History AuthorTract / Literature

* William Lind's ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' is very much this, a story set TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture where the US dissolves into a couple of far-right and a number of straw liberal states, with the former proceeding to smash the latter to Kingdom Come.

* ''Hayy ibn Yaqzan'', an Arabic novel written by Ibn Tufail in 12th-century Andalusia, is an UrExample of this trope. It tells the story of an autodidactic feral child, raised by an animal and living alone on a desert island in the Indian Ocean, who sets out on a journey of philosophical inquiry and self-discovery. Its plot somewhat resembles a more recent best-selling novel, ''Literature/LifeOfPi''.

* Creator/TomClancy's ''[[Literature/JackRyan Executive Orders]]'' has President Jack Ryan remaking the U.S. government, after most of its Legislative and Executive branch were [[spoiler:killed at the end of ''Debt of Honor'', by a Japanese Airlines 747 crashing into the Capitol Building while Ryan was being sworn in as Vice President]].

* The Literature/JakubWedrowycz stories are written by a conservative author, and it shows sometimes; in one of the stories, the bad guys are radical left-wing ecologists, and in another, the heroes chase away a European Union official.

* Most books by Creator/DeanKoontz has at least a few rants about the many things that Koontz considers to be wrong with the world, which while never ''explicitly'' tied to one political direction or another usually maps well onto the [[WarOnStraw dumbest extremes]] of liberalism. Sometimes this ties into the themes and plots of the novel -- for instance, ''Dark Rivers of the Heart'' is explicitly about governmental overreach and the dangers of people trying to use the government's power to [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans create utopia]], with a helpful afterword where the author explains exactly what he thinks on the subject -- but most of the time the deranged anarchists, [[GranolaGirl anti-intellectual poets]] and welfare cheats just seem to be there to highlight how wonderful the protagonists and their implicitly-conservative values are in comparison. It's quite common for some characters to just sometimes start thinking about how evil abortion is, how ridiculous the idea of evolution is or how anything other than BlackAndWhiteMorality is just an excuse to do evil, regardless of whether or not it has any relevance to the situaiton at hand.

** Towards the end, the ''Ender's Shadow'' series also features numerous lectures from widely disparate characters on how the only way to really be a part of the human race is to have babies, culminating in one Battle-school grad stopping her troops in the middle of a battle and telling them to go home and procreate.

** ''Literature/OrsonScottCardsEmpire'', where the characters will [[AuthorFilibuster pause during the action]] to explain exactly why sweeping demonizations of the views of others are destructive. Part of it comes from the ridiculous premise--he was hired to write the backstory for [[VideoGame/ShadowComplex a video game]] about a second American Civil War taking place TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, with the opposing sides being [[StrawmanPolitical strawman versions]] of the Democrats and Republicans.

** Psychiatry is also the most evil force in ''Literature/MissionEarth'', to the extent that ''every single antagonist'' is either a supporter of the profession or a practitioner or exporting it off-world or using it to take over the world. It doesn't help that almost every character is a StrawmanPolitical. For example, the evil Psychlos. This isn't a play on 'psycho'--it's a reference to ''psychologists'', who are considered evil in Scientology doctrine.

* Eugen Richter's ''Pictures of the Socialistic Future'', which has the StrawmanPolitical as the viewpoint character who celebrates Germany's slide into Stalinist Communism and saves the AuthorAvatar for the very end. Interestingly, it was published in 1891 and managed to predict much of the CrapsackWorld the Soviet bloc would become. The author (1838-1906) was a leading progressive liberal politician of the time of Otto von Bismarck and Wilhelm II.

* ''Literature/TheTurnerDiaries'', written under a pseudonym by William Pierce, who was the leader of the neo-Nazi organization National Alliance until his death in 2002. Largely about the evils of [[StrawmanPolitical liberals and Jews]] enslaving America, and the actions of the terrorist cell 'The Order' trying to overthrow said strawmen. For a scary note, a scene in which the Order blow up a federal building probably inspired the actions of one of its biggest fans -- Timothy [=McVeigh=], the Oklahoma City Bomber. The Order also inspired a RealLife terrorist organization of the same name which is responsible for numerous deaths.

