The Handmaids Tale is - IMHO - a work that supports a liberal viewpoint. At the very least, it offers a dystopian vision of what a socially conservative USA could look like.
What would be an example of a work that is opposite in viewpoint to a work like The Handmaids Tale?
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Geez, I dunno. Maybe Lord of the Rings? Maybe?
Look, here’s the thing. Conservatives, per se, don’t generally write about things politically, although we do think and write about politics. I would definitely say that people who are conservative, even in a vague sense, find politics unhealthy and unpleasant and try to separate that as much as possible from their actual lives. There’s nothing I find so obnoxious as to be reading a book, article, or even editorial and suddenly be told how cool the author is for being a Liberal (or Progressive, or whatever). But I watch for similar notions in conservatives and generally don’t find them - and I don’t think it’s just bias.
If someone towards the conservative end wants to write about politics, they will. But it’s only a necessary evil, and we honestly just don’t like the topic enough to crow about it. We may not always like or understand the other side of the aisle, but being “Conservative” simply isn’t a part of personal identity. I simply can’t imagine a group called “Easting Conservatively.” Most conservatives, Republicans, etc simply don’t understand (and may be offended) when people bring their personal politics up in an unrelated situation, including most work, schoo, and entertainment function.
As near as I can tell, we seem to be at the very least embarassed even if the person has very similar views. It’s sort of like farting in public: we all have gas form time to time but it’s not something we eagerly share. It’s something not to be shared except in relatively close company. At best, we may share related viewpoints that are also part of being conservative/Republican/libertarian/Libertarian/etc. However, we’re a lot more likely to think or write about those. Politics are a tacked-on consequence of applying personal views to the filthy necesseties of the times, they are not part of the man or woman.
Oddly enough, a lot of the best “conservative” fiction was written by people who weren’t really conservatives.
Think of George Orwell’s ***1984 ***or Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron.”
The ones that come to my mind would be The Turner Diaries for the racist right; the Left Behind series for the religious right; Freehold and sequels for the libertarian wing.
Turner Diaries ?
Or more seriously, if you’re asking for fiction about a left-wing dystopia, there must be lots of thinly-veiled warning stories about communism and such.
Sure; the Right is deeply racist.
Anything by Ayn Rand.
Atlas Shrugged comes to mind.
astorian, to argue that 1984 is an example, you’d have to first argue that the society depicted is a liberal one. I would tend to argue the opposite, if anything.
Atlas Shrugged and other of Rand’s works exemplify at least a strand of conservative thought (and certainly fit the bill for anti-communist).
Starship Troopers?
I was actually suggesting (only half seriously) Turner Diaries to the OP. It wasn’t in response to your mention of it.
Anything by Tom Clancy.
HahahahHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That’s hilarious. HaahahahahahahahahAHAH! Sorry, I’ll get a hold of myself soon. HAHAHAHAHAHhahahahahahHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA.!!! Rotflmao, etc. HAHA! This honestly might be the most unintentionally hilarious post I’ve read in at least a year.
Oh, wait, you’re kidding. Well done, sir. (I hope.)
I can’t think of the name right now but wasn’t there a book series that started just recently that has Muslim terrorists blackmail a weak-willed Liberal US government into giving the west coast over to Sharia law? That sounds like right-wing speculative fiction wet dream material right there.
Agenda 21 and The Overton Window by Glenn Beck.
The society depicted is a hypersocialized state dedicated to fairness by means of reduction to the lowest common denominator. Sure, it equates socialism with totalitarianism, which isn’t necessarily more fair than Atwood’s depiction of a Christianized state with totalitarianism, but that was more in the framework of the time Orwell was writing in.
If you’re looking for something that depicts a more modern view on what the right views as the left gone too far, Bonfire of the Vanities might not be a bad place to start.
Allen Drury got staggering fame with the political novel Advise and Consent in 1959, which is fairly neutral, but all the sequels grew progressively more conservative. You can trace the concerns and obsessions of the modern conservative movement as the books bashed liberal thinking.
I haven’t read them, but William F. Buckley’s series of Blackford Oakes spy novels were written with a specifically conservative point of view. Wikipedia says:
smiling bandit, your post just serves to perpetuate the stereotype that conservatives live in a different reality than everybody else.
As mentioned, Tom Clancy: in one of his book’s the Sierra Club are the bad guys.
There’s also Embrace the Serpent, co-written by Marilyn Quayle, which I assume is not keen on leftist views.
I would think that conservatives, by definition, wouldn’t be writing speculative fiction about their political ideal, assuming that they think that what we have, or had in the not too distant past, is ideal. The ideal liberal political system has never yet been tried by any country, so liberals have a lot more reason to write about their dream.
What what what? Read most of Heinlein’s works, specifically The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which is worth reading no matter what your politics are. Read Pournelle’s works, if you can. There are any number of speculative fiction writers who are conservative and write about how the world would be better if everyone was conservative, and the Evils of Liberalism.