how thin skinned the right wing of sci-fi/fantasy fandom is. If you cannot tolerate legitimate criticism of your world view then maybe you can find some place free from criticism. Perhaps call it a "secure zone" or something comforting like that. Best of luck!

Cathode Ray Dude

A 'blacklist' implies some sort of entity (government, business, religion) preventing others from saying or writing their beliefs. At what point does Forbes call for this? Who will be doing the blacklisting? Who will be enforcing it? It seems like you've misconstrued disagreement as being the same thing as state-sponsored censorship.

Cathode Ray Dude

Great episode! I could listen to The War Nerd and David Forbes go on for hours. I'd be really curious to hear what you guys think of Le Guin, especially.

Tom Serengai

There's quite a few people on here praising this episode, so i hope this is still able to ring through to you guys: I thought this episode was really hard to listen to all the way through and I thought that the result was a couple hour long interview light on substantive thoughts other than "these authors' politics are retrograde and they are bad people and writers as a result". While the subject matter here is a bit of a detour in relation to the subjects you often discuss, I do think an opportunity was lost here to actually engage with the ideas being criticized (what do they think, why would they think these things/historical context, what is the end goal of the ideas etc). I get that some attempt at this was made with the entire "wish fulfillment" angle, but I don't think that this is a very charitable interpretation (we're just ridiculing them as immature) and it doesn't drive discussion. Instead we wind up drawing lines in the sand, pointing at the other guy, and saying he's obviously terrible/ridiculous and never showing why. I thought a couple of opportunities were missed in this regard. JBS & new deal stealth communists is an interesting concept that can involve a lot of history and political/philosophical discussion. Instead we just dismiss JBS as crazy for seeing communists in every closet and every bed. Similary, a few mentions are made of a-historicity with regard to the vietnam war (which i am not an expert on) and the causes for our loss and there's absolutely no follow through on this claim. Christ, i would have really enjoyed a discussion on reasons why we lost the vietnam war and how having an authoritarian political system would have changed or not changed these. Even within the context of literary criticism, this episode is very light. Outside of the one observation re: kubrick and the need for diversity in order to drive imagination/innovation there was little engagement with any text/work outside of some sort of trite dismissal. Honestly if i wanted a masturbatory bull session with a particular political perspective, there are countless examples of this already on the internet. What i initially found interesting about the War Nerd was his ability to engage with ideas, events, and concepts. The way he was able to provide history for the sunni-shia conflict, for the US civil war, or for british imperial expansion and explain his view without necessarily vilifying the other side or even taking a side at all. This may be difficult to do when we're describing a particular subject as a nazi, a fascist, a racist, part of the patriarchy, or whatever. In this regard, I think it would be helpful to consider that history may not be a path that we progress along - it may just be a dialogue between different ideas. Might also be helpful to not have guests whose identities are so wrapped up in their politics that they can only engage with material in a political light. That or have someone play the antagonist (even if a devil's advocate) so that the conversation can go somewhere productive. My two cents. P.S. Republican Rome was very...republican, and yet they would elect a dictator in times of stress. Maybe the libertarian/authoritarian affinity comes from the same place.

teh_drewski

Man, I could talk about sci-fi and history, politics, personalities all day. What a great chat to listen to, thank you.

Enre

There are lots of podcasts about series that get pretty in depth. I haven't read much he's written and I don't follow the blog closely, but Steven Atwell of the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog writes about the series and has discussed it on fan podcasts. From the little I know, seems he would be a good fit with you guys.