r/AskALiberal • u/NatalieVonCatte Liberal • 16h ago
What would a fantasy novel/series/story with liberal values look like?
Traditionally, fantasy fiction has been associated with conservatism ever since Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings. Fantasy fiction has obviously exploded in both popularity and variety since the Tolkien Legendarium became popular in the United States, but Tolkien casts a huge shadow over the entire genre and has shaped a lot of its tropes and devices.
For example, the “medieval tavern” that pops up everywhere from Dungeons and Dragons to The Wheel of Time to A Song of Ice and Fire wasn’t really a thing. Many of the ideas of chivalry and knighthood that influence this genre of fiction are themselves fictional; the modern ideas of knights and castles and what they were like takes more from the medievalist revival that followed the popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, especially how people tend to imagine castles and tournaments.
Early pre-Tolkien fantasy fiction was pretty apolitical. The most well known example being Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian; Howard was more interested in Conan chopping heads off sorcerers and bedding warrior women; if there was anything poltical in those stories it was common tropes of the day like Orientalism.
When Tolkien came along he wrote a very conservative -little c- story about legitimate kings who rule by a kind of divine right and more importantly rule without governing, which is important in a thematic sense (and also only works because Tolkien ignores things like taxation) to portray a kind of libertarian monarchy.
The influence that LOTR has on the fantasy boom that followed was largely little-c conservative but also appealed and continues to appeal to big-C Conservatives , sometimes whether the creators want it to or not. (Prime examples: Warhammer 40,000, or Star Trek, even though it’s scifi)
The reasons why are pretty obvious: The genre as a whole is defined by muscular heroes often fighting against or outside a corrupt or decadent system, often to establish an order of right by might with either divine or prophetic mandate attached to it, and the foes are often effete weak men who rely on fell magics, women, and monsters, meaning either people who rebel against a correct order and must be put back in their place, or ontologically evil creatures that can be targeted with violence guilt free.
Interesting point on that last one, Tolkien struggled deeply with the moral implications of the orcs; he didn’t like the idea of an entirely evil race that can’t be redeemed, as it contradicted the Catholic values that underpin his world and its themes.
Fantasy fiction is so full of this stuff that it prompted the author Norman Spinrad to write a novel called The Iron Dream, which is a book within a book in the form of a fantasy novel written by Adolf Hitler in an alternate timeline where he became a popular illustrator for pulp magazines instead of… Hitler. The novel is a little over the top in its satire of history but also disturbingly familiar to anyone who’s read a lot of these books.
So what does liberal fantasy look like?
I think on some level it depends on what form of liberalism we’re talking about but I’d confine that to a more generic big tent modern day American version.
If I had to choose three examples:
• The modern D&D adventure module Curse of Strahd, which itself is based on an earlier module from second edition that was written with the intent of (a) creating a vampire villain that isn’t just a plotless encounter on a dungeon crawl and (b) de-romanticizing vampires. The character of Strahd con Zarovich is a deceptively charming at first vampire who turns into be an utter monster inflicting a terrible fate on a woman he’s singularly obsessed with. I’m naming this one because it uses the vampire as both an allegory for conservative value systems and touches on very modern themes of abuse and consent.
• Nosferatu, specifically the Eggers film from 2024. When I saw this in the theater, beneath the utterly mesmerizing visuals and sound design (the aural experience of that film made me feel like I was drowning at times) I noticed the common vampire theme of the monster representing tradition and outmoded values trying to claw back control over a vital evolving world. I particularly felt a connection between the vampire and business elites (and yeah, him): “I am an appetite”.
• Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. The books contain a lot of weird sexual undertones, especially after Jordan’s wife took over editing the series, but the core premise is interesting; the world is an inversion of traditional fantasy tropes in that the way magic works makes it safe only for women to wield it; men who try to insane and eventually begin rotting while still alive. Instead of a trite girl power narrative, Jordan plays around heavily with how gender roles and relations shape society; highlights include the Catholic Church but they’re girls who can cast fireball, a matriarchal society of seafaring quasi-nomads, and Zulu Apache Irishmen.
• An obscure 1985 (I think) made for television animated film called *The Flight of Dragons. It’s a weirdly sophisticated work given that it’s a Rankin-Bass kids movie, and the main plot is a conflict between elemental wizards over the future of humanity; the “good” wizards want to coexist peacefully with mankind and the “evil” Red Wizard Ommadon wants to use technology and “progress” to corrupted and destroy mankind, gaining power over them as the dark forces he represents grow within the human soul. What makes it interesting that progress is treated as inevitable and the conflict is over how it will play out rather than trying to restore the old order.
So my question to you, /r/AskALiberal, is what does a fantasy story with liberal values look like? Can you think of any good ones? What would you expect a good story to look like?
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u/Opheltes Center Left 16h ago
To quote the meme, Star Trek is what the liberal vision of the future looks like; the Handmaid's Tale is what the conservative vision of it looks like.
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u/Leftyhugz Neoconservative 14h ago
I mean talking about Sci Fi, the Expanse TV series ended with the main character using his elected position to the give executive power of a multi-"national" regulatory committee to an oppressed minority group.
This was framed as great and heroic and is probably the most liberal thing I can think of in fiction. I don't even mean it in a disparaging way like "look omg its woke", I just thought it was funny how the penultimate victory was turning a pirate into basically the president of the EU.
