Sunday, July 16, 2017

How Larry Niven Made Donald Trump President (Sort Of)


The American press periodically ascribes the election of Donald Trump to working-class rural whites, but post-election polling tells a different story. DJT’s core support came from “respectable,” middle-class white suburbanites. It seems hard to believe that this staid cohort supported such a vulgar, racist demagogue, but it really shouldn’t surprise us. The suburban populace has historically chosen to live in a racially-segregated, socially isolated environment, and to view with suspicion city-dwellers and activist governments.

What did surprise me was my discovery, in reading David Forbes’s long article “The Old Iron Dream” (2015), of how strongly the reactionary ideology of the suburbs infused one of the most ostensibly progressive, escapist genres of American media: science fiction. Forbes observes that sci-fi has nurtured authoritarian and racist tendencies since at least the late 1950s, and that publishers and booksellers gave prime placement to the more fascistic sci-fi authors well into the 1980s. To an extent not found in contemporary mainstream literature, the “Iron Dream” writers indulged in thinly-disguised racism, less thinly-disguised elitism, sexism, authoritarian leader-worship, and a narrow definition of liberty. John Campbell, the much-lauded editor of Astounding Science Fiction, prefigured the SF reactionaries' racism in his editorials. Robert Heinlein became the most well-known example of the type, with his seminal military/authoritarian sci-fi novel Starship Troopers (1959, movie review here), his libertarian parable The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966), and his racist fantasy Farnham’s Freehold (1964).* Jerry Pournelle gladly assumed Heinlein’s mantle in the ‘70s and ‘80s, inveighing against revolutionaries, urban “barbarians,” and welfare cheats in his novels. He later colonized book racks with his There Will Be War anthologies, each a melange of masculine mil-porn and Cold War propaganda. Orson Scott Card, probably the hottest new SF writer of the 1980s, purveyed an increasingly toxic brew of elitism, moral casuistry, and right-wing paranoia. Piers Anthony, who seemed to have an entire bookcase to himself in some bookstores, laced his fantasy and SF novels with sexism and misogyny, not to mention occasional pedophilia. Much of the popular sci-fi of the Reagan era thus reinforced the attitudes that helped Reagan's conservative and reactionary successors (George I, George II, DJT) win elections and push their political agendas.   

Forbes adds another name to his list, though only as a part-time “Iron Dreamer:” Larry Niven. Niven seems and odd fit for this category. His Known Space stories and novels, written in the ‘60s and ‘70s - the most famous of them the classic RINGWORLD (1970) - featured exotic alien worlds, bizarre aliens, and morally easy-going if over-populated human societies. He did co-write several novels with Jerry Pournelle, such as LUCIFER’S HAMMER (1977) and OATH OF FEALTY (1981), which featured darker and more reactionary story lines. Most readers ascribe these stories' right-wing politics to Pournelle alone. This, on reflection, seems another mistake.

Educated in Kansas, Niven spent most of his life in southern California, where a large inheritance (family oil money) helped him begin his writing career. He liked the libertinism of 1960s Los Angeles, but it did not make him a liberal. Niven considered himself a “right-libertarian,” one willing to support the Vietnam War (he co-signed a 1967 pro-war petition) and Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"), and to advocate anti-immigrant policies. His Known Space novels and stories suggest that even early in his career, Niven leaned more to the conservative side of the libertarian spectrum. His future societies were libertarian utopias, populated by pleasure-seeking “flatlanders” (Terrans) and self-reliant, problem-solving miners and colonists. Not surprisingly, his heroes (like Beowulf Shaeffer and Gil Hamilton) tended to come from the latter elite group.** Niven did not obsess over welfare drones like his friend Jerry Pournelle, but he did base one alarming feature of his 22nd and 23rd-century societies, the Organ Banks, on a right-wing epigram beloved of Pournelle and Heinlein: democracy can only last until the poor realize they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. In Known Space, the “treasury” consisted of the bodies of criminals broken up for organ transplants, and the “poor,” the mass of unhealthy citizens willing to approve the death penalty for increasingly trivial crimes.

Niven later evoked the Organ Banks in his (2007) proposal that the Department of Homeland Security spread the rumor, in Spanish, that doctors were kidnapping emergency-room patients and stealing their organs. This would, he hoped, drive Hispanic immigrants away from public hospitals. Niven might perhaps say that he meant his “modest proposal” as a joke, but it is an unspoken rule in comedy that you avoid punching down. L.N. probably thought he was “punching upward,” because he sees poor non-Anglo immigrants as a threat, financial if not cultural.

