Wanted: An Anarchist PI

No, as far as I know, I don't need a gumshoe personally.

But I think the anarchist movement does.

The most fun and cost-effective exercise in anarchist consciousness-raising I can imagine (at least at this point in the morning, before breakfast) would be the creation of a set of PI novels set in a stateless society.

Genre-crossing is already all the rage in crime fiction. Think Laurell Hamilton's early Anita Blake novels (the ones before sex became the central point of each story), which combined fantasy, horror, and romance with elements of the traditional police procedural. Or Hamilton's Merry Gentry novels, which combine fantasy, detective work, and politics. Or Jim Butcher's novels that blend the traditional PI story with fantasy (and occasionally horror). Or Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels, which often mix fantasy with politics and detection.

But this isn't, of course, a feature exclusively or primarily of fantasy fiction. A prime function of today's PI novel seems to be to introduce readers to unfamiliar worlds. Peter Spiegelman's really excellent novels concerned with the New York financial world come immediately to mind. So does the whole sub-genre of mysteries set in ancient Rome (of which Lindsey Davis's Falco stories are, on balance, I think, the best examples).

So: why not a series that integrates SF and politics with the Chandleresque PI story, offering the reader a window into the diverse sorts of communities that would doubtless figure in a stateless society through the eyes of a shamus?

Fiction about radically different social alternatives runs a serious risk of being boring and self-righteous if its primary purpose is explain what's wrong with current society while highlighting the advantages of an alternative. It's likely to be heavy on philosophical dialogue and exposition.

The need to write a good PI story, with no more exposition than you'd get in any piece of detective fiction or SF introducing readers to an unfamiliar environment, would make the boring and self-righteousness less likely (you can never rule out the possibility of either entirely, of course).

The series would be a great opportunity to put different anarchic options on display and to do what fiction of this sort always does: show how the sausages are made by revealing a society's seamy under-side. Thus, it would facilitate self-critical reflection by anarchists on their various projects. But, more importantly, it would help to normalize anarchism in the minds of an ordinary reader just interested in picking up something different in the mystery or SF section of her local bookstore.

I'm not volunteering—just proposing. I'd love to see volunteers come forward, so we could rally around them. But if you just want to debate my suggestion, that's OK, too.

I look forward to hearing from you.