* A lot of Creator/MegCabot's books, especially her YA novels. It was especially apparent in ''Literature/ReadyOrNot'', where Ms. Cabot literally stopped the narrative to rant against the abstinence movement. Her other books contain some amounts of similar commentary.

* ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'' by Philip Pullman is to teach about atheism and vilify the Catholic Church. Very specifically, it was begun with the direct intention of being an atheist counter-part, and counter-point, to the Narnia series.

* Most books by Creator/DeanKoontz has at least a few rants about the many things that Koontz considers to be wrong with the world, which while never ''explicitly'' tied to one political direction or another usually maps well onto the [[WarOnStraw dumbest extremes]] of liberalism. Sometimes this ties into the themes and plots of the novel -- for instance, ''Dark Rivers of the Heart'' is explicitly about governmental overreach and the dangers of people trying to use the government's power to [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans create utopia]], with a helpful afterword where the author explains exactly what he thinks on the subject -- but most of the time the deranged anarchists, [[GranolaGirl anti-intellectual poets]] and welfare cheats just seem to be there to highlight how wonderful the protagonists and their implicitly-conservative values are in comparison.

* ''Literature/DragonRider'' by Cornelia Funke is full of the author's agendas. Every character we are supposed to like is a vegetarian, a pacifist, and will never stop bemoaning mankind's need to put animals in cages even though this theme has cursory relevance to the actual plot, at best. The author places Eastern people high up on a pedestal over Western people to a point of othering them.

* Creator/ArthurHailey's novels often go into Author Tract territory, as the author has one or another of his character expatiate on a particular failing of the business he is examining in the current book.

** ''The Moneychangers'' has a recurring character to filibuster about how Gold is Good. Given that he's a pundit with his own popular newsletter and is married to one of the secondary characters, and the book is about banking, it kinda makes sense. Then, after the 'real' ending, the US establishes a gold-backed dollar, and we are treated to the full text of one of said pundit's newsletters. Guess what it's about? The book ends with the lead putting the newsletter down and reflecting how wise said pundit is.

* Creator/AynRand wrote several novels expounding of the virtues of her personal philosophy, Objectivism, culminating in her Magnum Opus, the {{Doorstopper}} ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'', which features ''the'' AuthorFilibuster (actually only the longest of several in the book), lasting dozens of pages on end. Of course, like Creator/GeorgeOrwell, Rand never pretended her books were anything ''but'' author tracts.
* This trope was Creator/CharlesDickens's stock in trade. All of his works are morality plays meant to drive home his socialist (or at least social-democratic) ideals. In ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'', Ebenezer Scrooge rails that the poor are lazy and inferior and deserve to die, on scientific principle, and then an innocent child almost does. In ''Literature/DavidCopperfield'', ''Literature/NicholasNickleby'', and ''Literature/OliverTwist'', more innocent children are mercilessly abused, either by predators that society chooses to do nothing about or by the very institutions of that society. In ''Literature/LittleDorrit'', citizens are reduced to professional beggars by the debtors' prison system. In ''American Notes'', he praises American attempts to reform asylums and condemns slavery. And the list goes on.
* The Czech children's books writer and Scout leader Jaroslav Foglar almost always wrote Author Tracts in one way or another, with morally upstanding characters, characters tackling moral dilemmas that he felt he ought to address, from his own experience working with children, or simply describing the way he thought child collectives ''should'' function. He was very good at making it entertaining, but he also definitely suffered from tendencies to use too much pathos and too much of a didactive voice. However, when you know Foglar mostly as the creator of the completely unironic IncorruptiblePurePureness character of [[ComicBook/RychleSipy Mirek Dušín]], it can then come as quite a surprise to read, say, ''Tábor smůly'' and realise Foglar was equally capable of tongue-in-cheek...

** ''Literature/TheGreatDivorce,'' is an allegory about how everyone in Hell could leave and go to heaven at any time, if they were willing to give up whatever sinful obsession it is that they are most holding on to and fully accept God instead. The majority of the examples in the book are ultimately unwilling to do this, though a few do.
** ''Literature/ThePilgrimsRegress,'' which Lewis wrote this as a deliberate allegory when he thought his path to conversion was typical. He later found out it wasn't.

