Things That Don’t Go Away – Still the Same Old Story? (‘Race in SF’ – Part IV)

Is it okay to confess I’m having trouble coming up with a pithy opening paragraph here? I actually meant to wrap this up last week (and sighs of relief were heard across the internet), but the Cold War column, kind of like the Cold War itself, went on for far longer than was originally envisioned.

Or it could be that after the Cold War, events become far less focused. Kind of like US SF did.

Being the surviving power after a period of warfare is a mixed blessing. It’s like a prop has been suddenly pulled away and you’ve got to find out if you can really stand on your own.

In some ways that’s what’s happened to US SF. The dominant social paradigm, that of the preservation of the US Values and Way of Life is gone. Yes, yes, we’ve got the War on Terror, but somehow, except for a relatively and blessedly brief period after the Sept. 11 attacks, that has failed to consume the US from top to bottom the way the Cold War did. The Space Program has become a hobby in terms of national attention and budget. Except for a brief period in the 80s when Cyberpunk held sway, US SF has kind of been wandering around looking to find itself.

And it’s finding out it’s still mostly male and mostly white. So, as I said last week, something important has clearly failed to happen. I think I know what it is, and it is related to the remaining inescapable fact of US SF. It’s a fact that doesn’t tend to get talked about much in polite company.

The literary SF community in the US is small. Really small. Only 7% of the books sold in the US are classified as Science Fiction. And the SF community itself, fandom, is seen as…weird. A lot of people look at us and say “Ooooookaaaayyy…whatever,” and wait for the next elevator car. Whether they should get to know us better or not, they don’t. We are not seen as a desirable community to join.

So, there was never any really big agitation for change in SF. We never experienced the literary equivalents of sit-ins or demonstrations. What attempts to bring in change there have been were met with a staunch denial that there was any racism in SF. The audience just didn’t want to read about black people. Books with black men on the cover just didn’t sell. That’s all. Of course we who are intelligent, rational, and involved in ideas about the life and death of the human race are not racist and we are genuinely confused as to why more black people don’t read our work…

Which is, of course, an old, familiar argument/blind-spot, and the only reason it changed anywhere else in US culture was that it met with heavy outside pressure. SF never got that. It was too small and too weird for the larger culture to really bother with. There were, and are, bigger fish to fry.

So there it is. An elitist background, an influential group of insiders who didn’t want to change, and no large force from the outside to push for change. End result: no change. All white, mostly male, US cultural dominant views of the future continued and continue to sell just fine. This essentially conservative view even got an extension with the advent of Cyberpunk, which in the US in the 80s was largely about how badly everything is going to suck when the US was no longer in charge.

So, there, spread out over the past month, is the bad news.

You want the good news?

The world I have described in these last three columns is on a respirator, and I do not expect it to recover.

Why?

One reason, three words: Kids These Days.

Because all the stuff I’ve been talking about in the past 3 columns? Next to nobody reads it anymore. Why on earth should they? The majority of the writing is antiquated where it’s not downright bad, as is the world view. And the technology is…primitive to say the least. And life is way too short to be struggling through all that stuff, unless you’re a special kind of literary masochist (like Jay, hi Jay!), or you grew up on it, like me. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still fun stuff in there (and I’ll be MORE than happy to recommend some of it to you), but the vast majority of it is not only less than deathless, it should be quietly buried in a small family ceremony, with all proper rites.

We have entered a new Golden Age of Youth Literature in the US. The bookstore shelves and the various internet outlets are filled to overflowing with exciting, imaginative, well-crafted SF/F/Horror aimed at kids between 8 and 17. I go to the store sometimes and am overwhelmed by what I’m seeing. And this magnificent new stuff is multi-racial and multi-ethnic in absolutely unprecedented ways. Is some of it being done badly? Oh, yeah. Is some of it incomplete in its world views? Most definitely. Have I contributed my share of screw-ups in the expansion? Heck yeah. But it is change. Visible, viable change.

The isolation of US culture is not over, but it is ending. The newest views of the future demonstrate this, and they are selling like hot-cakes. Manga and anime are, of course, a huge help here. I know, I know, the figures in Manga are Caucasian, or at least a kind of pan-Pacific Disneyeque hybrid. But the what Manga has done is made a generation of US youth look outside the boundaries of the US for their pop culture. That has not happened before in the whole timeline of modern SF.

Where we are now is an absolutely necessary step on the journey away from the monochromatic past and into the larger world. It is a step which America itself is finding difficult to take. But the US and US SF will take it in the end. We’ve got no choice. The kids coming up behind me have a wider view of the world than I do, as I have a wider view of the world than my parents did. They’ll look at this erroneous, incomplete stuff on the shelf and say “Oh, come ON. That’s not how it is!” And they will write, and we will write, and the world will turn.

I am not going to end this by calling for patience and understanding, although both are to our benefit. When you’re trying to win a long-term argument, it never hurts to be the one who looks reasonable. I am instead going to end it by calling for action. The collective We need to help push the doors of SF open wider. Those of us who write, need to write more. We need to be as open and as inclusive as it is in our ability to be. Those of us who read need to recommend good, inclusive SF far and wide. We need to buy the work and we need to push the work and the authors. The media market is a crude instrument, and what sells will be duplicated.

So, let us start here and start now. Give me some good titles, folks. I’m looking for something new to read.

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