To quote Morehouse above “Race doesn’t become a non-issue so much as it becomes INVISIBLE.” Again, when I write Cybil, she’s doing her thing and people react to her as they would anyone else, because in my future, a cyberpunk one, where words are powerful and potent.

Perhaps “invisible” isn’t the correct term–seamless. Though authors like the great Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson utilize race effectively in their sf works and those authors implore race as a centralized area of contention in their works.

I think race does play a role in my books also, because I am an African American female and my perspection of the world is, excuse the pun, colored by those experiences.

I think SF/F has always been about now and I have to agree with Morehouse. Series such as STAR TREK and even novels like Bradbury’s FAHRENHEIT 451, discussed the issues plaguing their society at the times but in futuristic settings.

And right now in our world, ethnicities matter and play a large role in who we are as people and that in turns shapes how we perceive our futures.

Except I never could.

Nor do I believe most women ever could, which is why there was such a push for inclusive language — saying “people” instead of “man,” saying “fire fighter” and “mail carrier” and all those terms that seem so NORMAL now, that when you find a book from twenty or forty years ago, it’s kind of shocking to read what now feels seeped in sexism.

I think the same is true for race. Unless we say it, it’s not there. Race doesn’t become a non-issue so much as it becomes INVISIBLE.

And I respectfully disagree with Brotherton… I think SF/F has always been about now. I believe our genre is transformative and subversive and it was episodes like that half-black/half-white one on Star Trek that made racism look as silly and stupid as it is. Given that when that show came out there was a race war happening in society, and the mere presence of a black woman on the bridge of a ship (even as a glorified receptionist) was RADICAL. I would submit that the idea of a woman carrying a gun into battle is STILL radical (as Uhura does in several episodes), given that woman are *still* not allowed to fight in combat missions.

Anyway, my original point was that I think words can change the world. By consciously saying “fire fighter” instead of “fireman” we made room for women to take up a profession that was dominated by (and still is) men. I think by writing in people of color, we bring about a future for everyone.

For a lark, I wrote a SF piece about a Muslim woman running a halaal eatery on a moon base. It was incredible the amount of resistance I encountered from American readers.

That being said, a Muslim author read the piece and commented that I had represented another culture convincingly.

I’m so tired of stock-standard races and cultures. I have so much to draw upon and it’s fun bringing it through in settings that would ordinarily not reflect a non-Western perspective.

It is important to help overcome racial and cultural stereotypes and as authors, we are often in a position to spark an interest in readers, to explore further and to let go of preconceptions perpetuated by the media.

But I like the idea of the color/gender/other blind perspective. Science fiction should be about something beyond the here and now, even if that’s impossible to achieve in practice regularly.

I do recall being stuck by watching that seemingly dumb Star Trek episode about the world where people were black and white on different sides, and how that mattered to them. It wasn’t dumb at all the first time I saw it.

To me, just going to an SF convention is a reminder how the field is so accepting of the other in a way you rarely find in other venues in life, even in the 21st century that is blind, but only to some, about differences.

it’s changed somewhat since then, but unless
a writer takes the time to explain to me (and
subtle is fine), i will again picture the person as
white. not like myself, alas. growing up as a minority,
seeing few asian-americans on tele or in films or marketing…

it’s sort of stuck with me. and i think it sticks
with more people than you perhaps realize, esp
readers of color who may have grown up not
reading about people like themselves very
much at all–within spec fic or beyond.

The only real race issues then come down to us (the humans) and them (the aliens).

Cindy, I’m intrigued by your assumptions. I’m assuming you, yourself, are white. It would be interesting to see what different readers bring to their reading experience. Do black people assume characters are black if not explicitly stated?

Interesting.

I figure if people are still around in a few hundred years, the bell curve of human skin tones will be dark on one end and light on the other end, and the great mass of humanity will be somewhere in the middle.

And maybe then we can all get along.