* Creator/DennisWheatley does this in just about every novel he wrote. His books often lapse into political polemic about the seductive evil of left-wing politics and the need for Britain to be governed by a strong benevolent dictator according to the principles of libertarianism and free-market economics. After all, the working classes are too docile and ill-educated, so people like ''us'' must shoulder the burden of ruling them, for their own good of course. Alongside the politics, Wheatley also held forth in favor of his religion, a kind of cross between Christianity and Buddhism.

* All or almost all works from Emilio Salgari (best known for the ''Literature/{{Sandokan}}'' novels) can be counted to have [[FairForItsDay better depictions of women and non-white people than it was standard in the Italy of the late 19th century]], brain and firepower trumping over valor and swords, massive doses of [[ThisIsReality reality ruining the characters' plans]], and [[WorldOfBadass everyone being a badass]] (''Le Meraviglie del Duemila'' has many unnamed characters fly through the world in airships carrying what amounts to small ''nukes'').
* Creator/FyodorDostoevsky:
** He hoped to convey a new way to understand religion through exemplifying the themes of guilt and free will in writing ''Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov''. This can be seen in what many critics call the pivotal chapters of the book, which include the parable called [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Inquisitor ''The Grand Inquisitor''.]] The way in which events play out conform with the Elder Zosima's idea expressed throughout "everyone is guilty for all and before all."
** ''Literature/NotesFromUnderground'' is arguably an Author Tract; it highlights the societal chaos brought about by the then-fashionable, and highly depressing, trend towards rational nihilism ("nihilists" in Russia also meant radicals who wanted to violently "remake" society by destroying all the existing institutions).
** ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'' is an Author Tract in the same vein, with the main character being a cruel nihilist who kills an elderly loan shark to rob her of the money he needs for university, justifying it on the grounds that "great men" such as Cesare Borgia showed no qualms about doing such things in pursuit of their goals. He winds up repenting and becoming an Orthodox Christian. Not surprisingly, this was Dostoevsky's religion.
* Creator/GeorgeOrwell, a staunch democratic socialist, spent a lot of effort to warn others about the dangers of surrendering to dictatorships:
** ''Literature/AnimalFarm'' is a thinly veiled satire of the Russian Revolution, and more generally of the nigh-universal FullCircleRevolution cycle as [[MeetTheNewBoss every new regime becomes corrupted and winds up like the old.]]
** ''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour 1984]]'', also by George Orwell, is an Author Tract based on his vision of the Soviet Union and on what rampant ideological totalitarianism can lead to.
* Creator/JohnGrisham's books often feature this trope, targeting big business and/or conservative views.
** ''Literature/TheConfession'': The book attacks the death penalty by constructing a miscarriage of justice where the pro-death penalty side is all grossly negligent and unlikable, in contrast to the anti-death penalty side. To top it off, once the message is thoroughly beaten through you, Grisham decides to dedicate a few pages to having a character rail against the death penalty.
** ''The Appeal'' features a long discourse on the need for an independent judiciary, how ads manipulate the truth, and how often big businesses will hide behind certain causes as an excuse to manipulate tort law to be more favorable. Including having a train of accidents hit the winning election candidate to get him to try and convert, but he stays bought.
* 99% of everything that Creator/JohnMilton wrote (including, tautologically, his political tracts).
* Creator/JohnRingo (a self-described Tea Party Republican) does this on a fairly regular basis, more so as time goes on.
** ''The Last Centurion'', written in a blog-type format, takes issue with various issues held dear by liberals, including universal healthcare, interracial relations, and "government knows best" attitudes.

** He wrote ''Literature/{{Ghost|2005}}'' as this deliberately. He never intended to publish it, but it got published due to pressure from the fans, much to his chagrin - he has described it as "the wanker piece" and "the spewings of my id." To give you an idea, the main character pursues kidnapper terrorists to the Middle East, where he kills them all, coaches a group of naked coeds through a siege (while renaming them, because he can't be bothered to learn their names), kills UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden and mails his head to the President in a bucket, buys a yacht with the reward money, has kinky bondage sex with some of the coeds and converts them to Republicanism. Later volumes in the ''Paladin of Shadows'' series, which tone down some of the more extreme elements of the first book, take aim at extremist Muslims, [[ObstructiveBureaucrat bureaucrats]], and assorted other issues that bother him.

