How Do You Respond to Racism in Older Scifi?

Superman turns Lois Lane black, hilarity ensues

The other day on io9, Charlie Jane Anders asked a very good question: what do you do when you encounter racism in old science fiction books?1 Do you grit your teeth and just move, knowing the writer lived in a different time and such things were culturally acceptable? Or, do you toss the book aside and read more modern, racism-free literature?

The majority of commenters, and most people I talked to about it, agreed that while racism is vile, there’s nothing you can do about it in old literature. You must simply accept it and move on; while we can certainly disagree with the author, railing against them is much like fighting windmills.

As the reasoning goes, if we shy away from older stuff that might not be “politically correct”2 we’ll not only miss out on great entertainment, but we’ll also do ourselves harm by being sheltered.3 A good amount of furor is raised when publishers try to remove the offensive parts of Huckleberry Finn, which we all acknowledge as an important piece of literature, so why should we ignore or whitewash our science fiction?

Initially, I found this argument actually quite persuasive. I mean, I really like H.P. Lovecraft, so why should it matter if he was personally a terrible racist who only occcasionally allowed that to creep into his works?4 Doesn’t the good outweigh the bad? But when I posed the question on Twitter, @eatingwords brought it all into perspective:

Of course I have no problem with racism in old scifi and fantasy, I’m not the target. I can read over that kind of stuff because a white guy wrote it about other people, not me. When I think about what it would be like for a person of color to read something like that, well, it becomes harder to justify my enjoyment of it.

So, let me propose a thought experiment. Suppose a writer, let’s make him a black man, maybe a professor at Harvard, wrote a story about aliens coming to Earth and promising to give unlimited wealth and technology to humans. Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch: Earth has to give up all of its black people in exchange. The twist: they do it, of course.

Now, suppose such a story did exist. Would white people be comfortable with it? Would white people feel that it was racist and didn’t represent them properly? Or would white people read the story, grit at the crap they didn’t like and move on?5

  1. We could also add misogyny to this, but I think that should be a separate post. ↩

  2. And, of course, by “not … politically correct” I mean racist. ↩

  3. Think about it, do you really want to miss out on watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s or Gone With the Wind? You’d be out of the loop, culturally illiterate. (Or, at least if you’re of a certain age. I’m certain my kids won’t know about Gone With the Wind unless I make a point to show it to them. Which I probably won’t.) ↩

  4. See this article for more on Lovecraft’s racism. ↩

  5. Of course, such a story would never exist and white people (specifically conservatives) would never object to it. ↩

Slavery and the Fate of the Jedi

In the last post, I looked at a fundamental question the Fate of the Jedi series began with but quickly abandoned in favor of the status quo.1 Reading only that post would give the impression that I dislike the series, or at least that I find nothing of value in it, but actually there are a number of very good things about Fate of the Jedi.

One of those very good things is the abolition movement that spreads through the galaxy, fueled in part by holonet reporters.2 This seems fitting, as there has been an evolution of the galaxy, from a oligarchy run by nobles and Jedi to a democratic society with journalists, military leaders, humanitarians and Jedi all vying for power. The slavery depicted in The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi doesn’t really have a place in this new science fiction setting.

After a revolt is foiled, slavery becomes a hot-button topic, with many reformers wondering how the GA can be a legitimate government if it tolerates slavery within its member planets. Slavery is antithetical to democracy and the government can’t speak authortatively on any issue if it also supports slavery (even if implicitly).

This brings up all sorts of very interesting questions: How can a weak central government force member planets to abolish slavery? Since slavery is so important to the economies of these planets, is it even possible to abolish it? What happens if they refuse, can they be sanctioned? Kicked out of the Alliance? Would the slavery bloc of planets form their own competing confederation?3

The very real political issues come head-to-head with the Jedi, who don’t care much about the politics of the situation, they just want to see people freed from bondage.4 This puts the Jedi at odds with the government, and brings up more questions of authority and accountability. In this case, the Jedi are right and the GA is wrong, but the conflict leads to an armed showdown at the Jedi Temple where Mandolorians are brought in to kill Jedi.

All of this is very good. The various authors go to great lengths to show that slavery is not a simple problem that can be solved by chopping someone’s arms off. There are very real reprecussions no matter what the government decides to do. It’s messy, something a hero on a quest can’t solve in a few hours.

