“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” This memorable quote belongs a tale about book burning and censorship, yet it points out to something greater: books carry and enable ideas, and so they are—and have always been—political.
Let’s get this idea undone.
Hello everyone, and welcome to Books Undone. I’m your host, Livia J. Elliot, and today I have a more philosophical discussion about a meta topic—how the authors’ and readers’ biases regarding society (including politics) interrelate in a book to create an inherently political experience. In particular, I will narrow this discussion to the context of science-fiction and fantasy.
The idea for this episode came after I listened to Zara, from Books With Zara, present some solid arguments as to why books are political. I’ll tag her video for you to watch it. If you have listened previous episodes of Books Undone, you know I have touched quote-on-quote uncomfortable books such as Fahrenheit 451, V for Vendetta, The Dispossessed, Rejoice, and 1984 (among others) so I was keen on diving into this topic and share some of my thoughts.
But before we get started, allow me to do some disclaimers. First, since we are not touching one particular book but many, this episode will be spoiler-lite; as usual, I’m using quotes from several books, but they are mostly isolated. Second, what you will hear is my subjective opinion on this topic; you can disagree, and everything will be fine.
So… are books political?
My answer is simple: yes, books are and forever will be political. However, there is more to that answer, and this episode will aim to discuss those nuances.
Let us begin with the basics, and that means a few definitions and examples.
‘Politics’ is a word rooted in the Ancient Greek word politiká. It was defined by Aristotle in his work of the same name, and refers to “the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources”. There are two key concepts here: (a) making decisions in groups, and (b) distribution of status or resources.
Those quote-on-quote ‘groups’ governed through politics are societies. Curiously, Aristotle also said, that: “[humans are] by nature a social animal; […] Society is something that precedes the individual.”
This means that humans achieve their highest potential in relationships and communities, because we have innate needs for companionship, communication, and cooperation. Society is thus the framework within which individuals are born, raised, and educated. Without society, individuals could not survive or reach their full potential.
We can exemplify this with Death Stranding—either the game or the novelisations, which I discussed in a prior episode. An in-book researcher called Heartman explains that: “Homo sapiens […] grew stronger through interpersonal connections. By creating what came to be called ‘society’.”
In other words, what made humans survive and thrive was the expansion of communication between tribes, the subsequent trade, and the establishment of societies. When the in-book societies collapsed because of a world-wide phenomenon (the Death Stranding itself) humanity was at risk of becoming extinct because we need governed communities to distribute resources we cannot produce and thus help us survive.
What I find interesting is that apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic sci-fi is based on Aristotle’s ideas; these plots usually test the limits of what happens when the social structures he saw as essential are broken or erased. Apocalyptic sci-fi seems to be based on a premise: what happens if we remove or threaten all governed societies? Will humanity rebuild, or will it break entirely?
For example, in World War Z (the book, not the movie), a character named General Travis D’Ambrosia stated that: “We aren’t just fighting for our physical survival, but for the survival of our civilisation.” This quote highlights that the in-book battle against the zombie plague is not just about physical survival but also about preserving the structures, values, and culture that make up human civilisation.
Basically, it was a fight to preserve society.
So, society is fundamental to humanity, and thus it must be governed and preserved… but there are two caveats to notice here:
One, if society is so fundamental to humankind, it is bound to influence the humans that live on it… which includes authors and readers. Hold on to this idea; we will come back to it soon.
Two, Aristotle’s definition of politics has no alignment (left, right, centre, whatever you want to call it) because it is not related to ideology. Let’s dive into this point.According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, ideology is “a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture” and more specifically “the integrated assertions, theories, and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program”1. Thus, while politics can be understood as the actions taken regarding law and governance, ideology explains why it’s done in a particular way, and what societal goal to work towards. After all, ideology defines how society should look if governed through politics aligned with this set of ethics.
Now, ideologies often clash. They are bound to, because if two factions with seemingly dissimilar ideologies are vying for political power, it often results in a war—aka people fighting for their ideals and beliefs. This is also a common plotline in fantasy and science fiction.
For example, in Star Wars, the struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance is an ideological clash; while the Empire represents authoritarianism and control, the Rebels fight for democracy and individual rights. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson also features an ideological clash between the in-book factions; while the Lord Ruler enforces a rigid class system that privileges nobles over skaa (the commoners), the rebellion is driven by ideals of equality and freedom.