* A lot of Creator/LarryNiven and Creator/JerryPournelle's collaborative work have a message that technology and science are good, religion and tree-hugging extremists who hate technology are bad.
** Pournelle's ''Literature/CoDominium'' backstory is one huge author tract, mostly in regards to socialism ruining the economy and society, though the tract is mostly absent from the actual meat of the novels.
** Ironically, the author tract was greatly ''reduced'' when Niven and Pournelle collaborated on ''Literature/TheMoteInGodsEye'', set in the [=CoDominium=] universe, albeit several hundred years later.
** ''Literature/LucifersHammer'' uses the StrawCharacter device to represent feminism, New Age religion, and environmentalism. These straw characters die shameful deaths during the ApocalypseHow plot.
* Creator/LRonHubbard:
** In ''Literature/BattlefieldEarth'', psychiatry is what caused the evil space overlords to turn from their generally happy live-and-let-live prior existence, into amoral PlanetLooters who regularly commit planetary genocide just so nobody will get in the way of their mining operations.
** Psychiatry is also the big-bad in ''Literature/MissionEarth'', to the extent that ''every single antagonist'' is either a supporter of the profession or a practitioner or exporting it off-world or using it to take over the world. It doesn't help that almost every character is a StrawmanPolitical. For example, the evil Psychlos. This isn't a play on 'psycho'--it's a reference to ''psychologists'', who are considered evil in Scientology doctrine.
** His earlier work ''Masters of Sleep'' promotes Dianetics and features as a villain a mad psychiatrist, Doctor Dyhard, who persists in rejecting Dianetics after all his abler colleagues have accepted it, and believes in prefrontal lobotomies for everyone.
** Other common targets for Hubbard's ire include journalists, federal investigators, bankers, elected officials, policemen, doctors, college professors, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and modern art]]. The first two had conducted investigations of Scientology, earning them his animus.
* A lot of Creator/MegCabot's books, especially her YA novels. It was especially apparent in ''Literature/ReadyOrNot'', where Ms. Cabot literally stopped the narrative to rant against the abstinence movement. Her other books contain some amounts of similar commentary.
* Creator/MichaelCrichton's books sometimes veer into this. In many of his books, he includes a little author's note at the beginning about the real-world issues the book explores, along with an AuthorFilibuster or two somewhere in said book. ''Literature/StateOfFear'' was an anti-global warming opinion piece veiled as a work of fiction. He devoted the last 50 pages of the book to a huge author's note, complete with bibliography and list of cited works. The story itself even has citations, and most of the villains are [[StrawCharacter strawmen environmentalists]].
* Creator/OrsonScottCard:
** ''Literature/OrsonScottCardsEmpire'', where the characters will [[AuthorFilibuster pause during the action]] to explain exactly why sweeping demonizations of the views of others are destructive. Part of it comes from the ridiculous premise--he was hired to write the backstory for [[VideoGame/ShadowComplex a video game]] about a second American Civil War taking place TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, with the opposing sides being [[StrawmanPolitical strawman versions]] of the Democrats and Republicans.
** Towards the end, the ''Ender's Shadow'' series also features numerous lectures from widely disparate characters on how the only way to really be a part of the human race is to have babies, culminating in one Battle-school grad stopping her troops in the middle of a battle and telling them to go home and procreate.
** More recently his novella ''Hamlet's Father'', a retelling of {{Theatre/Hamlet}}, has been accused of this. In it, Hamlet gets portrayed as staunchly Christian with a firm belief in the afterlife, very different from his doubts about this in the play, but in keeping with the author's beliefs. These revisions would be controversial enough themselves, but it's also shown that his father was a predatory pedophile who sexually abused Hamlet and many other male characters. In fact, his father was not killed by Claudius, but Horatio, in revenge for this abuse. Worse, it's implied this turned Hamlet and the other victims gay. Card has disputed this view, but it agrees with his publicly stated theory on what causes homosexuality.

