Is SF anti-capitalist?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Or at least deeply uninterested in it?

Sure, there's lots of Yay Free Marketism but how often do books focus on non-malevolent companies [1]? I think Flynn's do (but I can't read him) and so do wossname's books about the immortal time salvagers (but the Company in that does not seem all cuddles and happy songs around the campfire). There's Moon, but even her business adventure series seems to have turned into MilSF.

This may be related to the dearth of people who work for a living doing anything but stealing stuff or shooting people.


1: MARKET FORCES, for example, does focus on a particular company and its stuggle to prevail but I believe that if one looks very closely, some elements could be interpreted as being critical of modern capitalism.

Comments

Hey, maybe I should have included my unspoken qualifier

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Recent SF.

Old time SF is filled with people working for companies, many of whom were not plotting to suck out their employees eyes to sell the contents on the internation eye-jelly market.

Re: Hey, maybe I should have included my unspoken qualifier

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Does _Zodiac_ count as recent?

Re: Hey, maybe I should have included my unspoken qualifier

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Sure. Let me reduce my weasling room by specifying a cut-off date: March, 1981.

Re: Hey, maybe I should have included my unspoken qualifier

[james-angove.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem, at least in the last five years or so, may be the decision of many in corprate leadership roles to find new and innovative ways to combine "evil" with "stupid"

Sean McMullen's recent fantasies have a trading vessel it them. Were there any non-malevolent corporations in _Singlarity Sky_ or _Iron Sunrise_?

Varley's _Red Thunder_.

Flint's 1632 and 1633, those people start companies like crazy.

Re: Hey, maybe I should have included my unspoken qualifier

[autopope.livejournal.com]

"Singularity Sky": no corporations, the Festival ate them all. (Anyway, it was a critique of the monarchical principle and, to a lesser extent, a reductio ad absurdam for Straussian politics. Not much scope for corporations in a future dominated by philosopher-princes and their catspaw warriors, eh?) Iron Sunrise: Frank the Nose is effectively a large chunk of a roving News corporation. The interstellar liner is owned by a transport corporation who don't actually rip off their customers or mistreat their staff. The security company in chapter 3 is making the best of a bad job. The Bad Guys(™) in "Iron Sunrise" aren't corporate, in fact they're posthuman industrial feudalists along the lines of a nanotech-assisted Third Reich.

So yeah, no evil corporations in either book -- the evil is associated with authoritarian (monarchist/fascist) political structures.