Shakespeare in Hamlet framed the concept: “. . . many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills,” likely more familiar to you as the saying “The pen is mightier than the sword.” There are many derivatives of the idiom dating back as far as ancient Assyria (“The word is mightier than the sword) and Greece (The tongue is mightier than the blade”), but Edward Bulwer-Lytton is generally accredited with coining the exact wording in his 1839 play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy.
Fiction, in the form of satire, parodies, or allegories, is a potent weapon to expose political and social issues, especially when faced with repressive regimes that don’t take kindly to critiques. This approach has been used successfully by generations of authors. Charles Dickens used his writing to disclose conditions in workhouses, factories, and debtor’s prisons, encouraging reforms. George Orwell satirized the totalitarian government practices, providing an allegory in Animal Farm and offered a satirical example of surveillance tactics and thought control in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The short stories of Kurt Vonnegut often dealt with societal issues, such as EPICAC (future dangers of AI), 2BR02B (infanticide and assisted suicide), Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (overpopulation), and The Package (income inequality).
Aldous Huxley, before he wrote Brave New World, wrote numerous short stories, including satirical portraits of the English gentry, the psychological toll of war on individuals, the artist’s quest for identity, the absurdities of the modern world, and the post-war disillusionment and lost hopes of a generation.
Other examples of this type of writing: Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o mocked post-colonial African political corruption in his satirical novel Wizard of the Crow. Ralph Ellison addressed the prejudice and injustice faced by African Americans in his novel Invisible Man. Joseph Heller wrote his classic novel on the absurdity of war, Catch-22. Carl Hiaasen uses humor and satire to expose the environmental degradation of Florida and the warped political actions that prevail in many of his novels, including Tourist Season and Squeeze Me.
It's worth remembering the power of words. Many a tyrant has underestimated the way in which words can reveal truths and shine a light on tyrannical actions. As Robert Burton said in 1621, “It is an old saying, ‘A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.’”