A Fan's Playground

SFF written by a white man in the 1960s, so it is, unsurprisingly, rather sexist and colonialist. It's a very readable book but I don't actually like it.

The general premise: GOTTA SPREAD DEMOCRACY TO THE UNIVERSE but the Interplanetary Relations Bureau cannot force it onto other people (actual IRB motto: "Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny"!), so agents are embedded in planets to kind of work from underneath to make a world become a planet-wide democracy without it realizing it's being influenced. (Which obviously isn't forcing!!)

This one planet is proving difficult to manipulate, until one man comes along who understands the locals' interest in BEAUTY and uses that to help turn them against the king. Success! Democracy! Okay.

I think the book is trying to make a point about the importance of the arts? Which, I'm charmed by a Serious Science Fiction book of the era trying to make that point. But even though the main character purports to be interested in art for art's sake rather than for how he can use an understanding of art to manipulate people into democracy, he's certainly perfectly happy to use it that way, and the book as a whole is definitely a little too much about How To Make Backwards People Into Civilized Democracies. Hello colonialism. Gross.

Also there is exactly one female character and she's the love interest, and there's way too much narrative focus on how she's less attractive when she's in one of her various disguises.

ALSO as if the above weren't enough, there's an uncomfortable disability narrative. The despotic king likes to cut off one hand of anyone who displeases him. And these people all then go to "one-handed villages" even though they're not forced to go there. As if people with disabilities cannot (or do not deserve to) function in normal society and need to go live in their own private enclaves cut off from the rest of the world. And yes, one-handed people become instrumental in bringing about the revolution, but the idea of the villages is, uh. Bad. And also the one-handed trumpet players are only so important because of what they mean to the king, and not for their own sake, so there's that too. Disabled people as props in other people's stories!

Also, I just googled the sequel and it involves subhuman slaves SO THAT'S COOL. *shudders*