As a child, I read a book called The Ear, The Eye and The Arm by Nancy Farmer. It was a young adult science fiction book that took place in futuristic Africa. Mutant detectives were hired to track down the kidnapped children of an African warlord. I loved the book and for the longest time, I thought the author was black due to the extensive insight into African mythology and culture, but, as it turns out, she wasn't. This started me thinking that perhaps minorities had no interest in the genre.
In hopes of absolving myself of total racial ignorance, I would like to point out that I do have a few friends that are racial minorities. My own wife, in fact, is Hispanic and with her comes a heaping pile of Hispanic in-laws, none of whom display any interest in science fiction. My mother-in-law considers casseroles as "something white women make" and I started to think maybe minorities view science fiction as "something white boys read". I was bothered by this idea. After all, some white boys make rap, so it would seem logical that some minority or another would contribute to science fiction. It stands to reason, and yet there seemed to exist a gaping, interracial void.
When one calls to mind the greatest sci-fi contributors, one is blinded by whiteness: H.G. Wells, Issac Asimov, George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. LeGuin, Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Margaret Atwood (I don't care what she says, Oryx and Crake is social science fiction), Bruce Bethke, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Pat Cadigan, Robert Heinlein, Olaf Stapledon, Joss Wheldon, and the list goes on - are all of Western European descent and whiter than the day is long. So, too, is every Best Novel Hugo Award winning champion of the science fiction genre since 1953. I was curious what cultural differences determined that there be no significant Hispanic, black or Asian contributions, at least in terms of popular success, to American science fiction.
I began to just accept that it was, indeed, a cultural difference. I thought maybe it had to do with the space race being predominately a Caucasian concern during the time science fiction first gained popularity in America. The idea started to get under my skin.
In terms of global literature, the African/Middle Eastern culture, specifically, was the first, by modern speculation, to form advanced written languages and societies. The richness of ancient African/Middle Eastern development led to astounding things: functioning batteries, advanced engineering and highly efficient human governments to name a few. I imagined that any culture with so rich a history would have tapped into celestial and speculative fiction long ago.
Indeed, the earliest instances of science fiction could be attributed to some of the tales from the Arabian Nights. One story in particular that I remember dealt with a mechanical horse that carried the hero through the sky. A robot rocket horse, if you will. However, many people (Carl Sagan and Issac Asimov among them) attribute the birth of the science fiction genre to Voltaire with his book Micromègas. Voltaire was French and also just as white as his frilly lace cravats.
With this brief history in mind, I was pretty much convinced that sci fi could be labeled a "cracker genre". Then, I was introduced to a science fiction author named Octavia Butler. The Butler novel that was suggested to me by a friend (who was the crackin'est cracker you ever saw - straight from Oklahoma) was The Parable of the Sower. This book was not only science fiction, but dystopian future science fiction - my absolute favorite. I devoured the book and when I returned to discuss it with my friend I remarked how it was unique to read a dystopian story in which the protagonist was female.
"She's an old black lady," my friend said.
"What? Who is?" I asked. I started looking around.
"The author, Octavia Butler," he answered. "She's an old black lady."
I almost dropped a load in my white-boy britches.
Octavia Butler, in one short conversation, had become the messiah-anomaly of my literary world. I discovered that she had been writing since 1971 and had a whole slew of science fiction books. Upon doing some more research, I discovered two more black science fiction authors: Samuel R. Delany (who looks like a black version of Gandalf) and Nalo Hopkinson. I had already read Delany's book Dhalgren, another awesome dystopian future novel, without even realizing he was black. Nalo Hopkinson, I know nothing about and have yet to read her works, but in a literary genre dominated by whites, I was happy to learn that there were, in fact, "people of color" represented.
My hopes for diversity in literature were renewed and I delved deeper. It was then that I discovered the Carl Brandon Society. This amazing group focuses on "increas[ing] racial and ethnic diversity in the production of and audience for speculative fiction." Apparently I wasn't alone in noticing the interracial void. Here's how the Carl Brandon Society began:
"Carl Joshua Brandon was a fictional black fan writer invented by white writers Terry Carr and Peter Graham in the fifties. A hoax that lasted for over two years, Carl Brandon was nearly elected to office in a fan writers association, and was for a time one of the most popular fan writers in the genre. But the existence of a lone, fictional black writer underscores the fact that a fictional voice had to be invented for people of color, because we had none in fandom.
We named ourselves after Carl Brandon in much the same way that the Tiptree Award named itself after the fictional male writer James Tiptree, Jr, a pseudonym for the feminist SF writer Alice Sheldon. Just as women can now write under their own names, so can people of color now write (and publish) our own stories. We've got much further to go yet. This is why we're working to make fandom a more rewarding place for people of color, to build a readership for the speculative writing of people of color, and to help the world understand that we can't create a just future if people of color aren't includ[ed] in its imagining."
You can learn more about this group at www.carlbrandon.org
To sum up, I'm excited that other cultures are contributing to American science fiction. There are untapped cultural histories and mythologies that will most definitely add to the genre. A perfect example of this is Janelle Monae, who fused Funk, Soul and R & B music to her sci fi concept album - Metropolis:Suite 1. This was to be the first in a multi-suite tribute to Fritz Lang's Metropolis by which Monae develops a story about a android named Cindi Mayweather. The first album debuted at number 115 on Billboard's top 200 but the final installment - Archandroid - came in at number 17. I think this proves that unique, cultural combinations can attain popular success and bridge fanworlds together. These crossovers are beneficial to the artists by expanding their fan bases and beneficial to the genre by introducing completely new concepts.
No comments:
Post a Comment