Contemporary social issues in SF

Which science fiction authors of the last ten years are addressing social issues in their fiction? Race, gender, bioethics & medical issues, the environment, immigration/cultural pluralism, labor...etc. are a few of the issues which might be addressed. So who is writing science fiction currently which makes us think about these things?

Notes: While politics and social issues are connected, I have chosen to make this thread about social issues only. Someone may want to start a thread about political SF:-) I also purposely chose the most recent decade to limit the discussion to newer books.

Octavia Butler is the first author (and one of my favorites) who comes to mind. Sadly, we will not have more of her novels. Her thoughtful novels are low-tech but touch on issues like race, gender, power, and family.
Fledgling is her last novel (2005, should be out soon in paperback), an unusual vampire novel about a young, female vampire who is genetically engineered to stay awake during the day when they are the most vulnerable. The vampires, btw, have science fictional origins. Like many of her other novels, it is a very thoughtful piece of fiction.

Environment? Kim Stanley Robinson. If you mean it has to have no politics, then that wouldn't be one, though. :) Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, etc.

Gwyneth Jones who you mentioned just the other day. A whole bunch of what you mentioned.

About bioethics? Paul J. McAuley - and Whole Wide World is about privacy.

Class and bioethics wrapped up in adventure? Marianne de Pierres and Joel Shepherd

Ken MacLeod has clearly got some things to say about labor.

Well, I just wanted to avoid a discussion on left-wing, conservative, libertarian, anarchist, socialist...etc. Each, of course, would have their own ideas of how to deal with social issues so such books can't be totally excluded, of course.

Stan Robinson is a perfect example. I'm not sure anyone does environmental issues like Robinson. There have certainly been some great novels in the past about the enviroment, but are there others in the last decade?

And, out of curiosity, what does Ken MacLeod have to say about labor (interestingly, the latest Battlestar Galactica episode was about labor and class)?

Things like the microcommunites in The Star Fraction to the two timestream looks in The Sky Road.

Cherryh in the Foreigner series which is still going so even if the first book is over 10yrs old the latest isn't. has quite a bit to say about how cultures interact, and socially how to deal with people who are different to you.

I have revisited this thread every now and then since it first was posted, thinking... One of my reasons for reading SF is that it deals with contemporary issues, or the more ethernal ones, by looking at them from a different horizon. Of course som works does this better than others, but I find that I have a hard time singling out a specific book or author - a well written SF (or fantasy) yarn /mostly/ combines a good story with reflections on where and what of humanity. Those reflections, or grounds for reflection, may not be explicit if you're not looking for them, but they're still there.

Not like your everyday "have a hard time dealing with my family/boss/current situation" kind of book, which mostly/only look inwards and provides a mean for dissecting the self in regards to the self, not in regard to the world or situation or... you know.

Does anyone share this view?

Yes.

i would certainly agree in that my very favorite books in the genre are entertaining reads that look at social issues, exploring the "what if?" or offering some out-of-the-box thinking.

Certainly, bioethics is a current issue. Science Fiction becomes the news of the day, eh? Eva Hoffman's "The Secret" addresses cloning through a young woman's struggle with self-identity. Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is also a cloning "awful warning" novel (any synopsis might be a SPOILER) Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper tells the story of a teenager who was a product of "preimplantation genetic diagnosis" so she could be a bone marrow donor for her sister. These are all mainstream authors, of course. But are there contemporary SF novels addressing bioethical issues?

Two of the most interesting SF novels to present immigration issues, are the juvenile books The City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau and it's sequel. The setting is a future, post-apocaplytic US and it is in the sequel The People of Sparks that immigration and its subsequent problems is addressed in a thoughtful way (and not just for kids...). I picked up the audios after a young boy in the bookstore raved about them to me; I was not disppointed.

I think that depends on how explicitly you want them to be discussed. A suite of books I seem to mention every now and then (Grimwoods Arabesque cycle) features a protagonist who is genetically enhanced without having a clear understanding of this, and in part the story could be seen as a discussion about how genetic alteration affects us/and the society...

Also one has to remember that a lot of these themes have been explored by SF writers years before. From organ banks to clones to implants. Much has been moved into the unwritten background world-building as Busifer mentions. However enough are still being written if one cares to search them out.

A writer who continues to address certain issues is Geoff Ryman. Air: Or Have Not Have is absolutely full of social comment on a number of levels. Pervasiveness of technology, rejection of the have-culture, medical advances, issues of sexuality.

Kit Reed's Thinner Than Thou addresses eating behaviour (and though it consumption in general).

J.G. Ballard still skirts the slipstream and his latest Kingdom Come has mass-consumerism in its sights.

Peter F. Hamilton's Misspent Youth (despite flaws) addresses some of the issues that would occur with rejuvenation plus has a free-information based economy.

Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End also fits in with this list.

Darwin's Children - Greg Bear - 2 books, basically looking at an X-Men/Children of the Atom scenario.