There are many books with that use ideological clashes as part of their world-building or their inciting incident. Just to name a few: Herbert’s Dune, or Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, and even Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It generally works because taking it to the extreme it often results in a high-stakes plot-line and quite an entertaining read.
However, the importance of a governed society and the leverage of an ideological clash are not the only reasons why books are political. In my opinion, ideology is an important factor because it is a type of bias, and we humans are particularly reluctant to confront our biases.
But what are biases?
In short, biases are innate tendencies or prejudices2, and there are so many types of them, that the University of Oxford supported the creation of catalogofbias.org to catalogue all the biases that affect the human mind.
For this episode, let’s narrow down into cognitive biases, which are “systematic errors in the way individuals reason about the world due to their subjective perception of reality”, and are “often seen as flaws in the rational choice theory of human behaviour, which asserts that people make rational choices based on their preferences”3.
But what does this mean? That “people make rational choices based on their preferences”?
Sometime ago, I told you that society is fundamental to humankind and will thus influence the humans that live on it… and that’s because living in a society biases us. It ingrains preferences on us—from religions to fashion, from political ideologies to languages, from ways of treating others to the food we favour. Everything within a society becomes a source of bias, even the other members of it.
You have probably encountered many biased fictional characters. For example:
Denethor in The Lord of the Rings is deeply prejudiced against Aragorn—believing him unworthy to claim the throne of Gondor—and against Gandalf—viewing him as a meddler. Denethor’s bias clouds his judgment, leading him to despair and neglect his duties during Gondor’s most critical moments.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, Tywin Lannister mistreats his son Tyrion because of the latter’s physical disability and perceived weakness, which he sees (in short) as an affront to the Lannister’s image. That prejudice is a bias.
We also have Captain Picard in Star Trek. He tries to be aware of his own biases while actively reflecting on the tension between ideals and personal judgment… but he’s also deeply biased against the Borgs. Yes, Picard had quite a traumatic encounter with the Borgs, but trauma also biases us.
Bias is useful in storytelling and to create complex characters because it’s intrinsic to being human. In other words, if you’re human you are biased, especially if you think you are not. In Everyday Bias, author Howard J. Ross wrote that:
“Human beings are consistently, routinely, and profoundly biased. We not only are profoundly biased, but we also almost never know we are being biased."
Authors are humans, and if everything a human does is affected by the biases that person carries, everything a writer writes in also informed by those biases. That could be anything from what themes appear in their work, the ideologies of their warring factions, the biases of their characters, the politics of their secondary worlds, the presentation of all of this, and how their plots unfold. All of that (and even more!) can be affected by someone’s biases.
Like Jane Austen wrote in Northanger Abbey:
“It is only a novel… or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."
Ultimately, a book is a product of an author’s mind, and thus carries their biases, their preferences and prejudices. It may be more blatant or covert, it may be hidden under layers of allegories, or it may have been exacerbated or diluted by the pass of time—and the inherent change of society—but it is always there.
And do you know what bias is the one that can rile up readers the most? Political ideology.
An author’s ideological bias can generally leak through their the world-building, and in the ideologies of their fictional factions—especially who is presented as the quote-on-quote ‘good’ side. It may also leak through their character’s beliefs and values, what their villains believe in, in what light those beliefs are presented, and what themes their characters favour. It may also be visible in an author’s thematic work.
Let’s do one round of examples to assess books where political ideology takes the forefront. George Orwell wrote 1984 as a cautionary tale against totalitarianism because he’d been working as a propagandist for the British government and so disliked that entire apparatus. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote The Dispossessed not because she was an anarchist, but because that idea is impracticable in real life, and she wanted to explore it. Almost any dystopian fiction that you can find will have a clear political vein, either as a critical look on a detail of modern society, or as a cautionary tale; in some cases, they may be even humoresque, like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and its inherent critique of war and bureaucracy.
But what about the others? What about the books we quote-on-quote ‘read for escapism’? They also have politics and ideology. Take A Song of Ice and Fire, for example; yes, most of the regions are hierarchical or feudal systems that reflect medieval times… yet at the same time, each region has a different ideology–there are meritocracies and nepotism, theocracies, and a wide array of characters quite opinionated about their in-book ideologies. Now, take Tolkien’s Middle Earth; you have monarchies, oligarchies, decentralised governments (in the ents and hobbits), each with their ideologies, and again, opinionated characters with views of what society should look.
So… the elements are there. Politics and ideology are present in both types of books. But what makes books like 1984, Catch-22, and The Dispossessed be deemed quote-on-quote ‘political’ while The Lord of the Rings is not considered political?
