science fiction

It’s sad that something like this is still necessary and that the more sordid history of science fiction fandom isn’t better known, but David Forbes’ proposal for a long indepth article on this history is very timely, considering recent events:

Sci-fi’s popular history doesn’t mention John Campbell’s belief that race riots were caused by “genetic barbarians” or Robert Heinlein’s fondness for robber barons and military rule. It remembers Larry Niven’s creative alien worlds, not his advocacy of lying to immigrants to deny them healthcare. Jerry Pournelle is widely hailed as the dean of military sci-fi, his sympathies for fascists like Franco and Pinochet forgotten.

Rather than harmless eccentrics, the doyennes of the sci-fi far right advise the federal government, occupy important posts, head think-tanks and shape policy to this day. They’ve played a major role in creating an environment that, as shown in the case of Beale, can still make sci-fi hostile territory for women and people of color. Despite decades of courageous critical backlash within the genre, much of this impact and history remains unexposed.

The Old Iron Dream will drag this history out of the shadows, showing how sci-fi’s far-right has shaped not just its genre, but the larger culture and politics of America. It’s a turbulent, often horrifying story, ranging from coup plots and smear campaigns to shilling for Reagan’s weapons boondoggles and denying climate change.

The title is of course a reference to Norman Spinrad’s satirical novel The Iron Dream, aka “what if Adolf Hitler had become a pulp science fiction writer, then this would’ve been the novel he’d write”, written in the 1970ties as a rebuke to a particular toxic part of sf fandom.

N. K. Jemisin on that SFWA petition:

Oh, and — people who signed that petition: you want to know the real reason why you’re getting so much disrespect from the rest of the genre right now? It’s because you and your friends keep pulling shit like this while the rest of us are just trying to keep the lights on and put food on the table. It’s like Republicans passing bill after bill to fuck up reproductive health rights while the economy’s in the toilet; what the hell does this have to do with anything that matters? You got yours. You’re still getting it. You had every advantage in your favor, and you used the hell out of it. Good on you. But stop pitching shitfits just because the rest of us want a piece of the pie — the pie all of us helped to create — too.

The SFWA, the Science fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, sort of a union for sf&f writers, was in a spot of bother last summer, as some of its members turned out to be a little bit sexist and racist and worse, they were being sexist and racist in official SFWA publications. Credit to the organisation though, they did attempt to clear their house, getting rid of the biggest bigot and starting a consultation process to see what could be done to prevent further unpleasantness. (For a good overview of last year’s events as well as what’s happening now, S. L. Huang’s timeline is invaluable.)

Things went quiet for a long time, until last week, when it emerged that One Dave Truesdale, supposedly a bigshot in sf reviewing circles, found all the changes in how the SFWA would handle its publications censorship and a danger to the first amendament and all that good stuff and started a petition. This sadly got quite a few elderly, big name sf writers’ signatures, some of which (Robert Silverberg, C. J. Cherryh) I’m more than disappointed in seeing add their support to this nonsense; others not so much.

All of this renewed attention seems to have given the bigoted part of SFWA and their supporters elsewhere renewed vigour, as they gather to complainabout a lack of respect and how hard it is to be a white man these days, calling their critics insects:

“The problem is that the ‘vocal minority’ of insects who make up the new generation of writers don’t scramble for the shadows when outside lights shines on them—they bare their pincers and go for the jugular. Maybe it is a good thing that SFWA keeps them locked up. The newer members who Scalzi et al. brought in are an embarrassment to the genre.

In one of the funniest developments so far this prompted John Scalzi, together with Mary Robinette Kowal and Ursula “honey badger” Vernon to create the Insect Army to “swarm to make science fiction and fantasy awesome” and hospitable for everybody, even people who aren’t white or male. (And which of course immediately put Bill Bailey’s classic song, as featured above, in my head.)

But the best commentary I’ve read so far came from the Crime and the Forces of Evil blog, on what’s being lost:

And that leads to the sad part, the fundamental misunderstanding of the world part. The part wherein lives the idea that all these people they’re excluding won’t keep creating, somewhere else. The part where it’s still 1978, and you have the Big 3 Magazines, and the paperback publishers, and that’s all that matters. The part where supposed futurists so fundamentally fail to understand the modern world that they think someone can sue the entire Internet for libel. The part where they think it’s possible to keep that gate.

In this it seems, part of science fiction fandom are no different from the aging audience of FOX news and other rightwing fearmongers, aware that the world as they knew it and their place in it is gone, that the privileges they enjoyed just for being white, for being male, are slowly disappearing and that actually few people care anymore about their opinions, except when it hurts or hinders others.