Red Pepper är en radikal brittisk tidskrift som skriver så här om sig själva:

Red Pepper is a bi-monthly magazine and website of left politics and culture. We’re a socialist publication drawing on feminist, green and libertarian politics. We seek to be a space for debate on the left, a resource for movements for social justice, and a home for anyone who wants to see a world based on equality, meaningful democracy and freedom.

Red Pepper is completely independent, and whilst not rejecting party politics, seeks to help build the kind of pluralistic, dynamic movements which can fundamentally challenge our economic system, with its entrenched injustice, structures of power and oppression, and tendency towards war and environmental destruction. Although based in London, we have links around Britain, and have always covered events and perspectives from outside the capital.

Jag citerade i ett annat inlägg tidningens intervjuer med några kända SF-författare med hjärtat till vänster. De beskrev på ett bra sätt varför jag tycker om science-fiction. Tidningen har också gjort en lista på 10 favoriter bland SF-böcker:

• Iron Council, China Miéville
• Body of Glass, Marge Piercy
• The Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod
• White Queen, Gwyneth Jones
• The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin
• Swastika Night, Katharine Burdekin, writing as Murray Constantine
• Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
• Babel-17, Samuel R Delany
• Culture Series, Iain M Banks
• Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson

Tre av mina favoritförfattare i genren finns med på listan, Ursula K. LeGuin, Iain M Banks och Ken MacLeod. Om Iain M Banks Cultureserie skriver Red Pepper så här:

Banks just has to be included here but it’s pretty much impossible to select one from among the ten books in the decades-spanning Culture series. What Star Trek would have been if the Federation was organised on anarchist principles and the Enterprise was a living ship guided by a prodigious artificial intelligence with a nice line in wry humour, the Culture universe is a provocative playground for committed post-humanists. The sad news of Banks’ death means the series is at a close, but these books will be read, re-read, pondered and critiqued long after the rest of us have returned to galactic dust.

Culture-serien är bland det bästa som skrivits i SF-genren. Bland de bästa är förstås också The Dispossessed av Ursula K. LeGuin, från vilken bok namnet på denna blogg hämtats. Men jag tycker Left Hand of Darkness är hennes bästa bok. Värt att citera är också det som Red Pepper skriver om Ken MacLeods The Star Fraction:

First in the ‘Fall Revolutions’ series and a somewhat wry dig at the factionalisation of the left in the wake of neoliberalism. A near-future UK is split into mini-states with competing ideologies; a small part of north London exists as a libertarian/anarchist enclave and the green eco-warriors are armed and dangerous. Riffing on cyberpunk’s preoccupation with artificial intelligence and its ubiquitous multi-functioning mirrorshades (here called ‘glades’), The Star Fraction is part send-up of conspiracy theorising paranoia and part serious call-to-arms for an entrenched left. ‘On a clear day,’ writes MacLeod, ‘you can see the revolution.’

Intressant?
Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Red Pepper, SF-böcker, Iron Council, China Miéville, Body of Glass, Marge Piercy, The Star Fraction, Ken MacLeod, White Queen, Gwyneth Jones, The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin, Swastika Night, Katharine Burdekin, Murray Constantine, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, Babel-17, Samuel R Delany, Culture Series, Iain M Banks, Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson, Böcker, Science Fiction, Samhälle, Politik