Michael Moorcock’s Starship Stormtroopers - (From Michael Moorcock’s “The Opium General” Harrap (1984), reprinted from Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review 1978)
Another example: in 1967 Judith Merril, a founder member of The Science Fiction Writers of America, an ex-Trotskyist turned libertarian, proposed that ’ this Organisation would buy advertising space in the sf magazines condemning the war in Vietnam. I was around when this was proposed. A good number of members agreed with alacrity – including English members like myself, John Brunner, Brian Aldiss, Robert Silverberg and Harry Harrison were keen, as were Harlan Ellison, James Blish and, to be fair, Frank Herbert and Larry Niven. But quite as many were outraged by the idea, saying that the SFWA ‘shouldn’t interfere in politics.’ Okay, said Merril, then let’s say ‘The following members of the SFWA condemn American involvement in the Vietnam War etc.’ Finally the sf magazines contained two ads – one against the war and one in support of American involvement. Those in support included Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Ann MaCaffrey, Daniel F. Galouye, Keith Laumer and as many other popular sf writers as were against the war. The interesting thing was that at the time many of the pro-US-involvement writers were (and by and large still are) the most popular sf writers in the English-speaking world, let alone Japan, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, where a good many sf readers think of themselves as radicals. One or two of these writers (British as well as American) are dear friends of mine who are personally kindly and courageous people of considerable integrity – but their political statements (if not always, by any means, their actions) are stomach-turning! Most people have to be judged by their actions rather than their remarks, which are often surprisingly at odds. Writers, when they are writing, can only be judged on the substance of their work. The majority of the sf writers most popular with radicals are by and large crypto-fascists to a man and woman! There is Lovecraft, the misogynic racist; there is Heinlein, the authoritarian militarist; there is Ayn Rand, the rabid opponent of trade unionism and the left, who, like many a reactionary before her, sees the problems of the world as a failure by capitalists to assume the responsibilities of ‘good leadership’; there is Tolkein and that group of middle-class Christian fantasists who constantly sing the praises of bourgeois virtues and whose villains are thinly disguised working class agitators – fear of the Mob permeates their rural romances. To all these and more the working class is a mindless beast which must be controlled or it will savage the world (i.e. bourgeois security) – the answer is always leadership, ‘decency’, paternalism (Heinlein in particularly strong on this), Christian values… [emphasis added]
What can this stuff have in common with radicals of any persuasion? The simple answer is, perhaps, Romance. The dividing line between rightist Romance (Nazi insignia and myth etc.) and leftist Romance (insurgent cavalry etc.) is not always easy to determine. A stirring image is a stirring image and can be ,employed to raise all sorts of atavistic or infantile emotions in us. Escapist or ‘genre’ fiction appeals to these emotions. It does us no harm to escape from time to time but it can be dangerous to confuse simplified fiction with reality and that, of course, is what propaganda does.
Thanks to @GilbertWham for directing me to the text
