Socialism in Fantasy Fiction

Why is it that almost all fantasy fiction alludes to individualism and/or some variation of conservatism? I feel that story's about Marxist theory could work just as well in a fictional setting. Does anyone have any recommendations?

The future is conservative because the future is anti human, which obviously shits all over the humanist idealism that is the basis of all leftism. Deal with it.

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Star Trek

Future fiction is about navigating unknown landscapes and dealing with challenges, which appeals to the right-wing psyche. Space is a place for pioneers who want to live in the wild west again

When we try to do sci-fi we get star trek: people with magic free food machines flying around becoming friends with/compromising with aliens

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Yeah, it's usually about being on the edge of an expanding frontier which tends to mean less cohesion of civilization. There's fertile ground in that, though, if you portray civilization as more or less like current capitalism in the future and you establish a conflict between the oppressive nature of that civilization with the freedom associated with untamed wilderness. The Western genre has aspects of this in some stories, when it portrays conflicts between the capitalist cowboys and the primitive communist Indians (eg Dances with Wolves) but tends to really not explore the underlying materialist conflict. A lot of sci-fi tends toward some variation of Western-in-Space or Age-of-Sail-Colonialism-in-Space depending on civilization's level of development and proximity to the frontier. So I think a good place to look for potential Marxist (or just leftist) readings of space fiction is to look at Westerns and Age of Sail for inspiration about conflicts.

For Westerns you would probably focus on people living in the frontier - natives dealing with encroaching foreigners and settlers tasting life on the edge of civilization and developing a distaste (going native or seceding to form communes free of capitalist exploitation).

For Age of Sail you have pirates, who are proto-anarchists, and space pirates are well established though usually as generic baddies. There's plenty of pirate fiction, so it would not be all that groundbreaking to just have a story centered on space pirates that deals with how they build a functional society and fight the power.

Science fiction is almost never conservative, fantasy tends to be not because it reflects the writers’ views but because of the tropes and cliches that were allowed to infest it (pretty much Tolkien’s fault).

Also

Science fiction is constantly conservative. Look at Star Wars or Mass Effect, which are literally just liberal capitalism IN SPACE.

Modern science fiction is basically silicon valley liberal wankery, with way to much singulatarian transhumanist bullshit, and nonsense depictions of capitalism existing in its current form despite being set centuries in the future, or otherwise featuring technology that would make capitalism obsolete. However, it didn’t always used to be this way.

This. The more collective a society (the more specialized labor is), the more individual variation is enabled. At the extreme end, if everyone homesteads they have to spend all their time working on different things to survive and subsist. At the other extreme where everyone does just one or two things that supports lots of other people, that labor can be made much more efficient and people have much more time for things other than socially necessary labor.

Tbf the expanse is pretty leftist: actually a good reading of it would be Maoist tbh.

Palpatine did nothing wrong

Bolshevism in space, "what horror, cries out the rich rebel scum sympathiser".

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>"The galactic economy is a hypercomplex system, full of unexpected movements and ill-discerned effects, where the flutter of a pigeon on Trantor may create a typhoon on Bal'demnic. It is a mathematical organism with enough dependent variables to make the most devout Givin theoretician throw up his hands in defeat. This has by no means prevented attempts to harness it for political ends."

The rebels were reactionary liberals with corporate ties that had cozied up the previous liberal capitalist system and funded terrorism in order to subvert the empire.

I always recommend The Dispossesed by Ursula K. Le Guin because it's one of the most serious looks at the problems an anarcho-syndicalist society might face. I've heard Iain Bank's series The Culture to be good but haven't gotten around to reading it

Look into Soviet era sci-fi. I love Kir Bulychov, for example.

Star Wars is fucking fantasy you idiot. High technology setting=/=science fiction

B-but it has robots!

So does Eberron.

I actually started thinking a few days ago about how you could depict a post-capitalist society in a slice-of-live type story. A comfy story about someone who moves into a new town which is socialist. It would be about the MC getting used to a radicaly new society of co-ops, production for need, communes, non-alienatied societ, no currency and etc. Bonus points for not having a typical "socialist aesthetic", so minimal red flags and no hammers and sickles and etc.

because living in a world without conflict makes for a boring story

yeah, thats why it could be a slice of life story like

So take the Bookchin angle and make the conflict about different interests negotiating policy for the municipality. That kind of community involvement is pretty much absent from media and real life, so you'd be filling a significant gap.

So, suppose, miners arguing for a certain policy with the woodloggers?

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Then make it a conflict between socialist humanity and porky aliens.

Read the Culture series by Iain Banks. It's the best depiction of FALC ever put on paper.

Was this story individualistic / conservative?

don't some anime sort of already do this? The one with the robot in the future when humanity is dying out? Shin Sekai Yori despite being Fascist as fuck depicts a post Capitalist society as well. Too bad that society is a slave society based on extreme eugenics. Also Squealer did nothing wrong.

Honestly Star Trek is great Socialist fiction, sadly most Trek writers are hacks and try to write around Gene's Socialist vision instead of embracing it. This is why we get actual very little world building in Trek in terms of how the Federation actually functions and how people live in it.

Squealer did nothing wrong indeed comrade.

Sorry for the somewhat unrelated post; I'm currently 'world-building' a sci fi story featuring a planet-wide penal colony split between left-wing and right-wing political prisoners. After a revolt these two sections of the planet end up creating a socialist republic and a fascist one that are locked in a stalemate. Also the story is based primarily on Holla Forums and the leftypol-pol conflict.
Is this idea autistic or would it make a good premise for a book?