Diversity in SF and Fantasy

[Ophiucha]

I love Jim Sterling; he has a lot of great videos about female characters in games.

And I agree with him on this. Everyone has the right to write whatever they'd like, but it doesn't mean you can't be criticised for what's in it. Further, I find people act like only certain topics are open to criticism and others aren't. You can critique a character for being useless to the plot, but you can't point out that they are 'yet another' female character useless to the plot. You can critique the worldbuilding for having the unexplained presence of tropical crops or fabrics, and writers will justify it with handwaves of trade or different climates to the real world, but with nary a mention of the fact that they pointedly don't have any of the people to come from those same regions. You can critique the story for being boring, dry, confusing, formulaic, meandering... but not for glorifying imperialism. See: Avatar. Everyone will jump up to point out how similar it's story is to Pocahontas or Dances With Wolves, but will shut down any criticisms of how all three films have problematic 'white saviour'/'going wild' exotification plots.

 

[Addison]

1. If you want a good fantasy not from U.S.A, I strongly suggest the Tara Duncan series by Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian. Yea there's a new american print, and a cartoon in several languages, but the original is French and very good. It took forever for me to read it though, I taught myself French when I got the book.

2. I love diversity, not just because it makes our world unique, but unity of different ethnicities is beautiful. In my WIP each character is a different ethnicity. One is an American raised Irish/Scottish mix, with a family of proud old culture. The others are: Greek, Iranian, Russian....or Slovakian (still on the board), the other I'm using as a symbol of unity by being half Italian and half Brazilian. (Brazil brings a flavor of Aztecs. )

 

[Steerpike]

. The others are: Greek, Iranian, Russian....or Slovakian (still on the board), the other I'm using as a symbol of unity by being half Italian and half Brazilian. (Brazil brings a flavor of Aztecs. )

I like the same thing.

With respect to the Aztec, well...it is fantasy and you can do what you like, but just for the sake of historical accuracy, I want to point out that the Aztec weren't in Brazil, or even South America. They were in Mexico, and even further away from South America than the Maya, who extended further along the Yucatan and down into Guatemala, etc.

The Inca were the closest to Brazil, being in western South America, though I don't believe their empire actually spread into Brazil. But going with an Incan flavor would probably be the closest thing if you're looking at the primary Pre-Columbian new world empires.

 

[Chilari]

There are, I think, opportunities to introduce diversity whatever source of inspiration you use from Europe. There have been links with Africa and the Near East within Europe since the Minoan civilisation, and thus people of a range of ethnic backgrounds. The Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt are thought to have been very mixed race - Hellenic, Near Eastern and North African ancestry. Greek traders regularly mixed with Egyptians especially after Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, and long before that traded with the Near East, where the Persian Empire stretched from the Mediterranean to India, and to the Caspian Sea in the north. Under the Roman Empire, people from all over the place could find themselves thousands of miles from where they were born - or where they were two years ago. Legions raised in the Near East made it to north-western Europe; legions raised in Hispania (modern Spain and Portugal) ended up serving in Judea. Egypt was Rome's breadbasket. There were legionaries, auxilliaries, slaves and freedmen of every colour. There was trade on the Silk Road with China via Persia. In the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, thee were huge movements of populations all around Europe and North Africa. The Italian city-states and principalities had traders all across the Mediterranean.

Only the most isolated, distant locations - like Britain and Scandanavia - didn't regularly see this kind of variety and diversity.

There's plenty of opportunity for diversity even within the context of medieval Europe or Greco-Roman inspired worlds, and even in very ancient societies. The only real excuse for failure to include diversity is using an isolated setting like an island with no nearby landmasses, or a huge landmass where there's no means of accelerated travel like transit on water (river or sea).

I for one am trying to make an effort not just to write more diverse characters, cultures and experiences, but to read a lot more about them too - I've been reading a book about the history of China recently and will also have a look at some books on ordinary life in as many cultures as I can get my hands on.

 

[Graylorne]

To write about diversion in medieval Europe, you don't per se need to import strangers from Thebes or Beijing. Never forget that to a small village, someone from fifty miles away could be completely alien.

