A New Kind of Science Fiction...

John Scalzi sends us to a new kind of science fiction--for this time the science is economics:

Daniel Abraham, "The Cambist and Lord Iron".

Nominated for the Hugo award. Vote early and often. Shows a deep understanding of the concept of opportunity cost.

Comments

[P.M.Lawrence]

[I beg to differ. Ideology turns up. Economics much less so...]

It's hardly new. Economics turns up in a great many of Heinlein's works, sometimes quite prominently. Arguably, it is the driver of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", which is also an allegory of the American War of Independence with a water outflow standing in for the silver outflow.

[Elf M. Sternberg]

Charlie Stross has long maintained that his series The Merchant Princes is not fantasy, but science fiction. As he puts it, "The science happens to be economics."

[david]

Is the Merchant Princes series worth reading? I've meant to a couple of times, but never got around to it.

[shah8]

I enjoyed Merchant Princes, but it's really much more of a pulpy and standard thriller. Depends on what you want out of your sci-fi.

Market Forces by Richard Morgan is to a degree, economic sci-fi. Vernor Vinge's Across Realtime has economic substance in it as well. Both, however, are pretty tied to political economic rather than much real innovation on access to scarce materials.

[brione]

The entire first book of Asimov's Foundation series is modeled after the growth of the Venetian princes of old. The buildup of the economic system of the early trading partners is quite fascinating.

Not to mention that Harry Selden's whole science of psychohistory was based on the ability to predict the econonic and social choices of large populations.

[Fruity Bev]

I read a fun story where the aliens were rabid anti-monopolists. All gov'ts, armies, corporations or organizations of more than 5 individuals were considered to be combinations in restraint of trade, and dealt with harshly. Can't remember author or title, I'm afraid.

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/economic-science-fiction/

May 4, 2008

Economic Science Fiction
By Paul Krugman

I’m startled at Brad DeLong’s ignorance: * he thinks there’s something new about science fiction novels where the science in question is economics.

This theme actually goes back a long way. I once stumbled across Robert Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon, a very early novel that’s actually inspired by the then-popular doctrine of secular stagnation, ** which argued that rising savings and declining investment opportunities would lead to persistent problems in getting people to spend enough.

Oh, by the way — it’s a terrible novel, though not as bad a novel as The Internecine Project is a movie. Charles Stross’s Merchant Princes novels, on the other hand, are economic science fiction worth reading.

* http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/05/a-new-kind-of-s.html#comments

** Alvin Harvey Hansen - Economic Growth and a More Perfect Society: The Economist's Role in Defining the Stagnation Thesis and in Popularizing Keynesianism - 1989
By W. Robert Brazelton

[RW]

Judging by lack of public reaction at least, Issac Azimov's 1950's novella, The Martian Way, may have flopped as a critique of McCarthyism but it was an interesting exploration of economic principles involved in scarcity.

But I don't recall another SF work who's central theme and driving premise was fungibility; this may of course be because I never read one that I enjoyed, until now.

[Steven Rogers]

"First Contract" by Greg Costikyan dealt at length with the economic ramifications of, well, first contact.

[walkingtheline]

Reminds of Dahl's great "Uncle Oswald" series, with bonus points for narrative recursion.

[Tom Lowe]

Actually Robert Heinlein's notions of Economics seem mainly based on his education at Annapolis in the 1920s.

His first published short story "The Roads Must Roll" in 1942 is strongly anti-union; as late as the 1980s he dismisses a naive character as a "socialist". "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" struck me as self-consciously a free marketer's utopia. Pop/pulp playing to an audience of adolescent egos, no matter their age.

He'd have made a great speech writer for McCain.

[Tom Lowe]

Actually Robert Heinlein's notions of Economics seem mainly based on his education at Annapolis in the 1920s.

His first published short story "The Roads Must Roll" in 1942 is strongly anti-union; as late as the 1980s he dismisses a naive character as a "socialist". "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" struck me as self-consciously a free marketer's utopia. Pop/pulp playing to an audience of adolescent egos, no matter their age.

He'd have made a great speech writer for McCain.

[Ponzi Q. Globalization]

"this time the science is economics"

Economics is a science in the same way a male transvestite is a woman. Adding some high-powered math and focusing on models and theories that can be analyzed by such math may make a discipline look like science but it is all appearance.

The male transvestite may look like a beautiful woman but he cannot give birth or nurse. Economics may be all tarted up in pretty theories and models but it cannot predict or describe the parts of the real world it's supposed to predict and describe one bit. This is the minimum we expect in a science.

