50 Sci-Fi & Fantasy Works Every Socialist Should Read by China Mieville
Originally from https://fantasticmetropolis.com/i/50socialist/full/
This is not a list of the “best” fantasy or SF. There are huge numbers of superb works not on the list. Those below are chosen not just because of their quality—which though mostly good, is variable—but because the politics they embed (deliberately or not) are of particular interest to socialists. Of course, other works—by the same or other writers—could have been chosen: disagreement and alternative suggestions are welcomed. I change my own mind hour to hour on this anyway.
Yanggongju as an allegory of the nation: Images of working-class women in popular and radical texts
Hyun Sook Kim's essay examining representations of working-class South Korean sex workers for U.S. military in popular and radical texts, both of which fix the identities of the women as "bad"/"good" and treat the female body as a metaphorical map of the Korean nation.
Published in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism (2012).
The Dispossessed
Full online text -- as well as pdf, epub, and mobi files -- of Ursula Le Guin's anarchist sci-fi classic The Dispossessed.
Metropoliteno - Vladimir Varankin
Romano de Vladimir Varankin verkisto de Esperanto por Laboristoj. El la eldonejo "Sur la paĝoj de «Metropoliteno» vi legos pri la eventoj, kiuj kaŭzis naskiĝon de naziismo en Germanio kaj uzurpon de potenco en USSR far la koterio de Stalin."
Extracts from Carbonia (We Were All Communists)
Selections from Carbonia (We Were All Communists), Balestrini's novel of class struggle in a mining town
‘To live outside the trial’: Anarchist implications in Foucauldian readings of Franz Kafka’s 'In the Penal Colony' and 'The Trial'
An academic article by David Tulley about Franz Kafka’s engagement with anarchist theory in relation to two of his novels.
The Mexican - Jack London
Jack London's short story about a boxer who prize fights to fund the Mexican revolution.
In the mirror - Krailat
Kon Krailat's short fiction about an alienated male sex worker.
The railway hamlet - Chaiwat
Chatcharin Chaiwat's short fiction about the gruesome workplace death of a Thai railway worker and the identifical fate of his son years later.
Before reaching the stars - Wanlyangkun
Wat Wanlyangkun's 1975 short fiction about a Thai mother following the assassination of her student activist son. Included is an introduction by the late Benedict Anderson.
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