tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52890761596935892312024-03-13T07:15:51.577-05:00CrimethinkPolitics and Speculative FictionUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-1367942115303177172010-09-01T13:07:00.002-05:002010-09-01T13:08:23.155-05:00Print Edition Now AvailableThe print edition of <em>Crimethink</em> is now available from <a href="https://www.createspace.com/3476062">CreateSpace</a>. Each copy donates $1.90 to Doctors Without Borders.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-39885265750874293242010-07-01T16:07:00.001-05:002010-07-01T16:08:39.304-05:00Contents<i>Politics on the Page</i><br /><ul><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/no-news-is-good-news-what-science.html">No News Is Good News: What Science Fiction Leaves Out of the Future #1</a></b> by Gary Westfahl<br /><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/war-what-is-it-good-for.html">War: What Is It Good For?</a></b> by Lisa Agnew<br /><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/space-opera-rules-but-by-whom.html">Space Opera Rules; But By Whom?</a></b> by Ross Hamilton</li></ul><br /><i>Speculative Ideologies</i><br /><ul><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/reason-sexuality-and-self-in.html">Reason, Sexuality, and the Self in Libertarian Science Fiction Novels</a></b> by Greg Beatty<br /><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/speculative-fiction-political-struggle.html">Speculative Fiction & Political Struggle: The 'New Wave' of the 60s & 70s</a></b>by Jordan Humphreys</li></ul><br /><i>Recent Media</i><br /><ul><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/futures-bright.html">The Future’s Bright? A Review of <i>Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science-Fiction</a></i> </b>by Deborah Walker<br /><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/political-allegory-receptions-and-their.html">Political Allegory: Receptions and Their Implications in <i>V</i> and <i>District 9</a></i></b> by Shaun Duke</li></ul><br /><i>Race and Gender Politics</i><br /><ul><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/engendering-utopia-from-amazons-to.html">Engendering Utopia: From Amazons to Androgyny</a></b> by Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake<br /><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/aliens-at-office-christmas-party-how-to.html">Aliens at the Office Christmas Party: How to Write Subtle Discrimination</a></b> by Romie Stott<br /><li><b><a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/2010/06/transracial-writing-for-sincere.html">Transracial Writing for the Sincere</a></b> by Nisi Shawl </li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-62942827672044359312010-06-30T10:53:00.004-05:002010-06-30T12:40:24.667-05:00Engendering Utopia: From Amazons to Androgyny<strong>Engendering Utopia: From Amazons to Androgyny </strong><br /><em>by Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake</em><br /><br />Fictional concepts of utopia—"no place"—and dystopia—"bad place"—have invariably been used as an imaginative form of social criticism. While the literary utopia might seem to be far removed from reality, it is essentially a challenge to the actual world of the writer, and the meaning arises through the confrontation of the impossible with the known. Despite the derivation of the word, utopia has come to mean the "good place"—it is a sketch of the ideal, the world which has solved contemporary problems as the author sees them, for example, Marge Piercy's <em>Woman on the Edge of Time</em>. By contrast, dystopian fiction exaggerates existing problems in order to highlight them; instead of presenting the "best" of all possible worlds, it presents the "worst" of all possible worlds: e.g. Margaret Atwood's <em>The Handmaid's Tale</em>, or Esther Friesner's <em>The Psalms of Herod</em>. The term "anti-utopia" is often used as a synonym for "dystopia," but it may also be used to refer to works in which utopian thought or ideas themselves are being criticized, often in a satirical way.<br /><br /><strong>Sexual Identity in Utopian Texts </strong><br /><br />Utopian fiction has always been a product of its time, and as such, it is nearly unavoidable that it reflects on gender roles, whether intentionally or not. Since our social structures revolve around gender, any re-imagination of those structures must specify the roles men and women are destined to play in the new society. For example, in Thomas More's <em>Utopia</em> (1516), the little book that gave us the word for (if not the concept of) an imaginary place that examines ideal societies and social institutions, the patriarchal paradigm is the basis for social organization. While women can work outside the home and even become priests (unthinkable in sixteenth century England), More explicitly states that husbands are allowed to chastise their wives; no mention is made of wives being able to chastise their husbands. The way utopian and dystopian fictions constitute themselves in reference to gender is a result of both the social agenda of the writer and the implicit assumptions of a particular moment in history.<br /><br />Since at least the time of Margaret Cavendish's <em>Blazing World </em>(1666), women writers as well as men have used the form of the utopia to voice social criticism. It was not until the thirteenth century, however, that utopias by women became common—even to the point of exceeding those by men. Chris Ferns distinguishes two major types of positive utopias (as opposed to dystopias and anti-utopias): dreams of order and dreams of freedom. He points out that while "the overwhelming majority of utopian dreams of order have been written by men, it is equally the case that the recent resurgence in utopian dreams of freedom has been predominantly the work of women" (27). Women writers have also been prolific writers of dystopias, but they have only rarely tried their hands and pens at dreams of order—perhaps because the traditional dreams of order such as More's <em>Utopia </em>tended to be most restrictive where women were concerned.<br /><br /><strong>Appropriating Utopia: Amazons and Matriarchs </strong><br /><br />An early use of utopian narrative for specifically feminist goals is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's <em>Herland</em> (1915), in which three men discover a remote country in which only women live—an Amazonian utopia. The community of women is civilized and much more peaceful than a world on the cusp of the Great War. While the First World War plays no role in Gilman's fiction, the conflicts and violence of a male-dominated world are the subtext of Gilman's particular dream of freedom: the contrast between <em>Herland </em>and the world of the male visitors illuminates "our noise and dirt, our vice and crime, our disease and degeneracy" (Ch. 12). In order for such a perfect (too perfect?) word to come into being, it was necessary for the inhabitants of Herland to become spontaneously parthenogenetic. This conceit facilitates the utopian experiment of a world without men.<br /><br />An interesting parody of the Amazonian utopia was provided in 1924 by the German writer Gerhart Hauptmann in his novel <em>Die Insel der groéen Mutter </em>(<em>The Island of the Great Mother</em>, Engl. trans. 1925). In this anti-utopia, Hauptmann's island matriarchy is eventually destroyed by the insurgency of the males and the sexual hunger of the ruling women. Here too, "parthenogenesis" plays a role—in the mythology created by the shipwrecked women, a miracle based on a cultural lie. When one of the women finds herself pregnant a year after the catastrophe, she claims a mystical experience with the snake god "Mukalinda," enabling her to bear a child without being impregnated by a man. As opposed to Herland, however, Îles des Dames is graced with one male, the adolescent Phaon, but if he were to come under suspicion of being behind the miraculous pregnancies, the social structure would collapse.<br /><br />In Joanna Russ's fascinating reappraisal of Amazonian utopia, <em>The Female Man </em>(1975), women of the far future have deliberately developed parthenogenesis—a scientific advance required in order to be able to live without men. But the utopian world of Whileaway is only one of four different narrative levels, and is contrasted explicitly through the world of the character Joanna (a fictionalized version of the author herself) with the contemporary world, as well as two others: the ongoing economic depression of Jeannine's world, where women have no option other than marriage, and the near future of Jael, in which men and women are at war. As a result of these different narrative levels, the utopian ideas do not appear as naïve as they often do in utopian fiction.<br /><br />Other more recent works in the utopian tradition also tend to include negative as well as positive, providing both darker visions (without becoming strictly dystopian) and more ambiguous visions of Amazonian community and matriarchy. The novel <em>The Gate to Women's Country</em> (1988) by Sheri S. Tepper, for example, postulates a world after nuclear war:<br /><br /><blockquote>It was men who made the weapons and men who were the diplomats and men who made the speeches about national pride and defense. And in the end it was men who did whatever they had to do, pushed the button or pulled the string to set the terrible things off. And we died, Michael. Almost all of us. Women. Children. (301)</blockquote><br />The women of "Women's Country" have taken over what is left of civilization and are embarking on an exceptional experiment to ensure that such destruction never happens again. Men and women are segregated in "town" and "garrison," and while the men are responsible for defense, women control the books and the knowledge, and so the men's access to war technology is limited. In a final twist, it is revealed towards the end of the novel that the women are attempting to breed violence out of men through selection—one of the few technologies they have maintained is genetics.<br /><br />Pamela Sargent's novel <em>The Shore of Women</em> (1986) is based on a similar premise—men have nearly destroyed the world, and women have taken over and live apart from the men, but the women's civilization is more technological than in Tepper. The question of blame is also less clear-cut: although men certainly were guilty in the past, it is now women who have the power and are corrupted accordingly. They kill entire populations in villages of men on the outside when it appears that the men are becoming too advanced and might pose a threat to the established matriarchal order.<br /><br /><strong>The Biological Utopia: Androgyny </strong><br /><br />Androgyny refers to an ideal state of <em>being</em> rather than state in the political sense, but because it calls into question the biological determinant of sex, it is a fascinating thought experiment for a critical examination of gender roles. Both Joanna Russ's <em>The Female Man </em>and Marge Piercy's <em>Woman on the Edge of Time </em>incorporate references to androgyny, but the novel which has practically come to exemplify the fictional treatment of androgyny is Ursula LeGuin's <em>Left Hand of Darkness </em>(1969).<br /><br />As with several of the novels already mentioned above, LeGuin's world of Gethen is not utopian in the sense of a positive place, but the fact that the inhabitants are androgynous (or as they are referred to in the novel, ambisexual) provides an interesting contrast with our world. On Gethen (also known as Winter), there is no division of labor by sex, no rape, no power struggle between the sexes—and little progress. While the narrator of the novel, Genly Ai, must constantly readjust his perception of the dual-sexed beings on the planet where he is stationed as envoy, the natives tend to see his exclusive maleness as perverse, and cannot comprehend a world on which one half of humanity alone is responsible for bearing children. As Pamela J. Annas points out, the male narrator's "problems with the inhabitants of Winter come from his inability to judge them as human beings without first defining them as men or women."<br />An early researcher of the planet points out:<br /><br /><blockquote>When you first meet a Gethenian, you cannot and must not do what a bisexual naturally does, which is cast him in the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards him a corresponding role dependent on your expectations…Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interactions is nonexistent here. They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? (94)</blockquote><br />Yet this is of course exactly what Genly Ai does, because he is incapable of thinking any other way, outside the box of sexual duality.<br /><br />Perhaps one of the most famous fictional treatments of androgyny is Virginia Woolf's novel <em>Orlando</em> (1928), in which the main character switches effortlessly from man to woman and back again:<br /><br /><blockquote>Orlando had become a woman—there is no denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove, practically the same. His memory—but in the future we must, for convention’s sake, say “her” for “his” and “she” for “he”—her memory then, went back through all the events of her past life without encountering a single obstacle. (90-91)</blockquote><br />But as it turns out, the transformation is not quite as effortless as it initially seems. Orlando begins to act like a woman and think like a woman: "She was becoming a little more modest, as women are, of her brains, and a little more vain, as women are, of her person" (122). A further change is in the perception of the reader—as soon as Woolf changes the pronouns, she transforms the character in the minds of her audience.<br />Given the potential of the ideal and idea of androgyny for social criticism, it is worthy of note that there are not more writers who have made use of it. Perhaps, like Genly Ai, we are trapped in our need to see people in terms of one sex or another, and it is easier for us to imagine three or four or five sexes. As long as we can still make distinctions between male and female and more, our thought structures are not quite as threatened as when we are unable to ask that first question—whether it's a boy or a girl.<br /><br /><center><strong>Works Referenced</strong></center><br /><br /> Annas, Pamela J. "New Worlds, New Words: Androgyny in Feminist Science Fiction." Science Fiction Studies 15 (Vol. 5, Part 2), July 1978.<br /> Atwood, Margaret. <em>The Handmaid's Tale</em>. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985.<br /> Bonin, Erin Lang. "Margaret Cavendish's Dramatic Utopias and the Politics of Gender." SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 40.2 (2000), 339-354.<br /> Cavendish, Margaret. <em>Blazing World </em>(1666).<br /> Ferns, Chris. <em>Narrating Utopia: Ideology, Gender, From in Utopian Literature. </em>Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1999.<br /> Gilman, Carolyn Ives. <em>Halfway Human</em>. New York: Avon Eos, 1998.<br /> Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. <em>Herland</em> (1915).<br /> Hauptmann, Gerhart. <em>Die Insel der großen Mutter oder das Wunder von Île des dames. Eine Geschichte aus dem utopischen Archipelagus</em>. Berlin: Fischer, 1924.<br /> More, Thomas. <em>Utopia</em> (1516).<br /> Piercy, Marge. <em>Woman on the Edge of Time </em>(1976). New York: Fawcett Crest, 1983.<br /> Russ, Joanna. <em>The Female Man </em>(1975). Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.<br /> Sargent, Pamela. <em>The Shore of Women</em>. New York: Bantam, 1987.<br /> Tepper, Sherri. <em>The Gate to Women's Country</em>. New York: Bantam, 1989.<br /> Woolf, Virginia. (1928) <em>Orlando: A Biography</em>. New York: New American Library, 1960.<br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br /><strong>Ruth Nestvold</strong> is an American writer living in Stuttgart, Germany. Her work has appeared in numerous markets, including <em>Asimov's, F&SF, Realms of Fantasy, Baen's Universe, Strange Horizons</em>, and several year's best anthologies. She has been nominated for the Nebula, the Sturgeon, and the Tiptree awards. In 2007, the Italian translation of her novella "Looking Through Lace" won the "Premio Italia" for best international work. Her novel *Flamme und Harfe* (Flame and Harp) appeared in translation from Penhaligon, a German imprint of Random House, in 2009. She occasionally maintains a web site at <a href="http://www.ruthnestvold.com/">www.ruthnestvold.com</a>.<br /><br /><strong>Jay Lake</strong> lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2008 novels are<em> Escapement</em> from Tor Books and <em>Madness of Flowers</em> from Night Shade Books, while his short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. Jay can be reached through his blog at <a href="http://jaylake.livejournal.com/">http://jaylake.livejournal.com</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-16720597298820418402010-06-30T00:00:00.032-05:002010-07-29T15:10:57.052-05:00The Future's Bright? A Review of Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science-Fiction.<strong>The Future’s Bright? A Review of <em>Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science-Fiction</em>. </strong><br /><em>by Deborah Walker</em><br /><br />Recent science fiction paints a depressing picture of the future. In the introduction to his new anthology, Jeste de Vries estimates that 90% of stories show a negative view of the future1. Gardner Dozois comments in the July 2009 <em>Locus</em>: <br /><br /><blockquote> ...although I like a well-crafted dystopian story as well as anyone else, the balance has swung too far in that direction, and nihilism, gloom, and black despair about the future have become so standard in the genre that it's almost become stylized, and almost default setting, with few writers bothering to try to imagine viable human futures that somebody might actually want to live in.</blockquote><br />Science fiction’s obsession with a bleak future is at odds with the prevailing mood of the world. A Gallup World Poll, which sampled ninety-five percent of the world’s population, reported that the overwhelming majority of people are optimistic about the future(2). <br /><br />This bleak portrayal of the future is significant if one believes that science fiction moves beyond its role as entertaining literature and makes an impact on real life. Certainly many writers over the years have suggested that science fiction can influence society, arguing that science fiction is able to inspire future generation of scientists, or predict future development in science and culture. Brian Aldiss famously characterised science fiction as mirror to the present: “Set up that mirror 50 years into the future and today's confusions become clearer.”(3)<br /><br />It seems that the mirror is reflecting a dark future. This downbeat nature of current science fiction has initiated a lively debate, with writers such as <em>The Guardian’s </em>Damien Walters(4), Lou Anders(5), Gareth Lyn Powell(6), Ian Sales(7) and Jason Stoddard(8) entering the fray. <br /><br />Stoddard is a strong advocate of positive portrayals of the future: “Moving science fiction in a more positive direction isn’t an option, it’s a requirement. If we can’t help point the ways to the answers, then what use are we, really?” <br /><br />Sales argues that writing optimistic science fiction is irresponsible, that science fiction can only be relevant if it is honest and tackles the problems of today. For Sales, honest optimistic science fiction can only find small everyday victories, while ignoring the big questions.<br /><br />De Vries has called for more optimistic science fiction to balance the dystopian visions. His new anthology, <em>Shine</em>, is a collection such stories. De Vries stresses that these near-future positive stories think actively about problems that we face today; they are, he says, no mere “plethora of Pollyanans.”<br /><br /> De Vries reports that he encountered resistance the science fiction community: <br /><br /><blockquote>The general impression I’m getting from the SF ghetto is that ‘you’ll have to pry the pessimism from my cold, dead hands’ (exceptions acknowledged, of course). And indeed, if SF stops trying out new avenues, if it stops renewing itself, if it will not take risks, if it does not try to be relevant, then it will die.</blockquote>The Shine blog was a platform for inspiration and discussion of optimistic fiction. De Vries posted example of international science fiction, provided inspirational posts and links for positive change(9). In his blog, de Vries asked: <br /><br /><blockquote>I guess the big question here is whether a nation’s artistic output passively reflects its political and economic aspirations, or whether instead it can be used to influence and change those attitudes.</blockquote><br />In the <em>Shine</em> anthology, seventeen authors have tackled the challenge set down by de Vries. The result is a collection that provides a welcome change from the usual bleak visions of the future. <br /><br />Such is the dearth of optimism in science fiction that de Vries needed to work very hard to pull this anthology together, not only publishing his inspirational <em>Shine</em> blog, but also publishing <em>Outshine</em>, a twitter-zine of optimistic near-future tweets. One of my own tweets published on <em>Outshine </em>has found its way into the <em>Shine </em>anthology. <br /><br />Mari Ness’ story “Twittering the Stars” is written as a series of tweets. The story charts the progress of a deep space mining mission and their monumental discovery. Ness presents the story as it would appear on Twitter; the story unfolds in reverse chronological order, which gives a poignancy to the tale. <br /><br />Eric Gregory’s “The Earth of Yunhe” is set in a China devastated by environmental disaster. Technology could provide a solution, but the characters must overcome the resistance of the current regime and use social networks to mobilize the support of the population. <br /><br />The potential of electronic networks to disseminate information and effect change is a theme that runs through a number of Shine’s stories. Lavie Tidhar's “Solnet Ascency” is set on a remote Pacific archipelago. It examines ideas surrounding foreign-funded aid and developing countries. Once the islanders get their hands on wired technology, their progress is astounding. <br /><br />De Vries described Jacques Barcia’s “The Greenman Watches the Black Bar Go Up, Up, Up” as the ideal <em>Shine </em>story, where the positive outcome is very hard fought. Barcia’s story is tightly packed with ideas; I particularly enjoyed the concept of personal carbon consumption tallies. It ends on a moving note, reminding us that costs and balances must be reconciled within the framework of human emotion. <br /><br />Jason Stoddard’s story, the post-scarcity (a world where everyone’s material needs are met) “Overhead,” has been well received by other reviewers, and deservedly so. The story charts the progress of a lunar colony, who overcome a series of trials and secure a hard-fought triumph. There are some wonderful revelations about the politics of space colonization in this story. The story ends on a high note, but, curiously enough, my thoughts wandered back to the people of Earth who seemed trapped in an unappealing, static, post-scarcity Earth. I’d love to read a sequel. <br /><br />Alastair Reynolds' offers a wonderful gonzo story “At Budokan” in which a cloned T Rex is genetically engineered to give him hands and the mental capacity to play heavy metal. <br /><br />Holly Phillip’s “Summer Ice” is about a woman finding her place in a world changed by global warming. It is a dreamy, quiet story of the near future. This is Shine’s only reprint story. I was surprised to find that it had originally been published in Fantasy Magazine, but not surprised at all to find that it had found its way into a ‘Best of’ anthology. Fantasy or science fiction, it’s an outstanding story.