* Petrarch's [[DiedDuringProduction unpublished final work]], a poem on Scipio Africanus, was full of long {{Author Filibuster}}s on how AncientRome was better than everything ever. Technically, this is true of all of Petrarch's work, and indeed, most things that were written during UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance, but he exaggerated the cultural inferiority complex. There's also apparently a fictitious bit where Scipio goes to see a fortuneteller, who speaks of a dark time when poetry will die out and only a man named [[AuthorAvatar Petrarch]] will be able to save it.
* Creator/PhilipKDick put varying amounts of his own beliefs into his stories, but his short story 'The Pre-Persons' is very blatantly his personal, heavily emotional response to ''Roe vs. Wade'', set in a world where pro-choice activists have legalized "abortion" of children up to age 12. His mouthpiece characters claim abortion is all about powerful people deliberately picking on the helpless, or a certain kind of woman getting off on destroying men and children. He even depicts one woman wanting to get pregnant because she thinks an abortion would be fun and a turn-on.
* Creator/PiersAnthony does these occasionally. One story he wrote was basically a TakeThat explaining why the sci-fi publishing business was worthless (Anthony having struggled against it for quite some time before learning the tricks of the trade). One supposes that subjectivity enters in over where the line is drawn between Author Tract, AuthorFilibuster, and AuthorAppeal where his other books fall, though he's never been very shy about making his ideas on sexuality (and the ages at which people take notice of it), body modesty, and other things an important plot element of his stories.
* Creator/RobertHeinlein:
** ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' is an Author Tract, all right. Robert A. Heinlein wrote it in protest of America signing a nuclear treaty with Russia -- whom he did not believe would keep nuclear treaties.
** A large part of Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'' revolves around nudism and polyamory, both of which Heinlein practiced in his real life (''Literature/ForUsTheLivingAComedyOfCustoms'', a [[MissingEpisode lost early Heinlein manuscript]] which was first published in 2003, contains similar themes). Indeed, his works can largely be divided into pre-''Stranger'' and post-''Stranger'', with the latter showing far more evidence of this. There's also a greater-than-average amount of incest, including a mention that in his distant future it's genetically safer in some cases for a woman to bear her brother's children than an unrelated man's -- a couple's decision to have children together (or not) is based purely on their gene scans, not on consanguinity. Not that that necessarily stops them from ''marrying''; there's a reference to a happily married couple who are raising seven children, "four his, three hers, none theirs," using donor sperm for hers and donor eggs for his because the genetic risks of having children together were too great. Heinlein was probably unaware of the UsefulNotes/WestermarckEffect, or he would have been less sanguine about the possibility of genetic scans completely replacing the incest taboo as society's method of minimizing pregnancies and births marred by reinforced harmful recessive genes.
* Much of Creator/SheriSTepper's work reads as thinly disguised, feminist utopianism, particularly ''Literature/TheGateToWomensCountry'' and ''The Revenants''. ''Beauty'' paints a rather extreme picture of the human race's 'destruction' of Earth's environment.
* Creator/RobertJSawyer has these in a lot of his novels:
** ''[[Literature/TheNeanderthalParallax Hybrids]]'' spends a lot of time talking about how evil human males are, and how they've done nothing but bring evil into the world. Plus, when religious/mystical belief disappears it's described as causing many good things to occur, and Neanderthals (who are atheists universally) are in many ways better than humanity. This one is milder however. ''Hominids'' in the same series, along with [[http://www.sfwriter.com/privacy.htm some material produced to promote it]], includes many arguments about the evils of privacy.
** It becomes pretty obvious what Sawyer thinks about various issues across his novels (e.g. atheism, religion), and this even extends to his pet peeves, such as how January 1, 2000 wasn't the ''real'' new millennium given that there was no year zero -- rather, it's January 1, 2001. ''Quantum Night'' seems pretty heavy-handed against the US right wing too. It's hard to imagine even the most hardline Republican in the US ever invading Canada or abolishing illegal aliens' human rights.
* Creator/RayBradbury uses his story "The Toynbee Convector" (title story of his mid-80s collection) to rail against his society's defeatism and negativism at the time. It is out of character for Bradbury but works if you view the big lie of the story as representing the writer's art. In that view, Bradbury is just saying how he hopes his writing will influence the "real world" (or bragging that it has had that effect).
* Creator/JulesVerne belonged to a "Heavier-Than-Air" innovation society when he was young, so it's no surprise that one running theme of his major novel about flight, ''Literature/RoburTheConqueror'', is a continual deconstruction of the CoolAirship trope. (Of course, since his whole argument was built on hypotheses about future inventions, the novel was also a FantasticAesop until practical heavier-than-air crafts were actually invented.)
* Thriller author and former US Navy Captain Creator/PTDeutermann uses his political/military thrillers to air his opinions about military bureaucracy, politicking by senior military leadership (especially the Navy), social engineering and other military-related issues. Especially evident in ''Literature/ScorpionInTheSea'' (HeadInTheSandManagement by senior naval officials), ''Literature/TheEdgeOfHonor'' (the draft, lowering of standards), ''Literature/OfficialPrivilege'' (race issues in the military, too much power in the hands of admiral executive assistants), ''Literature/{{Darkside}}'' (social engineering, lowered standards and hypocritical senior leadership at the Naval Academy), ''Literature/ColdFrame'' (morality of drone warfare against terrorists).
* Most books by Creator/DeanKoontz has at least a few rants about the many things that Koontz considers to be wrong with the world, which while never ''explicitly'' tied to one political direction or another usually maps well onto the [[WarOnStraw dumbest extremes]] of liberalism. Sometimes this ties into the themes and plots of the novel - for instance, ''Dark Rivers of the Heart'' is explicitly about governmental overreach and the dangers of people trying to use the government's power to [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans create utopia]], with a helpful afterword where the author explains exactly what he thinks on the subject - but most of the time the deranged anarchists, [[GranolaGirl anti-intellectual poets]] and welfare cheats just seem to be there to highlight how wonderful the protagonists and their implicitly-conservative values are in comparison.
%%* This is a signature of Creator/IraTabankin. This is perhaps most evident in ''Literature/AHistoryLesson''.
* British children's author Jean Ure almost ''always'' brings up the topic of vegetarianism in her books, and the main characters are often converted to it by the end of the book, such as Cherry in ''Skinny Melon and Me'', Pumpkin from ''Pumpkin Pie'', or the character who is a vegetarian tends to be portrayed as the most sensible person in the novel, like Harmony in ''The Secret Life of Sally Tomato'' or Stephanie in ''Passion Flower''.
* Eoin Colfer is often fairly pro-green in ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' and ''The Supernaturalist,'' but he really dials it up in ''Literature/TheFowlTwins.'' In the first book, it's claimed out of nowhere that no fairies are naturally aggressive, and the ones who are have simply been poisoned by human pollution.

