We value Poul Anderson's sympathetic treatment of characters that he disagrees with politically. There are revolutionary characters in a couple of his novels. One of my current other authors is Frederik Forsyth, master of the journalistically documented thriller where weapons and surveillance technology would have been sf until recently. Forsyth is partially successful in sympathetic treatment of other viewpoints. Even when his villains are Muslim terrorists, he spells out that terrorism is a distortion of Islam. But his left-wing characters can be caricatures.
We notice similarities between distortions of Islam and the racist monotheism of the Merseian Roidhunate in Anderson's Technic History. However, the Ythrian New Faith of God the Hunter is a genuinely non-human religion imagined by Anderson, based on the premise of intelligent winged carnivores. Sf writers should be able not only to understand alternative world-views but also to imagine them.
4 comments:
We should note that the founder of Islam was not, like Jesus, a member of a powerless minority group, nor a political quietist like the Buddha. He was a ruler and war-leader. This had long-term consequences.
As in DUNE.
DUNE was heavily based on his career.
Ah.
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