Well, sure, on the sci-fi side, but what about fantasy? Tolkien has had his influence on our greatest political minds. Or have we all forgotten Senator Rick Santorum's wise words on terrorism and the Iraq war? "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S. You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."

Oh. Oh wait, I'm sorry. EX-Senator Rick Santorum. EX. Ha ha ha ha ha.

In fact, 1984 can be read practically as a dissertation on the relationship between politics and political rhetoric.

Thank god someone did it.

I remember that "Star Wars" was a really hot political term being tossed around in the 80's, being that Reagan nicknamed his missile defense system after the movie -- to the point where George Lucas actually tried to tell the government they couldn't use the copyrighted term (they laughed in his face). To this day I think Star Wars influences the military weapons industry, which is in a way political.

I also think that Terminator I and II have had a large impact, though perhaps more subtle, on American politics. And I'm not just talking about Arnold.

@braak: I might add Fahrenheit 451 to the list, though I'd be hard-pressed to put my finger on just how it made an impact on politics.

@Crash Launching: hehe, nice one. As a political science graduate, I can tell you that the act of predicting the future for previous generations of political philosophers has its hand in science fiction. Not as we know it today, of course, but the idea that cutting edge technologies that are ubiquitous within our every day lives certainly changes the way the world works. Not only that, but it also forces states to re-adapt their local and foreign policies, as tripping up could mean a much more massive scandal than before. What if, for example, civilians in Iraq caught British or American soldiers killing innocents, then posted it on Youtube? What sort of political repercussions could this have?

In terms of political theorists of yore, I like to think back to Heidegger who sort of predicted this state of humankind where, because of the excess in technology that would make our lives abundantly easy, that we humans would seek extreme forms of gratifying risk behaviors to make up the tediousness of our daily lives. How has this come true? Extreme sports like sky diving is one example. For the less courageous, Halo tournaments and World of Warcraft occupy the otherwise boring moments of those with enough income to sustain them. Even the internet is a new form of distraction for the masses.

How does this affect politics? Well, for one thing, the internet provides a open access source of information, whereas the TV is a one way communication device. Politicians are wise to this, though they don't need to watch any sci-fi movies to figure it out :)

@NefariousNewt: Certainly, I don't know that it provided any specific vocabulary to the debate--though I think it added a lot of emotional value to the danger in the idea of book-burning.

But then, we're moving into an anti-intellectual atmosphere in the US now, so maybe its cachet is wearing thin?

@livinglogic: You don't watch or read sci-fi to know how technology is changing out political atmosphere now. You do it so that you can have plans in place for how technology is going to change the political environment twenty years from now.

Politicians, honestly, seem to be one of the slowest groups to catch up on the tech advents.

the closer we move to universal, persistent connectivity the more direct democracy becomes a legitimate replacement for representative democracy.

@tetracycloide: That is true.

@braak: Do you really think that the US is moving in that direction? What with independent bloggers gaining so much attention as publishing costs are made up mostly of web-hosting fees? Perhaps it is, I'm currently living in Vietnam, so it's hard for me to get a firm understanding of how the intellectual state of the masses is being affected. Do you think technology is aiding the intellectual state of North Americans, or is it simultaneously (or simply) harming any progress? And also, I've noticed from living in a Socialist country, where university students are not even allowed to write short essays on why Democracy may even be slightly better than Socialism for fear of being reported to the state, is a bit more extreme than what is happening in the US, I think.

But @braak: it's a system of tubes!

@tetracycloide: Though I agree 100% with this statement, I fear that the true meaning of one's participation in democracy is demeaned by the ease of use of said universal connectivity. Who is the better subject of a democratic state, person A)who actively participates in politics by attending rallies, meets with others to discuss current international problems, acts to solve these in the real world, or person B)who makes all of his/her political decisions based on the information provided by the screen, and who never has to leave their comfort zone?

@livinglogic: Frankly, I'm not sure. There's a lot of problems with accepting the "blogosphere" (god I hate that word) as a definitive mark of progress, because for every well-informed and intelligent blogger, there are at least fifty idiot bloggers. Because being a blogger is so essentially cheap, it's easy to create a system that is 90% misinformation. So, that doesn't help.

Combine that with limited education for a lot of people, and technology rapidly evolving in complexity--far enough that the average person has trouble understanding both the technology itself and its ramifications--and I think that there's the potential for a lot of resistance towards new technologies.