--

Scandinavia had plenty of its own diversions; there were the Sami from the North, Karelians from the East, Russians and Mongols, and ofc the many traders in the summer towns along the coast. Traders from Norway ended up in Byzantium, traders from Arab lands visited Novgorod and Narvik.

The British isles even before the Romans had their visiting traders, too. Their civilization was rich in gold, tin, iron and other resources (I believe Britain was a major tin supplier to the whole of Europe). After the Romans, tribes from all over the West ended up in Britain. Different Gods, different clothing, different techniques.

Even the neothic peoples traded all over the continent. Glassware and pottery, jewelry and stones in burial places proved that often enough.

--

Diversity is everywhere. You just need to look.

--

In my books I have people from all over the place. The world of my Rhidauna books is an alternate of sorts of our world.
There are many peoples peoples like ours, but because of several reasons there is no discrimination because of race, religion etc. Therefore it isn't strange that my cast of MC's is mixed. It would be quite strange if it wasn't.

I have one MC who is the bastard son of a white farm girl and a famous black minstrel, I have two Arab royal twins, of whom the male is rather stout and hinted a homosexual, but a good fighter, and the female marries my main MC. I have a barbarian from a land where the females read and write, while the males hunt and fight (except for priests and battle maidens, where it's the other way round). I have a girl from a medieval Eastern European duchy, a lad from a Mongolian nomadic tribe, etc. I don't make a show of it, they are what they are, not because I want to prove anything. I didn't even plan it, they just happened that way.

--

 

[The Dark One]

Only the most isolated, distant locations - like Britain and Scandanavia - didn't regularly see this kind of variety and diversity.

Just blew a mouthful of wine through my nose.

Britain without diversity? How about Celts, Picts, Scots, Romans, Welsh, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings, Normans...all within about 600 years of each other. And those are just the warring tribes and invaders. The trade networks spread as far as the middle East and Africa even in antiquity.

 

[The Dark One]

Left out Angles...after whom England is named.

 

[Ophiucha]

Not to mention the fact that the Romans were by no means exclusively white, and the Moors were as close as France during the Middle Ages. Europe has always been quite diverse, both culturally and ethnically. Vikings, well, they may well have discovered America, so you have the Canadian First Nations, plus they were dangerously close to the Mongol invaders (which extended to the Slavs/Russia). And they traveled far enough to come back with more than a few mixed race children, possibly even wives from the Caspian Sea (where they had settlements). Plenty of opportunities to play around with.

 

[Jabrosky]

Part of the problem with measuring diversity is the arbitrary nature of racial or ethnic categorization. Would Mediterranean Europeans like the Greco-Romans qualify as white in the same sense as Celtic and Germanic peoples further north? Consider that certain sub-Saharan African groups like Ethiopians and Kalahari Bushmen have sometimes been excluded from the "black" category since most of those peoples look distinct from, say, Nigerian Yoruba. Depending on which outdated anthropological material you consult, Indians may either belong to the "Caucasoid" race alongside Europeans or the "Australoid" race alongside Melanesians and Aboriginal Australians. And then there's the whole issue of just how many races you must subdivide humanity into...

 

[Chilari]

Just blew a mouthful of wine through my nose.

Britain without diversity? How about Celts, Picts, Scots, Romans, Welsh, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings, Normans...all within about 600 years of each other. And those are just the warring tribes and invaders. The trade networks spread as far as the middle East and Africa even in antiquity.

Compared to other parts of Europe, Britain didn't see much racial diversity - Celts, Picts, Welsh, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings, Angles and so on were all white northwestern Europeans; Romans were the exception, but they were only here for about 367 years, and for the earlier and later stages of that, not everywhere here. There certainly was cultural diversity.

The Mediterranean region saw a lot more on a regular, week-to-week sort of basis; in Rome itself, there lived people from every province in the the Roman Empire and several territories outside it, in such numbers that it was perhaps normal to see half a dozen different skin tones in a single day. More remote locations might have heard half a dozen languages, but not seen such a variety of racial diversity.