<br /> <br />Paula R Stile’s “Sustainable Development,” set in Africa, is a tale with warmth and humanity. Another story that made me smile was Silveno Moreno-Garcia’s “Seeds”, an amusing culture-clash story, with its sly characterisation of the slick corporate trouble-shooter and the response of the Mexicans farmers forced to cultivate the genetically improved mono-crop. “Sarging Rasmussen: A report (by Organic)” by Gord Sellar is a tale of social manipulation, where one lonely man learns the techniques to pick up women. I enjoyed the science behind “pick-up artistry” and the flip from getting women into bed to saving the Earth. <br /><br />In “Castoff World,” Kay Kenyon’s offers us the moving story of a girl growing up on a oceanic garbage island. This island is equipped with nanobots able to transforms pollutants into ‘good stuff’ and, like the girl, the island is able to grows and develops. <br /><br /><em>Shine</em> is a fascinating collection. It demonstrates that stories can be speculative optimistic and entertaining. The international scope of Shine was refreshing. The stories come from around the world Africa to South America to Asia to Europe to North America. The stories that I enjoyed the most were the ones that used optimism as a backdrop and slipped me their message of hope, almost without me noticing. <br /><br />I’d like to read more of these types of stories. There’s already the good news from Alistair Reynolds, who is developing a series of novel rejecting the traditional dark background of science fiction(10). Perhaps there’s hope for the future after all. <br /><center><strong><br />Shine’s Table of Contents</strong></center><ul><br /><li> “The Earth of Yunhe” – Eric Gregory<br /><li> “The Greenman Watches the Black Bar Go Up, Up, Up” – Jacques Barcia<br /><li> “Overhead” – Jason Stoddard<br /><li> “Summer Ice” – Holly Phillips<br /><li> “Sustainable Development” – Paula R. Stiles<br /><li> “The Church of Accelerated Redemption” – Gareth L. Powell & Aliette de Bodard<br /><li> “The Solnet Ascendancy” – Lavie Tidhar<br /><li> “Twittering the Stars” – Mari Ness<br /><li> “Seeds” – Silvia Moreno-Garcia<br /><li> “At Budokan” – Alastair Reynolds<br /><li> “Sarging Rasmussen: A Report by Organic” – Gord Sellar<br /><li> “Scheherazade Caught in Starlight” – Jason Andrew<br /><li> “Russian Roulette 2020″ – Eva Maria Chapman<br /><li> “Castoff World” – Kay Kenyon<br /><li> “Paul Kishosha’s Children” – Kenn Edgett<br /><li> “Ishin” – Madeline Ashby<br /></ul><br /><center><strong>Footnotes</strong></center><br /> 1 de Vries, Jetse, ed. <em>Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science-Fiction</em>. Oxford: Solaris Books, 2010. <br /> <a href="http://www.news.ku.edu/2009/may/26/optimism.shtml">2</a> University of Kansas and Gallup World Poll 2009<br /> <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/it-is-science-fiction-that-holds-a-mirror-to-this-age-693802.html 2001">3</a> Adiss, B. "It is science fiction that holds a mirror to this age: from a talk by Brian W Aldiss, at the Royal Society of Literature in London." <br /> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/sep/24/science.fiction.fantasy.horror?showallcomments=true 2008">4</a> Walters, D. <em>Science fiction doesn't have to be gloomy, does it? </em><br /> <a href="http://louanders.blogspot.com/2008/09/im-tired-of-flying-cars.html">5</a> Anders, L. "I'm Tired of Flying Cars." 2008<br /> <a href="http://www.garethlpowell.com/optimism-in-science-fiction/ ">6</a> Powell, G L. "Optimism in Science Fiction." 2008<br /> <a href="http://justhastobeplausible.blogspot.com/2008/12/optimism-bad-fit-for-sf.html">7</a> Sales, I. "Optimism – A Bad Fit for SG?" 2008<br /> <a href="http://strangeandhappy.com/2008/09/27/stranger-and-happier-a-positive-science-fiction-manifesto/ ">8 </a>Stoddard, J. "Stranger and Happier: A Positive Science Fiction Platform." 2008 <br /> <a href="http://shineanthology.wordpress.com/">9</a> de Vries, J. Shine Blog 2009<br /> <a href="http://bordersblog.com/scifi/2010/05/27/uncategorized/on-plotting-and-optimism/">10</a> Reynolds, A. "On plotting and optimism" 2010<br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br />After a twenty year period of procrastination, <strong>Deborah Walker </strong> has started to write short stories and poetry. She lives in London with her partner Chris and her two lovely, yet distracting, young children. Find her science fiction in Natures Futures and Cosmos.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-62531215966805087632010-06-30T00:00:00.031-05:002010-07-07T17:25:04.272-05:00Speculative Fiction & Political Struggle: The 'New Wave' of the 60s & 70s<strong>Speculative Fiction & Political Struggle: The 'New Wave' of the 60s & 70s</strong><br /><em>by Jordan Humphreys</em><br /><br /><em><strong>Preface</strong></em><br /><br />It should come as no surprise that one of the greatest books on the relationship between fiction and political struggle was written during one of the high points of revolutionary struggle by one of the major individuals involved in that struggle. Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik revolutionary, wrote <em>Literature & Revolution </em>in 1924, just a few years after the Russian Revolution and just as a massive radicalisation was erupting throughout Europe. In <em>Literature & Revolution,</em> Trotsky was able to reflect upon how much forms, genres and schools of literature had changed (or for some tendencies, how much they had struggled to stay the same). <br /><br />The period that I'm going to discuss unfortunately was not as earth-shattering as the years 1917–1924. However, the revolt of the 60's and 70's shook the ruling classes and their ideas throughout the world. The literature of the time, including that broad range of novels that fell under the term speculative fiction, was transformed by the changing society in which the authors found themselves in. <br /><br />However, I want to make a note of caution. <br /><br />It can be easy for left-wing writers and critics (socialist ones in particular) to take a crude and mechanical view on the relationship between a historical period and the fiction that it produced. In our effort to combat the idea that politics and art are separate spheres of life, we can take things too far the other way. As the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton wrote, <br /><blockquote>In its cruder formulations, the idea that literature 'reflects' reality is clearly inadequate. It suggest a passive, mechanistic relationship between art and society, as through the work, like a mirror or photographic plate, merely inertly registered what was happening ‘out there’(Eagleton 46, 1989). </blockquote><br />Trotsky himself gave what I think is a much more accurate description of the relationship; he said that artistic creation is “a deflection, a changing and a transformation of reality, in accordance with the peculiar laws of art”(Eagleton 47, 1989). ‘The peculiar laws of art’ are the many different factors that act as layers between literature and society. Even when a radical period is unfolding, the position of the writer in society, the trends in fiction that have come before , and the way that type of fiction is published all shape the link between society in general and a piece of literature in particular. <br /><br />I hope to show how these mediating factors influenced the relationship between the political struggles of the 60s and 70s and the speculative fiction that was produced during that time by discussing the 'New Wave' in particular. It is my aim to try and draw these links out as fully as possible. Although length will prevent me from looking into each crack, I encourage others to go ahead and explore, deepen, criticise and discuss the ideas in the following article.<br /><br />It should also be said that this article is by no means a comprehensive study of all the speculative fiction of the period. I have had to limit myself to the trends and movements which I felt most merited discussion.<br /><br /><strong><em>What came before</em></strong><br /><br />The speculative fiction that burst onto the scene in the 60s and 70s was deeply influenced not only by the changing social conditions in which the writers found themselves, but also by the legacy of speculative fiction writers that had come before them. <br /><br />Many of the writers who would become the spokespeople for the 'New Wave' of speculative fiction in the 60's and 70's were little more than readers during the 50's and it was the contradictions of this generally conservative era and way they exploded later on that shaped much of their world-view.<br /><br />The 1950s had seen a relative stabilising of capitalism, at least in the most advanced areas of the capitalist world and in particular in the United States. “For close to twenty years the problems that had plagued the advanced countries between the First and Second World Wars seemed to be disappearing for good. Unemployment fell. Living standards rose steadily. The old slum tenement blocks and back-to-back houses were being systematically demolished. ‘You've never had it so good,’ proclaimed Britain's Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan during the 1959 election campaign – and most people agreed” (Harman 1, 1998). <br /><br />Not all fell into worshipping the greatness of the liberal democracy and capitalism, however. The German-American Marxist Herbert Marcuse's book <em>The One Dimensional Man </em>is filled with a hatred for the political system of the 1950s. “The rise in mass living standards,” he noted, “was provided by an economy which depended on monstrous war preparations for its stability; the unprecedented advance of technology, once seen as the key to human liberation, was now the lock guaranteeing human subjection”(Harman 3, 1998). Although in a minority, there were people like Marcuse who expressed dissatisfaction with the contradictory way that the West had seemingly escaped war, crisis and social upheaval. <br /> <br />However, he also agreed with many of the praisers of capitalism that the majority of people would not rebel against the system: “The people, previously the ferment for social change, have 'moved up' to become the ferment of social cohesion”(Marcuse 256, 1964). According to Marcuse, it was now up to the fringe dwellers and social misfits to fight for change as the majority of working people had become a part of the system and so a part of the problem. This idea of outcasts playing a role in destabilising the system instead of the more tradition Marxism view of the working class would also have an influence upon the ideas of the 'New Wave'. <br /><br />Science Fiction in particular saw a great boom in popularity during this time. It was the final decade of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, marked by stories that “[valorise] a particular sort of writing: hard SF, linear narratives, heroes solving problems or countering threats in a space-opera or technological-adventure idiom”(Roberts 195). In the era of the space race and massive technological advancement, stories of adventures to other planets and heroic battles with evil aliens appealed to many who grew up during the war years. It would be unfair to say that all the fiction of the Golden Age was simply optimistic and morally bourgeois, but a lot of it was. Isaac Asimov for instance was gifted with a visionary application of science and a more developed interest in the characters behind the technology. However he was also weighed down by an almost utopian sense of wonder in the marvels of science and a rather conservative liberalism revealed particularly in his space opera Foundation series. As Marx said, “the ruling ideas of an epoch are the ideas of the ruling class," and in a period of triumphant capitalism such as the 1950s, it isn't surprising that speculative fiction and science fiction in particular reflected capitalist ideas. <br /><br />However, they reflected this only to an extent. There were also the liberal dissents of science fiction and fantasy, some of them even achieved success. One of the dominant trends in science fiction, for instance, was the libertarian trend popularised by Robert A Heinlien. Although expressing discomfort with current morals and organised religion, these novels while perhaps radical in artistic terms merely repeated the pessimistic liberal politics of people like Herbert Marcuse. Heinlien's <em>Starship Troopers</em> is a case in point, but even his better novels just criticise mores, morals and social sensibility of the 50s rather than the structures of oppression in society. Heinlien also expressed a deep anti-communist and pro-militarist stance, especially in the before mentioned <em>Starship Troopers</em>. Heinlien would later be attacked by writers of the 'New Wave' for his militarism, especially by Michael Moorcock, who described Heinlien's ideas in his article “Starship Stormtroopers” as “the philosophy of the Western applied to the complex social problems of the twentieth century—it is Reaganism, it is John Wayne in Big John Maclean and The Green Berets, it is George Wallace and Joe McCarthy—at its most refined it is William F. Buckley Jr., who, already a long way more sophisticated than Heinlein, is still pretty simple-minded" (Moorcock, 1978). <br /><br />Three writers who were politically to the left of Heinlien and would influence the 'New Wave' were Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury and Alfred Bester. All wrote fiction for the pulp magazines as well as full length novels. Theodore's <em>More Than Human </em>revealed his (and wider society’s) fascination with Freud, psychotherapy and evolution. Both Ray Bradbury and Alfred Bester wrote stories that shared some of Marcuse's liberal ideas such as the alienation felt by people under the conservatism of the 50s and outcasts being the ones able to resist it. Alfred Bester's brilliant story The Stars My Destination was one of the most left-wing science fiction novels of the 1950s, featuring a down-trodden worker, Gully Foyle, and his transformation into a radical through a struggle with inequality and hypocrisy. The opening of the novel describes a world riddled with contradictions, not unlike our own:<br /><blockquote>This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard dying . . . but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice . . . but nobody admitted it. This was an ages of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks . . . but nobody loved it.<br /><br />All the habitable worlds of the solar system were occupied, three planets and eight satellites and eleven million million people swarmed in one of the most exciting ages ever known, yet minds still yearned for other times, as always. The solar system seethed with activity . . . fighting, feeding and breeding, learning the new technologies that spewed forth almost before the old had been mastered, girding itself for the first exploration of the far stars in deep space (Bester 7-8, 1956).</blockquote> <br />These writers expressed feeling of alienation and discomfort, the fear that underneath the golden era of capitalism, things were not as perfect as they were made out to be. They also popularised the use of Freudian themes, furthered the development of character development and a dissatisfaction with the status quo that would have lasting effects upon the writers of the 'New Wave'. <br /><br />The 50s also saw a massive rise in the popularity of fantasy novels. Although in many ways overshadowed by the Golden Age of Science Fiction, epic fantasy novels took root in many people’s mind. J. R. R. Tolkien's <em>The Lord of the Rings </em>was published over three volumes in the mid 50s. Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories and the tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber saw similar popularity, laying the ground for the expansion of the more cohesive sub-genre of fantasy known as Sword and Sorcery. <br /><br />As the stability of global capitalism started to be shaken up by the events of the early 60s, the social and political basis for the popularity of the Golden Age of Science Fiction was starting to be undermined and a space was opening up for the New Wave to erupt upon the speculative fiction scene.<br /><em><br /><strong>Break Out: New Wave & New Worlds</em></strong><br /><br />Michael Moorcock's 1964 selection as editor of the British Science Fiction magazine <em>New Worlds</em> marked the breaking-out point for the New Wave. In the late fifties and early sixties Moorcock, along with writers like Brain Aldiss who would go on to build the backbone of the New Wave, had discussed “glorious ideas of reuniting the values of popular and literary fiction" (Moorcock xxvi, 2008). Moorcock was influenced by the French existentialist writers and film-makers; he often went to Paris and “became an enthusiast for the likes of Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Boris Vian, Blaise Cendrars and William Burroughs” (Moorcock xxv, 2008). It was in Paris that he came across Alfred Bester's <em>The Stars My Destination </em>and said of him and writers such as Philip K. Dick and Robert Sheckley that “During the shame of McCarthyism, they were amongst the earliest to raise literary voices to examine modern times often far more rigorously and amusingly than literary writers had done. There were a few brave voices who, like their Russian counterparts, found places to publish and speak to a public who mourned what was going on" (Moorcock xxv, 2008).<br /><br />While a counter-culture had already begun to form out of the Beats and the first rumblings of student revolts could be heard at Berkeley, Michael Moorcock in <em>New Worlds </em>set out with a “clear agenda: to merge generic SF and Literary fiction. New Worlds not only ran an exclusive interview with Tolkien when he was refusing everyone else but also was the first to judge Philip K. Dick as an important writer.... we ran work by Disch, Pynchon, Soline, D. M. Thomas, Peak and a good many other ambitious writers, artists and scientists" (Moorcock xxvii, 2008). <br /><br /><em>New Worlds</em> (and afterwards the New Wave in general) rejected many of the central themes and concepts of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It leaned towards so-called “soft” science fiction and took on themes of alienation, mass media, militarism, the decline of western civilisation, revolt, violence and sex. The ideas were heavily influenced by writers like Philip K. Dick and Alfred Bester. Ursula Le Guin wrote science fiction novels about anarchism, the oppression of women and other minorities, questions of gender and sex-change and, in one of my favourite short stories “The Word for World is Forest,” she explored and reflected upon imperialism and resistance with explicit references to the Vietnam War.<br /><br />Fantasy fiction was similarly affected, with Michael Moorcock playing a lead role with his epic fantasy novels about Elric the albino emperor, who used his brains and magic rather than strength. A renewed interest in early paganism in Europe (especially England) and a resurgence in anti-Christian themes, especially in terms of the oppression of pagan religions would continue into the 80s and 90s. Also, with the Women's Liberation Movement in the 70s, there arose many fantasy works attacking the traditional sexist attitudes of classic fantasy stories such as <em>The Lord of the Rings</em>. <em>The Mists of Avalon </em>by Marion Zimmer Bradley, for instance, tackled the Arthurian romances from the perspectives of the main woman characters. <br /><br />Few of the speculative fiction writers of the 1960s were directly involved in the political struggles that broke out; however, they were deeply influenced by what was happening. Michael Moorcock says that:<br /><blockquote>[I]n 1967 Judith Merril, a founder member of The Science Fiction Writers of America, an ex-Trotskyist turned libertarian, proposed that this Organisation would buy advertising space in the sf magazines condemning the war in Vietnam. I was around when this was proposed. A good number of members agreed with alacrity—including English members like myself, John Brunner, Brian Aldiss, Robert Silverberg and Harry Harrison were keen, as were Harlan Ellison, James Blish and, to be fair, Frank Herbert and Larry Niven. But quite as many were outraged by the idea, saying that the SFWA 'shouldn't interfere in politics.' Okay, said Merril, then let's say 'The following members of the SFWA condemn American involvement in the Vietnam War etc.' Finally the sf magazines contained two ads—one against the war and one in support of American involvement. Those in support included Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, Ann MaCaffrey, Daniel F. Galouye, Keith Laumer and as many other popular sf writers as were against the war (Moorcock, 1978).</blockquote><br />Moorcock's quote shows that only the young upstarts were growing still some of the older science fiction writers like Heinlein and Ann MaCaffrey were against the political ideas that the New Wave embraced. As the radicalisation of the 60's increased in pace with the explosion of protests against the Vietnam War, the Berkeley student revolt, the uprisings among African Americans and the events of May 68 in Paris, the winds turned ever more to the favour of the New Wave. Young people craved new, ground-breaking, political fiction to match the times and those around <em>New Worlds</em> and beyond were more than happy to offer it. <br /><br />Michael Moorcock's fantasy series about Elric, the albino sorcerer and last king of decadent Melnibone, reflected Moorcock's criticisms of tradition epic fantasy as well as his interest in it. While Harlan Ellison's short stories experimented with literary styles and themes such as surrealism. Many of the writers of the New Wave, especially those in Britain, had connections to socialist or anarchist politics, including Michael Moorcock, Ursula Le Guin and M. John Harrison, while Harlan Ellison was deeply against the Vietnam War and a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. Often their criticisms of the stories of the Golden Age of Science Fiction were intertwined with attacks upon the politics of those writers in particular the 'big three' Arthur C Clark, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. The faith in technology and science of the so-called Campbellian years was shattered, and even writers who later tried to bring things back to world view of the Golden Age later had to grapple with the ideas that had been explored by the New Wave.<br /><br /><em><strong>Peak and Decline of the New Wave</em></strong><br /><br /><em>Dangerous Visions</em>, edited by Harlan Ellison in 1967, was a virtual Who's Who of the speculative fiction greats at the time. It included fiction by Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K Dick, Ellison himself, Fritz Lieber, Samuel R. Delany, J G Ballard, Larry Niven and Philip Jose Farmer and was followed by <em>Again Dangerous Visions</em> in 1972, which had fiction from Ursula Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, M. John Harrison and Thomas Disch. Both of the anthologies swept the science fiction and fantasy awards and were reflective of the height of the influence of the New Wave.<br /><br />Ursula Le Guin, Harlan Ellison and Michael Moorcock had achieved great popularity, especially within speculative fiction circles. However, the shifting social conditions of the United States and the wider world would soon start to affect political development of the New Wave writers.<br /><br />In <em>The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After</em>, socialist Chris Harman recounts:<br /><blockquote>At the end of 1968 the editorial board of International Socialism journal received a draft of an editorial on the year from one of its members, Peter Sedgewick. It began with a quote from the poet Yeats: 'The centre cannot hold …' It was brilliantly written. A far cry from the style most of us dished up. Except...<br /><br />Except we all agreed (including Peter), that the centre had held. It had been besieged, shaken, battered, but at the end of the day it still survived–the Grand Coalition in Germany, de Gaulle in France, Wilson in Britain, Christian Democracy in Italy, the substitution of Richard 'Tricky Dicky' Nixon for LBJ in the US (Harman 163, 1988). </blockquote><br />The social movements of the early and mid 70s would open up even more questions about women's oppression, the oppression of gays, lesbians and sexuality in general, but as the 70s dragged on the radicalism of the previous period began to decline. <br /><br />The 70s had marked the New Wave's dominance within speculative fiction circles in both science fiction and fantasy, as well as the break down of the divisions between science fiction, fantasy and horror. However, it also marked the assimilation of the New Wave into mainstream science fiction and fantasy. "After the flash and filigree of the sixties, the next decade can seem rather docile, even disappointing. It is widely regarded as an interval of integration and bruised armistice" (Broderick 58, 2002). This was combined with the decline in radicalism as the 70s drew to a close and the conservative black lash of the 80s began.