Parallel Universe: Extraordinary Heroines by Marcella Burnard

Let’s start right off with my contrarian take on extraordinary characters: Make them ordinary. Make them vulnerable. Make them real. Then give the character a twist that makes you giggle like a maniac. Start there and then you can do just about anything.

In my first book, ENEMY WITHIN, Ari is a fencing master, a starship captain, a bit of a scientist and an all around wise-ass. She does stuff I think we can all agree no one person could possibly do with the physical limits of the human body and the temporal limits of a single life span. None of it makes her extraordinary. It’s fun. It helps move the plot, but the thing that makes Ari interesting and memorable is the kernel of truth at her core. She suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There’s a tiny scene where the hero walks into Ari’s cabin and she’s playing a sound file on her room speakers –the mating songs of amphibians from a world she’s visited. That scene is real. A friend’s husband served two tours of duty in Iraq. He suffered from terrible PTSD upon his return and could only sleep if he slept in the bathroom floor with the shower running. Sit with that a moment. Can you imagine what it would feel like to have such a tenuous grip on a sense of safety? That emotional vulnerability – and a character’s reaction to it - is what makes heroines extraordinary, in my opinion. Ari was interesting because she was an uber-capable woman whose emotional and mental lives had been utterly deconstructed and left in ruins.

For the third book in this series, (the second is ENEMY GAMES, the third book is, as yet, unnamed) the heroine is deaf. She’s a freedom fighter turned mercenary, and a pyrotechnic/munitions expert, which translates into Edie blowing stuff up (this is the bit that makes me giggle and rub my hands together like some cheesy, second-class mad-scientist). Her people lost the war and subsequently turned on the rebels, afraid that the winners of that war would seek retribution from the populace over the battles fought by the freedom forces. If you studied World War II history, you know some of this occasionally happened in France when Germany occupied Paris. Imagine how you’d feel having put your life on the line for your people only to lose the war and then have your people turn on you, too. Resentment? Baggage? This seems to be where characters turn a corner from flat to fleshed-out. It isn’t about the fact that Edie is a mercenary/bounty-hunter tracking criminals on the fringes of legality. It isn’t about the fact that she’s deaf. The part that makes Edie interesting is her pain, her emotional sore-spots, her weaknesses.

Every one of us has strengths and weaknesses. Think through the heroes (male and female) of our world. Sometimes, we root for people based on that person’s strengths, but how much more intrigued are we by someone who has overcome weakness to achieve something? Remember the Olympic skater whose mother died the night before the woman was scheduled to skate? The skater wasn’t doing particularly well in the rankings, but that program she skated in her mother’s honor was a triumph that had the entire stadium on its feet for her. Why? Because every single human being watching could relate to the loss this woman had endured. Everyone watching wanted to believe he or she could pull an equally glorious success out of personal tragedy, even though most of us know that rarely happens. Lance Armstrong was reasonably well-known for winning the Tour de France, but the moment he suffered through cancer treatment and returned to cycling to win again, he was a household name. Again, every single person living can relate to being sick, tired, worn out – hopefully not to the life-threatening extreme of cancer – but we all have a basis for understanding even if the details are inaccurate. Right or wrong, our culture admires anyone who can bounce back from something so debilitating and wring a win out of it.

Let’s be clear. Extraordinary characters can’t breeze their way through their problems. Any success or triumph they wrest from their weakness must come at a cost, whether that is death – real or metaphorical – or whether that price is the sacrifice of a long-held goal. This is the part where your heroine has to demonstrate that she’s explored the boundaries of her vulnerabilities and has learned to cope. Or not. And that opens up so many stories with so many extraordinary characters. Get out there and write one.

***



For more information about Marcella Burnard, visit her Web site at www.marcellaburnard.com.

Parallel Universe: The Broad Canvas of Science Fiction Romance by KS Augustin

Welcome to 2010's Parallel Universe and many thanks to Heather for inviting me here. When she told the participants that this year's theme is "diversity", I didn't know where to begin. Diversity is exactly the reason I write SFR, and I'm not just talking about the diversity of characters, their traits and their sexuality. I'm actually being a bit selfish and talking about my diversity. Let me explain.

I have a very low boredom threshold and ideas are always popping into my head. SFR gives me such a broad canvas that I can come up with a variety of ideas and work them out through the genre. What I love about SFR is how it never constrains me. It also allows me to posit certain truths without having to walk the minefield of cultural sensitivities. For example, the majority of my characters are coloured. And why not? We already outnumber the white-skinned humans on this planet. Why shouldn't the future of a human-inhabited galaxy also be the same? Yet, the Republic (to take one of my universes as an example) is sufficiently divorced from current considerations that I can choose how I portray exploitation, discrimination and politics without somebody calling foul because I'm not citing history correctly. With SFR, I create my universe's own history.