But then my old complaint with Fate of the Jedi rears its ugly head: the storyline is completely dropped. The slavery issue serves a purpose, to bring the Jedi and GA together for a fight, and then disappears completely. A few planets decide (or, are forced to decide) whether slavery is important enough to fight a war over, but the galaxy-wide problem is never really addressed.5 Perhaps the next series will deal with it, but it seems more likely that it will disappear from the EU for a while, only to return with a single line that says “Oh slavery, that was outlawed a long time ago”.

UPDATE: I’m pretty sure I was right. At the end of Apocalypse, there’s mention of a couple Jedi helping the slaves start democratic societies. It’ll never be mentioned again.

  1. For the record, my argument was as follows: the series began by questioning how a democratic society could allow the Jedi to operate with little to no accountability, seeing as how they are beholden only an invisible, mystical Force. This was a great question, mainly because it resonates with the science fictional setting and our ideas of what a futuristic liberal society would look like. The series basically answers that question by making the leader of the Galactic Alliance a crazy fascist, the compromising moderate leader of the Jedi insane, and the Jedi the only ones who are able to see the terrible threat mere mortals are blind to. ↩

  2. SPOILER ALERT. Of course, as the story makes clear, the Freedom Flight was created and funded by an Imperial who hoped to topple the Galactic Alliance and take over, but most of the individuals who made up the organization knew nothing of that and were actually doing good work. ↩

  3. With the Hutts being the largest group of slave owners in the galaxy, a confederation of slave-owning planets would be a big threat to the Galatic Alliance. ↩

  4. Seeing as how the Jedi were almost completely wiped out by a kid who was really pissed about being a slave, we can understand their viewpoint here. ↩

  5. Also, the issue of droid slavery is not addressed either. There are a few paragraphs inserted for humor, but the idea that droids are essentially artificially sentient beings is never brought up. This seems ripe for a good EU exploration. ↩

The Big Question in Fate of the Jedi

This week the final book in the latest Star Wars series, Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse, hits store shelves, which should make a few thousand people happy.1 I haven’t had time to read, but I’m sure I’ll put a review once I’ve finished listening to the audiobook.

The Fate of the Jedi series has been fairly disappointing for a lot of reasons. The characters are uninteresting, the plot has failed to delivered on its promise, and it has, so far, pretty much failed to advance the universe in any significant way. The gold-standard in universe-shaking series is, of course, the New Jedi Order, which redefined the Star Wars EU going forward, created (and killed) memorable characters, and proved that a massive, multi-volume series could work. It seems the Star Wars team has spent the past ten years trying to recreate that phenomenom, but what they’ve done has never been as good.

In the beginning, Fate of the Jedi seemed to be full of promise and excellent plot ideas: Luke Skywalker (and, by proxy, the entire Jedi Order) is blamed for Jacen Solo turning to the dark side and is exiled from Coruscant; he’s not even allowed to communicate with the Jedi.2 Luke, along with his son Ben, decide to take to the stars in their luxury spaceship3 and find out what really happened to Jacen Solo to cause him to turn to the dark side.

The first book asked a lot of good questions, but chief among them was one asked by Admiral Daala: How can a modern, liberal, democratic society function when it is ruled by theocratic warriors who are accountable to no one but a mystical Force? Daala is the bad person in this series, so naturally her question is unimportant and destructive for the Alliance.4.

But let’s face it, it is a good question. If we lived in the galaxy far, far away we would ask the same question. Why are the Jedi allowed to run around chopping people’s arms off with impugnity? There is no way to scientifically analyze the Force5, so the legitimate government must take the Force-user’s word for it. The argument basically boils down to “God told me to do it”. There is no way in the 21st century we would accept that as a legitimate reason to kill someone.