<br /><br /><em><strong>Afterwards</em></strong><br /><br />The whole ideology of capitalism had been assaulted by the radicals of the 60s and 70s, massive social conflicts had undermined the idea that society was one of free equals in either the west or the east. The lasting effects of this revolt against the system would be felt in society and politics as well as in speculative fiction, and those rebels and reactionaries of the fantastic who came afterwards would have to deal with the legacy of the New Wave. <br /><br />Cyberpunk, deeply affected by the turn to the right and de-politicisation in the 80s, conjured up stories of dark industrialised dystopias where the main characters were “marginalised, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body” (Person, 1998). In the novels of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, there is little hope and the working class is almost invisible; what matters instead is the battle between shadowy multi-national corporations and a rag-tag group of computer hackers and social outlaws. While continuing the anti-authoritarian tone of the New Wave and a dislike for the military -industrial complex, it reflected the pessimism of much of the left in that decade: that a chance for revolutionary change had been missed and that it might have been the only chance. This contrasted with the 'New Wave's' strong positive sense that change was in the air and that new, radical techniques were need in fiction to keep up with the constant revolutionising of society. <br /><br />Now the much discussion is being had over the New Weird, the latest movement within speculative fiction. Popularised by writers such as Jeff Vandermeer, China Mieville and K. J Bishop. Their novels and short stories mix elements of science fiction, horror and fantasy, not unlike the original weird fiction writers. However New Weird writers bas their stories in purely fantastical worlds and are influenced by both urban fantasy and steam-punk. Mieville, a socialist even claims that New Weird is a part of a part of “post-Seattle fiction,” referring to the political struggles against the globalisation and rampant neo-liberalism of the 90s and the battle for Seattle in 1999. Although influenced by the political struggle after the conservatism of the 80s, the New Weird was also deeply influenced by developments in speculative fiction and the rising acceptance of many speculative fiction writers into the cannons of the literary elite. <br /><br />In the introduction to the New Weird anthology edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, a more comprehensive description of the New Weird is given:<br /><blockquote>New Weird is a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy. New Weird has a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects — in combination with the stimulus of influence from New Wave writers or their proxies (including also such forebears as Mervyn Peake and the French/English Decadents). New Weird fictions are acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise, but not always overtly political. As part of this awareness of the modern world, New Weird relies for its visionary power on a "surrender to the weird" that isn't, for example, hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in Antarctica. The "surrender" (or "belief") of the writer can take many forms, some of them even involving the use of postmodern techniques that do not undermine the surface reality of the text (Vandermeer, 2008). </blockquote><br />I tend to see the New Weird as not quite the revolutionary upheaval of mainstream speculative fiction that some might make it out to be, but rather as the beginnings of a more radical speculative fiction that is yet to mature. With the current economic crisis creating social upheavals throughout Greece, the United States and Thailand, we can expect a return but not a plain repeat of the political struggles of the past. The speculative fiction that will be written in the future will be deeply affected by those movements that will hopefully shake the foundations of world capitalism, as well as the development of the New Weird and its roots in the New Wave of the 60s and 70s.<br /><br /><br /><br /><center><strong>References</center></strong><br /><br /> Bester, Alfred. <em>The Stars My Destination </em>. 1956.<br /> Broderick, Daimen. <em>New Wave and the Backlash 1960 – 1980. </em> 2002.<br /> Eagleton, Terry. <em>Marxism and Literary Criticism. </em> 1989.<br /> Harman, Chris. <em>The Fire Last Time. </em> 1998.<br /> Marcuse, Herbert. <em>The One Dimensional Man. </em> 1964.<br /> Marx, Karl. <em>The German Ideology. </em> 1845.<br /> Moorcock, Michael. <em>Starship Stormtroopers</em>. 1978.<br /> --. <em>Elric The Stealer of Souls. </em> 2008.<br /> Person, Lawrence. <em>Notes towards a Postcyberpunk Manifesto. </em>1998. <br /> Roberts, Adam. <em>The History of Science Fiction.</em> 2006.<br /> Vandermeer, Jeff and Ann. <em>The New Weird.</em> 2008.<br /> <br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br /><strong>Jordan Humphreys</strong> is a socialist, writer and blogger. He currently lives in Sydney, Australia and studies Arts at Macquarie University. He runs a blog on speculative fiction and politics called Thoughts On Speculative Fiction and has had a short story published on Horror Bound Online Magazine.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-87548353453191667572010-06-30T00:00:00.030-05:002010-07-06T07:42:25.922-05:00Political Allegory: Receptions and Their Implications in V and District 9<strong>Political Allegory: Receptions and Their Implications in <em>V</em> and <em>District 9</em></strong><br /><em>by Shaun Duke</em><br /><br />Science fiction and allegory have had a cozy relationship since the genre’s rise in the Golden Age (1930s-50s) and its market takeover in the last twenty years in film and television. So much of science fiction, if not all of it, flirts with the past and the present to extrapolate the future and imagine how our species’ baggage will shape it. Thus, every work of serious science fiction literature or film is inherently allegorical, because science fiction questions our future, and asks us to consider the implications of what we might do and how that is inevitably influenced by what we have already done. It should come as no surprise, then, that science fiction allegories are often political, in the sense that they represent specific political biases/beliefs or that they can produce political action, either through misinterpretation of the author’s intent or through legitimate concern with the implications of a particular political message. The rise of science fiction film in the last ten years has made the politics of allegory and genre even more relevant, particularly in 2009, which introduced two exceptionally controversial, but fascinating films, each representative of the political power of science fiction: <em>District 9</em> and the re-imagined <em>V</em>. Both films appeared at a time of political and cultural strife and both were immediately subsumed into national and political dialogues—<em>District 9</em> in Nigeria and <em>V</em> in the United States.<br /><br />As part of present day dialogue about society, both <em>District 9</em> and <em>V</em> could be used as political weapons. <em>V</em>, as an allegory about leaders and trust, directly engaged with the widespread and vocal concerns about the Obama presidency and, as such, became a vehicle for political activism and thought. Its introduction to the film landscape was inevitably met with mixed reviews, many of which were tainted by the reading of the first episodes as a political allegory for present day America. But as a science fiction story and allegory, <em>V</em> has the distinction of being one of the few television shows to take an original work, in which Nazi imagery played a crucial role, and revamp it to comment upon a much greater issue in world politics.<br /><br />The same is also true of <em>District 9</em>, a film that pulled no punches as it attempted to deal with legitimate and mounting political problems on the African continent, and in South Africa specifically. As a film by a South African, set in African locations and populated by African actors and interests, <em>District 9</em> is inevitably about one of the “distinguishing feature[s] of South Africa” and one of the “important theme[s] of South African writing, which permeates its science fiction also”—that is, race (Byrne 524). Its reception, much like that of V, was mixed, but its political orientation—pigeonholed as it was as an allegory about Apartheid South Africa and disregarded or lamented by Nigerians who viewed the film as a slight on their nation and people—earned it a place on a number of awards lists and an astonishing amount of respect for bringing to the Western mainstream a view of the world rarely seen or discussed by average Westerners. But its allegories also motivated those who took the film’s messages to heart—namely, Nigerians—into political action.<br /><br />Both films are representative of the persistence of allegory within science fiction and the power of science fiction to play a political role in the world at large. Each engages with an internal politics that allegorizes the external world and its many faults, and each have been appropriated or used as political weapons for various purposes. As such, they serve as valuable tools for dealing with our world and considering the many problems we have and likely will face for years to come.<br /><br /><strong><em>Obamanation and the Visitors</em></strong><br /><br />The urgency of the present and the need for allegories to think about the past and the future is exceptionally true for Americans. In a stark political and economic climate, Americans have become more polarized, more concerned, and more vocal—not least because of the Internet—than during previous presidencies. <em>V’s </em>appearance during this time seems, based on its recycled plot and its apparent less-than-subtle allegory of present-day politics, both opportunistic and understandably controversial.<br /><br />The one year anniversary of the election of President Barack Hussein Obama was also the day the first episode of the re-imagined <em>V</em> appeared on our television screens. Its arrival sparked an online and television debate about the referential origin of its allegorical narrative: an all-too-familiar play on the blindness of human trust in the face of overwhelming hope or a barbed commentary on the Obama administration. While news agencies reported the initial backlash as a product of leftist or liberal fears of reprisal—namely, a public backlash, however real or imaginary, against the Obama administration by associating the hope of “Yes We Can” with the hope-with-another-face of the Visitors of <em>V</em>—the interpretation of <em>V</em> as an allegory for the Obama presidency was also spearheaded by right-leaning political commentators; collectively the argument spread from smaller venues like the conservative website <em>Big Hollywood </em>to larger organizations such as <em>The Huffington Post, Slate, The Chicago Tribune</em>, and even the <em>Bill O’Reilly Show </em>on FOX News.<br /><br />When set against the backdrop of current American politics, <em>V</em>’s narrative does appear to be a mirror image of the Obama administration, with one notable exception: there are no lizard-like aliens wearing humanoid exoskeletons on our world. The Visitors appear on Earth and offer mankind an escape from the wretchedness of its existence: free healthcare, safety, and, perhaps most iconic of the Obama administration, hope; underneath the mask, however, we learn, just in the first four episodes, that the Visitors have other plans for mankind—we don’t know what they are just yet, but we’re made well aware of the fact that whatever the Visitors intend, it means nothing but bad news for humanity. Whether one reads V in this light, or takes its themes as a representation of something bigger and human, rather than nationalistic, the connection exists and is politically charged, most notably because the rhetoric surrounding the Obama presidency, particularly from those opposed to it, has been instrumental to the alien-ation of Obama:<br /><blockquote>In questioning Obama's citizenship and heritage, conservatives have always portrayed Obama as an alien visitor. They've also constantly implied that behind Obama's friendly veneer are sinister motives - and they seem to believe that while most of the public are gullible fools believing in Obama as a savior, they and their tea-party protestors see the "real truth" of those motives. (Sirota)</blockquote><br />The Obama Presidency saw the making of history in two ways: 1) the election of the first ever African American President, and 2) the formation of a vocally active political right, organized in a somewhat haphazard and unkempt fashion, but organized nonetheless. An example of this unkempt organization can be found in the regular Tea Party rallies across the country, which are organized perhaps by general theme, but not necessarily by political ideology or by a cohesive argument; such phrases as “keep your government hands off my Medicare” or the general inability of many Tea Partiers to define what socialism is, let alone what terrifies them so much about it beyond a fairly rudimentary anti-communist rant, are part of one segment of the political right that has, largely speaking, become far more unified and far more oriented towards the beliefs—a fact that is equally true of many Democrats.<br /><br />From a political standpoint, <em>V</em>’s narrative provides a kind of fuel for an American fire that has, even now, begun to burn particularly bright in the face of mounting change. To think of Obama in terms of the current political climate, it is easy to see why Sirota’s argument about conservative views lends support to the <em>V</em>/Obama connection: the almost universal rejection of the Obama administration by conservatives has created a distinctive divide in America’s political climate, one which displaces Obama from what might be considered the normal political space and gives him the almost alien presence embodied by Anna in <em>V</em>. Likewise, the regular arguments over Obama’s birth, the various arguments about Obama as anti-American, socialist, fascist, Muslim, and so on—all politically charged accusations, and all inherently alienating from an American standpoint—provided little counterargument to the <em>V</em>/Obama allegory.<br /><br />Yet the allegory attributed to <em>V</em> thus far has been exceptionally nationalistic—in the sense that the proponents of this view see the narrative as an American allegory rather than as a world allegory—and unfortunately narrow-minded. While the connections are there, many politically oriented commentators have attempted to turn the entire narrative of <em>V</em>, right down to the hidden agenda of the Visitors, into an Obama allegory. Jeff Varga, in his <em>Big Hollywood</em> column “Obama Parable?: Brownshirt Lizards Return in ‘V,’” made such an argument, likening <em>V</em> and its Obama allegory, not just to leftist ideals, but to an even more insidious and controversial subject:<br /><blockquote>You see, once upon a time, there was this other real life charismatic leader. He offered hope, unity, plans to rebuild and strengthen his nation and even promised to eradicate disease and sickness. The people loved him. His rise to power seemed effortless. But behind the scenes, everyone who didn’t jump in line to support his agenda were systematically murdered… news reporters, police chiefs, etc. Those committing the murder became known as Brownshirts by the unmarked uniforms they wore. Then once the movement was well underway and excitement ran high, they enlisted the youth. Actual uniforms were handed out and they were brainwashed by the promises of a better world and that they would be the ushers into that new world, by being the eyes and ears of Der Fuhrer. My teacher was literally stabbed in the back BY HIS BEST FRIEND, because he would not join the Nazi Hitler Youth. (Varga)</blockquote><br />This comparison is not isolated just to discussions of <em>V</em>, but one that has become profoundly representative of many anti-Obama positions spanning the political spectrum. The Nazi imagery, and its corresponding red socialist icons, has become a potent political tool used to make unfounded accusations about the Obama administration amidst legitimate concerns—from nearly every political corner—about the administration’s various policies and interests. Yet, now, the argument has stretched into the realm of science fiction allegory, turning <em>V</em> into another political tool, despite the corrections by cast and crew of the series. Morena Baccarin, for example, has attempted it dispel the rumors about <em>V</em>, saying in an interview:<br /><blockquote>I don't think we're saying Anna is President Obama. But she is the leader of her people, and she is coming down to Earth and offering healthcare, and offering cures for diseases, and things that sort of clean out and give people hope, and there are definite parallels to be drawn and our intentions are to create a show that people relate to. And I think this is something that's been on people's minds, even before Obama... finding hope again, and healthcare, and finding a leader, and someone who can save us from the hole we've gotten ourselves into. (Baccarin)</blockquote><br />Additionally, executive producer Scott Peters addressed the accusation directly, stating:<br /><blockquote>We are not looking to put any sort of agenda onto the table but…you know, I wake up in the morning and you look at the news and you see there's wars; there's new diseases being discovered; there's old diseases that we are still dealing with. The economy is in the toilet; there are people losing their homes. Wouldn't it be awesome if 29 ships showed up and they all said, 'We've got this. We'll take care of you. Don't worry about it?' (cited in Moraes)</blockquote><br />And his partner, producer Jeffrey Bell, echoed the same argument, but added an element of time to the problematic nature of the <em>V</em>/Obama allegory:<br /><blockquote>‘Look, there are always going to be people who will look for agendas in everything…This show was conceived during the Bush administration; it got executed during an Obama administration.’ (cited in Moraes)</blockquote><br />While it is entirely possible that all three are simply playing a game of political cat and mouse with the intention of preventing the ratings from being tainted by politically oriented boycotts, the more likely story is the one given by Bell. Since television programs, like novels and films, often sit in limbo for years, maybe even decades, it is only fair to give credit to the producers and the actors when they say that <em>V</em> is not intended as a direct allegory of the Obama administration. But if all science fiction stories are allegorical, what is the allegory of <em>V </em>and is it reasonable to still apply the narrative to the real world?<br /><br />Allegories are not intended to be limited to specific points in time, but reflective of any moment in which they are read. Joe Haldeman’s <em>The Forever War</em>, published in 1974, is as much relevant to the discussion of Vietnam as it is to the discussion of present-day wars such as the ones still being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the wars that will, unfortunately, follow them. Likewise, <em>V </em>serves not simply as a way to look at our present conditions, but also as a way to try to understand the problems of human culture as a whole. The number of incidences that mimic that of Anna’s rise to power and fame are countless, reaching across the entire globe in dozens of countries, new and forgotten. If anything is to be taken from <em>V</em>, it isn’t that it is only a reflection of the potential for wrong in our present, but for the potential for wrong in any place or time. It’s an amalgam of all those historical narratives in which leaders are portrayed as masks of their true selves. The act of producing these kinds of allegories for public consumption is political in as much as it is political to read personal politics in a connect-the-dots fashion into a narrative, science fiction or otherwise.<br /><br />In this sense, it seems that everyone missed the point of <em>V</em>’s science fiction allegory. Left or right, <em>V </em>comments upon the potential pitfalls of buying into any political ideology without properly investigating it first, a point echoed rather poignantly by one of <em>V’s </em>main characters: “‘We're all so quick to jump on the bandwagon…A ride on the bandwagon, it sounds like fun. But before we get on, let us at least make sure it is sturdy’" (cited in Garvin). Orienting the television series outside of this, as an entity that represents a particular political ideology in a narrowed and immediate space and time, detracts from the potential for its narrative to reach farther and to succeed in a purpose greater than the ideology to which it has become attached.<br /><br />Perhaps the greatest downfall of the appropriation of <em>V’s </em>allegory into political ideology—on the right and through the fear-induced responses of the left—is its potential to increase the already volatile political ecology that has come to dominate American politics. Using <em>V</em> as a vehicle for discussing the Obama administration within an already problematic political ideology provides a boost to that particular group, but also aids in the continued divide of national politics and the erosion of national dialogue.<br /><br />Allegory, however, is just as capable of being used for negative purposes as it is for politically motivated change. While <em>V</em> has only added to the debate over Obama’s credentials and the efficacy of his presidency and his administration, <em>District 9</em> has been instrumental in fostering a desire for change to Nigeria’s global image, despite the fact that <em>District 9’s </em>allegorical narrative has not only been ill-received, but is inarguably blatantly negative, not just to Nigerians, but to mankind as a whole. As an allegory, <em>District 9</em> engages with the politics of the everyday in South Africa and the African continent, and, like <em>V</em>, has been used as a political “weapon” by those who, arguably, were most affected by it. But it has also been widely misinterpreted, and it is this misinterpretation that has acted as a motivational force.<br /><br /><strong><em>Nigeria, Political Motivation, and Misreading Allegory</em></strong><br /><br />When <em>District 9</em> was released, it was met with critical acclaim. Its unique method of storytelling, its attempt to bring voices from outside of the West into the mainstream, and its willingness to brutally and honestly engage issues such as racism (or speciesism), free market capitalism, and the crisis that has plagued the African continent for decades in many forms, earned the film a place in the science fiction canon. But the film was not universally loved, perhaps for good reason. Author Nnedi Okorafor, one of the many viewers angered by the film, wrote a scathing review of <em>District 9</em>, pointing out both the flaws in its narratives and in its portrayal of its various nationalities and races. As a Nigerian, she, like so many Nigerians who eventually spoke out against Blomkamp’s “masterpiece,” saw the portrayal of her people as shortsighted, politically charged, and blatantly racist. Her emotional stance left a lot of room for argument, but, nonetheless, represents the foundation for the political implications of <em>District 9’s </em>allegorical narrative and its reception by Nigeria and its people:<br /><blockquote>Why were the black South Africans portrayed so positively and the “Nigerians” so negatively? On top of all this, there was not <em>one </em>redeeming Nigerian character. They were all crazy, motiveless, and blood thirsty.</blockquote><br />While much can be said about Okorafor’s argument, particularly the problem of interpretation and the political potential of allegory in the modern world, there is one question that must be raised: who exactly is portrayed well in the film?<br /><br />The whites, who do play a prominent role, perhaps to the detriment of the non-white characters, are not particularly sympathetic figures. Wikus, the central character, is, up until the end, perhaps one of the most despicable characters to enter into science fiction film as the “hero”—and the end serves only to make us hate him a little less. He is selfish, astonishingly humanist (or racist, since this is the allegory being played with), and willfully disinterested in any of the obvious abuses of the Prawns, even when their biology begins to imprint itself upon him. As such, he remains apathetic to the Prawns even when his own kind (humans) begin to steal everything away from him (life, family, etc.); as a result, he only uses the Prawns to serve his purposes—i.e. to get back what is “rightfully” his. That is until the end. In the final moments of the film, we see sacrifice. It’s a pity, however, that it came an hour and forty-five minutes too late.<br /><br />The secondary characters fair no better. Even those few who are black are not given much better treatment than the whites. The opening for <em>District 9</em> displays them using racialized language, rioting and using violence against the aliens, serving eviction notices, and so on. Tola Onanuga, a columnist for The Guardian, made a similar argument in her article “Why <em>District 9</em> isn’t racist against Nigerians”:<br /><blockquote>If <em>District 9</em> really does hate Nigerians, it clearly hates its powerful, white characters even more. Objecting to Nigerians being portrayed as morally bankrupt criminals seems pointless when almost every group of characters in the film have little or no regard for the law. The company in charge of shipping the aliens out of the country, MNU, and many of the white politicians giving the orders are invariably ignorant, double-crossing and corrupt. The soldiers come across as mind-controlled thugs, using violent threats and tricking aliens into signing dubious eviction notices. Scientists carry out underhand experiments on captured "Prawns"; the aliens arm themselves with illegal weapons and brawl in the streets.