Crimethink: Politics and Speculative Fiction

by Megan Arkenberg, Greg Beatty, Romie Stott

Crimethink is a collection of essays exploring the ways in which politics and the literature of the imagination intersect. All proceeds are donated to Doctors Without Borders.

Genres: Science Fiction

90 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2010

About the author

Megan Arkenberg is an award-winning writer, poet, and editor of speculative fiction. Her work has appeared in Asimov's, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and dozens of other places. She blogs sporadically at Bitter Irony.

Reviews

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uneven - about two-thirds consists of excellent pieces, but (I think) they're mixed with examples of the kind of tripe that passes for deep thought in too much of academia. Not that I have anything against academia, given that I spent about a decade getting three degrees, but it's about the only place (except in law books and the rites of government) that the people running the circus missed the memo that says the goal of writing is to get your ideas across as clearly as you can.

Anyway, it's worth reading for that two-thirds that really is written to communicate, because those authors have some interesting ideas to share. I particularly like Gary Westfahl's essay titled "No News is Good News: What Science Fiction Leaves Out of the Future #1" - it shines a light on some common blind spots in the genre, asking why some professions are underrepresented or absent among characters and why the default form of government is the empire, often a dystopian one, when the trend of human history is to leave the creation of empires behind (and when at interplanetary distances, it would be nearly impossible to exert enough influence/control to hold one together.)

It's a quick read at 85 pages, and worthwhile for authors of science fiction and/or fantasy for the sake of the questions it raises to the level of conscious choices rather than unexamined assumptions.