Interested in leftist sci-fi? Why not read sci-fi written under actual existing socialism? Strugatsky brothers are noteworthy in that they were socialists, many of their novels were set in utopian communist future, but were allegorically critisizing modern Soviet institutions.
Come to think about it their Noon circle is kinda similar to Bank's Culture. Most people enjoy amazing fulfilling lives in post-scarcity communist society, but the novels focus on all the horrible soulcrashing shit select people who serve as covert influence agents in other cultures get up to.
TBH the Strugatsky brothers are leaned on too heavily in Soviet Sci-fi studies. We have a single book pretty much in the last 30 years looking at soviet sci-fi and far too many of the books examined are by them. There's more written on the sci fi from the 20s than the 50s through the 80s. I don't have many other suggestions though. Historians were just more interested in studying fiction during and right after the revolution than cold war fiction from the 50s to 80s.
Andromeda is one novel I had recommended for non Strugatsky work (which is btw pretty important as it marks a transition away from style of sci-fi during the Stalin period).
Soviet science fiction acted pretty differently than science fiction in the US in some very interesting ways. Checkout the more recent works listed here at the bottom of the page for that. For example, soviet sci-fi is almost devoid of computers/ai as a central plot point. Like in movies, there is no soviet analogue to the ai nuclear war movies at all (and nuclear war if it happens is usually in the context of another planet). Whereas cold war US sci-fi had a lot of AI worries and control systems gone mad stories (remnants up to today, the 100 show uses that trope for example).
Interested in leftist sci-fi? Why not read sci-fi written under actual existing socialism? Strugatsky brothers are noteworthy in that they were socialists, many of their novels were set in utopian communist future, but were allegorically critisizing modern Soviet institutions.
Come to think about it their Noon circle is kinda similar to Bank's Culture. Most people enjoy amazing fulfilling lives in post-scarcity communist society, but the novels focus on all the horrible soulcrashing shit select people who serve as covert influence agents in other cultures get up to.
TBH the Strugatsky brothers are leaned on too heavily in Soviet Sci-fi studies. We have a single book pretty much in the last 30 years looking at soviet sci-fi and far too many of the books examined are by them. There's more written on the sci fi from the 20s than the 50s through the 80s. I don't have many other suggestions though. Historians were just more interested in studying fiction during and right after the revolution than cold war fiction from the 50s to 80s.
Andromeda is one novel I had recommended for non Strugatsky work (which is btw pretty important as it marks a transition away from style of sci-fi during the Stalin period).
Soviet science fiction acted pretty differently than science fiction in the US in some very interesting ways. Checkout the more recent works listed here at the bottom of the page for that. For example, soviet sci-fi is almost devoid of computers/ai as a central plot point. Like in movies, there is no soviet analogue to the ai nuclear war movies at all (and nuclear war if it happens is usually in the context of another planet). Whereas cold war US sci-fi had a lot of AI worries and control systems gone mad stories (remnants up to today, the 100 show uses that trope for example).