<br /><br />Despite initially appearing powerless, the Nigerians exert a tremendous amount of power over the aliens by controlling their weapons and food supply. These power struggles are an everyday reality in <em>District 9's </em>slums, emulating the country's real-life problems during the same period in which the film is set.</blockquote><br />Nobody, it seems, is particularly safe from criticism. Despite this, Nigerians have largely looked at the film as detrimental to their image—and for good reason.<br /><br />One has to wonder about the reactions of various Nigerians—most prominently, perhaps, the Nigerian government, who have tried to ban the film since its release—to the seemingly racist, anti-Nigerian narrative of <em>District 9</em>. It isn’t hard to see why Nigerians might feel betrayed and have reacted with something akin to rage: the film portrays the vast majority of the Nigerian characters as believers in a kind of witchcraft in which consumption of alien flesh transfers some of their “power” to the consumer and as gangsters, opportunists, criminals, prostitutes, and worse—a view that no group of people would take lightly. Likewise, <em>District 9’s </em>narrative allows to rest comfortably within South African popular culture, which further credits Nigerian reactions to the film because it “is sad but typical of interracial encounters in South African science fiction that racial others are so often stereotyped” (Byrne 524). While it has become unacceptable “in South Africa to kill off racial others, even in fiction,” stereotyping and caricaturing have persisted (Byrne 525). Exceptions do exist, which Deirdre Byrne mentions only briefly in her article on South African science fiction, but stereotyping has remained strong within South African science fiction to this day. At times this stereotyping is for allegorical purposes, however—as is the case with <em>District 9</em>.<br /><br />While <em>District 9</em> does have a racist vision, it seems fair to consider the film within its fictional world, where its racist leanings are not only intentional and literal, but also allegorical. To take its narrative as a reflection of truth would miss the point not only of many third and former third world narratives, of which <em>District 9</em> is arguably a part, but also science fiction in general. <em>District 9</em>, with its documentary style and its distinctly anti-heroic narrative, is very much an attempt to show the darkest sides of humanity, right down to its very core, albeit through an iconic example: Apartheid.<br /><br />Apartheid South Africa, arguably the most racist regime to exist in the last thirty years, was responsible for creating its own brand of District 9s, which were used primarily to house the black population; as in <em>District 9</em>, these spaces became slums and were subjected to harsh restrictions by the whites who were in power—blacks even had to get special permission to enter the city proper, because such areas were reserved only for whites and their “servants.” Racial superiority was the rule of law and the system built around it continues to shock the world with its brutality, despite having long since ended—though some would argue otherwise—and having been written about countless times in fiction and non-fiction across the world.<br /><br /><em>District 9’s </em>allegories, however, shouldn’t be left to narrow comparisons with South African Apartheid, but extended to a broader political crisis on the African continent, in which millions have been stranded in refugee camps, exiled from their homes by corrupt political or military regimes, or displaced to other nations with the help of the UN and her partner nations as a result of civil wars, cross-border wars and disputes, and so on. For many refugees, this process is forever. The conditions of the Prawns reflect the very uncertainty of life on the African continent: they, as so many Africans have been and still are, are refugees in a world that doesn’t seem to want them, doesn’t know what to do with them, and has little interest in their wellbeing, despite the masks put on the faces of those working for corporate interests. South Africa is perhaps the perfect setting for this discussion, though certainly not the only one—the Sudan is absolutely a consideration when discussing violence and refugees. With its history of Apartheid, a particularly brutal system of deportation and white racial supremacy, South Africa is probably the most “black and white” location for the discussion of race, corruption, and so on in a global context, not least because of the fact that Apartheid has become, for better or worse, and iconic representation of former South Africa. But even Nigeria has dabbled in this system: in 1983 the Nigerian government deported over one million people, primarily Ghanaians. As convenient as it would be to apply the negative aspects of refugee systems specifically to Nigeria and South Africa, the reality is that most of Africa and many other parts of the world have had to deal with the ramifications of the conditions that create refugees.<br /><br />Being concerned with real world issues, <em>District 9</em> also looks at its setting internally to tease out the darkness not just in South Africa’s past, but also in its present. The film’s portrayal of Nigerians—far from positive—reflects a legitimate South African concern with crime and its Nigerian element. In 1998, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) released a report on organized crime in post-apartheid South Africa, which made clear that not only was organized crime noticeably prevalent, but remarkably identifiable by nationality:<br /><blockquote>Organized crime assessments…indicated substantial activity by Nigerian organized crime groups in South Africa…parts of inner city Johannesburg are increasingly dominated by the activities of Nigerian and central African ‘drug lords.’ (cited in Shaw)</blockquote><br />At the time, the ISS believed organized crime to be a step below that of nations with markedly more prominent and deeply rooted criminal organizations, such as in Russia, but the threat was still apparent, not just from Nigerian crime lords, but also from organizations from Asia and other parts of the world. Perhaps the most important point to take from this quote is its reference to Johannesburg, the same city in which <em>District 9</em> is set and where Neill Blomkamp grew up. Blomkamp even commented on this issue in an interview, in which he explained, to some extent, his motivations for choosing Nigeria as an allegorical and political vehicle within <em>District 9</em>:<br /><blockquote>The Nigerian thing is there because I wanted to take as many cues from South Africa as I could. I wanted South Africa to be the inspiration. If I try to keep South Africa as true to South Africa as I could, then, unfortunately, a massive part of the crime that happens in Johannesburg is by the Nigerians there. It's just the way it is. I wanted to have a crime group, and thought the most honest refraction of a crime group would be Nigerians, for one. (Balfour)</blockquote><br />As allegory, <em>District 9</em> embodies this conflicted relationship between South Africa and its past and present, both equally troubled by the problematic subject of race and the state of Africa and its struggle to resolve its internal and external tensions after independence. Blomkamp, in choosing Nigeria as a vehicle for discussing the internal conflicts of post-Apartheid South Africa, is channeling this very problematic subject, and, in doing so, reaches into the tainted heart of a nation still struggling to leave behind its Apartheid roots and a continent dominated by the conflicted seesaw of progress, poverty, and corruption. The Nigerians, thus, act as both reflections of South Africa and of Nigerian history within the African Crisis.<br /><br />But many Nigerians saw the film not as an allegory of Nigeria’s history, but as an attempt to send a political message about the image of Nigerians. Nigerian information minister Dora Akunyili, speaking around the same time that the Nigerian government tried to ban the film, was particularly vocal against <em>District 9</em>:<br /><blockquote>‘Why do they want to denigrate Nigerians as criminals, cannibals, and prostitutes who sleep with extraterrestrial animals? We’ve had enough with the stereotypes they have branded us with…we are not going to sit back and allow people to stigmatize us.’ (Karimi)</blockquote><br />Similar arguments were made by other Nigerians and supporters of Nigeria, amounting to a significant uproar in late 2009 against the film and its director. These remarks, however, seem to not only miss the point of <em>District 9</em>, but to also miss the political implications of its allegorical elements. While the film does portray Nigerians negatively, such portrayal as reflected through current and past political, social, and cultural events seems to suggest a concentrated representation of Nigeria in all its flawed glory. Nigeria’s history is one peppered with violent revolts, crime, political corruption, and so on, spanning back decades. Its image has been tarnished by its violent history and, perhaps unfairly, by Internet scams (called 419 scams) and other less-frequent-but-often-cited incidences, such as cannibalism, child trafficking, and so on. Even its own film industry, aptly named Nollywood, has reportedly helped aid in the production of Nigerian stereotypes by focusing on the same elements which make an appearance in <em>District 9</em>—notably the visualization of prostitution, witchcraft, and cannibalism (Karimi). With Nollywood contributing stereotyped or even fictional accounts to the more accurate and dark historical narrative of the country, it is no wonder that so much negativity has been absorbed globally about the country. Nigerians, however, were still outraged that a film produced by Hollywood had so unfairly represented them.<br /><br /><em>District 9</em>, though, has been instrumental in igniting Nigerians against their unwanted global image. The film’s allegories have successfully re-birthed Nigeria’s attempts to rebrand itself amidst an increasingly global negative portrayal of the country and its people. Dora Akunyili, in her public condemnation of District 9, also announced a reinvigorating rebranding program after “all allowing the international community to define the country based on the behaviour of ‘[a] few criminals’” (Nigeria).<br /><br />Originally a failed project, the Nigerian government had restarted their rebranding program in March of 2009 (Tattersall). The project, however, was not met well by Nigerians and critics of the country: some pointed to the murders and other violence still occurring in the country, which the government had apparently done little to suppress (Akpabio), while others, writing months after the rebranding project had been in effect and following the Nigerian government’s public outrage at <em>District 9</em>, argued that Nigeria’s leadership was primarily at fault (Ekeopara). The dialogue following <em>District 9</em>, however, has been remarkably open and brutal. Bloggers and online news agencies have criticized the Nigerian government for its faults, while the Nigerian government has attempted in the last six months to make changes to its image. The BBC even made a short audio documentary about the rebranding effort in October of 2009; the documentary created the impression that Akunyili was both passionate and dedicated to making Nigeria a better place—from someone who had worked to, more or less, destroy the Nigerian illegal drug market, her voice does carry some weight (“Rebranding Nigeria”). While some have attacked the campaign for being naïve, similar practices have worked for other nations with equally as terrible records: namely, South Africa. Whether these changes to Nigeria will take effect is yet to be seen.<br /><br />Yet, the resurgence of Nigerian pride, not just by the leadership, but by ordinary citizens as well, should be seen as a welcome outrage, not necessarily because of an agreement about the wrongs committed by <em>District 9</em>, but because it is one of the few times in the history of science fiction that a single work has acted as an unintentional political weapon for a positive purpose. If Nigeria takes <em>District 9 </em>as a cue and makes the effort to truly rebrand itself and clean up its image, then not only will the political power of science fiction be reaffirmed, but so will the belief that science fiction is relevant to modern society and an essential part of human culture. <em>District 9’s </em>ability to motivate nations towards positive goals is an affirmation of this very notion, but in order for science fiction to take the next step, motivation must produce results.<br /><em><br /><strong>The Future is Grim(ly) Satisfying</em></strong><br /><br />While <em>District 9</em> and<em> V </em>have both produced rather politically charged reactions due to their science fiction allegories, they have also continued to suggest that science fiction’s relevance to the modern world has shifted. While many have argued that science fiction has become unimportant or exceptionally commercial—without substance, if you will—the reality of the matter seems to be quite the opposite. If <em>District 9</em> and <em>V</em> have shown us anything, it is that the film industry is still capable of bringing to the forefront a plethora of serious issues that have arguably been set aside or ignored by the majority of those outside of the academic community. South African Apartheid has, perhaps for good reason, become a thing of the past and has, outside of South Africa, been left as a footnote, despite the reality that accounts of massive human rights violations occur almost daily across the globe. Likewise, while the inflamed political right may not have the right handle on the allegories of <em>V</em>, the reality is that so much of American culture has been driven by an unflinching maintenance of “party lines,” in which left and right proponents have dug in their heels without considering the deeper elements of argument that pepper their two political ideologies. Is it possible that <em>V</em> could be used as a way to bridge the gap and provide a way for both sides to consider that every politician and leader should be met with scrutiny, regardless of how they sound? Is it equally possible that <em>District 9</em> can create real change in a continent that has struggled not just for independence, but also for political and cultural normality and progress? Science fiction has the potential to put these questions to rest, but it is limited by the culture that surrounds it. It can open the door, but the political choices must still be made by individuals.<br /><br />If anything is to be taken from the last year of science fiction film and literature, it is that the genre is not only alive and kicking, but embedding itself so deeply within the cultural mainstream that its very existence is becoming integral to humanity’s continued pursuit to understand its nature. As thought experiment, science fiction offers a gateway into a world of wonder and terror, without all of the problems of the real world. We no longer have to use the past as the only object for the consideration of the potential for humanity to commit “evil”; instead, science fiction enhances our perceptions and shines a light on the conditions under which we live, the problems that our various human machinations can and often do produce, and the potentiality of action, whether political or otherwise, that reality has failed to bestow upon humanity at large. All it takes now is for us to act upon the things that, for nearly one hundred years, science fiction has been telling us about ourselves.<br /><br /><center><strong>Works Cited</center></strong><br /><br /> Akpabio, Eno. "<a href="http://www.iq4news.com/?q=content/nigeria-good-people-great-nation-or-bad-joke">Nigeria: Good People, Great Nation; Or Bad Joke? </a>" IQ4News. Mar. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http: q="content/nigeria-good-people-great-nation-or-bad-joke"><br /> Baccarin, Morena. "<a href="http://io9.com/5398912/morena-baccarin-i-am-not-obama">Morena Baccarin: I Am Not Obama</a>." Interview by Charlie J. Anders. Web log post. Io9. 6 Nov. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Balfour, Brad. "<a href="http://www.popentertainment.com/blomkamp.htm">Neill Blomkamp: South African Sci-Fi Director Finds Life in District 9 Is No Picnic</a>." Pop Entertainment. 24 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Ekeopara, Nkem. "<a href="http://www.usafricaonline.com/is-district-9-movie-a-fitting-metaphor-for-the-ugliness-of-nigeria/">Is District 9 Movie a Fitting Metaphor For the Ugliness of Nigeria</a>." USA Africa Online. 6 Oct. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Garvin, Glenn. "<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-tc-tvcolumn-v-1102-1103nov03,0,7062976.story">'V' Aims at Obamamania</a>." The Chicago Tribune. 3 Nov. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Karimi, Faith. "<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/21/nigeria.film.outcry/index.html">'District 9' Depiction Angers Some Nigerians - CNN.com</a>." CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. 21 Sept. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Moraes, Lisa De. "<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/09/AR2009080901970.html?hpid=topnews">ABC Executives Sound Coy About New Series's Political Edge</a>." The Washington Post. 10 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http: hpid="topnews"><br /> "<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8264180.stm">Nigeria 'Offended' By Sci-fi Film</a>." BBC NEWS. 19 Sept. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> "<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1067695.stm">Nigeria Timeline</a>." BBC News. 6 May 2010. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Okorafor, Nnedi. "<a href="http://nnedi.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-response-to-district-419i-mean.html">My Response to District 419…I Mean District 9. ;-)</a>." Rev. of District 9. Web log post. Nnedi's Wahala Zone Blog. 23 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Onanunga, Tola. "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/sep/08/district-9-racism">Why District 9 Isn't Racist Against Nigerians</a>." The Guardian. 8 Sept. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> "<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2009/10/091021_rebranding_nigeria.shtml">Rebranding Nigeria</a>." Audio blog post. BBC News. 21 Oct. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Shaw, Mark. <a href="http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/Papers/28/Paper28.html#Anchor-See-57067"><em>Organized Crime in Post-Apartheid South Africa</em></a>. Rep. no. 28. Institute for Security Studies, Jan. 1998. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Sirota, David. "<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/v---the-rights-new-favori_b_206342.html">"V" - The Right's New Favorite TV Show, Or Inadvertent Proof of The Ubiquity of The Right's Fables?</a>" The Huffington Post. 21 May 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /> Tattersall, Nick. "<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE52I6Y120090320">Nigeria Re-brands to Shed Chaotic Image Reuters.</a>" Reuters. 19 Mar. 2009. Web. 14 May 2010. <http:><br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br /><strong>Shaun Duke</strong> is a graduate student at the University of Florida studying science fiction, postcolonialism, posthumanism, and fantasy. He is also a writer, editor, co-host of <a href="http://skiffyandfanty.wordpress.com/">The Skiffy and Fanty Show </a>, and co-owner of <a href="http://www.youngwritersonline.net/">Young Writers Online</a>. His rants and musings on science fiction, fantasy, books, and related subjects can be found at <a href="http://wisb.blogspot.com/">The World in the Satin Bag</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-90680221014102939472010-06-30T00:00:00.028-05:002010-06-30T14:38:30.981-05:00Reason, Sexuality, and the Self in Libertarian Science Fiction Novels<strong>Reason, Sexuality, and the Self in Libertarian Science Fiction Novels</strong><br /><em>by Greg Beatty</em><br /><br /><strong>Defining the Genre</strong><br /><br />Trying to define science fiction is always a good way to start a controversy. Allegiances emerge quickly, and it's virtually certain that people will start talking past one another almost as soon as they start talking. Add a qualifier, such as "libertarian," and the task gets harder. For the purposes of this essay, I'll try to keep my discussion focused by using a fairly basic definition of the genre assembled from a number of sources. In his study of the fantastic, Tzvetan Todorov suggests that there are two kinds of literary genres: theoretical genres and historical genres. Theoretical genres are defined by the presence of specific key structures, which may exist in only a single example. I follow Darko Suvin, and argue that science fiction is defined by the presence of a "novum," some new thing that works as a rupture in the assumed fabric of reality and demands a new form of narrative that coherently integrates this novum. This novum can fall into almost any category -- Suvin suggests biology, social structure, physical reality, and so on. What I want to ask is, what sort of "new things" does libertarian science fiction posit, and what do they mean?<br /><br />For Todorov, a historical genre is produced through an accrual of genre conventions and narrative tropes shaped by an ongoing interaction among a community of readers. It's this sort of thing that makes it possible to legitimately say, "I can't define science fiction (or pornography, or westerns), but I know it when I see it!" and have the claim make sense. To help answer my core questions, I want to document the genre conventions that libertarian science fiction shares -- the things that accompany their novums, and which slip by unnoticed in the authors' rush to explore freedom. I do this, because like John Cawelti, I assume that these genre conventions indicate what a specific readership finds socially acceptable or desirable. These genre conventions are also where we'll find the ideological underpinnings of these books. If we look at the definition of freedom that libertarian science fiction uses, we'll find a striking pattern of assumptions about the nature of reason, sexuality, and the self.<br /><br /><strong>Libertarian Science Fiction</strong><br /><br />Since libertarian science fiction is also a debatable term, I'm only looking at the novels that have won the Prometheus Award, the award given annually since 1982 by the Libertarian Futurist Society. The award was founded in 1979 by L. Neil Smith to honor libertarian science fiction, and was given that year to F. Paul Wilson for <em>Wheels Within Wheels</em>, but due to the cost of the award—then a gold coin valued at $2500—and the lack of a formal supporting organization, the award fell into limbo until adopted by the LFS. The public documents of the Society itself provide our first clues as to the nature of these books; it was founded in 1982 "to provide encouragement to science fiction writers whose books examine the meaning of freedom." This claim, so open-minded as to be philosophical rather than political in nature, is immediately qualified. The Prometheus Award is given to the "best libertarian novel of the year." The best "examinations of freedom"—a term which could include challenges to it, rejections of it, or positing proper limits for it—will be found specifically in libertarian science fiction. The selections standards are therefore narrowly pre-defined: examining freedom will always produce works in favor of it, and these works will all be libertarian.<br /><br /><strong>Prometheus</strong><br /><br />Defining libertarianism can be as difficult as defining science fiction, even for someone who has been in and out of the libertarian movement for decades, such as myself. Clues to the complexity of this struggle can be found in the name of the award, and in what the Society says it represents. In Greek mythology the god Prometheus, whose name means "forethought," was charged by Zeus to create mankind. However, Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus ("afterthought") got the job of creating the animals, and followed his first impulses by giving out the best gifts lavishly. The eagle got flight, the tiger claws, and so on, until there was nothing left for humanity when Prometheus got there. He thought it through, and formed mankind in the image of the gods. He then stole fire, symbolic of reason, from the heavens, and gave it to man. Zeus, who had decreed that fire was to remain the property of the gods, was so angry at this that he chained Prometheus to a rock, with a vulture continually eating his liver. However, Prometheus was also tortured because he knew the identity of Zeus's offspring who would someday overthrow him. Prometheus refused to tell the name, and suffered for years before being freed by Hercules. Therefore, in addition to being responsible for the uplift of mankind, Prometheus was instrumental in overthrowing divine tyranny. The Prometheus award, however, stands for "free trade and free minds," reducing free mental activity to that of economic man in the marketplace, and equating free trade (whatever its motives) with freedom, and with rebellion against moral tyranny, conveniently ignoring the offense against property rights committed by Prometheus.