Politics and the Good Intentions series

Some thoughts on politics and the Good Intentions series

One of the more frequent stated reasons for dislike of the later installments of the Good Intentions series is that it turned political in some way.⁠ I disagree with that, but not in the sense that the later books lack political content or stances. The disagreement I have with it is that this is not new development. All of Elliott Kay's major works are deeply ideological, and have been so from the beginning. I view applied ideology as one of the main facets of politics, so that the works are political is no surprise to me.

Popular fiction and politics

But popular fiction is often perceived to not be ideological or political, when in reality it nearly always is steeped in ideological assumptions. Often those assumptions turn out to be conservative, in the original sense of the word. Usually they are simplistic or unexamined.⁠

This partly goes for the readers too. People unschooled in ideology often fail to identify it when they encounter it in places where they don't expect it—like in fiction. They are even less likely to notice it when they agree with it. This means that they are surprised when the ideology of the work gets too strong to ignore, because they disregarded or failed to notice all the prior examples. In many ways, I view popular fiction as the most political of all genres, because of how it is so often read as not being political while being filled with ideological assumptions.

Because who is given a voice is an ideological choice. So is the way organizations are depicted. Which solutions are used to resolve the problems. And so on and on.

Examples in Good Intentions

Politics and ideology are visibly present from the beginning in Good Intentions. Alex discusses sexual politics maybe not from day one, but definitely from day two. This includes Alex saying he is being a hypocrite about the one dick policy.⁠ He and Lorelei discuss how society views sex work, where Alex’s view may be unsophisticated and simple, but very clearly does not see it as something morally wrong.⁠ About what makes for meaningful consent.⁠ About the double standard of how society views men versus women having lots of sexual partners.⁠ Alex early on also expresses that he hates the misogynistic DJ on morning radio.⁠

A lot of this touches on feminism, but there are other political elements too.

Both Alex and Molly make it clear that people should not be property and that slavery is wrong.⁠ At the same time, many of the villains of the stories are supporters of slavery or see nothing wrong with enslavement. One of Alex’s strongest early internal conflicts is how Lorelei views him as her owner.⁠ An important piece of the development in their relationship is that Lorelei realises that Alex in no way thinks of her as his property.⁠

Another example is Wade’s statements about torture, proper use of force, and necessity while interrogating and then shooting the vampire Lucien in cold blood.⁠ Most particularly, he frames it as a necessary action but not as a morally defensible action.

There is also economic ideology at play. Making an embezzler into an early villain is the most obvious one, though it is somewhat weakened by that Cordingly is a stereotypically “bad”—in the moral sense—embezzler. The way both Alex and Lorelei approach money is also very much antithetical to capitalism. Money can certainly be gained, but it is there to be used, not as a goal in and of itself. Alex goes a bit further than Lorelei, by his stance that he won’t touch money gained by morally wrong means or deception.⁠

Examples in Natural Consequences

Natural Consequences continues with different political and ideological content. Alex gains a greater understanding of women and stalkers the hard way.⁠ But the primary focus is on law enforcement and criminal investigations. The secret courts and proceedings are again presented as something necessary but still something undesirable. It is not however presented as a risk for corruption but rather as a single point of failure.⁠⁠ There are also discussions on how to properly run investigations between the members of the Special Task Force, mostly geared towards what can be used as admissable evidence. Their tactics are also called out by Johnson and Murray.⁠

Especially pertinent to me is Lorelei’s and Alex’s discussion on how to assume or handle being in the crosshairs of law enforcement. Lorelei’s position is essentially to assume bad faith and that it is possible to evade it and simply start a new life somewhere else. Alex assumes good faith, that some law enforcement is necessary, and that he wants to live a life without hiding.⁠ While Lorelei is correct in her assessment of bad faith from Hauser, in the long run it is Alex’s more socially aware view that wins out, in that some law enforcement is necessary and that a life in the open is preferable.

The sharper discussion on law enforcement in Grand Theft Sorcery is thus not a deviation from the earlier stories, it is a continuation of it.

Later stories describe homeless people as people.⁠ Alex explicitly has been described as seeing and assisting them.⁠⁠

Examples in Poor Man’s Fight

For anyone who has read Poor Man’s Fight and its sequels, it should come as no surprise that there is political content there. From the beginning Poor Man’s Fight was anti-colonialist and critical of unfettered capitalism. It also had a different stance of government than most science fiction—especially military sf. A lot of military sf idolises the military while viewing the state inept or harmful at most everything else. In Poor Man’s Fight, the military is presented as a big multi-faceted institution with both faults and virtues. What we see of the rest of the government—admittedly not much—aligns with that. The relative lack of power of the Union of Humanity and inability to intervene in the war against Archangel is expressed as a problem, not as a virtue of “limited government”.

The series takes an especially strong stance on intelligence and covert operations, in that secrecy helps morally or ethically repugnant actions, and so selecting for high moral and ethical standards should be paramount. It also clearly points out the need for effective political and civilian oversight over any secret operations, even if it does not explicitly call for such.

My take

The Good Intentions series is a story grounded in humanism. By this I mean an ideology which values free choice in individuals, values reasoned thought, and makes a virtue of helping and enabling other people to grow in their own ways. This humanism does not necessarily preclude religion, but it rejects religion or any other ideology which only allows a single true way of life. From day one it has been highly critical of patriarchy and capitalism.