No conservative scifi geek's bookshelf would be complete without Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a novel about a dystopian future America full of nasty anti-capitalists who want to feed the poor and crush innovation. Slowly, our industrial capitalist main character realizes that other "atlases" of industry — the rich elites whose businesses make the world go round — are disappearing. It all has to do with this giant motor that turns "atmospheric static electricity" into "kinetic energy." And a secret underground world where all the planet's innovators and capitalists have hidden themselves in order to create a perfect utopia of innovation and individualism. The novel has been a favorite allegory for generations of free market libertarians, and even inspired the videogame Bioshock.

A much more radically conservative scifi novel is The Turner Diaries, written by "Andrew Macdonald," a fictional account from a foot soldier who fought in the white-power revolution in the United States. This is the novel where we first see the term ZOG, for "Zionist occupational government," which is what the revolutionaries in the book call the U.S. government, which is full of blacks and Jews and other terrible people. Written in the 1970s in gritty, disturbingly-engaging prose, the novel tells the story of how a rag-tag cell of soldiers works together with other bands to take over the U.S. government and murder blacks and Jews across the nation to create a white utopia. This is the novel that has inspired many Christian Identity groups and white-power militias in the United States, and a copy was found in the car of Timothy McVeigh, one of the men involved in the 1991 Oklahoma City bombing.

The bestselling Left Behind series, which has also been made into a movie, is science fiction for the Christian right. It's the simple tale of what happens when the Jews and Arabs finally make peace, and then the truly God-loving Christians are raptured up to heaven. Those who are left behind to face Armageddon must find their way toward heaven, or get ready for hell! There's a reason why these books are bestsellers: they're action-packed and intense, and they make an effort to translate present-day politics into a Biblical framework.

Of course there are plenty of right-wing science fiction classics to be found on video too. 1980s cold war paranoia flick Red Dawn tops the list, with its tale of what happens when the Soviets invade a small Colorado town. Unfortunately the Russkies didn't bargain on high school teacher Patrick Swayze and the whole high school football team becoming super-ninjas who can easily defeat them! It was a rah-rah Reagan moment of near-future scifi that might be one of the only examples of right-wing camp.

Then there's the strange Christopher Lambert movie Fortress, about a future where the United States is run by cruel abortionists and environmentalists, who won't let couples have more than one baby. Our hero is trying to flee to Mexico in order to have his second child with his wife. Like Atlas Shrugged, this conservative scifi shows us a liberal dystopia which rugged individuals must escape to be free.

Are these science fiction scenarios really any less compelling than liberal ones? Or are all politically-minded scifi scenarios doomed from the start to be bad fiction because they are attempts to shoehorn plot into philosophy rather than teasing many ideas out of a strong plot?

• Say what you will about the meh movie version of comic book Constantine, but Tilda Swinton's awe-inspiring depiction of the fallen angel Gabriel makes up for Keanu Reeves' mumbles. This androgynous angel is more like a beautified version of Predator than a fluttery creature you read about in Sunday School. She punches, kicks, growls, and gets her wings burned down to goth-gorgeous stumps, and still keeps on fighting the bad guys. Or is she fighting the good guys?
• Lyda Morehouse has a series of Unitarianpunk novels, including Archangel Protocol and Fallen Host, about angels who suddenly start appearing on the immersive internet-like communication network of the late twenty-first century. In a world where you must be part of a religion (any religion, including Pagan) in order to have access to social services, the creatures become a political and social issue of the utmost importance. But are they genuine spiritual beings who have chosen to reveal themselves on the 'net? Or are they just AIs with alien connections who have gained self-awareness?
• In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, including The Golden Compass, a young girl named Lyra and her companions fight to dethrone God (known as The Authority) and his band of fascist angels (known as angels). Although it's undeniable that the Authority and his angels have tremendous power — they can fly, have what seem to be spaceships, and are superstrong — they seem more like alien or mutant powers than spiritual ones. In fact, part of Pullman's point is that the creatures we think of as angels and gods may just be alien creatures with powers we don't understand. Deifying them may not be the best idea.
• One reason why so many science fiction fans love Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel is that the shows' demons and devils (and occasional appearance from the godlike Powers That Be) are so damn alien-like. Hanging out in Sunnydale near the Hellmouth, or in that demon Karaoke bar in Los Angeles, is like walking into the sleazy bar on Tatooine where Luke met Han Solo. Buffy creator Joss Whedon is a known science fiction buff (he also created Firefly), and neither of his shows make any effort to give spiritual explanations for the rubber-headed baddies and goodies who haunt Buffy and her Scooby Gang. Basically, Buffy could be Buffy the Alien Hunter if you just called the Hellmouth the Dimension Doorway (or the Stargate).
• A favorite plotline in the Star Trek franchise is the God or angel who turns out to be nothing more than an annoying alien. Sometimes the alien calls the humans "ugly bags of mostly water," and sometimes it teaches them a lesson, and sometimes it just becomes the desktop background of people who like to laugh at the more embarrassing moments in cheesy SF. Nevertheless, Star Trek's ongoing obsession with unmasking spiritual beings as material ones marks it as one of the best places to find angels who are really aliens.

And don't even get me started on aliens who are really angels. That, as they say, is another post.