<br /><br /><strong>Pandora and Wonder</strong><br /><br />Most people remember most of that part of the myth. What they fail to remember was that Prometheus gave reason to men, and men specifically. In this myth women were created later, as a punishment for men. Pandora (the gift of all) was created to be lovely, a wonder to look on for both men and gods, but possessed by powerful curiosity. Pandora was unable to withstand the temptation offered by a beautiful box, a gift which she was forbidden to open. By opening it, Pandora released a host of misfortunes on humanity. Combining the two myths, male rebellion against authority is what is most likely to be conflated with freedom. One would expect libertarian science fiction to accent a traditionally masculinist form of reason, and to treat female beauty as a dangerous given. The sense of wonder so central to science fiction comes, in libertarian science fiction, from rebellion and material achievement, and not from curiosity and its satisfaction, which are innately less important in this schema. When we look at the novels that have won the Prometheus Award, we see this hierarchy repeated again and again—and is it an accident that, despite the fact that women are more highly represented in science fiction than ever before, all the Prometheus Award winners to date have been male?<br /><br /><strong>The Novum</strong><br /><br />Turning to the books themselves, what do we see? Immediately, we see that the defining novum of libertarian science fiction is not liberty, but rebellion. Some of these rebellions encompass an actual overturning of the social system (<em>Wheels Within Wheels, Pallas</em>); all of these novels emphasize the actions of an individual (occasionally a small coalition of individuals). In a few cases (most notably in <em>Marooned in Realtime</em>), the action is not rebellion proper, but the demonstration of the superiority of private action to government action. However, the prevalence of rebellion is so strong, that this, rather than freedom, seems to provide the core plot for libertarian fiction. In several books, criminals who do not just break the laws libertarians disagree with -- laws impeding free trade, for example -- but who kill or rob are cast as the hero (Varley's <em>The Golden Globe</em> is the most overt example here). In others, the fundamental structures of organized society are taken to task for the threats they carry against the individual.<br /><br />This is most clearly the case in <em>Pallas</em>, in which agriculture is seen as a wrong turn in human history, rather than the advancement that allowed all human development, especially the accumulation of learning that became the sciences. This example is extreme, but it is a case where the narrative thrust to overturn accepted notions leads the author to cut the theoretical ground from under his own feet. In the philosophical traditions of classical liberalism, which the libertarian claims to use as a justification for its political stances, agricultural labor is the metaphoric base for all property rights. The argument used in this tradition is that which John Locke developed in his<em> Second Treatise on Government</em>; by mingling one's energies with the world via labor, and causing the earth to bring forth new produce by means of this combination, one deserves to own that land and those goods. Since one consumes the results, one's property becomes, functionally, an extension of one's own body. Railing against agriculture itself undercuts the philosophical justification for a libertarian society.<br /><br /><strong>Justifying Libertarianism</strong><br /><br />There are three arguments in libertarian thought against government action. These arguments justify overthrowing a government and creating instead a society defined by private action and organized through market action: the essential, the ethical, and the practical arguments. Though these arguments intertwine, they can be separated into distinct strands for the purpose of discussion. The essentialist argument says that societies should be organized around individuals because that's who we essentially are, and that all larger groupings are fictional and/or must consist of voluntary associations of these individuals. As the examples above indicate, this is taken to such an extreme in these novels that it becomes an ahistorical truth, and is such an absolute good that no cause, however lofty, is worthy enough to allow another to impinge on the rights of the individual, even, as threatened in <em>Marooned in Realtime</em>, the complete extinction of the human race.<br /><br />In classical liberal political philosophy, the primacy of the (male) individual is based on residual claims about the divine source of human nature; this is most evident in Locke's <em>Second Treatise on Government</em>, the single most influential source for the designers of <em>The Declaration of Independence</em>. However, there is a crucial difference between Locke's theories and contemporary libertarian thought as expressed in these novels. These novels place man at the center of creation, and reject God, either explicitly or implicitly. This is most clearly the case in Victor Koman's <em>The Jehovah Contract</em>, in which an assassin is hired to kill God (he does so by combining magic, extrasensory perception, drugs, and mass hypnosis), but it's a common thread found throughout the award winners.<br /><br /><strong>The Secular/The Mystic</strong><br /><br />Science fiction has always had a strong inclination towards the secular. Indeed, some have argued that science fiction and religious faith cannot coexist, because reason and faith are innately contradictory. However, religion has at times been treated at least anthropologically, as a defining element of culture. Many of Arthur C. Clarke's works do this. Other works have tried to find an explanation in physical reality for specific religious beliefs (again, Clarke did this in <em>Childhood's End</em>). However, writers of libertarian science fiction seem to draw on the writer which one survey identified as the single strongest influence on formal members of the Libertarian political party, the philosopher/novelist Ayn Rand. In all of her works Rand equates religion with mysticism, and mysticism with the irrational, qualities which are then attributed ahistorically to the supporters of the state. Supporting statist government and believing in religion are treated both as transgressions on man's essential nature, which is that of a rational (empiricist) being.<br /><br />The debt these novels owe to such a position is most explicit in <em>Fallen Angels</em>, in which Niven, Pournelle, and Flynn fuse the worst aspects of ecological concern and spiritual inquiry, and attribute both to a desire to have power over others. Time and again in these novels, reason is used as a synonym for proper mental behavior, and is equated with goal-oriented behavior; these goals are specific, take material form, and directly benefit the individuals involved. Altruistic behavior of the kind that directly benefited mankind in the Prometheus myth is always suspect. At best it is inaccurate, because no one can know what another individual desires; at worst and most common in these novels, expressions of compassion are a thin cover for the desire to control others.<br /><br />The ethical argument for the libertarian societies has two branches. The first argues that since we are fundamentally individuals, government action that restricts individual action in any way, except to protect other individuals, is simply wrong. The second fork of the argument is that used by Adam Smith in <em>The Wealth of Nations</em>, namely that the good of the whole is best served by the selfish actions of individuals, through the "invisible hand of the market" which yokes private desire to public good and makes a society more productive. Since in these books concern for others in a generalized or collective fashion is suspect, this second branch of the ethical argument is driven underground, so that private action is explicitly championed as the primary good above all else -- but is also shown to "just happen" to be more effective at producing those economic goods.<br /><br /><strong>Libertarian "Ethics"</strong><br /><br />However, these novels also stack the deck and simplify the issues involved in ethical questions. Individuals who serve the state are never misguided, following a different path that they believe will produce a good end. They are instead lying monsters, whose perversion emerges in a variety of ways, sexuality prominent among them. The primary voice of collectivist thought in <em>The Rainbow Cadenza</em> is fond of rape, and is most spontaneously aroused sexually by degradation. He has a spontaneous orgasm when he forces the novel's heroine to shit herself. The collectivist leader in <em>Pallas</em> responds primarily to women considerably younger than himself (well under the age of consent), and so on.<br /><br />The deck is stacked, because apparently in a free world no one has to make difficult ethical choices. Literally no one has to choose between fulfilling a dream and earning a living in these books, or, more to the point, no one has to consider the side effects of their own actions on anyone else, as might be the case in a sweatshop environment or a highly toxic industrial concern. Only a few novels are honest enough to produce superscience advanced enough to make this premise in any way logically viable. Vinge, for example, with his wonderful technology of "bobbling," enables individuals to enter a condition of stasis, in which no time passes, for as long as is needed for the ecology to heal itself and the toxic substances to decompose. In the rest of the novels concern about pollution is absent, ridiculous, or a thin cover for government desires to interfere with industry, as in <em>Fallen Angels</em>, which suggests that not only are concerns about global warming fallacious, but also that atmospheric pollutants produced by heavy industry are the only thing holding back an ice age.<br /><br /><strong>Libertarianism's Limits on Creativity</strong><br /><br />The practical argument is based largely on the problem of economic calculation. Due to the protean nature of human desires, and that fact that these desires are specific to the individual, capitalist theory says there is no way that a centralized planning system organized by the state can accurately perform all the necessary calculations to ensure a smoothly functioning economy. These calculations must be performed by the individuals themselves, who make endless calculations throughout the day as to what actions will maximize their personal satisfaction. This has certainly been largely true in the industrial age, but isn't science fiction about change, and isn't it possible that the information age will be different? No, and no. These novels endlessly replay the concerns of the early industrial age. They do this by creating a new frontier (near space is common) and, more strikingly, using a set of genre conventions that severely curtail the nature of scientific advancement.<br /><br />Given the vast spectrum of human science and practices, one might expect wonderful hypothesizing in any or all of them in a randomly chosen score of science fiction novels. In libertarian science fiction, the wonders of the world come from and for the individual, which makes for some very strange narrative twists indeed. Varley's<em> The Golden Globe</em> imagines far greater malleability of form and biological system for humans; genitals can be sucked into body cavities at will, drugs are available to reliably stimulate the sexual drive, and so on. However, rather than make definitions of humanity more porous—more cybernetic, if you will—these powers are always put in the service of the coherent individual self. <em>Pallas</em> postulates household-sized fusion reactors—but computers are largely absent, and the planning computers of the government have not advanced along with fusion or space exploration. Vinge does posit the ability to interface mentally with machines, and immense advancements in computing power, but these are all located in individual computers. The possibility of meeting mind to mind and reaching a shared agreement about the needs of the community or race is never acted on. The dream of connecting with other humans and really knowing them is age-old in the human race. It is so completely absent from these novels that it almost reduces to an equation: libertarian science fiction is about the freedom to explore and manipulate the entire universe, so long as the essential human self is not tampered with.<br /><br /><strong>The Essential Self</strong><br /><br />At various times the stability of this essential character is so extreme that it is self-evident, maintains itself essentially (beyond physical bounds), and is self-propagating. To give examples of each of these qualities, the detective in Vinge's <em>Marooned in Realtime</em> can accurately read faces and say without a hint of irony that someone looks like a murderer. The character is, of course, a former member of a government. In Milan's <em>The Cybernetic Samurai</em>, a scientist whose mind is downloaded at the time of death into a computer system inhabited by an AI maintains an independent existence within his circuitry, and thinks "privately" despite his omnipresence in the system. Finally, in <em>Pallas</em> the son of the leader of the collectivist state is literally a sociopath, a condition that is an implicit extension of his father's statist policies. James Gunn has stated that science fiction "is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people." Given the stability these novels claim for human character, libertarian science fiction is more about stasis, or, more charitably, about people effecting change on the universe without being changed by their actions.<br /><br /><strong>The Family</strong><br /><br />One area where all the libertarian arguments about how humans are innately individuals dissolves is the family unit, most especially the heterosexual couple. Time and again in these novels man and wife do—somehow—form a unified collective. Within the family unit it is somehow possible to reach an accord that is genuine, in which a) individuals do not strive to reach their own goals over those of others and/or b) the goals of two individuals somehow fuse and become one. Sexual relationships are the site where the male orientation most often becomes painfully obvious, and where the male perspective fuses with the (forgive me) thrust towards rebellion to become explicitly adolescent. In these novels sexuality is a force that leaps across all cultural barriers and obstacles. No libertarian character, for example, is drawn only to partners who come from a similar cultural matrix or ethnic background. A free mind leaves these things behind. However, in these novels it is only women whose desire must leap over physical unattractiveness or age. The inventor hero of<em> Pallas</em>, who is scarred and has only one eye, is sexually exciting to a woman less than half his age (who is also the daughter of his first true love); the heroine of <em>The Rainbow Cadenza</em> accepts the proposal of her former teacher, many decades older than she, and so on. Given the power to do so, it seems clear that male sexuality will reshape its object to be younger and prettier. The disembodied but somehow male AI in <em>The Cybernetic Samurai</em> reshapes the virtual form of his scientist mother to be more slender and fit, despite lacking a body himself, so that they may have virtual sex (that he assumes will be more satisfying for her).<br /><br />The relationship of parent to child is more slippery. If a parent nurtures a child's abilities, allows free rein for his or her curiosity, and allows free sexual expression, parent and child will have a good relationship. However, if a parent acts for what he or she perceives to be the child's own good and this contradicts the will of the child, the parent will inevitably be shown to be, well, wrong. To justify this, most children in these novels are prodigies, with judgment and insight far beyond their years. <em>Pallas</em>'s Emerson Ngu is both inventor and instinctively pro-freedom, and the child-actor in <em>The Golden Globe</em> is both a genius and instinctively pro-freedom.<br /><br />Two things are missing in these portrayals of family. The first is any sense that guidance or schooling is necessary. Families too become (somehow) voluntary units, in which already formed and complete humans are simply cared for. Enculturation is unnecessary, and schools, long the tool of statist socialization, are almost completely absent from these narratives. The second missing element is any recognition that the family could be either drastically reshaped by culture and circumstance (as happens, for example, with the line marriages in Heinlein's <em>The Moon is a Harsh Mistress</em>, one of the LFS's Hall of Fame Award winners), or, contrarily, form the metaphorical basis for a state that is less oppressive. The specific qualities of romantic love that allows it to form the base for a non-oppressive assemblage would surely be a worthy object of inquiry in any examination of freedom, but passes instead unexamined.<br /><br />The absence of an examination of the family is particularly telling because it is another example of libertarian science fiction cutting all ties with the lineage of actual libertarian and classical liberal thought. Locke, and many thinkers since, Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill among them, have argued that challenging the accepted nature of the family is a crucial step in freeing the mind. Rather than finding ways to make the maturation period more graceful, or examining how we can relate to children in ways that better equip them to be free, these novels show a self that is somehow naturally coherent and naturally equipped to operate responsibly in a market economy. All attempts to guide this self are oppressive. Individuals who are not perverted statists can reason purely and cleanly to their ends, an ability which passes beyond reason into some direct perception of the nature of existence, one that happens to align nicely with Western heterosexual desire, a desire that somehow transcends its physical container and is written into the nature of the universe. It would not be going too far to suggest that in rejecting the presence of a Judeo-Christian deity, as these books have, these authors have simply taken the position and qualities to themselves.<br /><br />The result of this schema is a grand melodrama, populated at its best by archetypes, but more often by thinly characterized placeholders for the reader's point of view. Such a narrative design makes a wonderful engine for a teen adventure story, but produces science fiction that is curiously distorted by the ideological limitations placed upon it, and allows examinations of freedom that are only marginally honest.<br /><br /><strong>The Wondrous Exceptions</strong><br /><br />It's clear that I've judged the winners of the Prometheus Award harshly. (Hey, that's what happens when a libertarian looks closely at what he's been reading.) Despite the many specific examples I've provided, I've also generalized broadly. This was intentional; I've been looking at the genre's shared characteristics. The obvious question now is: is that all there is? Stated more positively, do any winners of the Prometheus Award actually write fiction that is both good science fiction and that honestly examines the nature of freedom?<br /><br />The answer is a resounding yes, and two examples spring immediately to mind: Vernor Vinge's<em> A Deepness in the Sky</em> (the 2000 Prometheus Award winner) and the works of Ken Macleod (who won in 1996 for <em>The Star Fraction</em>, and again in 1998 for <em>The Stone Canal</em>). If I had to summarize my objections to the majority of the Prometheus Award winners, there would be three: they repeat the past, thinly disguised, in the future; they assume that the nature of freedom is unchanging; and they naturalize the social contexts in which classical liberalism arose (assuming the family, heterosexuality, etc.).<br /><br />The joy and wonder of books such as<em> A Deepness in the Sky</em> and <em>The Stone Canal</em> is precisely the sweeping zest with which they reverse all three of these characteristics. As perhaps should be obvious, both books change the very nature of humanity, by changing the physical limits on the free minds that libertarianism celebrates. Vinge does this twice over. First, he creates a convincing alien race with different physical constraints upon their mental functions. They live on a planet warmed by a unique star known as the OnOff star which, as its name suggests, goes dark periodically, then re-lights. This means that the aliens are regularly cast into a crisis situation similar to wartime, which often demands collective action, and that as they enter a technological era, they are still fighting their biological instincts that urge them to seek "deepnesses" in which to hibernate. Second, and more startling, Vinge concocts a viral poison referred to as Focus that turns humans into engines of creation. When infected, people focus fiercely on their selected area -- and biologically surrender their larger judgment. The result is a biological hierarchy that is more productive in basic inquiry than the free society opposing them. The result is a set of truly complex moral questions, to which there are few easy answers. One reason for this is that Vinge takes economics seriously. Rather than being a place for easy answers, his characters repeatedly face tough moral decisions akin to the core problem in Tom Godwin's story "The Cold Equations" (1954): what do I have to do to survive, and be the person I want to be, in a universe of limited resources?<br /><br />Macleod's <em>The Stone Canal</em> offers a very different perspective on the problem of freedom, but among other things, admits a commonality among all revolutionary doctrines (left, right, anarchist, et al.), documents the intensely learned political action necessary to bring an anarchist society into being, and, most fundamentally, documents how the moral choices that define freedom will morph almost beyond recognition as the human form does. If a body is cloned, who owns it? The original living embodiment of the genotype? Classical liberalism would say yes. Or, rather, he who mixed his labor with it, fed it, raised it? Classical liberalism would also say yes, and break down into a Zen-like state of confusion. More profoundly than any of the other winners, Macleod shows why libertarian science fiction must be science fiction first, libertarian second, in order to succeed at being either. To restate that more positively, Macleod writes good libertarian science fiction because he takes change seriously. He looks first at what it will do to us to conquer death, to create AIs, to download consciousness into machine bodies, and then asks, "What will freedom look like?" If you're interested in the answer to that question, I urge you to pick up Macleod's novel <em>The Stone Canal</em>—and to keep a close watch on the future winners of the Prometheus Award.<br /><br /><center><strong>Works Cited</strong></center><br /> Cawelti, John. <em>Adventure, Mystery, and Romance</em>. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976.<br /> Gunn, James, ed. <em>The Road to Science Fiction: From Gilgamesh to Wells</em>. New York: New American Library, 1977.<br /> Hamilton, Edith. <em>Mythology</em>. New York: New American Library, 1969.<br /> Koman, Victor. <em>The Jehovah Contract</em>. New York: Avon Books, 1987.<br /> Macleod, Ken. <em>The Stone Canal</em>. London: Legend, 1997.<br /> Milan, Victor. <em>The Cybernetic Samurai</em>. New York: Arbor House, 1985.<br /> Niven, Larry, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn. <em>Fallen Angels</em>. New York: Baen Books, 1991.<br /> Schulman, J. Neil. <em>The Rainbow Cadenza</em>. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.<br /> Smith, L. Neil. <em>Pallas.</em> New York: Tor, 1993.<br /> Suvin, Darko. <em>Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Genre</em>. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.<br /> Todorov, Tzvetan. <em>The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre</em>. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1973.<br /> Varley, John. <em>The Golden Globe</em>. New York: Ace Books, 1998.<br /> Vinge, Vernor. <em>A Deepness in the Sky</em>. New York: Tor, 1999.