Posted by Tim Stretton on June 29, 1999 at 03:24:56:
Wow!
I come back from a week’s holiday to find the BBS packed full of thoughts on Vance’s politics. Here’s my tuppenyworth:
Vance’s plots consistently champion the individual against oppressive, corrupt or moribund societies. You could argue that shows a right-wing libertarian outlook; or simply that such seemingly one-sided contests make for good stories. Arguably sf - “Golden Age” sf, at least - is a right-wing genre and in using the conventions of the field a writer is not necessarily expressing his own political viewpoints.
Nonetheless Vance’s work shows a remarkable thematic consistency throughout his career: his attitude to the individual versus society seems little different in Night Lamp from that displayed in To Live Forever forty years earlier. Other good examples of “man against society” works are Emphyrio and Wyst.
Those who want to align Vance’s political leanings with their own convictions have an easier job if they are coming from the right than the left, given his emphasis on individual freedoms. The counter-argument is that those characters who find themselves in oppressive societies often feel a need to reform them by taking on unwelcome responsibilities – Gastel Etzwane, Emphyrio, Sklar Hast, Beran in The Languages of Pao. Even in these cases, though, the spur is usually personal rather than political. Vance’s inability or unwillingness to create convincing female characters also argues for a somewhat reactionary viewpoint.
To conclude, for me Vance embodies a political viewpoint to the right of centre where the individual is paramount over society and self-reliance is the key virtue. To a British reader this triggers off associations (whether favourable or otherwise) with Maggie Thatcher. That is some way from my own political viewpoint: but am I going to stop reading Vance? Never – and I even turn to Heinlein every now and again…
Cheers,
Tim.
PS to Gabriele: Terry Pratchett sets my teeth on edge, and I think Eric Frank Russell’s short stories are great! He also wrote a novel about alien infiltration of Earth which captured the paranoid feel of the X-Files decades ahead of its time. A neglected writer!