So, it's been a summer. As much fun as I've had these past few months, I've also taken some good ole summer classes through SBU. It was a lot of reading given that I took two English classes, but I had a great time and learned a lot. One of the classes that I signed up for was purely about science fiction.
Really, the title of the class was just "Science Fiction."
As a time and space travel enthusiast I was super excited to begin. It was my impression that we would be comparing different texts and ideas to come to a general consensus on the meaning of the genre. This was not entirely the case.
Before I continue I'd like to clarify that this was a great class. I promise I'm not being sarcastic even though it probably sounds like I am. If I wanted to complain, I would do so in my course evaluation, not here to share with all of you.
What we did in this class was cover a wide variety of texts and scholarly journals and have critical discussions on why authors would choose what they chose to write about. What unique message were they trying to uncover, and why would they use the genre of science fiction to do so? More often than not, works of science fiction are social commentaries in disguise, which is cool, no doubt—but they are seriously lacking in the representation department. My absolute favorite thing about this class was that we could finally call out questionable themes in this genre that is overwhelmingly revered. One of the biggest complaints that I had was the lack of individuality of voice in the genre.
Of the three major texts that we read—"Frankenstein," "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," and "Permutation City"—only one has a female narrator, and she isn't even the main character. She's the main character's funky little scientist who carries out his crazy ideas (and yeah, they had sex at one point, too, even though the characters had absolutely no chemistry.)
Now, I know what you might be thinking: Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein!" What are you talking about sexism for?
You and I both know she published anonymously and didn't get the credit she deserved until much later on. Also, Shelley is just as guilty for the unoriginality of voice in sci-fi! Through each of these texts, the narrator is a variation of a tired genius with no social skills who just wants the world to end, more or less. Even better, ethnicities are hardly a concept.
Now when I look back at old science fiction, I notice things that I would have been blind to before. There are people of different ethnicities in "Star Trek," which is great, but there are only three of them. And the dresses that females are required to wear look like they could be shirts compared to what the males are dressed in.
I'm not saying there's no female representation in science fiction; we've come a long way. However, there must be a big change in narrative voice, primarily adding a strong female voice to the picture.