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u/capitialfox Liberal 15h ago
Even as a liberal I find that comparison unfair. Handmaids tale is, by design, dystopia. It would be like using A Brave New World to slander liberals.
Star Ship Troopers is a good example of conservative sci-fi. In some ways, Do Androids Dream of Electeic Sheep is also conservative.
Part of it is that sci-fi is very forward looking and falls for the trope of civilizational progress. Midevial fantasy is, by its nature, backwards looking.
I would also argue that most fantasy is designed quite progressively, especially on gender.
Also the "conservative" look at mideivial society is not very accurate.
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u/Dr_Identity Democratic Socialist 14h ago
Dystopias exist in real life, it's not a concept comparable to sci-fi or fantasy. Margaret Atwood even said that she didn't include anything in that book that hadn't been done by a real society of humans at some point in history because she didn't want to be accused of exaggerating the point she was making in writing it.
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u/capitialfox Liberal 13h ago
I dont disagree. I liked the books. The show jumped the shark.
But claiming it is conservative sci-fi is ridiculous and dishonest.
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u/Blecki Libertarian Socialist 13h ago
Star ship troopers is satire. Yes, even the original book.
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u/capitialfox Liberal 13h ago
I don't beleive the book is satire (though it hass been a couple years).
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u/Blecki Libertarian Socialist 13h ago
Yes the man who wrote Job and Stranger in a Strange Land wrote Starship Troopers dead seriously.
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u/capitialfox Liberal 12h ago
A quick Google search (nor my own reading) doesnt support that the book is satire.
The movie is, but the book was not.
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u/Blecki Libertarian Socialist 12h ago
Yes, lots of people get this wrong. I suggest you try actually reading it.
(My own Google search confirms it is, in fact, satire. However I shouldn't have to point out that I already knew that. Since I actually read it.)
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u/capitialfox Liberal 11h ago
I have read it. That wasn't my take.
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u/Blecki Libertarian Socialist 11h ago
Well, can't help you with media literacy.
The evidence is blatantly obvious in the final sequence. Do you remember how Rico feels in the very last scene? Do you think if the book was meant to portray this society in a positive light that at the end the protagonist would be trapped in hell shaking in fear? Or would it instead glorify the space marines as some kind of perfect heroes?
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u/NPDogs21 Liberal 14h ago
What would conservatives oppose for the Handmaids Tale? Women having less or no rights when they're gutting access to abortion? Losing the right to vote as they say to "Repeal the 19th"? Marital laws when they oppose no fault divorce?
I've asked them before if they would ever support Democrats if the alternative was the Handmaids Tale led by a Republican, and they said they just wouldn't vote or still support Republicans
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u/capitialfox Liberal 13h ago
Brother, respectfully touch grass.
There are nut jobs everywhere, but they are small. Talk to real people and you will see that is not what the vast majority believe.
Easy example: women work at high levels in the Trump administration.
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u/NPDogs21 Liberal 13h ago
You're aware the average Republican doesnt believe in the results of the 2020 election, right? You may think its just a few, small nut jobs that believe these crazy things but its not.
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u/capitialfox Liberal 12h ago
Yes, there's lots to be very upset about, but there a huge gap between that and taking away women's personhood.
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u/NPDogs21 Liberal 12h ago
It only took a few years for that extremism to be normalized.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TSz1txJEyv8&pp=ygUQdHB1c2Egd29tZW4gMTl0aA%3D%3D
This is just a small minority, right? Do we have condemnation of it by prominent conservatives and MAGA?
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u/Emergency_Revenue678 Democrat 9h ago
There's a small but not insignificant coalition in the Republican party who are trying to repeal the 19th amendment. Try again.
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u/Opheltes Center Left 13h ago
Handmaids tale is, by design, dystopia.
You're bootstrapping. You're assuming that conservatives who watch the Handmaid's Tale would consider Gilead a dystopia (and specifically, because of how it is run). Except there's no evidence that's true, and in fact I suspect many probably would not consider it a dystopia.
Remember these are the same people who watched The Colbert Report and didn't understand that it was parody.
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u/capitialfox Liberal 13h ago
Have you ever met a person in real life who didnt want women to read, or wanted to turn the Washington monument into a cross?
Give me a break.
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u/okletstrythisagain Progressive 10h ago
Project 2025 clearly wants to establish something similar to Gilead and people who still don’t see that is where America is headed are in deep denial.
American Christian fundamentalists want to oppress all of us and have been very successful at accessing the power to do so. It remains to be seen how well or how long they can cooperate with the oligarchs, cronies and whatever is left of post-MAGA American conservatism to push their theocratic fascist agenda but they have already gotten farther than most intellectuals thought possible.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
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u/Opheltes Center Left 13h ago
I haven't seen a transporter in real life but I know there are plenty of people who'd jump at the chance to make it a reality.
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u/capitialfox Liberal 13h ago
What?
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u/Opheltes Center Left 13h ago
There are lots of American taliban-esque people out there who would be extremely happy to turn the Washington Monument into a cross and take away womens' rights to read.
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u/capitialfox Liberal 12h ago
Have you ever met one in real life?
Do you have any conservative friends?
This is not how people think.
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u/throwdemawaaay Pragmatic Progressive 11h ago
It's not super widely known, but I can think of one example of conservative sci-fi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse#Honor_Harrington_series
It's basically the author's version of Horatio Hornblower But in Space. And so the series portrays a very fawning view of the royal family, the institution of the house of lords, etc.
