Using the Program of the North American
Science Fiction Convention in Puerto Rico in July of 2017 to which I will MIGHT
go someday if I recognized any of the names on the guest list… to go, I will
jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION
given in the pdf copy of the program. The link is provided below…
FRIDAY 2:00 PM - San Cristobal The Future of Local/National/Planetary Government in the Information
Age: Our current government
structures arose in the age of face-to-face communication. With individuals
able to "talk" instantly to people anywhere on the globe and governments
able to share information effortlessly, does either representative to
geographically defined government fit the emerging paradigm? How long before things change. Or will they?
Chris Gerrib: Author of 3 books that take place on Mars.
W. A. (Bill) Thomasson: Professional medical writer assisting
researchers with journal articles and grant applications.
David Manfre: Attended Bouchercon and Deadly Ink numerous
times, degree in English, working on stories.
Tanya Washburn: Studied archaeology and history, graduate of
Harvard Extension School and helps to coordinate ARISIA “New England's Largest,
Most Diverse Sci-Fi & Fantasy Convention”.
Pablo Vazquez: Revolutionary scholar, Voodoo Loa at night, half
of mime group, Mr. Saturday & Sixpence, San Antonio Neo-Victorian
Association and AetherFest chair.
We tend to assume
governments will stay the same. I think this is one reason our world is
currently in an uproar: governments have changed. The previous ideology no
longer holds sway, another ideology has taken over and (as happens whenever ideologies
shift), the side out of control protests, fully expecting that their protests
will alter either the timeline, the vote count, or everything that surrounds
the current regime so that they may comfortably go back to doing Things The Way
They Should Be Done.
Yet, as
speculative fiction writers who fiddle with time, timelines, characters, and
sexuality (we’ve been fiddling with THAT since Harlan Ellison introduced
DANGEROUS VISIONS in 1967), as a group we seem awfully…mono-political…
For some reason,
our heroes (rarely our heroines) seem to be tilting consistently at windmills
that more-or-less conform to the more-or-less accepted POV one finds in the
specfic community, which itself seems split between liberal/libertarian and
conservative; though the liberal/libertarian seems to have the loudest voice
and so calls many of the shots.
Be that as it may,
governments in speculative fiction seem to follow historical patterns rather
than striking out in new directions. For example, Ada Palmer, a “new” writer
whose books have made a splash in recent years, has built a society in her
Terra Ignota (for those of you who might not have taken a moment to Google the
meaning, it’s the Unknown Ground (or more likely Unknown Earth) series.) I’ve
read it and while I thoroughly enjoyed her world-building, I’m slightly
disappointed that the society of the first book resembled Roman society at its
apex (before it became an empire), writ a thousand times larger to encompass
the entire planet – a broadly inclusionary place, vital, striving forward,
artistic, multi-theistic, and powerful. Her governmental form was foreshadowed
here: https://www.wired.com/2007/08/creating-a-worl/
in 2007…
I also just
finished Kameron Hurley’s THE STARS ARE LEGION and while there doesn’t seem to
be any precise government over all the worlds (which seems to me to have been
necessary in order to create the original Legion), the petty governments that have shattered into
existence within each of three worldships: Katazyrna, Mokshi, and Bhavaja are
the same as we already have on Earth.
As a born-and-bred
American, I am of the opinion that a representational form of government (which
most people call a “democratic” government) is the best form. However, I’ve
never intimately experienced any other form. I was in Nigeria in the 1980s when
their representational government was forcibly morphed into a military junta. I
spent several months in Cameroon (or Cameroun) which has “enjoyed” the long
reign of an educated and “benevolent” dictator, and I lived for six weeks under
the rule of an elite party whose sole qualifications were descent from freed
American slaves.
Of course I’ve
visited parliamentary Canada, token monarchy England, and post Baby Doc Haiti; I
either didn’t notice any visible difference between “them” and “us” or the
difference was grim indeed.
So let’s see: republic,
military junta, benevolent dictatorship, elite republic, parliamentary, token
monarchy, and undeclared chaos. How many others are there?
According to
Wikipedia: nine, plus a smattering of others which don’t fit any of the
categories presented (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forms_of_government#Maps).
The maps also break the world into Full Democracy, Flawed Democracy, Hybrid
Regimes, and Authoritarian Regimes. (While three of the categories are
descriptive, one (into which the United States falls) is judgmental…hmmm. I
wonder who decided to use the word “Flawed” and what PRECISELY it denotes: ah,
here we go – “The Democracy Index is an index compiled by the UK-based
Economist Intelligence Unit that measures the state of democracy in 167
countries…” In a very strange turn of events, the UK is a Full Democracy (as
well as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland), while the US, India,
Japan, South Korea, and whoever else the British don’t like are on the Flawed
Democracy list. As a side note to Islamophilia, currently all the rage on the
world stage, I’d like to note that of the 167 nation states, 24 are classified
as Muslim. Of those 24, none of them are Full Democracies, four are Flawed
Democracies, seven are Hybrid governments, twelve (half) of them are
Authoritarian, and one is Somalia – designation unknown (though Warlords
springs to mind).
At any rate – have
speculative fiction writers come up with truly innovative forms of government?
Frank Herbert
created a religious capitalist imperial state.
Ann Leckie (whose
Imperial Radch books I LOVE) created an empire.
John Scalzi
created the Colonial Union, a sort of “uber” England/Portugal/Spain/Russia
imperialist form of government which forced the aliens of the universe to unite in opposition.
Anne McCaffrey’s
Pern has a unique cross between a monarchy and full democracy.
I’m not going to
touch fantasies here because the governments of the majority of the ones I’ve
read seem to fall into monarchies, empires, or Councils. I don’t recall a
fantasy story where people voted for anything or anyone. I could be wrong here,
so please feel free to correct me.
So – where are the wildly futuristic
governments? How many have shown a truly participatory democracy? Would such a
thing even be possible – not from a technological point of view, but from a
practical point of view. So many of the daily or weekly decisions governmental
officials make would bore me and the rest of the country silly – that’s why we
have a representational government. I hire someone to do that. But if liberals
are to be believed, then there’s been a gross miscarriage of the Will Of The
People and Trump is not REALLY the choice of The People Who Actually Matter
(people who live in cities, because who cares about farmers anyway? Certainly
not the DFL…which, I might point out, has the word Farmer embedded in it.) But that is mostly there, and I’m writing here.
So, I think the
question and answer, “How long before
things change? Or will they?” can be answered: things won’t change. This is
mostly because the people who pride themselves in being imaginative and seeing
the future haven’t come up with any really different form of government.
If we can’t
imagine it, I doubt very much that the proletariat will devise something new
and different and produce the paradigm shift we think we need.
Anyone disagree?
References: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forms_of_government#Maps,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index,
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/38/68/a7/3868a7460eacddf9b0a006fd3dfea016--world-government-stephen-hawking.jpg
(and Stephen Hawking OBVIOUSLY knows all, sees all, and is all!)
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