Also, I'm not sure it's necessarily accurate to make Democracy the opposite of Socialism, as they kind of aren't on the same scale. I mean, it's your country, and you know what people aren't letting you write, but democracy is how the laws are made, and socialism is one way that the laws can be arranged.

@aspiringexpatriate: Oh, man, I sent an e-mail last Wednesday, and it didn't get to my boss until today because the maintenance man had forgotten to grease all the tubes in the office.

@braak: hehe, blogosphere, I hate that too. I prefer the term 'blogotron,' personally.

Now, I don't want to be difficult, but I do feel it necessary to compare Socialism to Democracy, only if we concentrate on the role of the individual within each. In the former, we see the deconstruction of the individual's rights and powers, whereas the latter reinforces them to extremes. This is indeed simplified, as books upon books were and continue to be written on these two political spheres.

I agree what you say about the loads of craptastic blogs vs the actual decent ones. I do think that eventually more accurate methods of discerning between the two will arise, but for now I have to go read Tila Tequila's blog about her totally fab lifestyle ;)

@livinglogic: Socialism is an economic system and democracy is a system of government. The two are not directly comparable. I think you have socialism the economic system mixed up with the totalitarian regimes that purported to be socialist.

In a totalitarian regime socialism means everything is owned by the state and the state is owned by an individual or group of individuals like china or the former U.S.S.R. In a democratic country it is possible to elect officials that enact socialist laws so that the government is actually controlled by the people like in many countries in present day Europe.

@livinglogic: To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that no one's sat down and figured out a way to build an explicit "Reputations Market," a la Accelerando. I feel like this is going to be the way that the blogo...the thingie...regulates itself sometime in the next couple of years.

@tetracycloide: Whooo, look at us discreetly engaging with issues about political systems and not coming to blows! One thing we can both agree on: what things are called!

@tetracycloide: Yeah, people often get confused about that. It's because they assume that democracy = capitalism, which it needn't. In fact some would say capitalism can be destructive of democracy, since capitalism is based on elitism (a few people own most of the capital) and democracy is based on populism (everyone votes and has an opportunity to enter the political system).

@braak: o right, sorry about that... where was i... eviscerate the proletariat!

@tetracycloide: DIE CAPATLIST SCUM!

Pff, I say. Yes, pff.

Your average person thinks "Big Brother" is fine entertainment, a bunch of idiots locked up in a house doing stupid things on TV.

You could probably power a small city with the revolutions from Orwell's grave from that alone.

Well, wasn't there a new marketing thing in the London Underground, where the Transit Authority wanted to make people feel safe by putting these posters up saying that everyone was always being watched, and they just terrified the shit out of people?

Orwellian and Big Brother were not uncommon ways to describe that plan.

In the end, you always end up loving Big Brother...

Socialism does not lead to Totalitarian states, Tetra, I concede to this point. In fact, I was never in disagreement. To clarify my point, when considering the effects that extreme, left wing socialism has on the lives of individuals, you see how easy it is for a one party state to control the minds, values, and sense of individualistic power of its citizens. You cannot compare Eastern European states that call themselves socialist to China or a South East Asian country like Vietnam, as the extremities of the left are pushed beyond the realm of 'socialist ideologies coming to life within a Democratic system'. In my home country of Canada (sounds exotic, no?), we have managed to sustain a universal health care system due largely in part to the values held by left wing leaning (socialist) parties. However, in more extreme cases, like Vietnam, totalitarianism is the result of the diminished and nearly non-existent power of the individual over social issues involving the state, over land ownership, business ownership, basic property, etc. Here, they don't even have health care. Why? Because socialism in full-bloom allows for a very different image of left wing politics than we imagine in the West. In this example, Socialism can be balanced against democracy not as diametrically opposing political systems (I admit I went a bit far earlier in doing so), but rather as ideologies which commit its citizens to completely different ways of living their lives. Yes, Vietnam has but one political party which bullies its way into all matters of its people, and yes (I have concluded) that it is caused by Socialism in an extreme incarnation.

How the hell did we get on this topic anyways? I want some Pho!

Atlas Shrugged Anyone?

Aynn Rand's fantasy is the essence of NeoConservatism!

Just take two of the "book's" major themes:

First, nature's endless bounty is there for for the strong to simply take. Colorado! All those resources there for the raping! Who cares if someone else owns them, the strong take what they need from the weak.

