Star Trek for example - Cardassians were known as spoon-heads, Shran the Andorian (blue-skinned aliens) referred to Jonathan Archer as ‘pink-skin’ and the Klingons and Romulans loathed each other.

In Sci-Fi/fantasy it seems that even if humans learn to tolerate each other for their racial differences, they’ll find some other species to hate.

Best,
Mandolin

I’d like to repost it along with this misogyny bingo , because I think they’re both important.

Would it be OK for me to do that? Would you prefer that I hotlink to your image or host it myself? I’d link to this blog entry in any case. Please let me know.

http://ashokbanker.com/2008/08/01/is-american-science-fiction-fantasy-racist-and-sexist-bigotted-and-culturally-insensitive-too/

Kindred is a one-off. I think you may mean the Xenogenesis trilogy, which I believe is now being called Lilith’s Brood…

But either way - I heartily second the recommendation.

Octavia Butler will blow your mind. Start with the Kindred trilogy.

Very different conversation, actually.

The sad part is that sometimes the bigotry marrs otherwise really-good sci-fi. Forever War is one of the best science fiction books I’ve ever read… but Joe Haldeman was obviously quite homophobic when he wrote it… you can tell he is quite genuinely very uncomfortable and afraid of homosexuality (which plays a pretty big part in the book), even if he doesn’t hate it.

I think the simple problem is that an awful lot of sci-fi is written by white geeks who (surprise-surprise) tend to be somewhat insular and don’t have much experience with… well… anything. Even if they’re pacifist liberals, their isolation still makes it hard for them to be sensitive. Which means that we get, at best, all-white hetero universes. Which, imho, is fair if one should write what they know.

I mean, if I don’t know any gay people or anything about gay culture, should I feel compelled to include a gay character who I will inevitably either screw up or completely ignore the gay aspect of his character?

Then again, there is always the Earthsea approach. Mention it once or twice, then utterly forget about it. All the civilized peoples of Earthsea are brown. This is not a big deal.

edit: as for Ender’s Game, I always thought that the racism of the characters in the story was fine - Ender lived in an international group where racism was alive and well, and the author told that part convincingly. I just didn’t like the way so many characters lived up to racial stereotypes - most of the kids are caricatures of their nationalities.

>Scifi is fucking terrible for this, but I don’t know if it’s worse than other genre fiction or not.

It isn’t and it is. It isn’t in that, yep, any romance novel with more than 1 black main character or couple will likely be in the “African American Fiction” ghetto of Borders. It is in that sci-fi writers/producers/TPTB often makes valient attempts to deal with prejudice/racism/sexism/homophobia by SUBSTITUTING the alien other, and then either pat themselves on the back (”My work here is done,”), or think that in order to PROVE their point (with anvils, usually), they need to eliminate “distractions…” yeah, that would mean the REAL-LIFE targets of prejudice. At the expense of minority characters and actors.

>I do think it contributes that writers think they’re magically immune from all criticism

Which is funny-strange, when what often happens in movies and TV is that the real world minority actor gets red-shirted, Magical Negroe’d, or placed behind a latex mask AS the alien to be met and often friended. And they never see the irony..

Scifi is fucking terrible for this, but I don’t know if it’s worse than other genre fiction or not. I do think it contributes that writers think they’re magically immune from all criticism. No the REALY alien other in BSG are the cylons and the dearth of POC characters (who somehow manage to make up many of the thuggish marines) just shows, um, that that it’s a society with no concept of race!