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

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I bet they have more warriors than business people though. Lots of mainstream literature about the hero back from war, going to war, or whatever. All those stories like Cold Mountain that get turned into big Hollywood epics. I don't know for sure though because I don't read a lot of mainstream literature.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I bet they have more warriors than business people though.

I bet they don't. Look at all the small business folk who are the protagonists in detective novels. One of Easy Rawlins' defining characteristics is that he's actually quite a talented businessman, despite the constraints his deep-seated paranoia [1] put on him.

1: I don't know if paranoia is the right word, since white folk do screw him over on a routine basis.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I bet they don't. Look at all the small business folk who are the protagonists in detective novels.

Which leads to the conclusion that V.I. Warshawski is more of a capitalist than 90% of the protagonists in SF.