
What our science fiction says about us - pseudolus
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20181203-what-our-science-fiction-says-about-us
======
sn41
The author just sounds ignorant, and seems to have jumped up at Cixin Liu.
Western fans have always welcomed authors like the Strugarsky brothers and
Stanislaw Lem, and Japanese scifi. He also seems to be forgetting pioneers
like Ursula Le Guin, authors from a diverse Western background.

Moreover, even traditional well-known Western fiction has had diversity in
characters. I am Indian, and off the cuff, can recall the following
"historical" Indian figures/settings in Western scifi:

\- Captain Nemo, in "20000 Leagues Under the Sea", was the erstwhile Maharaja
of Bundelkhand, India

\- "Around the World in 80 days" \- Phileas Fogg, the main character, rescues
and later marries an Indian, "Aouda".

\- The programmer of HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, is Dr. Chandra, from
UIUC

\- One of the most famous antagonists in the Star Trek universe is Khan
Noonein Singh, a Sikh character

\- One of the five scientists in Carl Sagan's "Contact" is Indian (Devi?)

\- "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert Heinlein has Agra, India as a
pivotal plot venue.

~~~
dtx1
Most "Western" Sci Fi has been very diverse in it's characters as most non-
dystopian futures assume a very globalized earth. Let's take star trek for
example

* TOS has been on the forefront of this with basically the whole bridge crew beeing a commercial for space diversity, even going so far as having a russian officers during the cold war on the bridge.

* The first Chief engineer of the TNG Enterprise was an Indian only to be replaced by Geordi La Forge (a blind black man).

* DS9 dealt with race and diversity on so many levels, i can't even begin to count.

* VOY just happened to have a very diverse crew, it was never explored much just...accepted?

* ENT same as voyager just a little less "on the nose"

~~~
rsynnott
I think Star Trek was actually fairly timid about this compared to
contemporary and older novels. TOS pushed the envelope a little bit, but the
rest were mostly just hitting contemporary norms. Notoriously, they were very
skittish about LGBT characters, even at a time when gay people were showing up
in sitcoms etc without anyone getting too upset.

Novels are a whole different story, though; Clarke, le Guin etc were very much
more progressive.

~~~
beat
Television is a more conservative medium than novels, generally. Star Trek
always lagged slightly behind the cutting edge in terms of social commentary
on tv, but also stayed pretty close to that cutting edge.

It's always tricky, introducing more progressive social ideas to a broad
audience. You want to open minds without alienating them.

------
grive
Citing Black Panther as an example of a departure from

> Well-known artistic depictions of the future [...] showing a marked lack of
> diversity.

Black Panther was a purely american product, Comic book superhero is the most
stale and rehashed sub-genre of science-fiction from the last century, and
this author uses it to show a "blossoming" of new diverse and imaginative
production from "around the world"?

Afrofuturism, reaching back from W. E. B. Du Bois with The Comet to Black
Panther, Nnedi Okorafor, ALL of them american products, would not be
considered the "West"? African-american culture is not western?

> “But this phenomenon, which is now making its voice heard from areas like
> China or Africa, also has a much longer history that precedes today’s boom.”

This whole article seems to be written from the point of vue of someone who
have been blind for decades, discovering that other culture exists all around.
Reaching outside their bubble seems progressive and forward-thinking, but this
surprise and this impression of being so avant-gardiste only serves to show
how bigoted they were for so long.

> Well-known artistic depictions of the future have traditionally been
> regarded as the preserve of the West, and have shown a marked lack of
> diversity.

I can appreciate the prudent use of "well-known" here, because science-fiction
has been extremely diverse and progressive from the beginning. If anything
however, there is a backlash from alt-right cliques to colonize the genre,
with the recent attempts to subvert the Hugo Awards[1]. This seems to go
against the narrative of this article, but I think this is more important (and
disturbing). That Cixin have won the award recently does not mean that science
fiction is becoming more diverse, only that foreign authors have been welcomed
into the fold.

So typical, the only boom that matters is the one playing into the US cultural
codes, one face of imperialism. Only there it is pretending to be diversity.

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/17/hugo-award-
nom...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/17/hugo-award-nominees-
withdraw-amid-puppygate-storm)

~~~
gaius
_Comic book superhero is the most stale and rehashed sub-genre of science-
fiction from the last century_

Superheroes go all the way back to Ancient Greek stories of gods and demigods,
or even some of the Old Testament prophets, the stories are still read today
and are clearly structurally similar. The idea that superheroes are a modern
American invention is just ludicrous.

~~~
dTal
If we accept your premise that superheroism is a continuation and extension of
ancient fables, wouldn't that make it even _more_ stale and rehashed?

~~~
gaius
It would, but my point is really, that this isn’t a “purely American product”

------
melling
I started The Three-Body Problem yesterday. I don’t read much science fiction
but I’ve seen this particular book mentioned a lot so I thought I’d give it a
try.

~~~
codetrotter
I haven’t read that one but another science fiction book I read a couple of
years ago after seeing it mentioned on HN a few times is Cryptonomicon by Neal
Stephenson. If you feel like reading another science fiction book in the
future I recommend that you read Cryptonomicon. It was a good book that had a
lot to offer.

~~~
le-mark
If we're making recommendations then mine would be Marooned in Real Time by
Vernor Vinge.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I just read this a couple months ago and really enjoyed it. The world-building
was excellent and the story was very well constructed. Great writing and great
SF.

------
xte
Mh, personally I see far more fantasy production, distopic future fictions
than science fictions ones... And I agree that they represent actual society
trends since artist in general foresee the future far more than any other...

And if we dig deeper even science fiction like Star Trek represent their
"originating" society, for instance while ST clearly represent an
"international" future they represent it as USA-style-centric vision, that's
is the starfleet. The same they represent a not-really-free society because
yes there is no need to work and anybody seems to be happy, but anything goes
around "starfleet" or around a military apparatus, not a democracy.

~~~
dtx1
> The same they represent a not-really-free society because yes there is no
> need to work and anybody seems to be happy, but anything goes around
> "starfleet" or around a military apparatus, not a democracy.

Well the societies are free by our modern, humanist standards. Just one of
many examples:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdXTohdKcm4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdXTohdKcm4)

The whole "everything goes around starfleet/military" is basically just bad
writing, but very much against what the future of star trek wants to project.

~~~
xte
The fact that "starfleet" is actually a military force, while anywhere we hear
that it's task is exploration not war IMO demonstrate that. Essentially entire
"United federation" society seems to turn around starfleet. Only veeeery few
times I here thing about democracy like elections or political charges (that
in general came out when in trouble and need military protection or doing
something wrong and need to be stopped)...

Do you really see freedom in a hierarchy? Yes, characters seems to be free,
but basic of ST society is all but a military dictatorship not a democracy, so
they are the USA that formally have elections and are a democracy but in
practice they have a corporatocracy that use money, media power to steer the
society and single citizen have a very little weight... Consider only the real
purpose of many aspect of electoral system across the western world. The most
"democratic" was the Swiss one, followed by modern German one, only because of
nazi fear I think, classic Italian one was in a similar shape before actual
series of reform, French the same before recent ('90s era) transformations.
Why for instance have "primary elections"? Why not say simple "anyone who
collect around 0.1% of voter's signature can be a candidate and all of them
will go to the final election? Why not having a sovereign parliament without
any "majority prize" etc and a nominated government that have to face the
parliament without any veto power? Few country have or have had it and they
was or they are well and powerful.