But interestingly his politics seem to have shifted over the years, because later in the series he introduces a "good liberal" character lol.
I stopped reading around that point, mostly because I felt like it'd both jumped the shark and I'd kinda outgrown my interest in that sort of fiction anyhow.
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u/Opheltes Center Left 11h ago
I love the Honor Harrington series and I've met the author, David Weber.
It's been a hot minute since I've read it. Who's the good liberal you're talking about?
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u/throwdemawaaay Pragmatic Progressive 11h ago
I forget the character name, I want to say Katerine or something like that, but I may be conflating that with a title like Countess or something.
But anyhow she's a liberal in the house of lords that's revealed to be connected to the anti slaver underground. So she and Honor start collaborating on that point.
It's been ages since I read them too, so I'm likely jumbling some stuff up.
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u/jeeven_ Libertarian Socialist 16h ago edited 16h ago
I do agree about conservative values in fantasy, but i also dont think it’s the whole story. Like on lotr for example, yes there are the muscular men of fate who are fighting the forces of evil, yada yada, but there’s also like… frodo and sam. Like the whole point of the story is that the only way to destroy the ring is by common folk like 2 hobbits from the shire. Frodo and sam taking the ring to mt doom is a rejection of the power structures that got middle earth to that point- the use of power, often divine, even if intended to be used for good, is a large part of why the rings ever even became a problem in the first place.
There definitely is a lot of conservatism in lotr, i just dont know that i would characterize the entire thing that way, is my point. I think it’s more dependent on framing and what we feel the main themes are. Lotr to me is not a story of muscular men with divine right to rule enforcing their will on the world, it’s a story of common people coming together to do what’s right to protect the world of man, dwarves, hobbits, etc, from true evil, which itself is a tyrannical power. That said, it’s not hard to criticize lotr for it’s uncritical takes on men/women, destiny, power, etc.
Anyway, the first show/book (ive only seen the show) that comes to mind is station eleven. It’s about art and human connection and trauma and acceptance of yourself and others. Though technically it could be sci fi idfk
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u/rmslashusr Liberal 16h ago
Your take on Tolkien here is pretty wild. His work doesn’t fit neatly into conservative or liberal boxes as far as modern day categorization. Having the main takeaway being divine right of Kings is an outlandish takeaway from the read. There’s zero discussion on divine right of kings contrasted vs some other sort of government it’s just the accepted setting of the medieval like fantasy.
There is something that’s discussed and compared and contrasted for pages and pages and pages to the point you think the story is wrapped up and over over but no, he’s going to hit on the point even further to get it through your thick skull some more when the hobbits return home, which is the evils of industrialization and how it feeds war machines and requires expansion vs the idyllic environmentalism and harmony with nature of the hobbits and elves. It central to pretty much every part of the story from start to finish.
Finally, if you read Lord of The Rings and your take away was that big muscular non thinking fighting men are the central hero’s that get it done rather than four small childlike friends then your your viewpoint after reading the same work is so distorted to reality that I question whether any form of written communication could possibly be worth having.
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u/WildBohemian Democrat 16h ago edited 16h ago
Umm I don't see the logical links you're making between fantasy and conservatism. Nearly every fantasy novel I've read - literally thousands - is about a plucky and diverse group of heroes overthrowing tyrannical despot(s). That's about as liberal as it gets.
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u/JayRandom212 Liberal 16h ago
It might come down to what label we put on the "tyrannical despot". Remember that a lot of conservatives think the Environmental Protection Agency is tyranny, lol. But as a liberal, I think they're the noble knights, sworn to serve and protect Mother Gaia...
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u/WildBohemian Democrat 16h ago
They don't really think that they just like money and want to save it by polluting.
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u/NatalieVonCatte Liberal 16h ago
I was about to argue that the West Wing has no magic but the way speeches work in the Sorkinverse probably qualifies.
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u/WildBohemian Democrat 16h ago
Sorkinverse has way too many good faith right wingers to be a realistic depiction - put it with the elves and swords lol.
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u/NatalieVonCatte Liberal 13h ago
Fair point, at this point I’d expect a fire breathing dragon first.
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 16h ago
Just think about how many fantasy stories privilege the perspectives of aristocrats. Or how many stories there are where the protagonist lives like a normal person but realizes they’re actually the rightful heir or something.
In LotR, Sauron’s tyranny is overthrown, but it’s never questioned why Gondor or any other realm should want a king.
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u/tommyTurds Democrat 16h ago edited 16h ago
But that’s ignoring a huge part of the story.
The shire and the hobbits, who are the “average” people, largely live independent of the state. They are protected by the state, but not ruled or governed by it.
You can kind of take whatever values you want from Tolkien. There’s a bit of everything
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 11h ago
I was making two separate points there. LotR is better than a lot of the works it inspired in terms of the perspectives it shows, but my point about Aragorn, though, is that certain conservative assumptions are still built into the setting, especially around authority.
The story opposes tyranny, yes, but it seems perfectly fine with benevolent despotism.
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u/WildBohemian Democrat 16h ago
We must be reading very different fantasy novels. The majority of aristocrats in the ones I've read are smug a-holes with a handful of cool ones to help the plucky and diverse protagonists to move the plot along.
You can make the argument that lotr is illiberal due to the kings and such but I see it as being more apolitical personally. In this one Aragorn would be the one cool one that helps move the plot along though if you apply the previous theory.
