Asking for recommendations of fiction books with a communist setting. Ideally with a “show don’t tell” narrative structure. That is, communism exists and works fine but the author does not say “this is communism”. Just existing in the background like any other normal thing.
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Andromeda Nebula by Ivan Yefremov takes places on future communist Earth. His Hour of Bull also takes place in this setting, although it is more about Earth’s expedition to an another planet, where descendants of colonists have managed to preserve capitalism.
The first thing that comes to mind is Red Star by Alexander Boganov. It is pretty explicitly “about” communism in that it takes place on a communist Mars. It was written in the early 1900s but I think holds up fine.
The Culture series by Ian Banks features a communist-post-scarcity economic society.
Any books in the Noon Universe universe by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky take place in a future Earth where communism has spread over the planet.
Fire on the Mountain (1988) by Terry Bison is an alternate history novel that takes place in an African American socialist republic a century after Harriet Tubman’s and John Brown’s successful raid on Harper’s Ferry. I’ve read some of it and have been meaning to finish it. I suppose it’s quite explicit in its socialism, however.
2312 (2012) by Kim Stanley Robinson is a science fiction novel that takes place across a colonized solar system with multiple POVs. I quite like it, but if you much prefer narrative over worldbuilding then you may not. However, it does fit your criteria better. Socialism appears to be the predominant mode of production, with references to widespread worker co-ops (the author is obsessed with Mondragon), solar-system-wide economic planning, and I don’t think money comes up at all… Earth seems to be kind of fucked up though, so I guess you could say it has FALGSC but not FALGEC. Finally, I should note that Kim Stanley Robinson is not a Marxist.
Fire on the Mountain (1988) by Terry Bison is an alternate history novel that takes place in an African American socialist republic a century after Harriet Tubman’s and John Brown’s successful raid on Harper’s Ferry. I’ve read some of it and have been meaning to finish it. I suppose it’s quite explicit in its socialism, however.
It is not that explicit. It’s more one of those family history discovery stories, just the history is alternative and it happens in vaguely socialist solarpunk aesthetics. Honestly, it’s worth the reading because there is barely anything else there, but i found it incredibly boring, as the history is given in very small portions which don’t even get the clues about many important things, but the mundane slice of life comes in huge chunks inbetween (and i don’t like the slice of life).
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.
It always gets brought up as a book specifically about an anarchist society, but I think that’s mostly just because of the more negative connotations of the word “communist” and that most people don’t understand anarchism and communism share the same end goal.