<br /> —. <em>Marooned in Realtime</em>. New York: Bluejay Books, Inc., 1986.<br /> Wilson, F. Paul. <em>Wheels Within Wheels</em>. New York: Doubleday, 1978. <br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qbRvRtGuDHQ/S-gaNAlXYjI/AAAAAAAAAE8/U3Vo0I0tbR4/s1600/Beatty.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 120px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 150px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469650558238810674" border="0" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qbRvRtGuDHQ/S-gaNAlXYjI/AAAAAAAAAE8/U3Vo0I0tbR4/s320/Beatty.jpg" /></a><br /><strong>Greg Beatty</strong> lives with his wife in Bellingham , Washington , where he tries unsuccessfully to stay dry. He writes everything from children's books to essays about his cooking debacles. He won the 2005 Rhysling Award and the 2008 Dwarf Stars Award, and in 2008 published his first poetry chapbook, titled <em>Phrases of the Moon</em>. It is available from <a href="http://spechouseofpoetry.blogspot.com/">Spec House</a>.<br /><br />For more information on Greg's writing, visit <a href="http://gregbeatty.net/">http://gregbeatty.net</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-45811174396126626482010-06-30T00:00:00.026-05:002010-06-30T14:35:28.297-05:00Aliens at the Office Christmas Party: How to Write Subtle Discrimination<p><strong>Aliens at the Office Christmas Party: How to Write Subtle Discrimination </strong><br /><em>by Romie Stott </em><br /><br />Genre fiction’s most common theme is cross-cultural relationships: humans and aliens, vampires and werewolves, dwarves and elves, cowboys and Indians, cyborgs and normals, kings and peasants. It’s easy to write a perfectly symbiotic relationship, or an openly antagonistic one, but most first-world cultural interactions fall somewhere in the middle. For example: </p><ul><li>Not many people are neo-Nazi skinheads, but few will think to schedule around Rosh Hashanah the way they do around Easter. </li><li>A Hindu could be considered a valuable member of an American management team, but be left out of informal decisions made during Friday-night trips to the steakhouse. </li><li>Competent young women are often moved onto slow promotional tracks because it’s assumed they will leave the company to raise children. </li><li>A white woman might ask her affluent black coworker what life is like in the ghetto. </li></ul><p>In other words, a character can be racist without keeping slaves or hunting “lesser beings” for sport. He can be sexist without being a rapist. Discrimination isn’t always the product of blatant racism or restrictive religious dogma; it’s often small and unintentional, viewed as productive or harmless by the people that do it. Nevertheless, it can have pronounced psychological and economic effects on its target.<br /><br /><strong>INVISIBLE SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION</strong><br /><br />Most discrimination is invisible—except to the person who is discriminated against. Much of this has to do with cultural expectations that marginalize or trivialize members of a minority population. These expectations are frequently so intrinsic to the lives of the discriminating or majority population that they might have trouble recognizing them even when they are pointed out. Humans alone have vast cultural, religious, and ethnic differences; when it comes to alien or mythic races, physical and even sexual differences can also become very important.<br /><br /><strong>Minority as “Other”</strong><br /><br />Imagine a company in which all the employees are humans. A new position opens up in marketing, and the best candidate for the job is a Martian. Everyone is very excited to have him on board. However, the company is not equipped with Martian bathroom facilities, and thinks it would be too expensive to build them for just one guy. Instead, they make a deal that he can use the Martian bathroom of the business across the street. In addition, the Martian’s physiology requires him to meditate for an hour in the late afternoon, or his metabolic processes will shut down; however, he can work during the lunch hour, since he doesn’t have to eat.<br /><br />For the first couple of weeks, the Martian and the company seem to adapt to each other pretty well. There are a few misunderstandings, but they get smoothed out. But after a month, the Martian is pretty tired of walking across the street whenever he needs to use the bathroom—it’s disruptive to his work, the weather is often bad, and the receptionist thinks all Martians look the same and makes him check in with security every time he re-enters the building.<br /><br />Because the Martian works through lunch, he never develops a strong personal bond with any of his coworkers. They get along all right, but they know nothing about his life outside the context of work. And since he doesn’t celebrate the same holidays or have the same kind of family structure, he has a hard time finding common ground to start a conversation.<br /><br />After another month, the Martian’s coworkers are tired of scheduling meetings around his meditation time. They don’t feel it’s fair that they always have to rearrange their schedules to suit him, and he won’t meet them halfway. Of course, the Martian seems to be shy in general, so perhaps he won’t mind missing meetings. As a matter of fact, it might be better for him to telecommute anyway—after all, he loses a lot of productivity with those long trips to the bathroom.<br /><br />The Martian continues to do a good job with the work he’s given, but he is never considered for a promotion—he doesn’t have “people skills,” he’s never really become part of the corporate culture, and it’s easy to forget he’s there. Projects the Martian would excel at are given to junior members of his department because of informal mentoring relationships that develop between the human members of the company. Eventually, the Martian finds he is doing only half the workload he was hired for. When he mentions this to his boss, the corporate higher-ups decide to dissolve his position—it looks like it was never really necessary.<br /><br /><strong>The Token Member</strong><br /><br />People want to understand each other, but they don’t always know how. When dealing with a member of another culture, it can be hard to remember that the individual and the culture are not the same thing. For instance, just because one vampire likes cold weather, one shouldn’t assume that all vampires want the air conditioner cranked up. Conversely, even though a lot of vampires are good at chess, an individual vampire might not even know how the pieces move. For these reasons, it is wrong to assume that two vampires will get along by virtue of being vampires, even if they have no common interests.<br /><br />Stereotypes exist for a reason. The human brain is built to look for patterns, and these patterns are usually helpful. For example, a guy wearing an expensive watch is probably not a manual laborer. A woman who can’t walk in a straight line is probably either drunk or suffering from a head injury, and I shouldn’t ask her to drive me home. Very few teenagers will have upper management experience, and I probably shouldn’t recruit among them for my next C.E.O.<br /><br />Stereotypes’ usefulness ends when we don’t have enough data to make good predictions—or when the data we have is somehow distorted. If I’d met 30 gremlins, and two of them were lazy, I’d say “hmm. Those two gremlins were unusually lazy.” If, on the other hand, I met only two pookas, and both of them were lazy, I might conclude that all pookas are lazy—and I might hold to this first impression long after I’d met other, non-lazy pookas.<br /><br />This can put a lot of pressure on token minority members, who are often unintentional ambassadors by virtue of being the only one of their kind. They may have to field well-meaning but inappropriate questions based on misinformation about their culture, and they may feel extremely scrutinized (whether or not they actually are), as though even a small mistake would confirm negative stereotypes about them. They may be patronized, or asked to explain the behaviors of someone they don’t know. They may be restricted by stereotypes like “Asians are quiet and good at math,” even if they were raised in the same culture as the rest of the group, and are indistinguishable in all ways except appearance.<br /><br />In short, minority members are often depersonalized, even by well-meaning and helpful people. They are held to unusual standards, used as research tools, and treated as the face of their culture—not as individuals.<br /><br /><strong>Cultural Differences</strong><br /><br />Different cultures have different taboos, different traditions, and different styles of interaction. As a result, what is normal or laudable in one culture can be seen as rude or odd in another. For example: </p><ul><li>Japanese managers may spend a day a month working a menial job on the shop floor, are unlikely to have reserved parking spaces, and almost never fire or punish employees; they try to build life-long loyalty to the company, and are very careful about who they hire. American managers expect to change companies regularly and assume the same of their subordinates, surround themselves with special perks which emphasize their power and inspire ambitious employees, and try to “work smarter; not harder.” </li><li>Citizens of many Western European countries expect a short work week, a long lunch or midday break, and a lot of vacation time—and are more willing to take salary cuts than to surrender these benefits; Americans and Japanese may work as much as 90 hours a week, and often feel guilty about taking sick days or vacations. </li><li>Table manners vary widely, and not just in terms of utensil use. Some cultures expect shared dishes; others, separate plates. In some, it is rude to take a large serving of food; in others, it is a compliment to the chef. A clean plate can indicate hunger, respect, or a criticism of the host. </li><li>Time is seen as more flexible in some cultures than in others. People who work in theatre reliably arrive 15 minutes after the scheduled meeting time—except on performance nights, when they may be as much as an hour early. Citizens of some African and South American countries often schedule “around” a time—about 8; about 3—so no one need feel rushed; on other continents, this is often viewed as laziness or disrespect. </li></ul><p>These misunderstandings do not always equally affect both parties. An elf might feel threatened by the ogre that regularly invades his personal space, while the ogre might be offended by the elf’s aloof standoffishness. Alternately, the elf might feel violated by what he sees as inappropriate touching, and the ogre might never notice—after all, high-fives are a common tool of congratulations and bonding.<br /><br />Usually, it is the minority member that is most affected by a cultural difference. She may be unwilling to “cause trouble” by pointing out a behavior that makes her uncomfortable, especially if it seems to please everyone else; she may worry that she’ll seem weak, whiny, or insubordinate if she speaks out too often, and may not want to emphasize her differentness. Conversely, her companions might refuse or forget her requests, which may not be practical; they might resent her request to change what “has always worked before,” or criticize her for not having a sense of humor. And they might not tell her when her behaviors are unusual—they might worry they’ll be seen as brutish and inflexible, or they might assume she’s too stupid or brittle to change.<br /><br /><strong>Assumptions of Weakness</strong><br /><br />A culture normally values what it’s good at, and devalues what it’s bad at. Consequently, different is almost always viewed as weaker. Specifically, if someone can’t do something others see as easy or normal, he will be seen as stupid, crippled, clumsy, or childlike—no matter how superior he is in other areas. Thus minority contributions are often undervalued.<br /><br />For instance, Gongo the Robot is the smartest member of her space-pirate crew; she has a brilliant grasp of strategy. However, she can’t see very well, so she often misses things other crewmembers notice; she’s a terrible shot, and she sometimes runs into things. Even though she’s the ship’s best tactical mind, she is never promoted – not only does her captain assume her clumsiness is an indication of stupidity, but promotion is tied to kill ratios, and she misses half of what she shoots at.<br /><br />This can lead to a pattern of learned helplessness, wherein the minority member internalizes the incorrect judgments of the larger community and develops a distorted self image. For example, the dwarf who must constantly ask for help reaching things on high shelves might begin to think of himself as puny, and may begin to ask for help with all heavy objects—even though it was only his height, not his strength, that was inadequate.<br /><br />A presumption of incompetence can create unreasonably high standards, as the minority member must work doubly hard to overcome negative assumptions and expectations of failure. People might assume a nymph is insolent even though she is always incredibly polite; she may be seen as inadequate when she is average, and face a higher degree of scrutiny than her companions. Because she is expected to fail, she may be all the more highly regarded if she wins—or she might become an object of extreme resentment. She may even experience double bias, wherein she is expected not only to excel at the skills of the larger culture, but at her minority’s—to be an aggressive fighter, but also a good cook, a snazzy dresser, and a consummate housekeeper.<br /><br />In extreme circumstances, a minority member may be seen as not only physically or intellectually stunted, but morally weak; members of the larger culture may take it upon themselves to reform his “misguided” beliefs about anything from religion to sex. Especially if the minority member comes from a limited economic background, he may be suspected of lying, stealing, or cheating, even if he has no past history of unethical behavior.<br /><br />Signs of condescension can be extremely subtle, almost indistinguishable from simple friendship: excessive praise when a task is correctly completed, helpful offers to pay for small things and carry bulky packages, and overly familiar forms of address. These actions go beyond friendship and become discrimination when they are differentially applied—when the “helpful friend” will not allow reciprocal favors, and his “assistance” interferes with respect and professionalism.<br /><br /><strong>Discrimination Within</strong><br /><br />Different people react to discrimination differently. They may get angry with others or with themselves; they may not work as hard because “it doesn’t matter anyway;” they may work doubly hard to “prove those jerks wrong.” A particularly common coping mechanism is venting to peers; people often find relief in talking to others about shared problems, and are comforted by knowing their experiences are not imaginary or exclusive.<br /><br />That said, many victims of discrimination “toughen up,” with varying degrees of success. Sometimes, mental toughness is all someone needs to succeed in the face of discrimination, but as an unintended consequence, that person may become overly critical of other minority members who do not do the same. They may also side against other “weak” oppressed people in order to enhance their standing in the eyes of the powerful. As a result, minority members who succeed are not always willing to help their struggling brothers and sisters—they may not have the energy left, they may not be sympathetic, or they may want to distance themselves to protect their own successes. </p><p>On a final note, discrimination is harder on those who perceive themselves as belonging to the same culture as the oppressor; people who view themselves as different and are proud of those differences are unlikely to be troubled by differential treatment, which they may view as valid, or which they may have prepared for in advance. In other words, a boy raised by fairies will be rightly frustrated when the fairies don’t invite him to their balls; the same boy, raised by human parents, wouldn’t expect an invitation to begin with, and would rather not worry about the possibility of stepping on the fairies accidentally.<br /><br /><strong>SUBTLE ECONOMIC DISCRIMINATION</strong><br /><br />Economic discrimination tends to be systemic instead of individually targeted, and its problems can persist for several centuries, even when people in power are actively working to fix them. Economic discrimination is not simply a question of social discrimination’s “glass ceiling,” or lack of equal pay for equal work—it can exist for the population as a whole even when individuals are fairly treated.<br /><br />Even if a person is completely free to make her own decisions, those decisions will be influenced by the world around her. If she does not have role models in difficult and high-paying careers, she is unlikely to consider those careers when looking for work. Instead, she will contemplate “traditional” careers in which she knows it is possible for someone like her to succeed (which may be why we see so many elf archers). <br /><br />Furthermore, economic hardships can carry over from parent to child; a parent who could not afford schooling or advanced training will find it hard to make enough money to educate a child, and probably won’t have the time or knowledge to teach the child at home—especially since the child might also have to work to help support the family. Even if an exceptional parent finds a way to send a child to school, that child may drop out or fail in her studies because she wants to be “normal” like her unschooled peers. If she graduates, she will still have to make her own way in the world; she won’t have a family business to walk into. <br /><br />Discrimination is built into many common hiring practices, including unintentionally biased standardized tests and unwritten rules that are regarded as common practice, and assumed to be passed on from parent to child. Only low-paying workplaces with high turnover rates are likely to post “help wanted” signs; mid-range companies expect potential employees to contact and persuade them with a flawless resume and a series of follow-up calls.<br /><br />The most prestigious employers recruit on an individual basis—they only consider people they already know (or know of) through clubs, fraternities, social circles, or professional associations. Even if these clubs have open memberships, it is unlikely that a member of a traditionally impoverished population would think to join; he may not be able to pay the membership fees, and probably has no interest in hobnobbing in an environment where he feels out of place. Uthor the Barbarian doesn’t want to spend his free time learning origami—and so the origami club’s bodyguard contracts go to Pellinora, who attends every class.<br /><br />Finally, advancement within an organization is often tied to informal mentoring relationships that develop between people of similar interests and temperaments in different levels of the company. A new hire who befriends her boss on the laser-pistol range is more likely to be allowed to sit in on important meetings; will hear company news faster; will get more glowing recommendations when discussed with the higher-ups; and will have someone to ask for help when she’s overwhelmed.<br /><br />Thus, people are promoted faster when they are similar to the people already in power—and not through any deliberate ill will toward the people who aren’t. But lack of ill will doesn’t make class systems any less entrenched—even when they don’t officially exist.<br /><br /><strong>SYSTEMIC POLITICAL DISCRIMINATION</strong><br /><br />Especially in fantasy, we often see oppressed populations with no access to government; either they are serfs of another race which rules hereditarily, or there is a caste system which does not allow them to vote in free elections or serve in positions of power. However, science fiction is usually set in a democratic future with literally universal sufferage. (It’s practically unheard of for a culture to develop an advanced economy without abolishing all forms of slavery; the need for educated workers becomes too high, and those workers don’t want to compete with free labor.) Nevertheless, systemic discrimination can exist in politics even when a minority population has full legal rights.<br /><br />There are any number of reasons a minority member might choose not to vote. Polling stations may be in neighborhoods where she feels uncomfortable, or she might not have transportation to one. She might not know when votes are held, or how voting works; she might not speak the language of the poll workers or be able to read the ballot. She could feel physically threatened by protesters, or she might be so busy with work, family, or illness that she doesn’t have time to vote.<br /><br />These small reasons add up, especially if the voter in question doesn’t feel her vote counts. If her minority is a small enough percentage of the overall voters in a district, she is likely to feel voting a waste of her time. For instance, why would the only human member of a mostly Betelgeusian colony bother to vote when he knows he’ll be outvoted anyway, or when none of the candidates has taken a stance on water rationing, the only issue that concerns him (and concerns only him)?<br /><br />Even if a traditionally oppressed population is a majority, and is completely educated about the voting process, it will often fail to achieve representative parity. In other words, in a world of vampire majority and werewolf minority, werewolf candidates may consistently lose, even in a werewolf-dominated district. Due to economic forces, werewolf candidates may have trouble raising campaign funds, and may find it hard to get the backing of any major political organization. They may not know how to get on the ballot; they may have trouble getting their message heard without connections at the vampire-owned speaking assemblies. They are unlikely to have major political experience.<br /><br />Even if a werewolf candidate gets on the ballot, is covered by the press, and has a great political platform, he is still likely to lose. Most people don’t actually vote for the candidate they most agree with—they vote for a candidate they can live with who they think can win. The larger werewolf community may have trouble believing one of its members could actually wield power; the group may internalize the vampire attitudes and look down upon its own members. Alternately, they might fear that their concerns will be ignored by vampire politicians—that a werewolf will not be respected, and will not be able to make important alliances that will further the group’s political agendas.<br /><br />This assumes a werewolf candidate even decides to run—if the werewolf population is predominantly subsistence-level working class, few werewolves will have the time to get politically involved. And if there are no role models—if werewolves have never seen a politician who looks like them—they are unlikely to consider politics as a valid career choice.<br /><br /><strong>CONCLUSIONS</strong><br /><br />In essence, to write discrimination in fiction, one must understand the discrimination that exists in our own world. Although genre fiction is explicitly fictional, it is read by real people who will be affected by the parallels you draw. Whether your goal is to change the world, or simply to entertain, you will find that realistic representations of subtle discrimination translate into complex genre character relations.<br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br /><strong>Romie Stott</strong> is an editor of the slipstream magazine <em><a href="http://www.reflectionsedge.com ">Reflection's Edge</a></em>. Her work has been published by <em>Strange Horizons, Jerseyworks</em>, and <em>The Huffington Post</em>, among others. As a filmmaker (working as Romie Faienza), she has exhibited at the National Gallery in London and the Dallas Museum of Art. This article was influenced by the work of <a href=" http://www.diversitywealth.com">DiversityWealth</a> and Tasnim Benhalim.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-13477559482874645302010-06-30T00:00:00.024-05:002010-06-30T14:32:22.496-05:00Transracial Writing for the Sincere<strong>Transracial Writing for the Sincere</strong><br /><em>by Nisi Shawl </em><br /><br />“I’d never write about a person from a different ethnic background. The whole story would probably be full of horrible stereotypes and racist slurs.”<br /><br />Amy closed her mouth, and mine dropped open. Luckily, I was seated when my friend made this statement, but the lawn chair must have sagged visibly with the weight of my disbelief. My own classmate, excluding all other ethnic types from her creative universe!<br /><br />I think this sort of misguided caution is the source of a lot of sf’s monochrome futures. You know the ones I mean, where some nameless and never discussed plague has mysteriously killed off everyone with more than a hint of melanin in their skin. I wonder sometimes what kind of career I’d have if I followed suit with tales of stalwart Space Negroes and an unexplained absence of whites.