* ''Literature/ElsieDinsmore'', written by Martha Finley, aimed to teach Children how to be more Christlike by way of the adventures of the title character and was even reprinted under the ''Life of Faith'' banner in the 1990s, though with the UnfortunateImplications and ValuesDissonance toned down significantly. Finley was also the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, just in case you were curious, and most of her other works follow a similar format.

** ''Literature/TheSilverChair''
*** The scene where the Lady of the Green Kirtle is set up as a HollywoodAtheist of the "completely evil" variety and Lewis puts into her mouth some deliberately skewed philosophical arguments against the existence of Aslan (particularly bad because the Green Lady actually ''knows'' that Aslan exists, and is just straight-up lying, which is another common stereotype regarding atheists).
*** There is also Father Christmas, who discourages Susan and Lucy from fighting because they're girls ("War is ugly when women fight"). He does still give all of the children weapons, with the boys receiving swords and the girls bows and arrows. In later installments in the franchise there are female warriors such as Lucy, Aravis and Jill that participate directly in battle. This is thought to be influenced by his marriage to ardent feminist Joy Gresham after the first book was written.

* This trope was Creator/CharlesDickens's stock in trade. All of his works are morality plays meant to drive home his socialist (or at least social-democratic) ideals. In ''Literature/AChristmasCarol'', Ebeneezer Scrooge rails that the poor are lazy and inferior and deserve to die, on scientific principle, and then an innocent child almost does. In ''Literature/DavidCopperfield'', ''Literature/NicholasNickleby'', and ''Literature/OliverTwist'', more innocent children are mercilessly abused, either by predators that society chooses to do nothing about or by the very institutions of that society. In ''Literature/LittleDorrit'', citizens are reduced to professional beggars by the debtors' prison system. In ''American Notes'', he praises American attempts to reform asylums and condemns slavery. And the list goes on.

** A large part of Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'' revolves around nudism and polyamory, both of which Heinlein practiced in his real life (''Literature/ForUsTheLivingAComedyOfCustoms'', a [[MissingEpisode lost early Heinlein manuscript]] which was first published in 2003, contains similar themes). Indeed, his works can largely be divided into pre-''Stranger'' and post-''Stranger'', with the latter showing far more evidence of this. There's also a greater-than-average amount of incest, including a mention that in his distant future it's genetically safer in some cases for a woman to bear her brother's children than an unrelated man's -- a couple's decision to have children together (or not) is based purely on their gene scans, not on consanguinity. Not that that necessarily stops them from ''marrying''; there's a reference to a happily married couple who are raising seven children, "four his, three hers, none theirs," using donor sperm for hers and donor eggs for his because the genetic risks of having children together were too great. Heinlein was probably unaware of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect#Westermarck_effect Westermarck Effect]], or he would have been less sanguine about the possibility of genetic scans completely replacing the incest taboo as society's method of minimizing pregnancies and births marred by reinforced harmful recessive genes.

** ''[[Literature/TheNeanderthalParallax Hybrids]]'' spends a lot of time talking about how evil human males are, and how they've done nothing but bring evil into the world. ''Hybrids'' spends a lot of time talking about how evil human males are, and how they've done nothing but bring evil into the world. Plus, when religious/mystical belief disappears it's described as causing many good things to occur, and Neanderthals (who are atheists universally) are in many ways better than humanity. This one is milder however. ''Hominids'' in the same series, along with [[http://www.sfwriter.com/privacy.htm some material produced to promote it]], includes many arguments about the evils of privacy.

* Howard Zinn's ''A People's History of the United States'' has garnered controversy in part because of this trope. An attempt at historical revisionism, and nominally a non-fiction PopularHistory, it is in fact an AuthorTract which claims that American history is little more than a dismal narrative of {{Working Class Hero}}es who fight against [[TheBadGuyWins and often lose to]] [[ManipulativeBastard or are duped by]] [[AristocratsAreEvil elitist villains]]. For example, Zinn strips the American Revolution of all idealistic motives and claims that [[HistoricalVillainUpgrade the Founding Fathers used it]] [[BreadAndCircuses to distract the people from their own economic problems]]. Rather understandably, professional historians have criticized the book for robbing American history of its richness and nuances and leaving an empty text that boils down to propaganda.

* Living in [[TheGildedAge an age when the legal system was under the domination of the new rich,]] Creator/MarkTwain spent most of ''Literature/ThePrinceAndThePauper'' talking about the dangers of a legal system written strictly to benefit the upper class. This is why the film incarnations are so much shorter than the book, because the adaptations cut out a great number of instances of brutal medieval "justice" that the Prince encounters in his travels: the original book sends a powerful message about the insanity of a judicial system constructed entirely for the benefit of the wealthy.

* Petrarch's [[DiedDuringProduction unpublished final work]], a poem on Scipio Africanus, was full of long {{Author Filibuster}}s on how AncientRome was better than everything ever. Technically, this is true of all of Petrarch's work, and indeed, most things that were written during UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance, but he took the cultural inferiority complex UpToEleven. There's also apparently a fictitious bit where Scipio goes to see a fortuneteller, who speaks of a dark time when poetry will die out and only a man named [[AuthorAvatar Petrarch]] will be able to save it.

* Eoin Colfer is often fairly pro-green in ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'' and ''The Supernaturalist,'' but he really dials it UpToEleven in ''Literature/TheFowlTwins.'' In the first book, it's claimed out of nowhere that no fairies are naturally aggressive, and the ones who are have simply been poisoned by human pollution.