>>24382049
Scottish too and a contemporary of Iain Banks. One of his big influences is apparently Ernest Mandel, a Belgian Marxist. I haven't looked at his blog in awhile but I remember him posting a lot against anti-vaping types. (He likes to vape.)
https://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/

>On the second question, I’ve argued elsewhere that science fiction is implicitly historical materialist:

>"What distinguishes SF from previous ways of thinking about the future is precisely what distinguishes Marxism from other forms of socialism - it investigates the possibilities of the future by looking at the tendencies of the present: developments in technology, scientific discoveries, social trends, and how these interact. A reading of science fiction is one of the best possible preparations for understanding Marx’s materialist conception of history, no matter how conservative or pro-capitalist the given writer’s own views may be. That society is greatly affected by technological change, that societies flourish or fail to the extent that they enhance or inhibit technological progress, that people’s philosophical and religious and moral ideas are connected to the whole social system in which they live and move and have their being, and that the whole social system itself rests upon the ability of human beings to wrest a living from nature - these ideas are the most basic tools in the science-fiction writer’s kit, and in the science-fiction reader’s mental map of the world. They are also, of course, those of Marx."

>This may have been a tad over-stated, especially as I went on to suggest that maybe because the First and Second Internationals actually did promulgate that materialist way of thinking it may have directly or indirectly influenced early SF. But I still think tracing these connections would make an interesting research project for someone someday.
https://www.bigecho.org/ken-macleod

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does good Marxist fiction exist?