The Lost Voices: The Next Chapter of Science Fiction
The very heart of sci-fi is to explore and discover, to “boldly go where no one has ever gone before.” This is a journey that we couldn’t take without marginalized communities.
BY: JINGSHU YAO
Art by Daniel Gomes // THE UNDERGROUND
Growing up in a big city, my childhood was distant from nature or playmates. Reading became my gateway to an imaginary world and science fiction was one of the genres that I enjoyed the most. Sci-fi brings real-life questions into an imaginative setting, approaching them from unique points of view. I was also amazed by the variety of ways in which sci-fi stories could be delivered, such as novels, movies, comics, animation, and video games. These different media made sci-fi accessible for different age groups and people with different interests. When my family went to movies together years ago, we watched Star Wars, Terminator, and X-Men because everyone can find something to enjoy in those movies. Sci-fi exposed me to the infinite possibilities that creativity could bring to our lives and became one of the fundamental reasons that I wished to become a writer at a very young age.
I made my first attempt at writing science fiction at the age of 11. The details of the story are lost into the sea of memories, but I still remember the main plot. A cloned girl was created by bad guys to steal an advanced gene technology. Her morality eventually prevailed and she sacrificed herself to prevent the dangerous technology falling into the wrong hands. It was a cliche story pieced up with plots from Hollywood movies here and there. I even designed the cover for my “novel”. The left half was the human girl, smiling and wearing beautiful clothes, while the right half was her expressionless cloned counterpart, dressed all in black and standing in a blank space.
The creation is something I can laugh over after ten years, but what still bothers me are the names I gave to the characters. Ellen was the name of the protagonist, and one of the antagonists’ name was Bob. When I thought about the picture I drew, I remembered that the girls had high nose bridges and brow bridges, unlike myself.
Why would a Chinese girl who hardly spoke any English or met any non-Chinese people in her daily life give English names to the characters and imagine them to be foreign?
I was simply imitating everything I read in sci-fi stories and movies. To me, Chinese names sounded really odd in science fiction. All the characters were supposed to be foreigners, different from me and everyone around me. It wasn’t until I read an interview with Black Canadian writer Zetta Elliott and Indigenous writer Alicia Elliott’s personal essay “On Seeing and Being Seen”that I realized I wasn’t alone. Elliott described that her earlier writing was all about middle-class white girls’ lives, very different from the poverty she had experienced. Marginalized writers do wish to tell their own stories, but they simply see no place in the world where their stories belong. These two writers had built their imagination on names and identities that were different from their own because it was all they had ever read and considered as a standard.
The first time I read sci-fi written by a Chinese author was The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. It is the first book of the trilogy Remembrance of the Earth’s Past and was the winner of best novel of the Hugo Award in 2015. Science then, the book was translated into other languages and became one of the first Chinese sci-fi novels to be introduced to the world. For the first time, I read about Chinese characters working on high-tech projects, flying a spaceship, and saving the universe, and saw Chinese history being incorporated into the story. I started to understand that it wasn’t impossible for sci-fi stories to feature marginalized communities. However, both their quantity and quality are not satisfying, not to mention able to compete with the fame of the mainstream. They were like lone stars in a sea of lights, hard to notice.
Art by Daniel Gomes // THE UNDERGROUND
Science fiction is one of the first genres that promoted diversity on TV and the big screen. Star Trek, as one of the pioneers in modern sci-fi franchises that features TV series, movies, animation, comic books, video games, and novels, was known for its diverse cast members and inclusive storytelling. The Original Series was known for casting Nichelle Nichols as Uhura and George Takei as Sulu, who later became culture icons and inspired generations of women and POC in the science field. However, while having POC and female crew members on the show was revolutionary in the 60s, these characters were still marginalized in the show even while being present. They were involved in the story to an extent, but ultimately, it was always Kirk or Spock who saved the day.
Marginalized people as supporting characters were similar to marginal figures in real life: a woman who picks up phone calls for your offices, or an Asian Uber driver who takes you to the airport, or someone who lives two blocks away that you suspect to be gay. They were just names and figures without an arc and backstory. They existed but their voices went unheard. 60 years later, still having marginalized people only as sidekicks is not something to be proud of. The sci-fi world needs more marginalized people as protagonists to tell the story through their point of view, and experience the world from their perspective. The new series Star Trek: Discovery started well by introducing POC women as well as openly gay characters to the audiences. However, many had argued that these characters are underdeveloped and the show did not meet the promise (See interview by Electronic Lit and critic by Quillette.) Not even mention the many other sci-fi works that are far from taking its first steps.
Inculding marginalized voices in sci-fi stories doesn’t mean having supporting characters who are POC or queer and occasionally have a a scene or two. Only having them in the background or even representing them in a stereotypical way is an act that further marginalizes these people. They need to take up the main roles where they can have desires, face challenges, and make choices. Only in this way, their thoughts, wants, and voices come through to the audience. This is an opportunity as well as a responsibility for marginalized writers. Even though non-marginalized writers can feature marginalized characters in their stories, an identity is something that must be lived through to be understood. While having an open mind and conducting research can help, sometimes only marginalized people can capture the subtle details that would ultimately make the stories stand out.
Why do these voices matter in sci-fi stories?
Sci-fi stories draw deeply from the real world. From myths and legends in ancient times when science blurred with magic, to the journey of exploring the world we lived in following the industrial revolution, to slowly making its way beyond Earth with booming technology, these evolutions were shaped by the needs of our society. Now, the genre is calling for marginalized voices to take part in the change. Modern sci-fi often has futurist outer space or dystopian settings, consisting of elements such as mutations, artificial intelligences, and virtual reality. The characters are divided into heroes and villains, good against evil; there’s usually an epic fight that has the potential to be brought to the big screen with motion capture and CGI.
