Red River Radical Issue 2 Red River Radical May 2011 http://redriverradical.worpress.com http://anarchology.wordpress.com [email protected] Science Fiction Utopia Red River Radical is a zine (like a mini- and the magazine) about politics, gender, culture and other stuff pertaining to the Red Radical Imagination River valley and the rest of the world. We are anarchists, communists, radicals, feminists, anti-racists, and anti- colonialists. We’re a little weird, but you do let us babysit your children, and feed you. Anytime you leave your house you risk running into us. Who knows, maybe we have more in common than you real- ize. We want to hear from you. Wanna get published? Hate our anti-American pinko viewpoints? Feed back is always wel- come. Science Fiction has become synonymous with Science fiction could offer discourse on how to movies with poorly written scripts and high special become human in more novel, free, and beautiful effects budgets. This is a long way from sci fi’s ways. It could inspire more diverse, involved, and origins as a bizarre genre of literature akin to radical politics. It could provide a safe space for Westerns and Romance novels. That major Holly- people to discuss radical perspectives around wood movies are now sci fi has been largely detri- race, gender, and politics outside of academic set- mental to the critical aspects of science fiction lit- tings. That it currently doesn’t is indicative of the erature and to its usefulness in cultivating a radi- state of the popular imagination: dystopic, disillu- cal political imagination. sioned, and depressed. Avatar aliens prey to the mother-goddess/their planet to save them The only way that will come true is if you believe that bullshit. Primitive islanders pray for King Kong to save them from the giant octopus A perfect example of this phenomenon is the 2009 If you don’t believe, movie Avatar. Released in 3D, it became the high- est selling movie of all time. The visual effects are You had better get superstitious The post-apocalyptic sub-genre of sci fi is the stunning and the urge to ride a pterodactyl after most popular currently. Environmental disaster, viewing is very strong. Yet Avatar is hardly more the collapse of civilization, very often induced by a than a remixed Dances With Wolves; a watered zombie infestation show a bleak unhopeful future down anti-colonization story in which a white male of humankind. There seems to be some reason is still the hero after his remake into the indige- Hollywood wants the future to be shit and seems nous other. Avatar’s story revolves around a typi- interested in denying human cooperation. The cal teenage American romance; same gender zombie sub-genre is a perfect example of this: a roles, heteronormative and weirdly middle class. mass of unthinking, unemotional, undead humans You get all this after traveling near the speed of threatens an ill affected group of reluctant allies light for six years to another solar system to con- who must brutally make their way from point a to quer alien life. To James Cameron some stories point b. Is this an allegory for freeway traffic or im- are eternal – ignoring the bounds of time and migration? space. Avatar is based on a novel by Ben Bova titled The Winds of Altair. The first difference between The Winds of Altair and Avatar is the lack of the clear cut distinction between good and evil in Bova’s book. Rather than an evil corporation bent on min- ing some miracle mineral at all costs a group of young students is transported deep into space to terraform a planet that will be their new home. This process will kill all the indigenous life on the planet. The students take direct action, taking over the main laboratory on the space station, to stop the process. Only then do they learn that the Christian fundamentalist church that sent them into space will not return to rescue them if they fail Which of these to terraform the planet Altair. The story is one of frightens you most? environmental degradation versus meeting human Would you use a needs. The balancing act the young astronauts chainsaw, shotgun, must follow does not give the satisfaction of sim- or baseball bat to plistic thinking or huge grossing ticket sales that handle any of these Cameron’s rendition delivered. issues? Avatar is only one example of the dumbing down of sci fi that takes place. Sci fi once performed a sessed. The Left Hand of Darkness takes place role of providing a safe space for critical discourse on a planet in perpetual winter where the indige- that is now largely the terri- nous human life is totally hermaphroditic. The re- tory of academic feminist sult is the lack of gender as modern Americans writing. The academic ver- understand it. LeGuin explores the social con- sions of feminism pump out structedness of gender through her story in an en- literature on many of the gaging way that truly bends the imagination. The same subjects sci fi treats: Left Hand of Darkness shares affinity with Judith gender, anti-capitalism, race, Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Sub- and the environment. The version of Identity. Yet LeGuin’s novel enjoys academic feminist literature much greater understanding and wider readership is not necessarily less fan- than Butler’s, which is filled with academic jargon tastical than sci fi treatments and lack of relate-ability to one’s own life. of the same subjects, just less circulated, less under- LeGuin’s other novel The Dispossessed is the stood, and ultimately less story of a scientist who is alienated from the anar- inspirational of radical imagi- chist society he lives in. He leaves his Utopian nation. home planet to work as a wealthy government sponsored scientist on the nearby capitalist The project of sci fi as an planet. On the capitalist planet the scientist be- inspiration of radical political “Is that an alien?” comes aware that his home he was previously dis- imagination is explored “No, that is an am- illusioned with is a truly better way of life and goes beautifully in Margret Killjoy’s biguously gendered on to lead a revolution on the capitalist planet. new collection of interviews person.” LeGuin offered a way of viewing politics beyond with anarchist fiction writers “Oh. Looks like an the Cold War paradigm of Capitalism and Com- Mythmakers and Lawbreak- alien to me.” munism that was very welcome at the time and ers. The message of all the Actual conversation still has a great deal to offer the modern political taking place in a femi- interviewed authors is that nist space. imagination. fiction, especially science fiction, is to expand the LeGuin shares this affinity with Philip Jose Farmer reader’s notion of what is within the realm of pos- whose books posed the Cold War in the terms of sibility. a futuristic space race – with an important alterna- tive of a political faction based on direct democ- Several such efforts of expanding the notion of the racy and federation among the fascist capitalism possible are evident in Ursala K. LeGuin’s novels and totalitarian communism of the competing The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispos- blocs of nation-states. .