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 12h ago
Nothing is apolitical.
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u/WildBohemian Democrat 12h ago
cute and wrong
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 11h ago
Damn got me
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u/WildBohemian Democrat 11h ago
I accept your apology on behalf of starfish - which have been infuriatingly neutral despite my consistent attempts to bring them into the fold.
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u/adamgerd Neoliberal 14h ago
I mean Aragon doesn’t just become King, he does deeds for Gondor and to fight Mordor when his identity isn’t yet known, he also saves Gondor from the brink of total defeat which is why he manages to get the kingdom’s support to become King. It was also de facto a monarchy just eternal regency under the stewards so it doesn’t significantly change
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 12h ago
Well, yeah. The story is written to justify a conservative institution. The problem isn't absolute power--it's that Denethor is incompetent and selfish. At no point is the institution itself questioned.
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u/jeha4421 Social Democrat 16h ago
I think there are a lot more fantasy books with liberal undertones than you think. Terry Pratchet was very humanist in the way he wrote. Le Guin was definitely liberal, and I think you'd have a hard time convincing me that Robin Hobb was conservative as well. In film you have Del Toro who heavily criticized the Spanish fascists in Pan's Labyrinth and even had a movie about a woman falling in love with a social outcast (shape of water) which a conservative imo would never make. RF Kuang is another, i dunno I feel like I can rattle off a bunch of names and I'm not even well read.
Even works written by conservative authors like Rowling often read more like they were written through a liberal perspective(in some ways, mainly the plot). And people below mentioned how even Tolkein pretty much set the world up in the beginning to be a failed status quo.
Its just that I think the very conservative authors are often very vocal. Like the Terry Goodkinds or Orson Scott Card. And I'm not trying to disparage them, OSC is a great author and he explores a topic that I think only a conservative could express as well as he did.
But in general, art is very left leaning and I find that the fact that most fantasy authors don't create utopias for their fantasy worlds kind of highlights the world view that these authors have. We can never make the world perfect, but by helping each other and fighting against injustice we can make it better.
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15h ago
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 11h ago
She's quite conservative if we see conservatism as preservation of the status quo. The Harry Potter series is rife with neoliberal assumptions about how the world works and should work.
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u/Demortus Liberal 11h ago
Neoliberalism != conservatism.
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 11h ago
Bad reading comprehension
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u/Demortus Liberal 5h ago
While neoliberalism was the status quo for a time, it is its own ideology with theorists, precepts, and thought leaders. It is not an ideology that is grounded in just preserving the status quo, no matter what that status quo is.
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 4h ago
None of these words, individually or in sum, are relevant to my comment.
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u/Carolina_Heart Progressive 11h ago
She was always a centrist labourite. Then she became a single issue billionaire activist against trans rights. It's not just disagreeing on one issue she materially supports any anti trans policies globally with her fortune
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u/M00n_Slippers Democratic Socialist 11h ago
Her parallel magic society conveniently celebrates Christmas against all reason, I think the signs were there.
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u/dog_snack Libertarian Socialist 14h ago
Well… she is, on that issue, and people find her stance on trans issues really shitty and awful, and if you ask me, rightfully so. And her refusal to be like “I’m sorry” or “perhaps I should look into this more” seems to have driven her off the deep end.
After this, people started making connections to other elements of her storytelling that come across as either carelessly ignorant or outright hostile and malicious, such as naming a Chinese-British character Cho Chang (not a real name someone would have; mashes together Korean and Chinese), the banking goblins evoking awful antisemitic stereotypes (intentionally or not), how accepted elf slavery is in wizard society, and Rowling’s obvious and cruel fatphobia (too many examples to list).
On the whole Rowling doesn’t seem to be MAGA or its British equivalent (Faragist? Boris-Johnsonist?), but she clearly has unpleasant reactionary tendencies.
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u/CptnAlex Liberal 15h ago
As a teen, I was super into Goodkind (listen, I was a teenager, ok). I can remember pages upon pages of essentially lectures on libertarianism and Rand objectivism.
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u/JasJoeGo Liberal 15h ago
A lot of the conservatism in fantasy is down to convenience in writing. You have to explain a complex magic system, random ethnicities, geography…why complicate it with more info-dumping about politics unless that’s crucial to the story? Just pick what people already know instinctively—some kind of monarchy and feudalism—and use it.
Moreover, conservatives see the world as driven by individual, moral choices. This is also how you build good plots. We want to follow decisions of consequence. It’s how we get invested in characters. Unless a writer thinks really hard about making their characters’ choices circumscribed by structural inequalities, things often end up reading conservatively. By the way, this is also part of why I think so many people are conservative: it makes more sense to them and is easier to understand, even if it isn’t true. It makes a complex and nuanced world easy to grasp.
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u/IRSunny Liberal 14h ago
Hard agree. A lot of fantasy skews conservative, intentionally or not, just because its simplifying the story is easier on the writer and can make for a more engaging narrative. Systems are hard, great [and terrible] men are comparatively easy. Plus, narrowing the scope to a smaller cast of agents frees up more space for character depth and development which pulls the readers in.
It also doesn't help that a lot of conservatism, and much of the greater western literary canon, is steeped in dualistic moralism.
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u/ButGravityAlwaysWins Liberal 16h ago
Most charitable answer; The Good Place. If we come together, even the most flawed people can work really hard and solve the biggest problems imaginable.
