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Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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5 Responses

  1. Freddie says:

    If nothing else, Witch Week gets school, and its attendant little indignities and traumas, better than anything I’ve read.Report

  2. E.D. Kain says:

    Yeah – so far so good though I’m only a chapter or two in. Then again, sometimes those first chapters (pages? lines?) are the deal-breakers….Report

  3. Katherine says:

    I’ve read a fair bit of fantasy by liberals (Ursula le Guin, for example; JK Rowling; also pretty much any fantasy that has female main characters). My favorite author, Tolkien, though, was an odd sort of paleocon/libertarian – his political comment that most sticks in my mind is that he would prefer absolute monarchy of a king who was mainly interested in collecting stamps or some other hobby entirely unrelated to governing.Report

  4. Ian M. says:

    Hey, I meant to respond to an earlier list of fantasy and science fiction but got distracted by life (pesky offspring). I used to work in the SF section at Powell’s Books in Portland so I know a little about the genre.
    I didn’t see Joe Abercrombie mentioned in any of your fantasy posts – it’s your next read. Best fantasy I’ve read in years, hands down, and the trilogy is complete (First Law series, beginning with The Blade Itself). I’m reading Steel Remains right now and it’s very good although the war on terror theme is somewhat troweled on. Morgan’s Kovacs series is better and I would recommend it first (starting with Altered Carbon).
    If you want to see how the other half lives (us liberal/socialists) I would point you to The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod. MacLeod is a Scottish socialist who keeps inexplicably winning the Prometheus Best Novel Award. Also, socialist China Mieville has the single best imagination I’ve read in fantasy, but I’ll take a slightly contrarian tack and suggest Un Lun Dun, his young adult novel, ahead of his his outstanding Bas Lag novel Perdido Street Station.
    Finally, the imp in you would like the Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. Locke is a con man, a bastard, and fun as hell to read about. The second in the series is also great.Report

  5. E.D. Kain says:

    Note: There are certainly liberals who write both fantasy and sci-fi as well, but I would note that many of these writers dip into “tradition” nonetheless in a very similar way as their conservative counterparts, and run with similar themes even. And in sci-fi you basically have to deal with a dynamic of great possibility and progress coupled with the inherent dangers of possibility and progress, so it really can work regardless so long as one isn’t hopelessly optimistic. Then it just becomes space opera.

    Thanks for the reading suggestions. If I get around to it I’ll add them to the list and maybe re-post with updates….time permitting….(oh, and memory permitting of course!)Report