But of course we don’t live in the GFFA. The residents of that galaxy have a history with the Jedi and magic that we simply don’t have. So it must be easier for them to accept the role of a mystical force, right? Well, if we look at the history of the galaxy, it seems rife with examples of Force users wrecking the crap out of things and getting away with it. In fact, during the Fate of the Jedi series there is a Jedi on the Council, Kyp Durron, who once destroyed an entire planet of a billion or so inhabitants and was never charged as a war criminal.6

And in this case, it does seem quite reasonable to not understand the difference between Jedi and Sith; they’re the same thing, only philosophically a little different. The wall separating the two seem quite permeable, so much so that Force users seem to come and go at will, escaping punishment for crimes committed under the influence of evil.7

The question Daala asks creates a potential turning point for the Star Wars universe. Is it a fantasy or science fiction series?8 Does Star Wars represent a conservative viewpoint, one that respects ancient traditions and ways of life or is it about modernity and the undoing of the more barbaric elements of our past? Fate of the Jedi had the potential to move in a forward direction, to show that just because the Jedi have always existed without accountability does not mean they have that right in perpetuity. Unfortunately, the story proceeded to demolish Daala’s argument and prove that Jedi are always right and that if the legitimate government does not bow to their supremacy, they will be put aside.

I’m not sure how the series will end, but based on the previous eight books it will be disappointing. The larger questions of the series will go unanswered in favor of more pointless plotlines.

  1. The demand for this series seems to be very low, even worse than the last series, which was pretty bad. ↩

  2. On the face of it, this is a pretty dumb punishment. In a galaxy of literally hundreds of millions of planets, Luke isn’t allowed to step foot on one of them. Sure, it is the center of the galaxy, but it’s a lot like me being banned from New York City. I think I might get by because I can GO ANYWHERE ELSE I WANT. It’s not like he was forced to live on Hoth or something. ↩

  3. Again, not a bad deal. He has the equivalent of a luxury RV that he can take anywhere he wants. That he chooses to go to some pretty terrible planets is his decision. He could’ve gone to that one planet in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where it’s always Saturday afternoon on the beach, Saturday night in the town and Sunday afternoon in the hotels. ↩

  4. It also doesn’t help that Daala becomes quite unhinged and creates a fascist state. ↩

  5. Midicholrians notwithstanding. ↩

  6. Sure, they were at war and he was allegedly under the control of a Sith ghost, but that goes right to my point. A modern, rational society would reject the war defense as baseless (was he a commissioned soldier?) and would, in my opinion, reject the Sith ghost defense as insanity. Regardless, he would/should have been locked up. That he was really, really sorry would play no part. Assuming they have better technology than we do, perhaps Durron could have been rehabilitated. ↩

  7. And even this argument is somewhat undercut by the major philosophical difference between Luke and Jacen. Luke, taught by Obi-won and Yoda, believes in the existence of a semi-personal evil Dark Side. Jacen, taught by the Sith (?) Vergere, seems to believe only in the Force and the will of the individual. The latter view seems more in keeping with what we actually see in the films (as opposed to what the unreliable characters tell us; remember, they lie a lot). There is no light or dark side, there is only the Force and the user decides whether to do good or evil. The boogeyman known as the Dark Side is a fantasy told to impressionable Padawans. ↩

  8. While most people seem to think of Star Wars as science fiction, it is in fact a work of fantasy. While this is not really an argument I want to get into, but it seems the dividing line between science fiction and fantasy is the existence of magic. Star Wars and Dune take place in futuristic science fictional universes, but everything in the stories centers on magic and not science. Star Wars could be called sci-fi, which seems somewhat different from science fiction, but again, science is not a concern, magic is. (As an aside: a movie like Independence Day could be called sci-fi, as it has space travel and aliens, but it isn’t proper science fiction because there is no plausible science in it. But it isn’t fantasy.) ↩

On Violence and Children’s Stories

A wonderful post by Ben Myers on the role of violence in children’s stories. The key quote:

There are people – mostly people with PhDs who have never met a real child – who say the old fairytales and adventures are too violent. For my part, I tend to avoid contemporary children’s writing because it is, for the most part, not violent enough. Only an expert could think that what children really need is stories about tolerance, multiculturalism, sensitivity to difference, and all the abominable boredom of what is called ‘life skills’.

The stories I remember most from my childhood, the ones that had the greatest impact on me, are stories full of violence, bravery, and very little adult supervision. In other words, exactly the kind of world I wanted to live in. I wanted to ride the Mississippi with Huck and Jim, or discover the Kansas prairie with Laura, or confront a dragon with Bilbo, and especially walk through a wardrobe and fight an evil witch.