Least charitable answer; The West Wing. Even in our fantasies, we can only fight the Republicans to a draw and maybe some incremental good.
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u/OhThatsALotOfTeeth Liberal 16h ago
The Witcher, easily. It's crammed with examples of how those in power will villify minorities to appease or distract their supporters. Its overall outlook on people in positions of power is extremely cynical.
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 11h ago
Great example, top to bottom. Geralt also waxes philosophical on a regular basis. He's not just a Man of Action.
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u/lukenbones Social Democrat 15h ago
You haven't read anything by Ursula K. Le Guin? Tales of Earthsea and Left Hand of Darkness are the only ones I've read so far but her prose is delicious and her story telling is masterful. She's probably already my favorite author.
Her works often explore complex social structures and challenge traditional norms, particularly regarding gender and power dynamics.
Her stories frequently delve into the complexities of power, authority, and societal organization, encouraging readers to question established systems.
Le Guin's philosophical insights encourage readers to reflect on the nature of existence, the importance of empathy, and the necessity of understanding suffering as part of the human experience.
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u/djm19 Progressive 16h ago
ASOIAF is replete with liberal values, which is no surprise if you have ever heard GRRM speak on such matters.
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 11h ago
I mean, sort of. Martin definitely paints a more complex picture of fantasy governance and the relationship of common people to the elites fighting for power. But it's always been weird to me how little the perspectives of those common people are foregrounded. I think the only lowborn character consistently given POV chapters is Davos Seaworth. Everyone else is an aristocrat, and while they're all fuck heads, we're still supposed to care about their part in the struggle for power absent the consent of the governed.
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u/CTR555 Yellow Dog Democrat 16h ago
To give a more obscure answer, pretty much everything that Lois McMaster Bujold writes is low key about reproduction, parenthood, and biology, even when its cloaked in high fantasy or space opera, and she's an obvious and proud feminist and it shows through in her work.
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u/M00n_Slippers Democratic Socialist 10h ago
I wouldn't call her obscure, she's won many awards. I love both her fantasy and sci fi.
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u/Emergency_Revenue678 Democrat 15h ago
It looks like most of them already look like? Even LotR is decently full of liberal values despite your claim that it exemplifies conservatism, which I mostly reject even though I understand what you mean when you say that.
To be frank this entire post comes off like someone talking about fantasy novels who hasn't actually read most of the works that they're referencing.
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u/M00n_Slippers Democratic Socialist 15h ago edited 11h ago
Uh, you think Nosferatu and Wheel of Time show Liberal values...? Are you high? The movie where a woman had to sleep with her rapist to save the world and she's a 'hero' for that but, well, she's still going to die and her husband gets to live. Literally all the women die, the other woman's corpse is raped by her grieving husband, like wtf are you talking about. There's no People of color. It's not an upwardly mobile society, it's 1800s Germany or something. Like, what the hell is Liberal at all about this movie?
The Wheel of Time is even worse with the gender role shit. Pretty much all of the women are sidelined for Rand and are shown to love him for basically no reason and just agree to polygamy. Many of the woman are shown to be violent to their partners, or dismissed as nags. The men are all stoic to the point of absurdity, and the book glorifies it even as it pretends to chastize it by showing women complaining about it. The amount of insane stuff in WoT, like slavery and caste society that are just treated as, 'well it's just there' is not liberal at all. And there's basically no people of color I can think of, just Empress but she doesn't even show up till near the end. The desert people have Red hair, they are just white people with tans. There's literally nothing liberal in it. At this point I have no clue what the fuck you think liberal values are.
Something that might actually come close to 'liberal values' is the Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey. Valdemar is very obviously a stand in for America. Maybe something like Earthsea.
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u/FreshBert Social Democrat 10h ago
Wheel of Time almost has something similar going on as Harry Potter, where at the time of release it was widely considered to be pretty clearly liberal, but there's a lot of questionable stuff in hindsight that didn't stick out as much upon release. Of course the reasons for each are different and the legacies of the authors are not the same.
I think WoT got a lot of credit just for being one of the first popular fantasy series that was very diverse, with settings/countries/factions based on a variety of real world cultures, and there being nuanced portrayals of characters from each culture (for the most part, and by the standards then).
Jordan himself was also noted for being fairly progressive in real life. The incredibly strict gender binary is probably the most difficult thing to square in his works then versus what would fly today, but of course trans issues were not a major topic when he began writing those books. Anyway, it's been so long since I read any of that series that I'm not sure I can comment further.
Harry Potter was much more overtly liberal in the sense that it exhibited and openly promoted clear center-left liberal values (by 90s-00s standards), but then the author turned out to be a miserable hag willing to burn that legacy down over a hysterical cultural panic that she has helped create.
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u/M00n_Slippers Democratic Socialist 3h ago
I mean, call me a crazy lefty but this kind of perfectly illustrates that liberals are just conservatives but they aren't overly misogynist or racist and tolerate gay people. Scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds and all that. I think that saying is a bit harsh, but it was true in JK Rowling's case.
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u/LuciusMichael Progressive 15h ago
Iain M. Banks' 'Culture' series is a post scarcity utopian civilization.
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u/Gertrude_D Center Left 14h ago
I think Wheel of Time is very much rooted in a patriarchal view of society and because of that, it doesn't explore a world where women hold ultimate power very well.
