The giant evil mega-corporation and science fiction.

Science fiction has a tendency to show corporate officials as villains. Frankly, I don't have much of a problem with this, since, lets face it, many corporation officials are villians. However, the economic analysis that goes on in science fiction television is predictably weak, and the situation is not much more complex in film sci-fi either. The only corporation in science fiction that has really got the extended attention it deserves is Edgars Industries in Babylon 5. The whole fourth season of Babylon 5 examined how William Edgars, the head of Edgars Industries, sought to play Mr. Garibaldi off President Sherdian, in the hopes of buying time to develop an anti-telepath virus. Edgars motives are complex, yet believable for a corporate exec. He isn't an idealist, but Edgars is concerned that the telepaths, particularly Psi Corps, will end up dominating homo sapiens, and becoming homo superiors themselves. Edgars therefore seeks to eliminate the telepath menace before it becomes a power mundanes can not deal with. The portrayal of Edgars is suitably excellent for Babylon 5, as it shows how a good, or at least decent man, can be sucked into Nazi-like plots given the problems of his time.

Not many other shows have featured corporations in a major way. Blake's 7 occasionally delved into corporate politics, as did Doctor Who and the X-Files, but many series, most notably Star Trek, hardly touched on corporate greed, to their everlasting and eternal shame (the preacher in me, natch!). Here's hoping that the next dialectical mega-analysis of a mega-corporation in sci-fi isn't another fifty years away.

Reference under Marxism.

Karl Marx and the Triumph of Libertarian Sci-Fi

One of the most peculiar aspects of the science fiction genre is that it has been dominated, not by liberals, as is traditionally supposed, nor conservatives, but libertarians. Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gordon Dickson, The Prisoner, H. Beam Piper, and Robert Heinlein, among many others, could all be labeled libertarian in their outlook. So far as I know, only Mieville and Kim Robinson, among major authors, are socialist in outlook. The picture becomes even worse when one looks at fantasy, though the situation in both genres is improving. Fantasy literature has too often been dominated by right wing ideologues, like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. So what needs to change in the genre? I think, first of all, there needs to be a greater awareness of the plight of working class people, something Marxist fiction is particularly good at supplying. Secondly, publishers need to be challenged to diversify their production lines beyond the conservative\liberal, libertarian banners, to something more original, inviting voices from socialism and anarchism as well. Lastly, as the Sci-Fi Politico has pointed out before, the genre needs to accept individualistic voices, especially in TV and Film, rather than rely on retreads of old ideas. Only then will we have a genre that both Rand and Marx could be proud of.

Class in Science Fiction Television

For all its supposed racial liberalism, science fiction television has done a relatively poor job of addressing class issues. Farscape, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Doctor Who, Star Trek: Voyager, and Space 1999 all had nearly zero class analysis in their plots. The original Star Trek series "Cloud Minders,"
pictured to the left, is probably the most direct class analysis ever done by science fiction. It's one of the few science fiction TV episodes to question the nature and purpose of capitalism. While Star Trek ultimately came down on the side of capitalism, the "Cloud Minders" episode clearly implied that the workers were right in making demands for better pay and equipment. Unfortunately, Star Trek's insistence that poverty would disappear in the future ended up serving as a way of erasing working class people from the Star Trek universe. That universe is comfortably middle class, really upper middle class, with no discernible analysis as to how the Federation managed to achieve this poverty-less society. The Marquis, featured in later episodes of DS9 and Voyager at least showed us that Federation colonial policy wasn't all it's cracked up to be.

Babylon 5 did a somewhat better job of dealing with class. Security Chief Garibaldi clearly was a grunt, a guy who had seen better days. And two episodes, "A View from the Gallery" and "By Any Means Necessary" dealt with working class laborers and the issues they dealt with, including oppressive corporate bosses. Earth 2 was also fairly nuanced in its view of labor strife, not picturing a perfect future, but one in which class strife was epidemic. Battlestar Galactica (the reboot) pictured future humans using slave labor forces, as did Blake's Seven, so neither series could be accused of painting a bright picture of the industrialist class. Unfortunately, today, class is too often relegated to the background, in favor of simplistic analyses of race issues that usually end up condemning racial and ethnic minorities more than helping them. Science fiction television still needs a Marxist classic to match the fifty capitalist classics it has given us.