Will Shetterly's Chimera is more explicit, like Paul McAuley.

As mentioned, others touch on it as a part Richard Morgan for instance, where consciousness transfer can happen by technology, but some oppose this on religious grounds, is part of the story.

I suppose you would say bio-ethics as part of politics is at the heart of the conflicts in Alastair Reynolds' work, too, with the Conjoiners/Demarchists, or the Slashers, etc. in Century Rain

#11 that's a good thought about Reynolds's work, and they are stunning reading into the bargin.

I suppose you could also say about the Revelation Space stuff that the uber-conflict also has elements of that, as it does in Jack McDevitt's Priscilla Hutchins books.

I also thought of a couple of other overt type bio-books while I was reading something else.

Teranesia by Greg Egan

Bios by Robert Charles Wilson

Well the book I'm currently reading, the author definitely touches upon social issues. I would say it is the core of the book. I'm reading Earth by David Brin.

It's an end-of-the-world type book but not your typical nuclear war, alien invasion, plague, or comet/asteroid scenario. The story takes place in the year 2038 where the Earth is pretty much dying slowly due to human actions. A population of 10 billion hasn't helped matters. Species have become extinct. Whole forests have been wiped out. No more whales or manatees. Life arks are the norm, a contained ecosystem housing what's left of life on Earth. Deserts are enroaching in Europe. People walk around with hats and goggles, slathered with skin cream because of UV damage. Birds and animals that go blind from the sun damage. (it's the reason for the life arks). Resources such as oil are gone.

But that's not really what is going to make the world go in this book.lol. No, that's something man-made that is found in the core of the Earth.

That reminds me of another, in the environmental camp. Salt, by Gabrielle Lord. Not too far future Australia, not too nice as the average outside temperate is getting towards the high 50s. Very bloody hot.

(Environmental issues are the backdrop to Code Noir,Crash Deluxe etc. too.

Yes I would agree about Earth but it is quite an old book now (first published in 1990) and out of the original question's scope. But you are right, Earth does deal with social issues - ubiquitous networks and it was the beginning of Brin's ideas on transparent societies.

Although the overall tone of the series is space opera, many of Lois McMaster Bujold's books touch on bioethics to some extent. A Civil Campaign in particular manages to ask, "how does a highly traditional society deals with new technologies that make a mockery of old rules?" in the middle of a romance. The subtitle, after all, is "A Comedy of Biology and Manners."

Well, my last post got eaten by the ten minute downtime LT had late this afternoon, so I'll try again.

Yes, Earth came out around the time of Ecotopia, I think. I did have those in mind when I decided to make the discussion more contemporary.

Andyl, Kit Reed is a great example, although to say Thinner Than Thou is about eating behavior is a bit oversimplified. I think she is taking aim at our society's obsession with beauty, youth and perfection. For those unfamiliar, it is a satirical story set in a dystopian world where the pursuit of physical perfection has become religion. I think she also spoofs some of the self help gurus and mega-churches of our day. Interestingly, Scott Westerfeld's young adult trilogy which begins with the novel Uglies also touches on our society's obession with beauty and perfection.

Kit Reed's latest book, The Baby Merchant, is about the lengths that desperate people will go to to become parents. Nancy Kress had a book with a similar theme back in 1997. Maximum Light wasn't that well-reviewed but I thought she very credibly evoked the desperation of people trying to have children (the illegal trade in this story was human-animal hybrids).

Sure Thinner Than Thou is about more than eating disorders which is why I added the bits in parentheses. I meant the pressure to consume - be it designer label clothes, fancy trainers (sneakers), electronic goodies, religion, jewellery, plastic surgery etc - rather than just consumption of food.

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Busifer, I don't know if you have heard but JCG has sold another three (as yet mostly unwritten) Ashraf Bey books to Gollancz. The first is to be set in Istanbul and events will be set about five years on from those in Felaheen. It should be out later this year.

19 andyl, you know, I hadn't thought about the consumption in general but, you're right, it's valid also.

Teranesia is one of three Egan's I've read, I had forgotten about it (so many books ago).

I wonder if there will be a SF novel that will be to the Iraq war what The Forever War was to Vietnam?

For gender issues the James Tiptree, Jn. Award is for "science fiction or fantasy that explores and expands the roles of women and men for work by both women and men". see http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Tiptree.html for winners and finalists.

#20 - I have feared for that moment... the ending in Felaheen felt too much like a cliffhanger, too many threads hanging loose.
I'm not sure I'm looking forward to this, to be true. "More" is not always "better" ;-)

William Gibson discussed advertising and net.memes in Pattern Recognition, and Charles Stross used, among other things, intellectual property rights and taxation in Accelerando, as well as asking a question that not many transhumanists have: Just because we /can/, does it mean that /it would really work/?

Cory Doctorow also wrote about IP, interoperability, and infomational warfare in the short stories that were collected in Overclocked.