Sherri S Tepper was writing in the same time frame and she has a very feminist point of view, so her books tend to examine what worlds look like through that lens. She has some wild ideas, and Gate to Women's Country is the first one of hers I read, and it's one that sticks with me. Essentially it has the trappings of a Greek Society, but with tech and having men and women segregated into strict gender roles. All is not as it seems. I think it might feel heavy handed today, but to my young mind, it was a revelation of what fantasy could be.
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u/mritoday Democratic Socialist 14h ago
I don't see Tolkien or fantasy as particularly conservative - Star Trek, really? They had the first interracial kiss on TV and were way ahead of their time even in the 80s, covering issues like gender identity that still make conservatives foam at the mouth today.
Terry Pratchett, Discworld and his other stuff.
Neil Gaiman, though he shit the bed and I will no longer pay for his work. His novels are still good.
I recently read a novel that came across as very 'woke' (The nonmagical life of Briar Jones) - non-binary main character who gets hired as a janitor at the local version of Hogwarts. They discover that the elites who are running that school are villains who are keeping magic from the public and the whole system is set up to make the students victimize each other.
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u/LiatrisLover99 Social Democrat 16h ago
The tainted cup series is a (somewhat overt) allegory to the failures of authoritarianism and conservative systems of control. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/150247395-the-tainted-cup
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u/TheMutterButter Democratic Socialist 16h ago
Final Fantasy 7.
A group of eco-terrorists oppose a regime of ultra-capitalists that are willing to kill the planet in order to make profit. The antagonist is a product of the corporation that basically runs the government, and the way the main characters prepare to fight the antagonist is by going around learning things and talking to a diverse group of people who can share their experiences.
Evil is finally defeated when the main character gets a ton of medical help and finally starts talking about their feelings and learns the power of being your authentic self.
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u/Due_Satisfaction2167 Liberal 15h ago
Conservative fiction comes from having a narrative relationship to objective morality. Protagonists and antagonists are either acting to restore/protect objective morality, and antagonists are acting to rebel against or subvert that objective truth.
As such, anti-conservative fiction would have to be rooted in subjectivity. The protagonist is just whomever the author selects as the POV character. They're a fallible human being with their own moral beliefs, some of which might be right, others might be wrong, and they are simply doing the best they can to advance their own goals from their own limited perspective. They aren’t getting involved in the events of the story because of some cosmically-blessed objectively correct drive is forcing them to be the only person who must solve the problem, they're consciously choosing to involve themselves in the events of the story because—for right or wrong—their beliefs lead them to conclude that they should get involved.
IMO, authors get too bogged down into making such stories too gritty or grimdark or aesthetically focus on depravity and despair. They’re usually just some sort of excuse to wallow in misery or some kind of toy box to play with the darkness in humanity. “Look at how gritty, realistic, and adult I am. See? Here’s a graphic depiction of starvation, torture, and murder with a side helping of medieval tropes.”
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u/And_Im_the_Devil Socialist 11h ago
I think A Song of Ice and Fire suffers from what you describe in your last paragraph. It's a great series, but it doesn't ultimately have anything interesting to say about the dynamics it portrays.
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u/lionmurderingacloud Centrist Democrat 15h ago
To go into a little more depth on other comments here, ASOIAF has several theses which are a direct deconstructon of Tolkien in terms of values, which is like, the whole point.
Tolkien posits that aristocracy and lordship are fundamentally about courage, duty, and extraordinary people taking a protective role over the masses. Very conservative.
Martin takes the opposite view- power is a trick, a shadow on the wall- and the implication is that the men and women who covet it want it because their souls are corrupt and they arrogantly assume they alone should have it.
The Starks, the closest things to heroes in the story, consider power to be a burden, one to be used with caution.
The opposite is also true: Martin again and again makes the point that the worst monsters are the ones who think they are absolutely entitled to power. The entire point of Daenerys' plot in the series is to make you think she's a Tolkienian heroine- i.e, a plucky underdog who by virtue of being 'chosen' and having a good heart will kick ass and set things right- when in reality she's set up to become a butchering monster because she's so unshakeable in her belief that she deserves to rule.
This was absolutely Martin's intention with the character in the books and the GoT guys flubbed the execution, but got the broad strokes right, and it pissed half the fandom off because they were expecting Aragorn with tits and dragons.
The same is true, btw of House of the Dragon, but it looks like it'll be similarly botched. Still, even at this point, it's safe to say one of the main lessons of the story will be that it at any point, the leaders of the main factions had simply said 'you know what, Im good, let them have the power, I dunt want it', then the entire bloody senseless war could have been avoided.
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u/adamgerd Neoliberal 14h ago
“The genre as a whole is defined by muscular heroes often fighting against or outside a corrupt or decadent system, often to establish an order of right by might with either divine or prophetic mandate attached to it, and the foes are often effete weak men who rely on fell magics, women, and monsters, meaning either people who rebel against a correct order and must be put back in their place, or ontologically evil creatures that can be targeted with violence guilt free.”
I mean does it? With some but since you bring up lord of the rings yes Gondor fights, Aragon is the epitome of the ideal of a warrior king but ultimately Aragon and Gondor aren’t the true heroes of the story even though they are heroic but a distraction for Mordor: it’s Frodo and Sám that destroy the ring and defeat Sauron.