With SFR, I can also afford to make my heroes more thoughtful. They don't require five hours' hard practice a day with heavy equipment to learn how to beat a villain into the ground. Maybe they only need to push a button. Or say a word. Under such circumstances, I can make both my heroes and heroines intellectual, thoughtful, even more vulnerable as a result of that, without taking away their intrinsic power. The men can be cripples, the women can be scientists, and there can still be romance, action and intrigue. In zero gravity, nobody can beat you at arm-wrestling! LOL

I can place entire societies side by side, comparing and contrasting them. It would sound like an anthropological study but it's in space, where I can also add all the science and whizz-bang gadgetry to the story that my geek heart desires. I can have a society where only a small contingent of men survive, and another where genetic mutations are causing a population crash, and wonder if the representatives of those societies can put their own problems aside long enough to come up with the obvious solution to their problems (The Commander's Slave).

And let's not forget the aliens. Can a tired widowed engineer really find the strength within herself to grab a chance at happiness with someone so divorced from her reality, a male-dominant hermaphrodite who also happens to be an ex-criminal (Prime Suspect)? Will a ship's commander give her heart a chance when confronted by a shapeshifter alien that she's been taught is the enemy of all humanity (On Bliss)?

But we even have alienness within ourselves that can be explored. Difference is not just outside our skins but underneath it too. How do you love a man who forgets you every two days (In Enemy Hands)? Can we rise above our upbringing (A Pirate's Passion)? Can a mercenary find charity in her heart for someone else? And can her pursuer (Combat!)?

I don't need to go to different genres in order to present these thought experiments to you: contemporary for one, historical for another, suspense for a third. SFR can easily encompass all this and much more, as previous contributors to this Parallel Universe have no doubt exhibited. By placing all these stories within a single framework, I can concentrate more on what I want to say, how the characters behave and grow, how their society functions, rather than the established guidelines of several genres and sub-genres.

By being so elastic, so open to diversity, SFR encompasses us all, each and every one of a diverse set of voices speaking to you this month. All we need now are the readers. Can we count on you?

***



Kaz Augustin is a Malaysian-born writer of science-fiction, romance, and permutations of the two. Her website is at http://www.ksaugustin.com, she blogs at http://blog.ksaugustin.com and she writes about food (as all good Malaysians do!) at http://food.ksaugustin.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter; just look for “ksaugustin”.

Parallel Universe: "Does she take sugar?" by Ann Somerville

One of the first science fiction stories I read where the hero of a SF story wasn’t a strapping white male, was about a young telepathic Bangladeshi refugee living in a futuristic New York as an indentured servant/psychic on a leash. She was tough, poor, and smart and brave enough to work out how to save the man she loved and a child, even at a terrible physical cost. Even thirty years on, she’s still my gold standard for memorable, powerful non-stereotypical characters in fiction.

Unfortunately, finding leading characters in SF who break the straight white male mould is still harder than it should be. It feels sometimes like we’re stuck on Star Trek mode in an endless loop. All the aliens are bipedal humanoids, the black actors play the aliens (unless they’re hot black women, then they get to play the receptionist), and we only allow one or two token model minorities into the fully human cast. Everybody’s heterosexual, the captain is always Caucasian and omniscient, and almost always male.

It’s getting better, though, and with many more female writers gaining acceptance in the genre, we’re seeing more women, more GLBT people, and more brown and black characters. Which is as it should be because brown and black people have always been in the majority (over 80%) of the planetary population, and with China and India both heavily involved in the space race, there’s no reason why the new colony on that distant exo-planet won’t be founded by Krishnamurtis, Lees and Changs, rather than Smiths, Harrisons and O’Reillys.

However, the final frontier in science fiction turns out not to be space, but disability. More specifically, characters with disabilities who aren’t blind sages or Geordi LaForge and his magical visor. I can’t claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of modern SF, but publishers are certainly leery of disabled romantic leads, and I can’t off-hand remember a science fiction story where the main protagonist—not just the perky, disposable sidekick—had a disability for more than cosmetic purposes.