Some of Larry Niven’s SF contemporaries went beyond mere elitism, anti-democratic skepticism, and anti-Latino racism to endorse authoritarian leader-worship. Pournelle admired monarchy and what he called “Iberio-Italian” fascism (i.e. Mussolini), and Orson Scott Card valorized ruthless warlords and religious leaders. Niven implicitly endorsed anti-democratic politics in LUCIFER’S HAMMER, in which the besieged heroes bring back slavery, and OATH OF FEALTY, whose heroes' massive gated community brings back feudalism. Even before these works, however, Niven included a troubling speculation about freedom in PROTECTOR (1973). In this later Known Space novel, an asteroid miner named Jack Brennan was transformed by an alien disease into a sexless monster - but a monster with enormous strength and superhuman intelligence. Asked by one of his former fellow humans to describe his new mental abilities, Brennan replied that he no longer had free will: he could immediately see the optimal course of action to take in any situation, and any other decision would have been a stupid one. This is a fairly narrow definition of intelligence, privileging problem-solving over creativity or kinesthetic acumen, but that's not altogether relevant in this context. The implication of Brennan’s revelation is that true freedom belongs to the young and stupid, and that those who want good, intelligent leadership cannot value freedom. It is a pretty short way from this to the conclusion that free societies are immature and stupid, and that the best leadership comes from supermen, warlords, or other autocrats.

So, let us not let Larry Niven off the hook. He had a lot more creativity and joie de vivre than his more didactic contemporaries, but he still shared their elitist, autocratic principles, and shared them with his impressionable readers. I was a big fan of Niven in my youth, having been introduced to his novels by my gaming buddies in the sixth grade, and read his fiction almost compulsively until I was eighteen. If I left my teen years feeling politically schizophrenic, this may have resulted from my dual interest in history, which introduced me to revolutionary idealism, and sci-fi, much of which told me that was dangerous hokum and that I should defer to my Republican political betters. Fortunately, my interest in history won out, and the emergence of a more progressive group of popular SF and fantasy writers - Kim Stanley Robinson, Iain Banks, Terry Pratchett, Nancy Kress - in the 1990s helped turn the genre back into one that offered a genuine escape from suburban reality.

That a small but dedicated group within the "alt-right" are now earnestly trying to restore Card, Pournelle, Heinlein, and their reactionary kindred to the center of the genre should alarm us. Youthful dreams shape adult attitudes, and the merchants of Iron Dreams apparently want adults who will support out-and-out fascism. Last year more than fifty percent of American voters my age and older voted for a fascist TV celebrity, and I will bet that at least some of my DJT-supporting contemporaries were old sci-fi fans. If we are to keep the millennials from climbing on the Trump-and-Brexit train, offering them alternatives*** to Heinlein, Niven, Vox Day, and their creepy future visions is essential.

(Photo of Larry Niven [2006] is by David Corby and licensed by him under Creative Commons. Space Nazi Armstrong photo via arcadiapod.com)


* Featuring a future African civilization that eats white babies.

** Louis Wu, the sybaritic flatlander hero of Ringworld, was a partial exception, but he was also a xenophile and explorer.

*** Examples of SF authors pursuing more progressive visions include Ann Leckie (author of Ancillary Justice and its sequels), Ted Chiang, Adam Rakunas, and Becky Chambers.

16 comments:

  1. tard, he didnt say that in so many words but he did say democracy is expensive and you need to be vigilant

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  2. Yes. I still enjoy some of the amazing ideas Niven came up with, he really but I couldn't read him now. Although... Maybe I put my own spin on it when I was a kid, but I always felt like Niven was saying 'Organ Banks - bad,' 'Arrogant authoritarian leaders - bad,' I felt like he was deliberately portraying an often-dystopian future, but not exactly endorsing it.

    Re-reading him now with context and experience, he does seem like typical white, male sci-fi writer of the past, though...

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    1. Organ banks are great, if you are not an unwilling donor or added to the donor pool because you are not of the elite and you J-walked.

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  3. Thank you for your comment. Some of the Known Space stories, particularly those dealing with Organ Banks ("The Jigsaw Man," A A GIFT FROM EARTH), were clearly dystopian. I think Niven would argue that the dystopian elements of his future civilization grew from 1960s welfare-state social trends of which he disapproved. I agree that I find his old stuff hard to read now - much of the social change he predicted (casual nudism, severe population control, current addiction) was just a projection of 1970s-era news stories, and is unlikely to come to pass.

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  4. Did you show this to your wife’s boyfriend before posting it?