My point is that remote locations saw less diversity - not none at all - and that only very isolated locations such as islands without nearby landmasses or vast landmasses where long-distance travel is incredibly difficult, will see minimal diversity or even none at all.

 

[The Dark One]

My point was all about the impact on people's lives...which tended to be fairly savage, fairly frequently. People don't have to look physically different to behave different.

In any case, my point was just a reaction to the (I thought rather glib) point about Britain. But diversity is relative. Until WW2, the vast majority of Brits had never travelled more than 20 miles from their home village/suburb. The world has exploded in the last 70 years...for us in the wealthy 1st world at least.

 

[Sanctified]

My two questions are these:

1. What are some examples that you've seen recently that seem to show a positive shift toward more diversity in SF and fantasy (meaning authors, characters, worlds, etc.)?

2. What do you think could be done to improve diversity in SF and fantasy? (more translations from non-English speaking countries, more diverse characters when it comes to gender, race, or other backgrounds)

Let's keep this discussion friendly and productive!

I think it's completely unhelpful, even destructive, to have this kind of debate about perceived diversity in science fiction and fantasy via Twitter and blogs. Just look at the all-encompassing flamewar known as "racefail" from 2009.

The best diversity goes unnoticed and isn't the product of an intentional push for "more diversity" sparked by some dude's blog post or essay in the Guardian. (Besides, the recent Books Blog post in the Guardian has it wrong -- a lot has changed, and the white man antagonist is no longer the default.)

Maybe it's easier for me, as a New Yorker, to view diversity as a natural thing and not contrived. After all, you can walk two blocks and hear 15 different languages here. But we tell people to write what they know for a reason, and maybe the perceived lack of diversity has more to do with authors living in a bubble.

My list of favorites includes Haruki Murakami (Japan), David Mitchell (UK/Japan), Iain M. Banks (Scotland), Alastair Reynolds (Wales), Neil Gaiman (British expat living in New York), Chekov (Russia), Charlaine Harris (U.S.), Steven Pressfield (U.S.) and Steven Saylor (U.S.). Oh, not enough women! What to do...

 

[Jabrosky]

I think it's completely unhelpful, even destructive, to have this kind of debate about perceived diversity in science fiction and fantasy via Twitter and blogs.

The Internet in general is a lousy medium for a serious and civil discussion. It's great for exposing yourself to different points of view all over the world though.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Maybe it's easier for me, as a New Yorker, to view diversity as a natural thing and not contrived. After all, you can walk two blocks and hear 15 different languages here. But we tell people to write what they know for a reason, and maybe the perceived lack of diversity has more to do with authors living in a bubble.

Outside science fiction and fantasy, this actually ties into some of the complaints I've seen--have you noticed that shows set in New York tend to cast mostly white actors, both as main characters and as extras? (In the sci-fi realm, I've also seen this complaint about The Walking Dead, a primarily white show set in and around the city with the highest black population in the United States. And James Marsters, an actor on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, infamously stated that he'd never seen a real town as white as the show's locale of Sunnydale.)

 

[Philip Overby]

I think it's completely unhelpful, even destructive, to have this kind of debate about perceived diversity in science fiction and fantasy via Twitter and blogs. Just look at the all-encompassing flamewar known as "racefail" from 2009.

The best diversity goes unnoticed and isn't the product of an intentional push for "more diversity" sparked by some dude's blog post or essay in the Guardian. (Besides, the recent Books Blog post in the Guardian has it wrong -- a lot has changed, and the white man antagonist is no longer the default.)

Maybe it's easier for me, as a New Yorker, to view diversity as a natural thing and not contrived. After all, you can walk two blocks and hear 15 different languages here. But we tell people to write what they know for a reason, and maybe the perceived lack of diversity has more to do with authors living in a bubble.