***

Dune describes the future of the neoliberal world. Aristocracy, feudalism, perpetual fighting over control of resources, jihad, and sandworms. Great big sandworms.

[John]

What about Stephenson's Baroque Cycle?

[Austin Kelly]

Clif Simak - "They Walked Like Men" published in 1962, alien real estate agents land on earth and create a housing bubble. All about economics, and how prophetic is that?

James Blish - "Cities in Flight" - a series of 4 novels in the 50's and 60's that chronicle cities with anti-grav devices that bring a service economy to the galaxy. Much of the story line is taken up with finding markets, earning profits, and riding out galactic recessions.

[Scott]

Damon Knight's "The Big Pat Boom" has what may be the ultimate speculative bubble.

[Calton Bolick]

Mack Reynolds' work is FULL of his earnest socioeconomic speculations, though since I read them in high school, I can't tell you how reality-based they are.

[No One of Consequence]

Niven's Known Space touches upon the economic impact of teleportation (short version: it royally fubars the world). One of his short stories even looks at the future of theft. If anything, I think he was too restrained.

[Junsok Yang]

The neatest piece of economic analysis in a SF story that I've ever read was John Barnes "The Man Who Pulled Down the Sky" which dealt with revolution on the Moon. He used the old GDP equation Y = C + I + G to show that the independent Moon will remain dependent on the Earth economics-wise, (and thus the Earth will not need to re-invade Earth). Due to independence, output will rise, but since (in the background of the novel), there will be little increase in investment or government spending (libertarian economy), consumption will rise, but since most consumption goods are made on Earth, imports will have to rise. (presumbly, exports will rise as well, but most Moon exports will be technology-intensive not-necessarily consumption goods, and increasing interdependence between Moon and Earth).
Also, John Barnes had an article in Analog a couple of decades back on how to build a future economy. Interesting reading. I believe John Barnes had some degree in economics (though it may have been heterodox radical econ).
For my money, the best Stross book, (and one of the best books I've read in a long time) is Accererando.
P.S. I shouldn't be surprised that so many economists were inspired by Asimov's Psychohistory. However, in an essay (an editorial in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine), Asimov basically disavowed his idea that anything like psychohistory would be possible, and he did not believe that economics was a science. My own feeling is that the reason Asimov made his misguided effort to join the robot series and the Foundation series is to make psychohistory workable (in his personal view) by having the mind-reading robots guide humanity. ("If you can't make the equation fit the behavior, have the behavior fit the equation." Lucas)

[SvN]

There's been more than a couple articles written about the various economic themes in "The Phantom Menace", which has some nice digressions on the economic implications of slavery, all played out against the backdrop of a trade federation blockade enforced by mercenaries (of course!) Now if only they'd explained why there is no foreign exchange market on Tatooine...

[John Howard Brown]

To add my own personal geekiness to this thread.
"I read a fun story where the aliens were rabid anti-monopolists. All gov'ts, armies, corporations or organizations of more than 5 individuals were considered to be combinations in restraint of trade, and dealt with harshly. Can't remember author or title, I'm afraid."
The story about the alien species which imposed anarchy on Earth was in Analog in the 1970s sometime.

Mack Reynolds was probably a Marxist of some stripe or another, his work (again for Analog) in the sixties laid out an awful lot of Marx's theories

There was a serial which ran in Analog in about 1982 or '83 which featured an unspecified east African nation which had achieved an anarchical-libertarian nirvana, including space flight. The "Mans" method of keeping the brother down was by imposing monopolistic practices on space based commerce. Ironically, a few years later Somalia began practicing its own version of anarchical something or another, which scarcely served as a good advertisement.

[Steven]

"I read a fun story where the aliens were rabid anti-monopolists. All gov'ts, armies, corporations or organizations of more than 5 individuals were considered to be combinations in restraint of trade, and dealt with harshly. Can't remember author or title, I'm afraid."

Vernor Vinge, "Conquest by Default." Originally published in Analog in the 1960's, also available in various collections, most recently "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge."

[Christopher P. Kile]

I'm surprised no one mention Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series. An examination of the development of the independent nitrogen and hydrogen economies described there might add something to this discussion, and should certainly be mentioned under the topic "economic S-F".

[A. Kelly]

John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar. An underdeveloped country hires a ginormous western firm to act as their government (sort of a city manager writ large) to spead their economic development process.

[G.B.]

The Man Who Sold the Moon...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Sold_the_Moon