But why should this be the case? We can imagine faster than light travel and artificial gravity, but not a space environment where being blind, deaf or paralysed is just another personal characteristic to accommodate? Hey, some people with Autistic Spectrum Disorders are considered preferred employees in some industries—the same industries that contribute significantly to space travel and research right now, in 2010—because of their ability to focus and concentrate without becoming bored by repetitive tasks. Being autistic certainly doesn’t mean you can’t be a fully contributing member of society, so how come we don’t have an autistic hero whose powers of concentration save the day? And if sufferers of depression are among some of our most beloved artists and musicans, and respected politicians, why can’t they fly a space ship and engage in exploration? There’s no reason why physical or mental conditions accommodated to a lesser or greater degree on our Earth, have to be insurmountable limitations where there’s no gravity, when computers can produce output in many forms, or where, for example, being very small or light could be a positive advantage.

But I don’t want stories that ‘cure’ those conditions, or where no one ever has the slightest difficulty though they were born with what we would consider a disability now. Don’t give me Geordi laForge—the blind character who isn’t actually blind—or a deaf character who’s telepathic. Using such a narrative device sends the message disability is still a problem and can’t be tolerated in the character, unless it’s overcome or eradicated, and that, without such a cheat, people with disabilities are still unwelcome in the author’s universe (as they were in James Cameron’s Avatar.) That’s as erasing as not including characters with disabilities at all.

I want stories where someone’s physical abilities or disabilities are all part of who they are, what formed them, and what contributes to them being completely awesome and fascinating. Don’t make them extraordinary—by that, I mean, magical or superhuman—for those things. Just have those things there. They don’t have to save the world because their disability makes them superawesomely perceptive. They can save the world because the experience of being disabled has contributed to their character and their way of dealing with problems and challenges. It’s like someone’s religion, or their cultural background. These things make someone who they are, and who they are is what they bring to the fight.

So give me the story of the depressed deep space captain, and his navigator husband with PTSD, who fight off the ravening alien hordes, and live to fly another day.

Tell me about a deaf engineer who finds out about the sabotage threatening the lives of a million people living under an artificial sky on Mars...
...or the autistic astrogator who steps in when the pilot of a star ship falls desperately ill, and single-handedly lands the ship, ensuring the safety of the crew and passengers.

Where’s the blind artist whose vivid hallucinations inspire a planet full of empaths and telepaths to create a new and wonderful biosphere? And what about her wives who love and encourage her work, designing healthy living areas on ships for long-haul space travel?

And how’s this for a pitch? “She’s got a really big laser cannon. He’s a kickass pilot. Together, they’re chasing sky pirates, bringing them to justice. They don’t need their legs.”

Not including characters with disabilities—or excluding from the main heroic lead role, or refusing to allow them to be the part of the main romantic relationship—isn’t just insulting, it’s a terrible waste of the diversity inherent in our present reality, let alone of what we can conceive. That diversity of experiences is what helps human beings be so adaptable, and the most successful species on this planet. There’s every reason to believe it’ll help us be successful when we branch out into the rest of the universe.

I invite you to peruse the following titles of my stories with disabled characters, all of which can be found on my site:

Einan - PTSD. "Going Down"
Paole - Blind in one eye. "Many Roads Home"
Jumei - Partial paralysis caused by brain injury. "Home Ground" (free to read)

[My thanks to McVane and Anita for their gracious assistance with this article]

***

Ann Somerville grew up in one of Australia’s prettiest small cities. In 1989, she left Australia with a BA majoring in English, French and History, and a burning ambition to see more of the world and its people, and to discover this ‘culture’ thing people kept telling her about. In 2006, she returned home to Southeast Queensland with two more degrees (this time in science and IT), an English husband (and an English accent) and a staggering case of homesickness, vowing never to leave Australia again.

She now writes full-time, working part-time as a contract web programmer to pay for the small luxuries of life, but all she really needs is a laptop and an internet connection for true happiness. Her long, plot-driven fiction featuring gay and bisexual characters has been published by Samhain Publishing and elsewhere. Additionally, copious free full length stories and novels are available on her website. She also reviews GLBT fiction on Outlaw Reviews and blogs about writing, publishing, her life and many shiny distracting things.

Parallel Universe: To Boldly "Go" by Rowena Cherry

Sir Jasper isn't ripping bodices, these days. He's ripping spacesuits… and he's just as likely to get his own thong whipped off!

One of the late Barbara Karmazin's memorable one-liners of SFR writing advice is "When writing, always strive to boldly go where no one has gone before, and this includes in the bedroom."

…Also, I'd say, in the bathroom, the dungeon, the cathouse, the doghouse, and the gladiatorial locker room. If William Shakespeare were writing today, in the space age, he'd write of alien "Nature red in tooth and claw."

