The Great Science Fiction Civil War
While I haven’t been very active in the science fiction and fantasy scene for a couple of years, I have been watching from the sidelines. There is always a certain degree of disagreement in any large group associated by a common bond (like writing) and little else. What I’ve seen unfolding over the past several years in the speculative fiction community can be described succinctly as a civil war. Total civil war, with a take no prisoners attitude and a destroy everything in your path methodology.
On one side, you have the conservative arm of the genre, often white males, trying to maintain values according to their faith, trying to continue the grand tradition of those who went before them, and just trying to write bang-up stories from their own world view. On the other side, you have the SJW (social justice warriors) who want more diversity in in fiction, more recognition for diverse (read non-white non-male) writers, and less of an American male is best point of view.
The problem is, both sides are right.
Conservatism
Let me elaborate with a digression. I grew up in a conservative family. I spent much of my teenage years pondering how to make my understanding of the sciences and what I had been taught about Christianity fit together, and they don’t fit together very well, so they become compartmentalized. I tried to understand why being gay was considered by the church to be as great a sin as murder, and why gays (in those days, people called them fags) were persecuted when every gay person I had ever met was kind and generous, and arguably a better overall person than many who held them in contempt. I went through high school holding certain classmates in esteem only to hear racial slurs come out of their mouths when talking about a certain small population, and I tried to understand.
Classism
I grew up in a middle-class family of modest means. We worked for what we had, but we didn’t ask for much and we helped others when we could. And I saw what was worse than we had because my parents sheltered battered women and cared for Foster children with severe disabilities. I understood the plight well enough that I didn’t get upset when my favorite Pink Floyd t-shirt disappeared with one of those women. We complained on occasion for not being allowed to do certain things when my father was out of work for an extended period of time, but we had it pretty good. We always had food to eat and house to live in. And I saw how painful the lives of some very wealthy families were despite their wealth and fame, and I tried to understand.
Whiteism
I grew up in a white family in a white neighborhood in the white suburbs of Milwaukee. And yet, the few black classmates I had were just people to me. My parents adopted a Korean girl, and later they adopted two black kids they had Fostered for many years. I lived for a decade in San Jose, California, where whites are about 40% of the population. And still, I recall back to that classmate who didn’t want “anything to do with that nigger” and I try to understand.
In 1983, the Civil Rights marches of Martin Luther King might as well have happened before the Roman Republic became an empire–ancient history to a teenager’s perception. Racism didn’t exist because I never saw it. Not until that classmate opened his mouth.
A Point to the Digression
While this discussion of a person born into modest privilege might seem to have nothing to do with the Great Science Fiction Civil War, there is a point. It all comes back to perspective. In my youth, I would listen to conservative people tell me why their world view was correct, and what the other people were doing that threatened everything, and they had some valid points. The next day, I would listen to liberal people tell me why their world view was correct, and what the other people were doing that threatened everything, and they had some valid points.
How do you balance and parse such conflicting input and take a stand one way or the other? I used to think I was wishy-washy because I could be influenced by both sides, but upon further reflection, I don’t think that’s the case at all. Rather, I was becoming aware, and I dare say more aware than most people, that any contentious issue has no one right answer, conflict is deeply-rooted, and problems are not simple things. One side’s solution makes the problem worse for the other side. which brings us back to…
What Does This Have to do with Science Fiction?
It’s obvious to me that the divisions in science fiction and fantasy author-land are far more complicated than I described to open this essay. There is a long history of what many think science fiction should be. There is also a long history of oppressed peoples wanting to be heard, wanting to be represented, and wanting to participate.
We have one side wanting to take back the genre and the other side claiming there is nothing to take back because nothing was ever taken away. We have one side celebrating an all-female award ballot and the other side feeling like excellent work was shut out in favor of lesser work because author.
I see vicious attacks on conservative authors for no reason other than being themselves. I see minority authors putting up with blatant racism and even death threats for no reason other than being themselves. I’ve been casually lumped in with both sides, depending on the phase of the moon or the direction of the wind. (Fact is, I’ve written stories that fall in all parts of that spectrum and I consider myself a member of neither side.) I try to understand.
I’ve seen Robert Heinlein paraded as an iconic hero, and I’ve seen Robert Heinlein (figuratively) hanged in effigy, often on the same day. Heinlein is the figurehead for one side holding up classic science fiction as the way things ought to be and the representative devil for overbearing straight white male dominance for the other, and I try to understand.
With Heinlein, both sides are making the same mistake, and it’s a mistake I see all too often–judging a historical person by the standards of a different time. Classic science fiction is a product of the early to mid 20th-century, and that isn’t the way it ought to be in the 21st-century any more than coal-driven steam locomotives ought to replace domestic air travel. But neither is Heinlein a villain. He wrote from his experience for readers with a similar background. It was a simpler time to be a science fiction writer because at the time, science fiction was more progressive than the world around it. Think of all the new ground on television trail-blazed by Star Trek in the 1960s.
So here I am again, nodding in agreement with many things uttered by both sides, and I try to understand. Nobody who partakes in this civil war comes out clean. Everyone participating has dirty hands in one way or another. There exist extremists on both sides, representative of everything the other side rails against. There are also a lot of very good people on both sides. The vast majority are good people, and yet they are attacked by colleagues who somehow don’t seem to understand that there is room for all of us. The Venn diagram of our readership might overlap, but that diagram definitely consists of more than one circle.
There is room for everyone at the table, and plenty of empty chairs to sit in, and still each side wants to make the other eat outside with the dogs. That isn’t good for the genre, and it isn’t healthy for the people involved, either. I suspect these divisions have always been around, yet before social media we were able to be professional about matters. Now, each of us gathers our own angry, torch-bearing crowd and march through the internet lighting fires. And still, I try to understand.
It’s a recognition that there is no easy solution to this problem. Or perhaps, in reality, it’s a vast stack of layered problems, intertwined and twisted about each other in such a tangle that the problems can never be resolved. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. I see such vitriol and hatred from both sides, and I’m saddened. I’m not worried about the genre. It will survive. I worry more for the people, for the authors I have become friends with over the years–some of them wearing blue, and others wearing gray.
I don’t have the solutions, but I did have a thought. Just maybe, if we each focus on what we are writing ourselves and less upon what other people are doing, the healing process could begin.
Or maybe I’ll just never understand.