Second, there is no need to worry when reality of a finite planet with limited resources comes crashing down, because a quick technological fix will be invented to give everyone "zero-point" free energy. Well not everyone, obviously the weakling-poor-folk don't deserve cool technology.

Who was the unnamed Bush official who said it best: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." ?

If this is not John Gault, I'll eat my hat.

@livinglogic: It's interesting, but, of course, you could argue that totalitarianism is also the natural result Capitalism (if that's what we're holding up as the opposite of socialism).

That is, society is moderated by energy exchanges, and some individual actor seizes control of these exchanges and is thus able to dominate whole societies. The difference, I suppose, is that a Socialist totalitarian state is one in which the individual's rights are subsumed (in theory) in service to the good of the community, while in a capitalist totalitarian state, the individual's rights are subsumed in service to the ruler.

In practice, I think they both end up being like the latter.

Planet of the Apes gave the US our aggressive gun lobby.

@ BRAAK: The messages in the Tube are creepy, but compaired to the fact that you aren't warned out on the city streets it's nothing. Watching the CCTV (closed circut TV) cars drive around watching their remote cameras bothered me more. When I was living in London they would sit in their little car outside my flat window and watch the cameras on the block. From where I was I could see their screen and what exactly they were watching. They have amazing amounts of control over those little cameras too.

For the record, I don't think 1984 is the *only* SF book that changed politics, just that it's an interesting case study.

I'm particularly interested in how words frame discussions, whether or not they have SF origins: two of my favourites at the moment are "filesharing" (yay!) and "politically correct" (boo!).

I think post-apoc stuff like Mad Max has also had an impact: it's a conservative view of what would happen without government, and it's become the de facto stand in for what anarchy would look like for lots of people.

@tetracycloide: Good point about comparing socialism to democracy.

If we didn't have 1984? I imagine we'd use GOOD dystopian fiction instead.

Capitalism gave birth to Socialism by creating the proletariat. Capitalism never was democracy it was forced down its throat by the abject working standards and lack of rights for the common man and woman. Democracy all to often is a weak excuse for giving up the right to chose your destiny as we put a tick on abit of paper every four years or so and then complain about those we abdicate to. Socialism is not state socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat has become the party and to go against the party is to go against the people. One big Boss or lots of little Bosses ...

I'm off to read Ursula K LeGuin's The Dispossessed!

I am so happy to know that someone else groks the impact of ID4 on the neocons.
In fact, this little gem is indirectly responsible for their successful election....because honestly, it's hard not to be influenced once Bill Pullman gets all Presidential.

"...and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!"

Ultimately, the neocons forgot that unity bit...and they didn't have Jeff Goldblum in reserve to save the day.

Yous might want to check out 2002's Science Fiction and World Politics (edited by Jutta Weldes). The Intro talks about some of the issues raised here, especially science fiction's role as providing language to talk about alternatives to status quo.

Also (unsurprisingly?) the rhetoric of science fiction and its interconnections with politics is a growing field in International Studies these days with most researchers focusing on TV shows (e.g. Battlestar Galactica). I'd say it's making the the study of world politics more fun than it'd otherwise be!

@bluesaranwrap: Oh, whoah! They really do that? I thought they made that up in V for Vendetta.

@DAppammattoxx: Interestingly, the Independence Day speech in ID4 shares a remarkable similarity in sound and content to the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V., which often served as a similar cultural touchstone for the English.

@BRAAK: Nope, definitely do it. If you walk around Central London, even if just from your tube stop to work then to lunch you'll have your photo taken on average of 300 times. Granted I was in an American student study center who seemed to have their own dedicated cameras. Strangely enough there are 3 visible right outside of the building that inspired Orwell to write 1984. Truth seems to be stranger than fiction, huh?

@braak: I wish people would look more closely at F451. It's more than a little eerie how prophetic parts of it are. Not the book-burning parts, but the anti-intellectual, no-attention-span culture? It's disturbing.

@snarkhunting: Ironically, the people who are the most likely to do that, and the people who are best able to learn the lesson that it offers, are also the people least in need of it.

A new word just blurped out of me after consuming this page, well, skimming it, and I'm afraid to say it. Mormonoscopy.

@Annalee Newitz: The trouble is we do not now have nor did our founding fathers intend a true "democracy". I>E Novotes for women, African Americans as chattel, Native Americans hunted, and the only people who could and did vote were LAND OWNERS.