<br /><br />But of course I don’t. I boldly write about people from other backgrounds, just as many of the field’s best authors do. Suzy McKee Charnas, Bruce Sterling, and Sarah Zettel have all produced wonderful transracial characters, as I show in examples below. Before getting into their work, though, let’s discuss how to prepare for your own.<br /><br />If you want to go beyond the level of just assigning different skin tones and heritages to random characters, you’re going to have to do some research. Because yes, all people are the same, but they’re also quite different. For now, we’ll set aside the argument that race is an artificial construct, and concentrate on how someone outside a minority group can gain enough knowledge of the group’s common traits to realistically represent one of its members.<br /><br />Reading’s a very non-confrontational way to do this. Be sure, though, if you choose this route, to use as many primary sources as possible. If researching a story about first contact between a stranded explorer from Aldeberan and a runaway slave, for example, you’d do much better reading <em>The Life & Times of Frederick Douglass </em>than <em>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</em>. The latter is an important and moving book. But not only is it a work of fiction, it was written by a non-slave; therefore it’s a step further removed from the authentic experience you need.<br /><br />Websites on minority culture abound. Any half-decent search engine will bring up a freighter’s worth of URLs on African-Americans, for instance, and at least a line or two on lesser-known groups.<br /><br />For a less cerebral approach, check out nearby ethnic history museums. Art collections, historical dioramas, anthropological displays and so on can provide you with strong visuals. Some are interactive, and allow you to pick up a few aural and tactile sensations as well. For locations, look under “Museums” in the yellow pages, or consult a travel guide for your area.<br /><br />When it comes to finding more contemporary material, magazines help. I also strongly recommend shopping trips, night-clubbing and restaurant hopping. Take a walk on the wild side. Do you feel like a tourist? Uncomfortable? Well, you are one, and you need to know what it’s like to be conspicuous. If your character’s a minority, she or he will be quite familiar with the sensation. Bruce Sterling once told me that alienation is an essential part of any science fiction writer’s education, and I agree.<br /><br />Perhaps you have friends of other cultural backgrounds. Talk to them. Explain what you’re trying to do. Even though no one is a certified representative of their own ethnic group, they can let you know when something you propose is totally out of whack. And they can point you to sources of specific info.<br /><br />If you’re thinking of approaching someone who’s more an acquaintance than a friend, offer to buy them lunch, or dinner, and make the interaction a formal interview. This is what you’d do with anyone else you wanted to pump for valuable data. Cultural background is data. If you want it, and you don’t have it, it’s valuable; treat it that way.<br /><br />Above all, don’t rely on representations of minorities gleaned from popular culture. They’re as true to life as Donna Reed’s pearl-laden floor-waxing outfits.<br /><br />So now that you’ve got some background on these Beautiful Strangers, how best to use it?<br /><br />A lot depends on your piece’s point of view, and the size of a given character’s role within it. Let’s start with Charnas’ short story, “The Ancient Mind At Work,” in which the protagonist, a white immigrant from South Africa, views an African American man:<br /><blockquote>Katje never called him by his name because she didn’t know whether he was Jackson Somebody or Somebody Jackson, and she had learned to be careful in everything to do with blacks in this country.<br /><br />He was slender as a Kikuyu youth–she could see his ribs arch under his shirt . . . By rights he belonged in a red blanket, skin gleaming with oil, hair plaited. Instead he wore the tan shirt, pants, and zip-up jacket of an ‘engineer’ from Buildings and Grounds, and his hair was a modest Afro, as they called it, around his narrow face.</blockquote><br />Here we see the minority through the eyes of another minority, but one sharing many assumptions with this society’s rulers. Katje’s opinions about what this man “should” be wearing and doing throw our own preconceptions in relief by their extremity. Her caution in dealing with Jackson underscores that of most American whites.<br /><br />On a few occasions, Charnas has Jackson speak for himself:<br /><blockquote>“Try and don’t put nobody in that number-six bedroom till I get to it at the end of the week,” he said.<br /><br />“I got accepted in Computer school in Rochester next semester . . . they don’t do blacks with guns . . .”</blockquote><br />Jackson’s speech reflects patterns familiar to anyone who’s ever listened to or talked with blacks of a certain upbringing. But it doesn’t lapse into incomprehensible “Buckwheatisms”; it marks difference, not inferiority. The combination of honest, foreign prejudice, familiar tension, and Jackson’s voicing of his own concerns produces a picture in slightly more than two dimensions, all that’s necessary for a supporting character.<br /><br />Sterling’s “Green Days In Brunei” features a multi-transracial cast; main and most supporting roles are filled by people of very different races than the author’s own. On assignment for a Japanese corporation, Turner Choi, a twenty-six year old Chinese Canadian CAD CAM engineer, becomes slowly accustomed to the ways of a tiny, somnolent country near Borneo, and its mix of Malaysian, Chinese, Iban, Dayak and European citizenry. Novella length gives Sterling room to flesh Choi out, using comparisons to his stay-at-home lawyer brother and his domineering, bad-cop, drug tycoon of a grandfather. A non-Asian girlfriend calls him “about as Chinese as maple syrup. . .” A Malaysian princess sees his status as a Western techie as exotic.<br /><br />Choi’s observations of his surroundings reveal as much about himself as they do about Brunei. The gossipy, village-like <em>kampongs</em> which run the city’s retro-greened high-rises inhibit his bachelor lifestyle. The Dayaks are his exotics, the “dark, beautiful descendants of headhunting pirates, dressed in hand-dyed <em>sarongs</em> and ancient plastic baseball caps,” their language “utterly incomprehensible.”<br /><br />Otherness is not a uniform state. Non-whites are not indentical, interchangeable units. Choi’s sense of himself as a foreigner, as a Westerner, a Northerner, and a child of privilege, complicates all his interactions. Age, more than race, distances him from the white exile Brooke, with whom he might otherwise form an alliance.<br /><br />It’s mostly Choi’s gear-headedness that defines him for himself. He learns the obsolete programming language required for his assignment so well he dreams in it. And he sees his love for Princess Seria as defined by tech:<br /><blockquote>The painfully simple local Net filtered human relations down to a single channel of printed words, leaving only a high-flown, Platonic essence. Their relationship had grown into a classic, bloodless, spiritual romance . . .</blockquote><br />Being a gear-head in low-and-appropriate tech Brunei causes Choi’s most alienated moments, and allows Sterling his closest identification with the character.<br /><br />Katmer Al Shei, a heroine of the novel Fool’s War, shares several characteristics with her creator, Sarah Zettel. They’re both women of low stature and high determination. Both rely on discipline and humor to help them deal with trying situations.<br /><br />For Al Shei, this includes an encounter with a “gerbil,” or space-station worker, who assaults her near the book’s beginning:<br /><blockquote>“Oh, sorry,” said a man’s bland voice. “I didn’t see a person there. I thought it was just a pile of rags and shit.<br /><br />Al Shei pulled herself upright and turned around slowly to face the chestnut skinned, auburn-haired, totally unshaven can-gerbil.<br /><br />She drew herself up to her full height. “There is no god but Allah and Muhammed is the Prophet of Allah.” Reciting the first pillar of Islam loudly was her standard tactic. Bigots seldom know how to reply to a declaration of faith . . .</blockquote><br />Long before this early and explicit confrontation, Zettel establishes Al Shei’s otherness, with descriptions of the veils she and her cousin wear, and their integration of prayer into starship routine.<br /><br />She also gives us a good idea of the context of this otherness. Coloring is noted: Master Fool Evelyn Dobbs’ skin is “a clear brown, two or three shades lighter than Al Shei’s earth tones. That and the angles in her eyes and her face said a good chunk of her ancestry was European.” And “shockingly blue eyes” shine out of Al Shei’s brother-in-law Tully’s “medium brown face.” But the roots of this society’s major prejudices lie in a dislike of certain strongly held beliefs. And right down there with the Muslims in terms of popularity is a group called “Freers.”<br /><br />Freers have revolutionary ideas concerning A.I.s and their occasional emergence into self-awareness. Since these chaotic births usually result in the loss of human life, most people think Freers are insane to encourage them.<br /><br /><em>Fool’s War</em>'s narrative switches between Al Shei, a target of religious persecution, Freer Jemina Yerusha, and Evelyn Dobbs, who has her own reasons for fearing irrational hatred. Though they all experience prejudice, the heroines’ goals aren’t quite congruent. Again, varying view points and sources of otherness give the story verisimilitude.<br /><br />One more note on <em>Fool’s War</em>: Zettel makes a conscious effort to avoid equating non-European skin tones with food. In fact, she does the opposite, writing of Com Engineer Lipinski’s “pale, exotic good looks” in terms of milk and lobsters, which she contrasts with the more customary copper, bark brown, chestnut, etc. A friend pointed out to her the annoying frequency of references to coffee and chocolate as racial color analogies. Humans have been treated as commodities in this hemisphere’s recent past. The connection to slavery was subtle, but disturbing, and Zettel has done what she can to reverse the trend.<br /><br />So let’s review how you, too, can make your universe an equal opportunity employer.<br />First, get to know your subjects. Primary sources are best.<br /><br />When telling your story from any character’s viewpoint, be true to their take on the situation. Don’t give them your own anachronistic beliefs, or inauthentic, “p.c.” motivations.<br /><br />Allow minority characters to speak with their own voices, even if only in a brief comment. Contrasts between multiple viewpoints produce both diversity and depth.<br /><br />Show how race and prejudice figure in your setting, and what, if any, their connections.<br /><br />Remember that difference is in the eye of the beholder. Black people don’t spend their whole lives thinking of themselves as black. We’re Ghanaians and editors and diabetics, and lots of other -ians and -ors and -ics. Use these self-categorizations to add points of audience identification to your characters.<br /><br />Finally, offer your work to members of other ethnic groups for critique. You don’t have to follow their suggestions, but it won’t hurt to hear them.<br /><br />Tom Wolfe spoke at a Press Club lunch on the subject of “writing what you know.” His point was that this is great advice, but that as writers it’s our job to continually know more.<br /><br />This is true for SF writers in spades cubed. If we can’t create a reasonable facsimile of the local cigar shop’s owner, how much of a chance do we have of convincing readers they understand the Ganymedian group mind’s ambassador?<br /><br />So welcome the Beautiful Strangers. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes with them. Do your best, and you’ll avoid the biggest mistake of all: exclusion.<br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /> <br /><strong>Nisi Shawl</strong>’s story collection <em>Filter House</em> won the 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award and was nominated for a 2009 World Fantasy Award. She received a second 2009 World Fantasy Award nomination for her novella “Good Boy.” Shawl is the coeditor, with Dr. Rebecca Holden, of <em>Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler</em> (forthcoming) and the coauthor of the Tiptree Special Mention book <em>Writing the Other</em>, a guide to developing characters of varying backgrounds. Her reviews and essays appear in the Seattle Times and Ms. Magazine, and she has contributed to <em>Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy</em> and <em>The Encyclopedia of Themes in Science Fiction</em>. Shawl is a founding member of the Carl Brandon Society and serves on the Board of Directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, which she attended in 1992.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-47002011263731730922010-06-30T00:00:00.023-05:002010-06-30T14:30:40.344-05:00Space Opera Rules; But By Whom?<strong>Space Opera Rules; But By Whom? </strong><br /><em>by Ross Hamilton</em><br /><br />Space opera—all sorts of cool space ships buzzing around, blasters, alien creatures, weird and wonderful technology—it has it all. Sure, the more "serious" writers have been known to dismiss it as not being "literature," but as one of my first published stories was about fairy tale characters as professional wrestlers, I can hardly lay great claims to being especially "literary" myself. Still, Mark Twain and Raymond Chandler were both dismissed in their day as not being literary.<br /><br />Confession time—I often find the more "literary" works to be a bit boring. Certainly I can appreciate and admire the quality of the writing while quietly cursing my own apparent lack in that regard, but I like to read for entertainment, not to sit and ponder afterwards to make sure that I actually understood it or to seek the underlying deeper meaning. I had enough of that at school, where anything other than alleged searches for beauty or truth was deemed unworthy of reading. Space opera has so many of the entertaining, escapism elements that we enjoy—literary or otherwise—just so long as it is a darn good read.<br /><br />There is one thing, though, about this genre or sub-genre—whichever you wish to call it—that often gets right up my rather large, multi-colored nose.<br /> <br />Why is it that all too often, space opera features a back-story where humanity has returned to having an overall, ruling royalty—emperors, kings, queens, whatever? To me, the space-opera formula is about presenting a far future that <strong>could</strong> be. While I obviously cannot say that there could <strong>never</strong> be a planetary or inter-planetary ruling royalty as such, I find it rather hard to accept. The little internal critic starts jumping up and down, kicking my temporal lobes and yelling for attention. "Yeah right," he squeals. "Like <strong>that's</strong> gonna happen!" And he does have a point.<br /><br />Take a step back for a moment, and consider the evolution of this whole "royalty" thing. Early tribal and family groups had leaders, usually being the strongest, fittest and best suited to both survive and to lead. We can observe that today in the animal kingdom at large. The alpha male of a kangaroo flock near where I live is a cantankerous old sod that carries plenty of scars from fending off pretenders to his "throne".<br /><br />As humanity became more "civilized", hereditary kingship overtook the older concept of tribal leaders being those best suited to lead. Sure, there is nothing stopping the incumbent's genes producing a "good" ruler, but it sure as heck doesn't ensure production of the "fittest" or "best". Consider the state of the European royalty by the late nineteenth century. Most of them were related. Queen Victoria was cousin, mother, grandmother or aunt to most of the European royal pack! So the inevitable happened—by only marrying into other royalty, the available gene pool became more and more limited—effectively inbreeding. Hemophilia became known as the "royal disease" due to its greater incidence among the nobility—a direct product of this unintentional inbreeding. The bottom line is that we moved further and further away from these rulers being the best or fittest.<br /><br />At the same time that royalty were doing their best to interbreed themselves out of existence, growing social awareness led to increasing upheaval against the hereditary rule concept. Consider for example the Stuarts' adamant view of their divine right to rule, which was a major contributing factor to the English Civil War that saw Charles I deposed and beheaded. The state of play today is that the concept of the all-powerful ruling royalty has all but disappeared. The few remainders, certainly in Europe, are only figureheads and supposed tourist attractions (not to mention grist for the gossip magazines).<br /><br />From at least as far back as Asimov's wonderful <em>Foundation </em>series, space opera all too often expects the reader to believe that humanity suddenly returned to the concept of a ruling, all-powerful royalty. Walter H. Hunt's <em>Dark Wing </em>series, a piece of militarist space opera I otherwise quite enjoyed, had a back-story of Earth having suffered greatly during a War of Succession. I can accept the concept of wars being fought between different factions or creeds seeking to rule, but wars being fought to put an all-powerful ruling royalty back in charge? The internal critic just leapt into warp drive.<br /><br />I can readily suspend disbelief about all sorts of technologies and alien life forms, but the concept of an inexplicable and sudden urge to support a royalty rerun? It does help, however, if there is something particularly interesting about the ruling party that adds to the story. For example, Simon R. Green's Empress Lionstone in his <em>Deathstalker</em> series was such a psychotic, homicidal and insanely <strong>nasty</strong> bitch that I just had to keep reading. Although, after the inevitable rebellion was won and the Empress deposed, I never quite understood the populace's sudden desire for a constitutional monarchy. Emperor Palatine in George Lucas's <em>Star Wars </em>was another that was a little different—a senator who manipulated people and events through the dark side of the Force until in a position of being able to simply declare himself Emperor. Napoleonesque?<br /><br />Chris Bunch and Allen Cole with their <em>Sten</em> series had an Emperor <strong>voted </strong>into the role of all-powerful ruler-for-life because he controlled the energy source which made interstellar flight possible. As much as I enjoyed <em>Sten</em>, that concept was a bit hard for me to swallow. Of course, the interesting twist was that this Emperor had made arrangements which ensured that clones of him automatically appeared after he had died, following a suitable period of the populace experiencing life without the energy source that he alone controlled. The rule-for-life became a rule-for-many-lives-of-one-man with the populace apparently generally accepting his regular reappearance.<br /><br />In fairness, probably every other reasonably expected alternative has been explored and used, but we seem to keep returning all too often to the same gambit. We are also often asked to accept that the all-powerful hereditary ruling elite are usually the product of a long-lived, unbroken hereditary line. Green's Empress was the latest in a 900-year dynasty. The <strong>wonderful</strong> Frank Herbert in <em>Dune </em>had Emperor Shaddam as the latest in the 10,000-year House Corrino dynasty. Asimov's ruling royalty in <em>Foundation</em>, prior to the collapse of the Empire, was another product of extremely long-lived dynasties.<br /><br />Why such long dynasties? Are we expected to accept that humanity, a species that seems to become more skeptical of things as it ages, accepts that situation unquestioningly? Or that in the high-tech far futures of space opera, other prospective claimants to the throne or anti-royalist rebels are <em>never</em> successful, or at least not until our heroes of that particular story arrive on the scene?<br /><br />The thing is that it doesn't have to be like that. Kevin J. Anderson in his <em>Seven Suns </em>saga gave us an earthly ruling royalty with a public façade of appearing to rule and make the decisions. His Majesty was, however, just a figurehead behind which a faceless bureaucracy ran things, largely through the hands of one individual. When a king had outlived his usefulness, the incumbent, in at least one instance, was given a new identity and permitted to disappear into peaceful oblivion while the public mourned his supposed death. The heir to the throne had been carefully selected and prepared beforehand. No matter if the king had failed to produce a suitable heir—the bureaucracy simply found a suitable candidate from elsewhere in the populace and then announced that this was one of the king's children. This was only successful because the royal family was largely kept quite secret so that the general population wouldn't know that it was all a crock. I found this a nice touch, which also added to the storyline conflict when the latest incumbent decided to refuse to play along entirely as expected.<br /><br />Okay, okay—I know what a lot of you are saying. Who is this turkey, and exactly what has <strong>he</strong> done that lets him become a critic? I don't have the publishing credential of any of those authors I have mentioned here. I just read a lot, try to write a bit, and I know what I like. But you know what—despite my criticisms, I keep reading the work of these authors anyway. That is because, at the end of the day, a good, entertaining storyline can overcome even this royalty bugbear of mine. Note the emphasis on <strong>good</strong> and <strong>entertaining</strong> as opposed to say the last of the <em>Matrix</em> series of films—that became such a tiresome trope, I was waiting for Lassie to suddenly dash out and save the day or a Vivian Leigh clone to flounce in, mint julep in hand, claiming that "after all, tomorrow is another day." Even the special effects didn't quite save that one from becoming a barf fest (shades of Colleen McCullough wandering around the set of <em>Thornbirds</em> yelling "Vomit material!"). But that is another whinge for another time.<br /><br />So space opera rules, even if I don't necessarily like whom they have doing the ruling. With so many other angles, however, do we really have to keep resorting to the worn-out royalty concept? <br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br /><strong>Ross Hamilton</strong> is an author of mainly sci fi and fantasy from Canberra, Australia. He is also a staff writer and book reviewer for <a href="www.awritergoesonajourney.com">www.awritergoesonajourney.com</a>. The idea for the article came from some late-night musing when unable to sleep and nothing but 'infomercials' to watch on the television. <a href="http://www.rosshamilton.net">www.rosshamilton.net</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-72257650332751091712010-06-30T00:00:00.022-05:002010-06-30T14:29:44.441-05:00War: What Is It Good For?<strong>War: What Is It Good For?</strong><br /><em>by Lisa Agnew </em><br /><br />In these testing international times, when a portion of this world in which we live appears to always be at war, a perennial ugly question rears its head once more. What exactly is war good for? In anthropological terms, the answer is actually—quite a lot. In many ways, it almost defines us as a species. It is that endless quest for territory, access and influence. The bleak and cynical would also say that it provides a pressure valve for population control. In terms of fiction and science fiction, war is often the <em>raison d'être</em>. It can neatly unite opposing factions in the face of a greater foe. As a plot device, it almost unfailingly delivers believable motivation. The question I wish to ask the reader is this—should science fiction's long-term vision not involve far loftier goals than an endless playing-out of man's most basic, reptilian instincts?