Science Fiction Romance boldly comes with sex acts and situations that might be too offensive for publication if they popped up in any other modern genre. I don't count Graeco-Roman myths and legends as "modern".

Space aliens are not what one might call "politically correct". Most of our "good" aliens visit Earth illicitly, and quite often they are here to break a whole slew of our laws about kidnapping, abduction, sex slavery, forcible seduction, rape, human trafficking, grievous bodily harm, murder, vigilantism, animal abuse, torture and more….

We have cultural and religious taboos about having sex with other races (miscegenation was widely prohibited in the USA until 1967), not to mention sex with other species.

Aliens aren't just another race. They're another species. The proper term for sex with other species is either the loose British term "buggery" or the mind boggling "zoophilia" (or "zoosexuality"). I know, "zoo" does not mean every inhabitant of the nearest zoological garden.

In Greek mythology, the zoosexuality happens "off-stage", and with the exception of the Minotaur's father, the sexually excitable animal is generally a shape-shifting god. We're told that Zeus visited Leda as a swan, or Io or Europa as a bull, but that's backstory, and what's interesting is the consequences for the mortal woman and the resultant offspring.

Not so with SFR.

In Anne McCaffrey's Freedom's Landing, we're in the consenting woman's head as the cat-headed hero's penis penetrates her (slowly). Happily, his penis does not appear to have been barbed.

Should it have had barbs for verisimilitude?

*See footnotes for more fascinating trivia about diversity among animal penises.

Possibly it wasn't "that sort" of story. In many SFR erotica stories, the were-dragon, were-wolf or were-whatever-he-is makes love to the human woman while in his human form. But not always. There are romances where the shifter shifts during sex. And, there are romances where the hero is what he is all the time.

In 2004, Barbara Karmazin's THE HUNTRESS was a bold, ground-breaking pioneer of sexy SFR, featuring a reptilian hero with a double penis (like an iguana), a penchant for scent-marking household fixtures and fittings, and toenails so long and sharp that he could only wear sandals.

Rulagh's toenails rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not at all into toenails. I seem to recall a particularly nasty big toe with yellow nail in THE POWER AND THE GLORY by Graham Greene -- which has nothing at all to do with aliens or Romance.

Have you ever noticed how it is almost de rigueur for a Romance heroine to notice the hero's impeccably manicured hands? His well groomed, long --they are always long-- fingers? How often have you read a passage where the heroine notices with approval the hero's neatly trimmed toenails?

Part of the problem is that most of the heroes that our mainstream, non-SFR editors buy wear shoes, boots or top boots (or moccasins). Therefore, if the hero's feet are bare, other parts may also be, and the heroine does not need to draw spurious conclusions about his wedding tackle based on the length of his toes. However, if he is an alien, his feet are on the table, or could be.

Mixed metaphor intended. Metaphors are fertile ground for alien romance humor. I should warn you that I am more interested in the politics of sex, and the pratfalls of sex than in out-of-this-world orgasms. That's why I write what I call "Space Snark" ™


Speaking of the importance of non-standard body parts for world-building, Lisa Shearin does a fantastic job of reminding the reader that her POV character is an elf. Fantasy heroine Raine Benares checks out fanciable elf and gnome males with great appreciation for their elegant, pointy ears.

The closest that I have come to an exotic hero with edgy body parts is my alien king of the Volnoth, Viz-Igerd, whose titles include The Gravenclaw and "His Potency".

He has skin like a squid which can change color at will for camouflage or intimidation, fully retractable cojones (and so forth), and a "warhand" which is a surgically modified hand with claws that do not retract. It's less like something Wolverine would sport when enraged, more something either feathery and eagle-like, or hairy and bear-like.

He doesn't wear clothes. He is a proud (except for the voluntarily retracted genitals) traditionalist. On his own world, this is fine and dandy and supremely practical, but it does create certain problems when it comes to interstellar diplomacy.

Please see footnote for a description of the fearsome Viz-Igerd through human eyes. Or visit my Twit Wall and look for "A naked alien seen through human eyes".

Why are SFR writers able to write with such carnal diversity about gay sex, sex in ménages, sex with menageries (zoophilia pun?), and sex with members of other species?

Are our bestiality taboos learned or instinctive? Some say that our taboos stem from moral panic, others that the "Abrahamic religions" teach that God has a plan for mankind which involves specific, approved behaviors. There's also a fear of creating dangerous or unattractive mutants and monsters (such as the Minotaur). I suspect, there might also have been some concern in the wilderness years about competition from the Egyptian gods.