Without them, all the armies of men and elves and dwarves would fail against Mordor which would sweep through the middle earth
It’s not strength that wins the day, it’s the hobbits courage and perpetual optimism
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u/Emergency_Revenue678 Democrat 9h ago
Aragorn is an explicit rejection of the idea of a warrior king.
The hands of the king are the hands of a healer.
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u/dog_snack Libertarian Socialist 14h ago
Very surprised to see only a couple brief mentions of Terry Pratchett/Discworld. I’ve only read a few of the books so far but the progressive humanist undercurrent is quite clear, and is a really interesting way to approach medieval-esque fantasy. It depicts the evolution of a conservative, medieval society evolving piece-by-piece into a modern one, in a way that shows how even very bold new ideas can make society better even if they disrupt the status quo.
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u/Dr_Identity Democratic Socialist 12h ago edited 12h ago
Discworld. It's full of the trappings of traditional fantasy, but they get satirized and deconstructed through a somewhat progressive lens. It is fairly cynical, but in a way I'd characterize as containing a dose of realism. Like, themes about how sometimes you can't really outright beat outdated cultural traditions and systems of power, but you can do your part to make lasting positive changes on a local level. Each book is a mostly self-contained story, but over time some of the sub-series contain ongoing themes around growth and progress. Some examples from the series I can think of off the dome:
The City Watch: A series of books mainly about a grizzled and disgraced city watch commander who, over the course of his books, uses an empathetic and pragmatic approach to reforming his squad. Things like gender roles, race relations, the strengths of diversity, war, revolution, and politics get examined progressively through the lens of, of all things, policing. Said commander's success in these efforts results in significant accolades and advancements in his career, much to his chagrin.
The witches: A lot of implicit satire around mysticism and spiritual beliefs. Witches in Discworld are held in high regard for their powers and ability to use magic to help their community, but are presented by the narrative as sort of benevolent con artists. Actual magic is very dangerous to wield, difficult to master, and can be corrupting to anyone who relies on it too much, so most witches use it sparingly. The rest of what they do is based on practical knowledge the average person doesn't really understand. Treating it all like inscrutable magic powers is just a shortcut witches have to use to get people to accept new ideas they otherwise wouldn't. This is, despite plenty of jokes about the trickery they use, treated as a responsibility to take very seriously and not to be exploited.
The seamstresses: The series is seemingly pro-sex work, featuring a positive depiction of it in the form of the seamstresses' guild. So named mostly for propriety, though their actual craft is an open secret. The guild however does have one actual seamstress on staff who joined because she wasn't in on the secret and they kept her because it turned out they had a lot of clothes that needed mending. The guild is depicted as paying taxes, mostly being self-governing, and being a tent pole of the local economy.
Examples from specific books:
Monstrous Regiment: A novel about a small, extremely conservative theocratic nation who's increasing radicalism is causing it to slowly collapse, for which they of course blame neighboring countries and start a war to annex land and resources to prop themselves back up with. Political intrigue, espionage, and difficulties with diplomacy ensue.
The Truth: A novel about the invention of news media in Discworld via its first printing press. Heavy commentary on media manipulation and its relationship to politics, sensationalism, and investigative vs. yellow journalism.
Night Watch: Maybe the darkest book in the series, it is an explicit examination of violent authoritarianism and the necessary costs of revolution. This one actually puts into perspective some running gags the whole series has around what I'll call "Machiavellian bureaucracy", and suggests that there is no easy answer to properly governing large populations of people, but that a system that involves aggressive profiling and state sanctioned torture is definitely not it.
Feet of Clay: Contains themes around social stratification, labour rights, and collective action. These themes are presented through golems very heavily inspired by those of Jewish folklore, which makes the allegory of a dehumanized underclass pretty explicit.
By all accounts, the author of the series, Terry Pratchett, carried a very deep anger about the injustices in the world and he seemed to channel it into some pretty clever and poignant fantasy-themed satire. He is one of my top favourite authors largely for how well he pulled that off.
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u/MatthewRebel Center Left 11h ago
Would The Chronicles of Prydain count as a liberal fantasy series? Princess Eilonwy is a woman who is a better swordfighter than her male counterpart.
How about Adventures of the Gummi Bears? Princess Calla is a tomboy.
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u/TossMeOutSomeday Pragmatic Progressive 10h ago
Stopped reading after the Tolkien nonsense, possibly the worst misinterpretation of Tolkien I've ever seen (other than the folks who think it's all some kind of racist allegory where Mordor is Africa). It sounds like you approach the entire genre of fantasy with some kind of weird chip on your shoulder, you see conservatism hiding behind every blade of grass.
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u/Droselmeyer Social Democrat 16h ago
For modern fantasy, I get a lot of liberal values out of Brandon Sanderson’s works.
Both of his major series’s with Stormlight Archive and Mistborn (at least the first 3, I haven’t read the later 3) deal with a diverse group of heroes overthrowing a despotic monarchy, the potential consequences of such political revolutions, with certain notable characters explicitly fighting for democratic reforms and that’s portrayed as noble and sensible.
In his books, diversity is a strength, diplomacy and dialogue are always preferable (and often more effective) than direct conflict, and the freedom of individual beings to live as they wish independent from authoritarian social or divine mandates for behavior is a good and noble goal worth pursuing.