<br /><br />Much early military science fiction was the result of the writers' actual experiences. Many of those writers highlighted the ultimate pointlessness of war or used it as an allegory of various episodes in history. As William S. Frisbee Jr. says on his website, "War is not about guns or bombs, war is about people." A large-scale conflict may be utilized as the setting within a story, but the characters are the reason for the tale's existence. However, during the past 30 years or so—a time that has seen the science fiction genre succeed in shedding its "pulp" associations and cross over into the realm of general consumption—the genre has also embraced the mythic archetypes of some of our oldest stories. These archetypes—the hero, the villain, the damsel or comrade in distress—are ideally fitted to military sf and, whilst their entertainment value is undeniable, they have, to a large extent, almost taken over the visual medium of the genre. Cinematic renditions of science fiction have dumbed the genre down to the point where it means little beyond this immediate and gratuitous entertainment value. <br /><br />While many excellent science fiction books are still being written, how many of these books are actually being read by the people to whom they could conceivably make a difference? How many people in dire need of broadening their horizons actually pick up a copy of anything like <em>Scientific American</em> or <em>National Geographic</em>, let alone speculative fiction? How many folk out there would read Philip Pullman's <em>Northern Lights</em> (<em>The Golden Compass </em>in the U.S.) were it not for the cinematic adaptation (if only to see why the critics unfavorably compare the film to the book)? Pullman himself seems worried at the direction taken by his genre, noting "that unless it does more to tackle moral questions it is in danger of becoming trivial and worthless. It has unlimited potential to explore all sorts of metaphysical and moral questions, but it is not doing that," His point is at the center of my argument. Military science fiction, in itself, can be informative and worthwhile but, when scope for a wide-ranging examination of all sorts of "metaphysical and moral questions" is present, why is it not explored to its fullest extent? Why are more movies of excellent science fiction books not made? They can be box-office successes—just look at <em>2001: A Space Odyssey. </em><br /><br />In today's world, the truth is that if something is not hyped to death, those who may actually benefit from the exercise of their grey matter will not bother to look at it in the first place. Even <em>Harry Potter </em>did not become the phenomenon it is without being very well publicized. War is and always has been heavily hyped. War is easy for politicians to hype by playing on nationalistic pride and xenophobic fear. So the job of movie promoters and distributors is made that much easier.<br /><br />Many people would not today entertain the notion of science fiction/fantasy as a viable mainstream genre were it not for those grand "us versus them" movies of the 1970s and earlier. If we examine such tales as products of their time, we discover that the war (or threat of war) portrayed within is an allegory of current or comparatively recent events. As an example, the film <em>The Day the Earth Stood Still </em>is fairly obviously an allegory of the "red paranoia" of those times, as is <em>Fahrenheit 451 </em>(book and film). Alasdair Spark points out in his essay "Science Fiction: This Time It's War!" that the Vietnam war is also a perennial favourite for re-hashing as a science fiction escapade. Spark notes the genre's remarkable ability to isolate and intensify elements of the war experience, and makes a good argument for the Alien series of movies as a particular case in point. So is it merely the idea of conflict that draws the crowds into the cinematic science fiction spectacular? Or do they see through the layers to that something deeper? With movies, we can almost certainly answer with the latter and, while this is understandable, it is certainly a cop-out. <br /><br />True aficionados of our genre feel an urge to be in at the start of a phenomenon. That is their nature. They will go to the book store and actively seek out a new title. The remainder of the public usually waits for the movie adaptation. So, how does the science fiction/fantasy writer incorporate readability into their manuscript? God knows it's hard enough getting published and the reality is that gaining a movie deal is not paramount in most writers' long-term plan. War is often incorporated into the plots of science fiction books as a draw-card. It is something the general public understands and only the more established writers can afford to throw away this tried-and-true blueprint and explore other avenues. It can be argued that Robert Heinlein's <em>Starship Troopers </em>set the tone for the militarism of the genre, though it can equally be argued that he was a writer of his times. So perhaps the 21st century is a time in which to begin exploring the premise that there may be worlds out there that have never been stained by this horror called war. It is only because of our particular evolutionary path that we find that difficult to contemplate. Perhaps some good science fiction writer can produce a book or a movie on the theme. Yet perhaps the constraints of our nature make it impractical. If one tallies up the number of Utopian novels versus the number of Dystopian novels ever written (not just by science fiction writers), the Dystopians outnumber the Utopians two to one. Yet dystopias have only caught up and overtaken the utopias in the past 200 years or so (coincidentally since about the same time that science fiction found a name for its format). So perhaps it is just another trait of our genre, mirroring traits of the species in general, which dictates that we prefer to explore the dark side of our natures far more than we wish to examine the goodness within. Or is it a case of wish fulfillment—reveling in the superior human hero triumphing over astounding odds and an inferior foe (as aliens are often portrayed)?<br /><br />Using a formula of archetype plus dystopia plus conflict, we can conclude that the most popular science fiction story would involve a young, male hero joining a war to fight against an all-powerful, dystopian enemy. Sound familiar?<br /><br />Where science goes, fiction follows. Or is it the other way around? These days there seems to be almost a symbiosis between the two. Science fiction writers like L. Ron Hubbard and the late, great Arthur C. Clarke have become immensely influential in their own right (in vastly different fields) by first imagining, then making their imaginings a reality. Gene Roddenberry envisioned much that now seems on the verge of coming to fruition. Roddenberry is on record as saying that "<em>Star Trek </em>is an optimistic vision that gives humanity hope for a better future." However, <em>Star Trek </em>also made good use of the "war as a plot device" theme (many of the writers were formerly active in the military, i.e. Gene Roddenbury, Gene L. Coon, Joe Haldeman). It is true that there have recently been a few attempts to imagine first contact with an alien species outside the realms of invasion and warfare. It has, however, taken writer/scientists of the caliber of Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan to imagine such scenarios—both writers with sound scientific bases behind their stories. Hopefully, their particular kind of vision will ultimately filter down into the general population. It is only as we discover more and more about the true nature of the cosmos that we have come to realize our Earth is not so unusual after all. Anything an alien civilization covets here can, in all probability, be found in abundance elsewhere. According to the Drake equation, planets of an Earth-like composition are probably far more numerous than planets of an Earth-like composition populated by any semblance of intelligent life. <br /><br />So conflict is a theme that sells well; we all know that. However, war is conflict gone troppo. Movie producers and fiction writers profiteer from visualizing extremes. Has the time come for this paradigm to shift? Paradigm shifts are always slow to happen. Nobody likes change, it seems, not even in science fiction. Unlike other storytelling traditions, our genre, when done well, is at least capable of exploring the possibility of change. Indeed, by definition, speculative fiction is one of only a few modes of thinking really capable of the concept. So should we not rise to the challenge and begin once more to visualize brave new worlds, peaceful modes of living, interspecies co-operation? By concentrating on large-scale conflict, science fiction is mirroring reality. But surely that is why we have current event programs. Science fiction should certainly explore the motivations of a whole range of human behavior, yet the genre is limiting itself by becoming stuck in this trough of conflict. Now that we possess more knowledge with which to back our visions up, we can infuse stories with more that is futurist but at the same time believable, using the "hard" science fiction premise for more than just the space ships and laser weapons that littered the so-called "golden age" of the genre. I put it to you that the science fiction/fantasy aficionado is as much a leader in fields of thought as the philosophers, scientists, and theologians (and immensely more practical than the last of those three). The eclectic nature of our interests is what makes our range of imagination so vast. Perhaps there will always be a niche for militarist science fiction, but why limit ourselves to endless explorations on that old, tired theme of ingrained human aggression, a theme that has been around at least since we evolved into our present form? <br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qbRvRtGuDHQ/S_f9cbhAvlI/AAAAAAAAAFE/TjBufPZMukI/s1600/Agnew.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 236px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qbRvRtGuDHQ/S_f9cbhAvlI/AAAAAAAAAFE/TjBufPZMukI/s320/Agnew.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5474122536956509778" /></a><strong>Lisa Agnew</strong> was born in 1965 in Burnham, Buckinghamshire, England, but is now resident in New Zealand. Her latest novel, <em>The Overman’s Folly</em>, is published by Altered Dimensions at <a href="http://www.cyberwizardproductions.com/">www.cyberwizardproductions.com</a>. Her first novel, <em>Sword: Tales from the Green Sahara</em>, is due to be re-published in the near future. She has written numerous non-fiction articles and also occasionally pens the odd short story. She lives in Auckland with her daughter, Caitlin.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-85702249268174792692010-06-30T00:00:00.001-05:002010-06-30T00:00:05.137-05:00No News Is Good News: What Science Fiction Leaves Out of the Future #1<strong>No News Is Good News: What Science Fiction Leaves Out of the Future #1</strong><br /><em>by Gary Westfahl</em><br /><br />For critics and commentators, it is generally easy to notice and discuss whatever there is to be found in a science fiction story or film. It can be harder, however, to notice and discuss what is<strong> not</strong> there in science fiction—those features one might ordinarily expect to find in a story or film that are, for some reason, being left out.<br /><br />I discovered one of these strange omissions purely by accident while editing <em>The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy</em>: because the assigned contributor never completed the entry, I was forced on short notice to write the entry on "Journalism." And hurried research brought to light a curious situation: while journalists were reasonably common in science fiction stories set in the present—ranging from the novels of Clifford D. Simak to the adventures of Superman—they were extraordinarily rare in science fiction stories set in the<strong> future</strong>.<br /><br />Consider the most obvious examples, the <em>Star Trek</em> and <em>Star Wars</em> universes: one never observes a reporter visiting the <em>Enterprise</em> to interview Captain Picard about his latest exploits, or the crew of the <em>Millennium Falcon</em> killing time by reading a hard copy of the latest news or watching a propagandistic news bulletin from the Empire News Network. In print, no journalists that I can recall ever appear in Isaac Asimov's far-future <em>Foundation</em> saga or Frank Herbert's <em>Dune</em> novels. To be sure, reporters are not <strong>entirely</strong> excluded from futuristic science fiction stories; for example, outré news bulletins permeate the chaotic prose of John Brunner's <em>Stand on Zanzibar</em> (1968), reporters were regular visitors to the <em>Babylon 5</em> space station, and television news reports can be seen in films like <em>Total Recall</em> (1990) and <em>Johnny Mnemonic</em> (1995). Still, even when they appear, these journalists of the future are always invariably minor characters or voices in the background. There have been many stories about heroic reporters in mainstream fiction—consider Gaston Leroux's novel <em>The Mystery of the Yellow Room</em> (1907) and its sequels, the comic strip <em>Brenda Starr,</em> the play and film <em>The Front Page</em> (1931), and television series like <em>The Name of the Game</em> or <em>Lou Grant</em>. Why has there never been a novel or film about a star-spanning investigative reporter for the Galactic News Agency?<br /><br />At this time, I can come up with three possible explanations for the strange absence of reporters in the future worlds created by science fiction.<br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br />The first explanation would be: perhaps journalists will no longer be <strong>needed</strong> in the future. After all, the profession of journalism came into being because people were unable to travel to faraway places or sit in government chambers to observe newsworthy events, so that trained reporters had to be there to write down what they saw in a clear, concise fashion for curious outsiders to read. Today, however, due to various advanced forms of communication, people are gaining direct access to sources of information, and this trend is sure to continue in the future. Thus, future citizens of New York City who want reports about the latest crimes may be able to directly examine police reports, and future inhabitants of Earth interested in the doings of the starship <em>Enterprise</em> may be able to direct examine the ship's logs. Just as new ways to directly make plane and hotel reservations are making the profession of travel agent obsolete, new ways to directly obtain desired information may make the profession of journalist obsolete.<br /><br />Still, I don't find this argument particularly convincing. For one thing, I can't think of a single science fiction novel or film which explicitly presented this explanation to account for its omission of reporters. There is also the real problem of information overload: if you look at New York City police reports, the vast majority will always consist of dull descriptions of boring crimes, just as the vast majority of entries in the <em>Enterprise</em> logs will be routine status updates. To avoid having to search through all of this verbiage to find the worthwhile story of an interesting crime or an historic alien encounter, people will always require the services of someone whose job is to sort through all the forgettable stuff and select only the data that others will want to have. Finally, those who produce police reports and starship logs are rarely talented writers, so that even their descriptions of exciting events may make for dull reading; trained journalists would be valuable because of their ability to tell such stories in lively, involving prose.<br /><br />A second explanation is the one I floated in the conclusion of my encyclopedia entry on "Journalism": after noting that the few references to futuristic journalism one finds were generally negative—such as satirical exaggerations of dire trends in contemporary broadcast journalism like Edward Bryant's "The 10:00 Report Is Brought to You by..." (1972) and Norman Spinrad's<em> Bug Jack Barron</em> (1968)—I suggested that the absence of reporters in science fiction might represent another strategy for criticizing the profession. In effect, writers and filmmakers may dislike reporters so much that they consistently resolve to banish them from their imagined future worlds.<br /><br />On further reflection, I'm not much fond of this idea either. I can think of another profession that is almost universally despised—bureaucrats—yet obtuse, troublesome bureaucrats are as endemic as villains in written and filmed science fiction. If writers and filmmakers indeed feel a deep hostility toward certain figures, one has to believe that they would always choose to express those feelings instead of suppressing them. Certainly, when I encounter an argument about science fiction that I disagree with, it has never occurred to me that the very best way to show my contempt for the argument would be to ignore it; instead, I take aim and fire away. The problem is that silence on a given subject is too ambiguous to be a satisfying method of criticizing it, for there are many reasons other than enmity that might lead one to be silent about something. So, if writers have some strong opinions about journalists, we can assume that they will always prefer to express them.<br /><br />We arrive at a third possible explanation, one which I find both persuasive and rather disturbing.<br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br />I begin by noting, as others have noted, that science fiction frequently seems obsessed with the idea of empire. As the preferred form of governments for thousands of worlds across the Galaxy, writers have regularly envisioned a Galactic Empire, seeing no problems in having a single man exercise direct and complete control over the affairs of trillions and trillions of people living on innumerable distant planets, and stories set on single worlds routinely involve petty monarchs and scheming prime ministers exactly like those featured in Ruritanian romances. Even when more democratic forms of government are vaguely projected, such as the <em>Star Trek</em> universe's Federation of Planets, the spaceships that function as their errand boys and ambassadors invariably have military structures, with captains who maintain absolute authority over their crews. Think about the last time you have read about or watched citizens of the future participating in a democratic election, or a group of future citizens pausing to take a vote before proceeding upon a course of action. Yes, I can think of examples of works that show or refer to such activities (Robert A. Heinlein's novel <em>Starship Troopers</em> [1959], Douglas Adams's farcical novel and film <em>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</em> [1979, 2005]), but they seem uncomfortably rare to me.<br /><br />To illustrate science fiction's attachment to totalitarianism in all its manifestations, I have a personal story which I had hoped never to tell, but its relevance to this point is undeniable. Many years ago, through a series of odd circumstances, I found myself as the credited co-author of a script that was submitted to, and properly rejected by, the series <em>Star Trek: The Next Generation</em>. The idea behind the episode, which I had come up with, involved precisely the issue I am discussing: why should the starships of the future, which are much more like traveling communities in space than battleships, be governed precisely like ships of the British Navy during the Napoleonic Era? It had never made any sense to me. So in the episode, prodded by an iconoclastic crew member, Captain Picard agrees to experimentally implement a democratic government on board the <em>Enterprise</em>, with himself as elected President and various crew divisions under their own elected leaders, and things seem to be working out in their own bumpy way until a contrived crisis involving the Romulan Neutral Zone (I <strong>said</strong> the script was properly rejected) convinces everyone to return to the military chain of command as at least an occasional necessity. I was given the rare opportunity to read (but not to keep) the show's written comments on the script, which began promisingly (quoting from memory): "Abuse of authority is a worthwhile theme to explore. However—" (now identifying the crucial flaw in the script) "Captain Picard never abuses his authority." Thus, we observe how the program's creators are indeed attached to militaristic structures, and what sort of stirring defense they would offer for their authoritarianism: hey, dictatorships are just fine and dandy, as long as the dictator is a really good guy.<br /><br />Further, we now begin to discern why there are never any reporters interviewing Captain Picard. Journalists are trained to be gadflies. Their natural inclination is to ask pointed questions about government affairs, to look for signs of incompetence or corruption in everything that political leaders and bureaucrats are doing. The ultimate victory they seek, as celebrated in fictional stories like <em>The Front Page</em> and the real-life adventure <em>All the President's Men</em> (1976), is to uncover evidence of official malfeasance so outrageous as to lead directly to the downfall of the once-powerful perpetrators. So, that reporter would not be welcome on board the <em>Enterprise</em> because he would raise awkward questions: Captain Picard, was your decision <strong>really</strong> the best course of action? Weren't there other ways you might have better dealt with this crisis? In making your decision, did you perhaps have any ulterior motives? Do you mind if I take a long look at all of your official records to confirm the accuracy of everything you're saying? In other words, doing what reporters always want to do, that reporter would be fiercely probing for evidence to show that Captain Picard—gasp!—had actually abused his authority.<br /><br />In sum, I regretfully conclude, science fiction excludes journalists from its futures for the same reason that dictators always seek to suppress the freedom of the press: journalists ask too many discomfiting questions; they want to find and publish information about matters that dictators would prefer to keep secret; their goal is always to challenge and undermine authoritarian governments. Journalists in the future worlds of science fiction would be challenging and undermining the very assumptions that lay at the heart of those future worlds—and for that reason, their presence cannot be tolerated.<br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br />In the past, when commentators have noticed how frequently science fiction envisions a dictatorial future, even implying that certain authors are closet fascists, there have been defenses of the practice ranging from the claim that such governments represent a logical prediction of future developments to the fallback position of efficiency in storytelling (that is, because crew members do not have to stop and take a vote before landing on an alien world, the writer can more quickly get to the interesting stuff). Here, however, I wish neither to characterize the political beliefs of these writers nor to ponder rationalizations of their proclivities.<br /><br />Instead, I would offer science fiction writers and filmmakers this simple challenge: the next time you are creating or revisiting one of your future worlds, make an effort to include a journalist or two. In the process of coming up with things for this journalist to do, or questions for him or her to ask, you may hit upon provocative issues in the structure of your future world which you never considered before, inspiring worthwhile revisions to your story. Forced to play the roles of both master and critic of your invented world, you are likely to end up making that world a better world, and making your story about that world a more interesting story.<br /><br />A free press is indeed a wonderful thing: it keeps government officials on their toes, impels them to do their work honestly and efficiently, and helps to keep them focused on the important business of improving the lives of their citizens. And, like the governments of the United States, science fiction would greatly benefit from the presence of a free press. It is, at the very least, an idea worth exploring.<br /><br /><center>* * *</center><br /><br /><strong>Gary Westfahl</strong>is the author, editor, or co-editor of twenty-four books about science fiction and fantasy, including the Hugo-nominated <em>Science Fiction Quotations: From the Inner Mind to the Outer Limits </em>(2005),<em>The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy </em>(2005), the co-edited critical anthology <em>Science Fiction and the Two Cultures </em>(2009), and the recently published Second Edition of <em>Islands in the Sky: The Space Station Theme in Science Fiction Literature </em>(2009) and its companion volume, <em>The Other Side of the Sky: An Annotated Bibliography of Space Stations in Science Fiction</em>, 1869-1993 (2009).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289076159693589231.post-36439526345373345442010-03-07T19:38:00.002-06:002010-06-30T14:41:14.902-05:00Politics and Speculative Fiction<em>Crimethink</em> explores the ways in which politics and the literature of the imagination intersect. Our content is free; if you enjoy it, we hope you will show your appreciation by donating to <a href="http://crimethinksf.blogspot.com/p/doctors-without-boarders.html">Doctors Without Borders</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0