I’ll hazard a guess. It is not because of the presence of ideology, but how politics and ideology are presented to the reader.
The subtler the writer is, the more allegories that are used, or the more that the real-world themes that are coated in fantasy or science-fiction, the more difficult it is for a reader to perceive the writer’s ideologies. As Carl Sagan put it, “One glance at a book, and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for a thousand years.”
But… the reader is also a human and, therefore, also biased. Thus, how a reader reads, what themes, plot-lines, characters, and style interest them or not are also the result of their biases. This is especially important because readers also carry, knowingly or not, an ideological bias.
In my opinion, there are three ways in which an author’s ideological biases can clash against the reader’s ideological biases:
First, if a reader’s biases are aligned with the writer’s, then the former is probably going to like the book, or not even realise where the author’s ideology is quote-on-quote ’leaking through’; this is especially true for subtler, allegorical books. Why? Well, we all like to have our biases confirmed to avoid confrontation. George Orwell wrote in 1984 that “the best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” Books that are quote-on-quote ’easy to read’ confirm what we already believe. They align with our ideology, and they do not present anything new—just more of what we’re comfortable with.
Second, if the reader is particularly affected by confirmation bias, they may favour books where the author is actively allowing their ideology to leak into the book; they may even write in a way that it reinforces what they believe. This is quite common, but let me leverage an excerpt from 1984 by George Orwell. In this scene, the main character, Winston Smith, is reading a banned book:
“The book fascinated him, or more exactly, it reassured him. In a sense, it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction. It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden.”
That’s confirmation bias, namely, “a psychological term for the human tendency to only seek out information that supports one position or idea”4. There is a funny explanation about confirmation bias in Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance, where Shallan remembers that her mentor “Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results.” And well… that’s the problem with confirmation bias; it leads to interpret information in a way that supports our opinion, regardless of what the data shows.
Third, if the reader’s ideological bias is highly opposed to the author’s—and the book is not subtle in its presentation—the reader may get annoyed. Why? First, because opinions contrary to ours challenge us to revisit our biases, to wonder whether the other’s opinion is sensible, to challenge what we believe. They may even force us to see something as quote-on-quote ‘bad’ when we are biased to see it as ‘good’.
In Fahrenheit 451, retired professor Faber said: “[…] you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them.” That “come round in their own time” means that direct, abrupt confrontation is never a good idea to challenge someone’s biases; on the contrary, it’s going to put them on the defensive, make them aggressive, and less likely to listen.
It is in the relationship between the author’s presentation of their ideological biases, the reader’s biases, and the latter’s willingness to be challenged that we can understand that the question we posited at the beginning of this episode is flawed.
It is not whether books are political or not, it is about whether books are perceived as being political or not.
We should be asking ourselves, why do I perceive this book as political? and use it to understand the ideologies that are being presented.
As Franz Kafka put it, “Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.” A book doesn’t just offer external knowledge; it offers an invitation to introspection and self-discovery. They are not just external objects to be read, but instruments that allow us to venture deeper into our own minds, unveiling parts of us that might otherwise remain locked away… and that’s exactly what biases are—parts of our mind we seldom know.
We can also find good advice about this in Steelheart, by Brandon Sanderson, where one character tells another that: “It’s good for you to think of this, son. Ponder. Worry. Stay up nights, frightened for the casualties of your ideology. It will do you good to realize the price of fighting.”
We need to understand why we support what we support, and why are we bothered by different beliefs. We need to understand why perceiving a book as political aggravates us so much in order to understand a key part of ourselves.
To close off, let me say that this was quite an amusing episode to prepare, and a topic that I’m keen on continuing discussing.
This type of discussions, alongside bite-sized prose analyses, and concise deep-dives, is what you will find in my newsletter; you can sign up at liviajelliot.com and by doing so, you’ll also get a free copy of my novella, The Genesis of Change.
That said, if you liked it, please like and subscribe, review the podcast if possible and let’s continue the discussion in the comments!
Thanks for listening, and happy reading~
You can read the definition of ideology from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ideology
You can read The University of Chicago’s definition of bias here: https://help.uchicago.edu/bias-education-and-support-team/bias/
The Encyclopedia Britannica has an interested article, written by Stephen Eldridge, on cognitive bias: https://www.britannica.com/science/cognitive-bias
“What is Confirmation Bias?” written by Dayva Segal and medically reviewed by Melinda Ratini, MS, DO. https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-confirmation-bias
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