“Digital vigilante
groups like Anonymous sprang to prominence a few years ago, but what have they
achieved in that time? Scientology is still running, and banks are still being
banks, while governments and companies are coming up with more and harsher laws
to restrict digital rights. How do digital activists work around these
restrictions? Do they have a future, and is it one that’s good for them, computing
and the rest of us? Kin-Ming Looi (M), Cory Doctorow, Lilian Edwards, David Dingwall,
Neil McKellar (PAGE 57)
Science fiction cycles...
As much as we (science fiction readers and writers) would
LOVE to say we eschew cycles like the vampires, werewolves, paranormal romance,
et al; we DO in fact have our own cute little set of cycles.
Take for example the Hugo Award kerfuffle. In a nutshell, it’s
conservatives versus liberals, every bit as acrimonious as the current
Congresses; Council, Parliament, and Court; Congresso Nacional; 内閣;on the
rest of the planet. One side wants science fiction to be pure fun, the other
wants it to be a tool for sociological change. I don’t have a problem with us
doing both – but that’s a different issue.
I started reading SF just as the New Wave was breaking
over the SF world. JG Ballard was one of my favorites, though I read Samuel R.
Delaney, John Brunner, and Harlan Ellison as well. Supposedly, these authors
pushed the limits of the general reading public and managed to puncture it,
allowing science fiction into the “Literary World” with works like FARENHEIT
451, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE, and THE LEFT HAND O F DARKNESS.
After the Wave passed over fandom, cyberpunk swelled
right behind it. Named by Bruce Bethke in his short story of the same name, it
examined the effect of the personal computer/personal access to computers had
on society. Though his name got buried, it was because the present wave of
science fiction was even then beginning far out to sea. More people associate
Cyberpunk with Bruce Sterling, William Gibbs, and Pat Cadigan than any others,
and it still has some influence today. An undercurrent of Cyberpunk might be
Transhumanism, a cluster of stories and novels exploring what happens “next” in
the evolution of Humanity once computers become intelligent and they are
implanted into our bodies.
Last of all – at least as I see it – is the newest Wave,
which appears to be one of Relevance. Science fiction has often marginalized
those who are outside of the “white, male, wealthy” demographic. Heroes of the stories I grew up with were
almost exclusively guys. Heinlein didn’t have any black kids in his juvenile
novels, nor did the “hidden female” writer, Andre Norton – and her novels had
no girls in them as main characters. Anne McCaffrey allowed for some, but they
were “conveniently” attached to some dominating male or other. The influential
books of my nativity as a science fiction reader all let me view the future
through the eyes of the demographic to which I belonged – wealthy, white, male.
Today, the backlash against my demographic is fierce –
and ironically often championed by those very wealthy, white, male members of
the First Demographic who are protecting the downtrodden and underrepresented
readers of SF...and the loudest cry in the Hugo mess is that the challengers
didn’t promote a diverse platform.
In essence, I think this Diversity Drive is good. It’s
just being promoted the wrong way. The people who should be crying out loudest
are young adults from diverse backgrounds. Yet I don’t see them flocking to
read Alaya Dawn Johnson’s THE SUMMER PRINCE, which I loudly recommended for
SFWA’s Andre Norton Award because the STORY was good and the color and sexual
orientation of the main characters weren’t the raison d'être of the book – and I
thought it would appeal to the students of the high school I work at. Despite
the recommendations of the committee, SFWA voted to skip the recommendations of
the Norton Committee and bestow the Award on Nalo Hopkinson for SISTER MINE.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Hopkinson’s writing starting with her first novel,
BROWN GIRL IN THE RING, but where there’s an abundance of urban fantasy with
diverse POV characters; and there is a DROUGHT of science fiction with diverse
POV characters.
This is the battle being fought now; the Wave attempting
to rise. This is one of the main reasons the Hugo disaster has occurred...and
ultimately, I think the real losers are going to be the young adults and new
readers who will see the infighting as just another extension of the current angry,
vituperative, and divisive politics of Left vs Right that has the world in its
sharp and taloned grip.
Ultimately this is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
Program Book: http://www.loncon3.org/documents/ReadMe_LR.pdf
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