I don’t think it’s any stretch of the imagination to say that not all of the authors I talked to would agree with each other about much more than the desire for an anarchist society, if that. I’ve spoken with pacifists and insurrectionary anarchists, with anti-civilization authors and pro-technology ones. But they’ve all got a lot to say about storytelling, a lot to say about society. I’m glad to get them under one cover.
Mythmakers & Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction
Rating: 5/5 stars
I approached Mythmakers & Lawbreakers a big fan of Robinson, Moore, and Le Guin, and being somewhat familiar with CrimethInc., Jensen, Moorcock and Professor Calamity (who came to my attention for his G-20 Twittering arrest and against whom charges have recently been dropped). As such, most of the interviewees were new voices to me, and my to-read list has correspondingly expanded (I’m particularly pumped to read one of Lewis Shiner’s novels; his short stuff, available here, is fantastic). This collection often surprised me (pleasantly, as when Alan Moore spouted off about alternative currencies, unpleasantly, as when Starhawk self-identified as a progressive democrat and said, “Go Obama, we need more regulation…”), prompted me to scrutinize my own premises and goals regarding anarchy and literature (individually and, like, together) and for shizzle inspired me to kick my own fictional endeavors into high gear.
Killjoy also covers a lot of ground in his marvelous appendices (I was set to be all like, “WTF, why didn’t suchandsuch make the cut?” but I got nothin’), with a paragraph or so each about other self-proclaimed anarchist fiction writers (listed here), “Also Of Note” authors who’ve been “adopted” (Wilde, Tolkien, Shaw, Kafka, Joyce, Huxley, Jack London, Frank Herbert, Hugo Ball: What yinz stiffs gonna do about it?), and lists of “Stories that explore anarchist societies”, “Stories that fictionalize anarchist history”, “Stories that feature sympathetic anarchist characters”, and “Stories that feature anarchists as villains”.
These lists alone make Mythmakers & Lawbreakers praiseworthy, but as the interviews are all entertaining as hell, there’s really no reason not to pick it up (through the above link, presuming it’s out of stock at your local independent bookseller/infoshop) immediately… presuming you’re, you know, a real anarchist/SF geek and not just some joker. Killjoy concludes,
And honestly, we just need stories with some damn teeth.
I’d add, echoing the interviewees, shiny ones.
Happy reading and writing and cuídate.