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  5. Generally in agreement with you here but have to take issue with one point:

    "Brennan replied that he no longer had free will: he could immediately see the optimal course of action to take in any situation, and any other decision would have been a stupid one...The implication of Brennan’s revelation is that true freedom belongs to the young and stupid, and that those who want good, intelligent leadership cannot value freedom."

    I don't think that's a fair reading. The same idea is expressed in Ursula LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea by the protagonist's mentor Ogion: "The truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing but does only and wholly what he must do." LeGuin is hardly some right-winger!

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    1. Thank you for your thoughtful and stimulating comment. I take your point. Additionally, I no longer think Niven presented intelligence in this book as an unqualified good. His super-smart protectors, after all, spent most of their time fighting one another or preparing for war, activities that Niven found necessary evils at best.

      Thinking about PROTECTOR has reminded me of the novel’s ending, which (without giving too much away) shares some similarities with his friend Jerry Pournelle’s THE MERCENARY. Both books share protagonists who are estranged from mainstream society, and in both the main characters have to commit morally-indefensible acts for society’s greater good. Allow me to hypothesize that such scenarios were more commonly explored in the 1970s by conservative writers (of the “hard choices” school of conservatism) than liberal ones.

      The question of Leguin’s politics is a perplexing one. I agree that she was not right-wing. She also opposed the socialist or liberal-corporatist states of the mid-twentieth century, personified in real life by the Soviet Union and the United States, and represented in her fiction by Orgoreyn (LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS) and the oppressively-bureaucratized near-future U.S.A. of LATHE OF HEAVEN and “The New Atlantis.” At the heart of much of her fiction was a deep distrust of power, and a belief that men with power, however idealistic, almost invariably became destructive. It’s been a while (if forty years is “a while”) since I’ve read WIZARD OF EARTHSEA, but in those novels knowledge is powerful and power, I believe, is dangerous. Ogion presents his observation as descriptive, but I dare say it is also cautionary. If you have power and powerful knowledge, you must follow a very straitened path, or else you go to your and others’ destruction.

      Fans of Leguin will note her sympathy for left-wing anarcho-municipalism, of the kind developed by Murray Bookchin in the 1960s and explored in her THE DISPOSSESSED (1974). If asked, Niven might call himself a bit of an anarchist too, of the “right-libertarian” variety. (He has so described himself.) The main difference is that Niven is a laissez-faire capitalist and individualist, and Leguin was anti-capitalist and mutualist. The former ideology, as we have seen, leads to monopoly capitalism and social decay - to the cyberpunk dystopia most of us now inhabit. The latter ideology usually gets squashed by statists with big armies, so we don’t yet know where it leads.

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  6. I'm a big fan of Niven's early works, though I struggle with anything he wrote after 1979.

    As someone who is experiencing Niven's work a second time in context through Galactic Journey, he actually comes off as somewhat progressive. One of his earliest stories, One Face, features women as equal and important members of the crew, and race is casually mentioned (i.e. existing, but unimportant). This was unusual in 1965, though we take it for granted today.

    There's no question that he had an acquisitive taste when it came to plots (which is to say he made stories out of science articles he'd read the other day -- and I'm beginning to suspect that Ringworld and Riverworld have some kind of kinship), but if anything, that's more suggestive that he didn't have much of a political axe to grind, if any. I think he got or found clever ideas, turned them into stories, and sold them. Over time, he wove them together into a common universe, but not much of a common ideology. Also, Niven in recent years is likely not Niven of 55 years ago. I definitely wouldn't hold up something from 2007 as evidence of his beliefs in 1967. Tying Niven to Vox Day and Heinlein is really a stretch.

    Indeed, instead of linking Niven to Trump (which is facile) the real link is Niven to The Expanse, one of the most progressive science fiction shows yet. I'd wager that the pair that comprise its authors grew up on Niven because The Belt, as portrayed in the show, is more like Niven's Belt than any other rendition I've seen (and they're the right age to have grown up with Known Space).

    Anyway, there's no question that there are lots of great writers that could use amplification, and *I* certainly prefer progressive visions to conservative ones (there's a reason I reprinted Tom Purdom's 1964 book, "I Want the Stars" -- that one reads like it could have come out today), and Heinlein ranges from problematic to Good Lord, but singling out Niven, particularly early Niven, as an example of All That Is Wrong with Science Fiction seems misplaced.