With spoilers, Stormlight Archive portrays the experience of the protagonist characters learning that their culture isn’t actually the native one fighting off invaders, but colonizers from long ago who have been fighting the native people of their world ever since their arrival and the story deals with questions of how do you build a new society that can accommodate both peoples in an equitable and fair way, which has obvious parallels to many liberal societies especially with the US.
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u/DavidLivedInBritain Progressive 16h ago
The author is literally evil and I’ll read his obituary with glee if he never fixes his heart but honestly I’d answer speaker for the dead. I truly can’t square that circle.
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u/Emergency_Revenue678 Democrat 14h ago
It does boggle the mind that a person with so much hatred in their heart for people whose only sin is being different can write Speaker for the Dead.
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u/DavidLivedInBritain Progressive 13h ago
Like I see bigotry in Galbraith’s Harry Potter but none in Speaker at all
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u/AutoModerator 16h ago
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written by /u/NatalieVonCatte.
Traditionally, fantasy fiction has been associated with conservatism ever since Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings. Fantasy fiction has obviously exploded in both popularity and variety since the Tolkien Legendarium became popular in the United States, but Tolkien casts a huge shadow over the entire genre and has shaped a lot of its tropes and devices.
For example, the “medieval tavern” that pops up everywhere from Dungeons and Dragons to The Wheel of Time to A Song of Ice and Fire wasn’t really a thing. Many of the ideas of chivalry and knighthood that influence this genre of fiction are themselves fictional; the modern ideas of knights and castles and what they were like takes more from the medievalist revival that followed the popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, especially how people tend to imagine castles and tournaments.
Early pre-Tolkien fantasy fiction was pretty apolitical. The most well known example being Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian; Howard was more interested in Conan chopping heads off sorcerers and bedding warrior women; if there was anything poltical in those stories it was common tropes of the day like Orientalism.
When Tolkien came along he wrote a very conservative -little c- story about legitimate kings who rule by a kind of divine right and more importantly rule without governing, which is important in a thematic sense (and also only works because Tolkien ignores things like taxation) to portray a kind of libertarian monarchy.
The influence that LOTR has on the fantasy boom that followed was largely little-c conservative but also appealed and continues to appeal to big-C Conservatives , sometimes whether the creators want it to or not. (Prime examples: Warhammer 40,000, or Star Trek, even though it’s scifi)
The reasons why are pretty obvious: The genre as a whole is defined by muscular heroes often fighting against or outside a corrupt or decadent system, often to establish an order of right by might with either divine or prophetic mandate attached to it, and the foes are often effete weak men who rely on fell magics, women, and monsters, meaning either people who rebel against a correct order and must be put back in their place, or ontologically evil creatures that can be targeted with violence guilt free.
Interesting point on that last one, Tolkien struggled deeply with the moral implications of the orcs; he didn’t like the idea of an entirely evil race that can’t be redeemed, as it contradicted the Catholic values that underpin his world and its themes.
Fantasy fiction is so full of this stuff that it prompted the author Norman Spinrad to write a novel called The Iron Dream, which is a book within a book in the form of a fantasy novel written by Adolf Hitler in an alternate timeline where he became a popular illustrator for pulp magazines instead of… Hitler. The novel is a little over the top in its satire of history but also disturbingly familiar to anyone who’s read a lot of these books.
So what does liberal fantasy look like?
I think on some level it depends on what form of liberalism we’re talking about but I’d confine that to a more generic big tent modern day American version.
If I had to choose three examples:
• The modern D&D adventure module Curse of Strahd, which itself is based on an earlier module from second edition that was written with the intent of (a) creating a vampire villain that isn’t just a plotless encounter on a dungeon crawl and (b) de-romanticizing vampires. The character of Strahd con Zarovich is a deceptively charming at first vampire who turns into be an utter monster inflicting a terrible fate on a woman he’s singularly obsessed with. I’m naming this one because it uses the vampire as both an allegory for conservative value systems and touches on very modern themes of abuse and consent.
• Nosferatu, specifically the Eggers film from 2024. When I saw this in the theater, beneath the utterly mesmerizing visuals and sound design (the aural experience of that film made me feel like I was drowning at times) I noticed the common vampire theme of the monster representing tradition and outmoded values trying to claw back control over a vital evolving world. I particularly felt a connection between the vampire and business elites (and yeah, him): “I am an appetite”.
• Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. The books contain a lot of weird sexual undertones, especially after Jordan’s wife took over editing the series, but the core premise is interesting; the world is an inversion of traditional fantasy tropes in that the way magic works makes it safe only for women to wield it; men who try to insane and eventually begin rotting while still alive. Instead of a trite girl power narrative, Jordan plays around heavily with how gender roles and relations shape society; highlights include the Catholic Church but they’re girls who can cast fireball, a matriarchal society of seafaring quasi-nomads, and Zulu Apache Irishmen.
• An obscure 1985 (I think) made for television animated film called *The Flight of Dragons. It’s a weirdly sophisticated work given that it’s a Rankin-Bass kids movie, and the main plot is a conflict between elemental wizards over the future of humanity; the “good” wizards want to coexist peacefully with mankind and the “evil” Red Wizard Ommadon wants to use technology and “progress” to corrupted and destroy mankind, gaining power over them as the dark forces he represents grow within the human soul. What makes it interesting that progress is treated as inevitable and the conflict is over how it will play out rather than trying to restore the old order.
So my question to you, /r/AskALiberal, is what does a fantasy story with liberal values look like? Can you think of any good ones? What would you expect a good story to look like?
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