Doctorow, Cory. Walkaway.

Cory Doctorow, Walkaway (2017).

Doctorow's Walkaway is a book centrally concerned with political economy. It deserves places on pretty much any reading list of economic SF, and many a list of utopian/dystopian SF, alongside classics such as Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Juliet E. McKenna offers an excellent summary in Interzone #270:

In this near-future, the rich have got much, much richer while those further down the social order desperately cling to exploitative jobs, fearful of becoming a surplus labour unit. Elites ensure this default state of affairs for the blinkered majority by controlling the only meaningful careers left: financial engineering, and politics.  

[...] 

When computer access is ubiquitous, survival knowledge is free for the taking. Ultimately, people can simply walk away from a society they’re no longer invested in. So Hubert, Seth and Natalie head north into the Canadian wilderness where Limpopo and like-minded folk have set up a community where everyone can have what they want or need without even having to contribute from their own means. Limpopo isn’t the leader because there’s no such role. There is no obligation to even work for the common good unless one chooses to. 

[...] 

Some are always determined to keep score. Some demand a pecking order. What happens when they turn up and try to remake this community to suit themselves? Walking away from conventional society means walking away from its protections, in a world where anyone can arm themselves with an AK-3DP gun. Conflict is the essence of drama, right? Not so much, as it turns out, when Limpopo and the others simply walk away again. 

[...] 

Walkaway philosophy says the only way to win is not to play. But what if the other side insists? Well, then it’s time to change the rules of the game, more than once if you need to, and always trying to stay one move ahead.

Le Guin, Ursula. The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974). Le Guin's fairly brilliant imagining of a well-established "Odonian" revolutionary anarcho-syndicalist society on the moon Annares. It sets out a utopian vision via a stress test of that vision. The novel is absolutely an anarchist-syndicalist polemic -- to think otherwise is a serious misreading! -- but it dwells on the fragilities and flaws of the society it advocates.

Books like these are really carrying the whole SFF team. Really: The Disposssessed is getting toward half a century old, and is still in many ways the first go-to book for speculative fiction and political economy. That's a testament to the great insight and imagination of the novel itself, of course. But it could also be a wee bit of an indictment of what we've all been up to since then.

A huge amount has been written about it, but I haven't come across any attempt at a brief summary of the key economic institutions and practices of Annares. So I've attempted that below. If you think I've bungled something, please let me know!