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    1. Thank you for your comment. I don’t think I’d characterize this post as “singling out” Larry Niven, given that the introductory paragraph places him in the company of other conservative SF writers, rather than naming him as the most reactionary of the lot. In fairness, Niven does lack the ethnocentrism and racism of many of his peers, but he shares their dislike of powerful states and collectives, which are often the most effective means of fighting racism. His early heroes are generally libertarian techno-tricksters, like the rebels in A GIFT FROM EARTH and Beowulf Shaeffer in “Neutron Star” (though the latter’s trickery is actually scientific.) Arguably, Jack Brennan falls into this category, as he’s a loner who plays fast-and-loose with the law and enjoys making high-tech gadgets. Brennan, or at least his creator, also has a tough-love savior complex. Like John Falkenberg in Pournelle’s THE MERCENARY, Brennan and his protege Roy Truesdale are willing to “make tough choices:” to do unspeakable things to a large number of people in order to save an even larger number.

      Niven’s libertarianism doesn’t automatically make him a conservative. Ursula LeGuin, a leftie par excellence, shared other contemporary science-fiction writers’ dislike of powerful states and bureaucracies. She differed from Niven and his circle, however, in her distrust of hyper-individualism and the will-to-power that often supported it. She was much more interested in exploring the possibilities of anarchic collectives, held together by non-coercive mutual aid. Niven wasn’t very interested in utopias, and I doubt he would have valued an anarcho-syndicalist one.

      I have written of “Niven’s circle,” which suggests a tighter connection than your comment acknowledges. I will note that Niven partnered with the avowedly fascist-sympathizing Pournelle on at least half a dozen novels, beginning fairly early in his career (1974), and that he would certainly have appreciated the comparison to Heinlein (pre-1970 Heinlein, anyway), who was the “Dean” of the field when LN was writing his first stories. Niven’s support for the Vietnam War is also a matter of record. Perhaps he grew more conservative with age, but I don’t think this was connected to a particular change in the character or quality of his writing. LN’s books definitely declined in quality after RINGWORLD ENGINEERS, but I strongly suspect this stemmed from the author’s increasing devotion to marijuana and/or alcohol, and his willingness to coast on his earlier reputation, rather than a hardening of his heart and political views.

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  7. Thank you for the reply!

    "I don’t think I’d characterize this post as “singling out” Larry Niven,"

    Perhaps a different title for the article would have helped. :)

    "Niven does lack the ethnocentrism and racism of many of his peers, but he shares their dislike of powerful states and collectives, which are often the most effective means of fighting racism"

    This is an odd point to make -- that if someone writes about not liking powerful states inclines one to racism. And if that's not your point, what is your point?

    In any event, Niven didn't write politics. He wrote technical science fiction stories that occasionally mentioned politics. I think the closest he ever got was The State in the Leshy Circuit stories, which were more a dystopian projection of the result of overpopulation, and the organ bank laws, which were less to make a political point and more just to write stories using organlegging as a plot point. One might as well argue that the Svetz stories indicate Niven's thinly veiled disdain for the U.N...

    In any event:

    "His early heroes are generally libertarian techno-tricksters"

    Bey Schaeffer's a pilot. I can't recall his politics ever being expressed.

    I'll have to read Gift from Earth again as it's been a while and it was one of my less favorite books, but I recall the big bad there wasn't statism but apartheid-level classism.

    Counter examples include Luke Garner (and I appreciate the geriatric AND disabled representation) and Gil Hamilton, agents of a state. Heck, there are two hundred years of human history pre-Kzinti contact under the United Nations known as The Golden Age!

    As for guilt by association, I'm not sure why he enjoyed palling around with Pournelle, and with the exception of Inferno, I never enjoy N+P as much as N. But I've got friends who are more conservative than me, and I'm a bleeding heart liberal for the most part. More parts as time goes on.

    The Vietnam War is a tough razor to grade someone on. It's easy to see the error in retrospect, and I've nothing but respect for Al Franken's brother and my father-in-law, who escaped the draft through extreme methods. But the country was split pretty hard on it (again, I'm right in the middle of it right now, chronologically).

    My father was in favor of "making a parking lot out of Vietnam" when he was in college (easy for him -- too old for draft once it came) but by 1980, voted for John Anderson and was a confirmed Democrat by the late 80s. People change.

    And finally, *I* would love to be compared to Heinlein -- in a limited capacity. In fact, I do it all the time. When I'm selling my books, I describe them as Heinlein/Norton-style Juveniles updated for the 21st Century. That doesn't mean they're paeans to Libertarianism, Nudism, and Cats (though I can get behind the latter two); simply that they are upbeat, fast-paced, and aimed at all ages.

    They also star queer persons of color. :)

    Point being just because one can opine that "Niven would certainly have appreciated being compared to Heinlein" doesn't mean A) that it's true or B) that desiring that level of fame means espousing that individual's philosophies.

    I did not know Niven had suffered from substance abuse in his latter life, though it would explain a lot. Of all of the Old Guard I've met at conventions, he seems among the least well, and he comes off poorly when speaking.