Art by Daniel Gomes // THE UNDERGROUND
These are no doubt the main components of sci-fi, but not everything it stands for. Sci-fi originated from fantasy and myth, characterized by imagination and a sense of wonder. Many of the earlier sci-fi stories are purely about discovering the unknown and pushing the boundary of human knowledge. Some early sci-fi such as Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth were heavily focused on these themes. Similarly, some of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-1969), such as “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “The Devil in the Dark”, didn’t include a specific villain or a fight like most sci-fi does today. From the very beginning, the Enterprise’s mission wasn’t to fight Klingons or Romulans, or protect the universe from Borgs. The very heart of sci-fi is to explore and discover, to “boldly go where know one has ever gone before.”
This nature of sci-fi is also what makes the inclusion of marginalized voices essential. It is impossible to explore every angle of human knowledge if several communities are left out. Every culture has its myth and legend to investigate and all of them could trigger the spark of imagination. We have witnessed the alien or superpower interpretation of gods with European origins in This Immortal and Creatures of Light and Darkness. People who grew up hearing stories from Hinduism, Buddhism, or Indigenous folklore could also contribute new concepts to their own storytelling. If sci-fi can’t even accept and appreciate every member of human society, what rights do we have to take our thoughts and imaginations beyond the earth and into the unknown?
Sci-fi opens up infinite opportunities and possibilities for both writers and audiences. Through creativity, individuals are given the chance to establish an idealistic society, change the mistakes of the past, and imagine a brighter future. Many of the early voices that called for equality and diversity emerged in the sci-fi world, and sci-fi remains as a platform that showcases humanity’s hope with storytelling.
While including marginalized voices is essential for the nature of sci-fi, the process is a long and still ongoing journey.
According to Isaac Asimov, one of the most well-known sci-fi writers of the 20th century, “true science fiction could not really exist until people understood the rationalism of science and began to use it with respect in their stories.” It is understandable that with the early emergence of industrialization, the western world took the lead in sci-fi creation. However, this leading role also led to the lack of representation of women, POC, LGBTQ+ folks, and other marginalized people. This is a negative loop that kept rolling and growing like a snowball, but it isn’t impossible to break through.
Almost 30 years into its development, Star Trek welcomed its first POC protagonist, Benjamin Sisko (Avery Brooks) in Deep Space Nine. In addition, The Original Series episode “Turnabout Intruder” (1969) clearly stated that women are not allowed to serve as starship captains. It wasn’t until 1995 that the TV series featured its first female protagonist Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) and in 2017, the first African-American female protagonist Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). Similarly, including LGBTQ+ characters into the series had been discussed over the years, but it wasn’t until the 2016 movie Star Trek: Beyond that Hikaru Sulu was announced as the first openly gay character in honor of George Takei, who came out in 2005.
Even for the pioneers of the sci-fi world, marginalized voices didn’t start to emerge until recent years and their voices are still outnumbered by the mainstream. The impact was the further delay of the presence of marginalized people in the sci-fi industry. A survey conducted by sci-fi magazine Fireside Fiction in 2016 showed that only around 2% of the published stories are written by Black writers. If writers from marginalized communities hardly see people with similar identities in stories, they may assume that they could never be in those stories.
Decades after audiences had their first glance of the diverse, inclusive society Star Trek tried to bring to its stories, we did see many changes in the sci-fi industry. A great place to explore them is on The Illustrated Page, a journal that is dedicated to sci-fi and fantasy. The website published several lists of marginalized communities and themes in sci-fi fantasy, including Disability and Neurodivergence and LGBTQIAP, POC, and women protagonists. Though we could be impressed by the not-so-short listing, these stories seldom reach general readers and tend to be harder to find in public libraries or bookstores.
Indeed, one of the concerns that writers and producers have while trying to incorporate marginalized voices into their stories is losing audiences. It is always safe to give audiences what they’re used to for marketing reasons. Star Trek producer Brannon Braga admitted in an interview that under the pressure of making Star Trek a “family show”, the idea of adding LGBTQ+ characters wasn’t “a forward thinking decision”. Similarly, J.J Abrams intended to include a gay character when he was directing the 2011 movie Into Darkness, but evetually dropped it, possibily because it wasn’t really benefiting the storyline. The idea didn’t become reality until almost 30 years after it was first brought up.
However, most emerging writers, artists, and filmmakers wish to express their thoughts through stories and creations. Appealing to the market might not be their prime concern. This gives them the courage to break through conventional storytelling and provide more diverse content that is relatable for marginalized people. New technologies have given writers more chances to self publish or present their work online so they don’t have to worry about being appealing to the publishers. This also makes their creations more easily accessible to audiences. Many writers today first started their writing on FanFiction or Tumblr, and later on they created their own blogs for stories and artwork. These are much more accessible compared with traditional publications and allow the writers and artists to form a community of their own, having a space to showcase their work and learn from one another. Many outstanding works have thousands and millions of hits, and have reached even more audiences, especially among younger generations, than traditional publications.
Ten years after my first clumsy attempt to write a sci-fi story, I am still a sci-fi fan. I just finished watching the long overdue seventh season of the animated series Star Wars:The Clone Wars, and I’m looking forward to a new season of Star Trek: Picard. Like many other fans, I had my dream start in a galaxy far, far away and kept being inspired by the imagination and creativity sci-fi brings to our lives. If I were in a universe where time travel is available, I would tell my younger self, “write sci-fi based on your own life, because that’s what makes your story different.”
