(John Rateliff wrote up one of his “classics of fantasy” essays about it, too.)

It is a pseudo-Gnostic (it appears to be Gnostic, but contains elements fundamentally opposed to it, especially Krag) deconstruction of the Western civilisation written using the mental apparatus of Hegelian philosophy.

The details may be very difficult to grasp – but it is the only book I know which managed to show that a lot of ice-cream is not the ultimate happiness and purpose of Man, and morality which is about ensuring equal and/or abundant, or, for that matter, unequal, access to ice-cream is wrong and deadly, no matter how attractive it looks.

It’s not normally counted as science fiction, though it’s set in the future: A Clockwork Orange has a very reactionary message, particularly in the final chapter which the American publishers hated so much they left out.

Certainly Lucifer’s Hammer qualifies as post-apocalyptic and conservative. Most of Pournelle’s works are overtly conservative.

Moon is not my favorite Heinlein, but it is one of the two most overtly political of his novels. On a second thinking, it occurs to me that Double Star is a more conservative book than either Moon or Starship Troopers — it has a constitutional monarchy that is not derided.

A Deepness in the Sky merits consideration. The problems of ubiquitous surveillance and the control aspects of dust and focus are real concerns, and impressive that Vinge raised these things about a decade before it became obvious to most people.

Banks is an avowedly socialist science fictional Scotsman. But I repeat myself. The culture books are among my favorites — but there is no particularly conservative lessons there.

And of course, every reactionary should read The Veil War.

On the other hand, I love Moon. It’s my second favorite Heinlein after Assignment in Eternity.

Shouldn’t something post-singularity be floating in here as well? Fire upon the Deep? Iain Banks?

I found the anarchists of Russell’s “And then there were none,” the short story that became The Great Explosion, a little too silly.

When I read H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking, it struck me as rather Moldbuggian.

In fact, much classic science-fiction strikes me as conservative — even Asimov’s technocratic Foundation series — because it’s concerned with societies rising and falling, the long-term consequences of culture, etc.

Poul Anderson’s works run the gamut from deeply thoughtful to light and pulpy. Many feature interstellar traders as heroes and overreaching governments as villains or obstacles.