    Long story short, one can draw a line between certain SF writers and the Puppies. The set of Trumpsters and the set of Puppies probably overlap a lot.

    If I were making a list of those SF writers, I probably wouldn't include Niven. Thus far, our pleasant conversation has not swayed me from that belief.




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    1. (also, regarding "powerful states and collectives, which are often the most effective means of fighting racism," powerful states and collectives are often the most effect means of promoting racism. My relatives were rendered into soap by one powerful state and hounded into gulag or pressured into exile by another.)

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  8. I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t mean to imply that anti-statists are naturally racist, but rather than racism is usually undergirded by strong social and political institutions - strong enough that it takes a powerful government to counteract them. The example I had in mind was the U.S. government of the 1860s and 1960s, not Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.

    Fair point about A Gift from Earth and Lucas Garner. Gil Hamilton is an interesting case, since he started his career as a Belter and became an ARM cop to help fight the organlegger menace on Earth (after emigrating there to get his arm back). And the State in A World out of Time does grow out of one of Niven’s excursions into speculative political science: it derives its despotic power from its status as a “water-monopoly empire,” a term Niven borrowed from political scientist Karl Wittfogel. For “water,” in this case, substitute “fusion power.” Such empires, Niven wrote, were very stable but also very vulnerable to outside attack, so not necessarily more secure over the long run than a more democratic society.

    I’ve read several interviews Niven did in the last decade or so, and he comes across more as a political naïf than an ideologue. I think he allowed himself to be roped into supporting a few conservative causes by more doctrinaire friends, like Poul Anderson (who organized the pro-Vietnam War letter in Galaxy) and Pournelle (who brought LN onto the pro-SDI Citizens Advisory Council). Past a certain point, though, a person who maintains a close professional friendship with a far-right conservative and espouses conservative causes has to stop calling themself apolitical.

    Thanks again for your posts.

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    1. "Niven ... comes across more as a political naïf than an ideologue"

      That hits the nail on the head. I don't think Niven's political thinking is sophisticated enough for his writing to have an agenda. :) (which is not the slur it might sound like -- I don't know how sophisticated my political thinking is, either.)

      "Past a certain point, though, a person who maintains a close professional friendship with a far-right conservative and espouses conservative causes has to stop calling themself apolitical."

      Maybe so. Certainly, I think a lot of the aversion for Niven stems from Mote and Lucifer's. Interestingly, A World out of Time, which I think is Niven's best book, is from the same era and has none of the offensive stuff in the N-P collaborations.

      I may be being overly charitable, but I've always thought the best parts of both of those collaborations came from Niven and the worst from Pournelle.

      As for Niven post-1979, well, the less we talk about that, the better. But pre-1980 Niven, I'll maintain, is not That Guy.

      And also well worth reading. :)

      Thank you as well! You are warmly invited to follow Niven's career (and everyone else's!) over at Galactic Journey (galacticjourney.org). It's currently February 1966 here.

      Cheers.

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    2. As an addendum, I actually met Larry this May. I was a keynote speaker at an astrobiology conference talking about astrobiology in the 1960s. I namechecked Niven a lot since he wrote cutting edge solar system science fiction in the mid 60s.

      As it turns out, he was *there* at the conference, sat in on the talk, had a great time, and we went out to dinner together.

      My assessment remains the same -- I don't think he ever had much of a political agenda. I think his worldview was shaped by growing up rich, not having to work, and not being particularly big on work, even with his writing (his words, not mine). He also has (or had -- we had a conversation that may have enlightened him) archaic views on homosexuality, believing it to be entirely genetic and entirely monolithic (i.e., everyone's on one end of Kinsey Scale or the other).

      But he was, and is, very nice, and I did not get fascistic or Trumpist vibes of any kind.

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  9. Trump's election in 2016 was mostly powered by exurbanites, and while he got votes in the more numerous suburbs they have swung MASSIVELY towards Democrats, pretty much universally with college educated voters trending leftwards the kind of people that would read Larry Niven. Rural areas and WWC areas off all types swung rightward and powered Trump to victory populated or not.

    In 2020, Trump laid off the anti immigrant rhetoric and because of COVID signed off the bipartisan stimulus checks which helped him with working class Latinos to a large extent. Support for the GOP is increasing among Latinos and their base is becoming more diverse.

    Education not race is becoming the primary divided line, poor TA's and adjuncts are working class but support Democrats regardless of race. While a wealthy pest control business owner or landscaping business owner tends to be a hardcore Trumpie.

    People who read for pleasure are moving towards the Democrats.

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