My list of favorites includes Haruki Murakami (Japan), David Mitchell (UK/Japan), Iain M. Banks (Scotland), Alastair Reynolds (Wales), Neil Gaiman (British expat living in New York), Chekov (Russia), Charlaine Harris (U.S.), Steven Pressfield (U.S.) and Steven Saylor (U.S.). Oh, not enough women! What to do...

Well, we're not having the discussion via Twitter or blogs. We're having it here on a forum where we can have an extended conversation. I feel like if the science fiction and fantasy community at large is discussing something, we should probably attempt to discuss it here. Even if it's not the way you'd want to discuss it, I don't find it to be destructive. If anything else, I've learned about some new authors I wouldn't have known about otherwise. People get what they want out of these discussions. They can view them negatively or try to receive something positive from them.

Your comment about writers living in a bubble could definitely be true. Not so much a bubble in their personal life, but a writer's bubble. If they only read certain kinds of fiction from certain kinds of authors, then their experience is definitely going to be limited. That is why I used this thread to reach out to people to ask them about non-English speaking, translated fiction from authors I may never have heard of otherwise. Others have taken the opportunity to talk about other issues they'd like to see discussed.

I'll echo what Feo said about New York. I do find it strange that one of the most multi-cultural cities in the whole world focuses most on one race. However, I find it discouraging that a lot of movies about New York involve "a down on his/her luck so-and-so that is trying to make it in the big city and find love at the same time." Well, at least the bad movies about New York are about that.

However, living in Japan, 99 percent of the people I see are Japanese. This allows me to get a lot of perspective on their culture, but very little on anyone else's unless I seek out other foreigners in Tokyo or another big city.

 

[Sanctified]

Good point about how New York is portrayed in some movies and TV. That's been a criticism leveled at the HBO show Girls, and for good reason I think -- the entire show takes place in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and it's entirely too white-washed. Brooklyn has been gentrified, but I don't know anyone who lives in social circles without people of different races and ethnicities.

And The Walking Dead? Yeah. The crazy thing is that they really do film in Georgia. We saw Atlanta in the first season, and it's been a journey through rural and suburban GA since then, but still.

Regarding race discussion, Phil, did you see any of those racefail posts? It got extremely nasty. The short version is that a midwestern, bubble-living white female novelist wrote a blog post about how to write minority characters for the sake of diversity. Problem was, her version of an authentic minority character was based on stereotypes. Some people pointed that out, some very politely and some not so much, and soon it became a massive flamewar that managed to suck in a few well-known authors who made fools of themselves.

As for me, I was upset when a favorite author of mine was called out, but glad to see he stayed above the fray. (And anyway, his characters ran the gamut and were from a far more diverse range of backgrounds, races and ethnicities than the vast majority of others.)

My problem with these discussions is that they tend to degenerate or blow up, and they can become minefields, although this is a friendly environment so hopefully that won't happen. In any case, I believe the diversity or lack thereof in a story reflects the author's experiences, biases and social experiences.

 

[Philip Overby]

Thankfully, this thread hasn't blown up. We have a good community here that respects other people's opinions. I can see how topics such as these can get out of hand and cause people to throw accusations at each other.

That said, I don't know about this "racefail" you speak of. I don't typically follow any sort of flamewars as it's usually just an attempt to shout people down you don't agree with about whatever.

I always find these types of discussions to be terribly tricky. You can either ignore certain problems and stay out of the discussion, or you can get involved and either change people's minds or alienate them. My tendency is to stay out of too many discussions that could get too sticky, but when it comes to reading fantasy and finding new types of authors, that's something I'm passionate about. I'm all about spreading the word about new and exciting fantasy writers, and I think there are a ton that may get passed by because they're not heavily promoted in English speaking markets or there aren't translations of their work. I hope that can change and more and more authors from around the world get recognized for their contributions to the genre.

I have less to say about diverse characters because I try to include what I think works best for my stories. I'm happy reading stories about any kind of characters as long as they're good and engaging. However, experiencing new types of characters (from the perspective of people not from the same culture as me) I'm not accustomed to, interests me more and more.

