While I'm Choating the list: sf writer China Mieville (*) posted a list of sf and fantasy books "that every Socialist should read" at http://www.sfsite.com/fm/show.html?rw,50socialist Even if you don't care about books or politics check out the site and dig those cheekbones.
Interesting overlaps with the sort of stuff some of the right-wing libertarians here might read. I particularly liked: "Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged (1957) Know your enemy. This panoply of portentous Nietzcheanism lite has had a huge influence on American SF. Rand was an obsessive "objectivist" (libertarian pro-capitalist individualist) whose hatred of socialism and any form of "collectivism" is visible in this important an influential -- though vile and ponderous -- novel." and "Ken MacLeod -- The Star Fraction (1996) British Trotskyist (of strongly libertarian bent), all of whose (very good) works examine Left politics without sloganeering. The Stone Canal, for example, features arguments about distortions of Marxism. However, The Star Fraction is chosen here as it features Virtual Reality heroes of the left, by name -- a roll call of genuine revolutionaries recast in digital form." Ken Brown (*) Everyone always asks that. He always says "hippy parents".