 

[Ophiucha]

Racefail '09, I stayed out of it at the time since I'm white and didn't really want to speak over the people I agreed with, but was also pretty young (16) and didn't want to confront some of the adult, professional authors on the other side either. I lurked some of the livejournals, though, and it got pretty nasty. Though there was a great blog post towards the beginning, I Didn't Dream of Dragons, which I would recommend giving a read. It's not very long.

On the subject of blogs, I'd recommend skimming the 'greatest hits' section of N.K. Jemisin's website. She's written some great posts about writing characters of colour, and a few about general fantasy writing that are worth a read (as well as things about her books that are interesting if you've already read them and want to know more about the world and her writing process).

 

[Feo Takahari]

Racefail '09, I stayed out of it at the time since I'm white and didn't really want to speak over the people I agreed with, but was also pretty young (16) and didn't want to confront some of the adult, professional authors on the other side either. I lurked some of the livejournals, though, and it got pretty nasty. Though there was a great blog post towards the beginning, I Didn't Dream of Dragons, which I would recommend giving a read. It's not very long.

I don't know much about race, but I know directly about gender, and I know indirectly about [r-word]*. Between the two, I recognize a pattern that makes me question this post.

I write a lot of female characters, and I don't write a lot of characters who embody traditional feminine virtues. To put it bluntly, I write a lot of women of the type other women often call "guys with tits," and I've seen a lot of ink spilled (by women as well as men!) to argue that characters like them are unrealistic depictions of women. But if I were to make them more conventionally feminine, they'd stop being like certain women I know and respect. They're not "guys with tits," they're women, and they have as much of a right to the word as any other women.

Tarol Hunt is one of my favorite authors. His mother was [r-worded] repeatedly by four men over a period of several days. In his comic Goblins, he portrays a character who has survived a similar experience, and who is slowly recovering from it and becoming comfortable around men again. On several occasions, [r-word] survivors have called this character's thoughts and actions unrealistic, arguing that she should display more or different trauma than she displays. But after the blog post when he admitted the character was based on his mother, I saw more [r-word] survivors and friends of survivors come forward to state that her behaviors were not unique--one in particular noted that his girlfriend matched the character's actions almost exactly after her [r-word.] Again, the group that saw itself as misunderstood policed itself to eliminate not unrealistic portrayals, but unconventional portrayals.

When this blog poster mentions that "I do not want to see a White American with brown skin and kohl and an elephant sidekick," I could interpret that to mean that she's seeing white Americans who have brown skin and kohl and elephant sidekicks. But from this pattern, I find it far more likely that she's seeing people who have brown skin and kohl and elephant sidekicks, noticing that they're not perfectly like her, and concluding that they must be white Americans.

* I still think it's incredibly stupid that we're not supposed to say that word, but I'll respect the mods' wishes.

 

[Ophiucha]

I doubt, however, that the author is also alone in their viewpoint and perspective. Part of diversity is culture, and culture varies within groups of people of the same race. A brown American may write a vision of South Asia with the knowledge granted by being raised in America with American media. With pride in their skin and culture, undoubtedly, yet with a perspective that does not speak to those who actually have lived there. This is fairly common, from what I've read.

I don't think the criticism is invalid or incorrect simply because some people within the author's demographic would disagree. Even as a white person, I see this very often, more with Japan and China than with India, but the principal is the same. Western views of morality applied to an Eastern culture, often glorifying the protagonist for having 'enlightened' views in a wince-worthy way. This is particularly common when you have some crossover with the diversity, for instance a story of shoguns with a female warrior as the protagonist. You'll end up with her being glorified for having feminist views that are very modern American in their origin, to the point where characters who have more cultural or contemporaneous views are shamed and even exotified, emphasizing their more foreign traits (these villains are often darker and may have a more distinctly 'foreign' nose - this is strangely common, the nose thing) compared to the protagonist's often more fair skin and typically European nose.

There is, obviously, room in fantasy for all portrayals of these characters, particularly by Western authors of colour whose culture is European or American despite where their race may originate. But when those stories dominate an already small market for diverse sff... yeah, I don't blame the author for criticizing it's prevalence.