Others see "bestiality" as an issue of animal welfare and good stewardship. In fact, some laws regard animals as legal minors (like children) because they are incapable of giving informed consent.

Or is it all a matter of hygiene -- the potential for the interspecies mutation of parasites and diseases, and reasonable prudence enforced by various prehistoric "nanny states" for our own greater good?

Why does the world wink at a full range of carnal diversity in the case of romances with aliens?

Is it because the alien --or were-being-- is as smart or smarter than a human (by our standards of intelligence) so we don't have to worry about his welfare. We don't have to concern ourselves about his consent, because he is well-spoken, articulate, thoughtful, and socially responsible. He is not altogether lethal in the sack or in the mating flight.

And we can assume that anyone technologically advanced enough to cross galaxies has probably conquered his own parasites.

Bottom line: Almost anything goes in SFR, and that's okay because 1. They're aliens. 2. They're smarter than we are.

FOOTNOTES

Diversity (also bifurcation) in animal penises
Instant gratification, look here
http://bayblab.blogspot.com/2007/07/penises-of-animal-kingdom.html

http://scienceray.com/biology/zoology/bizarre-penis-facts-in-the-animal-kingdom/

Iguana penes if you scroll to the bottom of the page. Lovely!
http://www.greenigsociety.org/anatomy.htm


Buggery:

Under most common law legal systems, the term buggery refers to a criminal offence and has a specific legal meaning. In English law, "buggery" was first used in the Buggery Act 1533, while Section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, entitled "Sodomy and Bestiality", defined punishments for "the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal". Neither Act defined what constituted buggery. Over the years the courts have defined buggery as including either:

1. anal intercourse by a man with a man or woman, or
2. vaginal intercourse by either a man or a woman with an animal

but not any other form of "unnatural intercourse".

At common law consent was not a defense; nor was the fact that the parties were married. In the UK the punishment for buggery was reduced from hanging to life imprisonment…. As with the crime of rape, buggery required that penetration must have occurred, but ejaculation is not necessary.

Zoophilia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoosexuality_and_the_law

Miscegenation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws

Cats' barbed penises
http://www.kittens-lair.net/cat-mating-and-pregnancy/feline-mating-pregnancy-and-the-birth.html

The male cat's ‘penis' is covered in hook-like barbs, and as he withdraws these barbs abrade the females cat's ‘vulva'. She will scream and turn to bite him. An experienced male cat will maintain control of her until he fees it is safe to release her and move away.

***



Rowena Cherry writes humorous, quirky, politically-incorrect SFR. She is particularly fond of trivia, etymology, puzzles (including chess) and word-play.

Rowena Cherry's books are: Forced Mate, Mating Net (short, prequel, e- only), Insufficient Mating Material, and Knight's Fork.


Excerpt from KNIGHT'S FORK


THE CLAW’D ARRIVES AT THE TRAJANT

The TRAJANT
Situation Room


“Good grief, son! What’s that?” Grievous blurted out.

Thor-quentin stood in front of the one-way hologram, looking ashen and about to puke.

The shark-eyed technicians looked more grim faced than usual, and the Trajant’s War-Star Leader –a normal-looking Tigron— was there, which was unusual.

“What do you see, Grievous?” Thor-quentin gasped.

Grievous supposed that the young Prince was virtually begging him to provide a running commentary, while Thor-quentin got a handle on his intestinal fortitude.

“Right. Well, I daresay if what you want is a fresh eye, I’m your man. If a translation is wanted, someone else’ll have to cut in.”

Grievous eyeballed the Imperial warriors. They all seemed stunned.

“I see a tall, good looking, bald-headed dude. He’d be better looking if he wasn’t so ferociously red in the face, but he’s one of those smooth faced chaps that baldness suits. Talking of suits, he’s wearing a skin tight, multi colored cat suit, or jump suit, and one punk looking gauntlet. Oh, Hell’s bells and buckets of blood!”

The gauntlet flared.

“That startled me. Sorry. His gauntlet just opened up, like an umbrella, or the ruff on the neck of those fierce frilled lizards. Hecky thump! Will you look at those spikes! Now he’s showing us his claws. I shouldn’t like to meet that chap in a dark alley!”

Thor-quentin inhaled.

“Nor should I, Grievous.”

The dude was saying something. As he spoke, black warpaint appeared under his bright green eyes, like the glare-block that some professional athletes had begun to favor.

The penny dropped.

“Good lord! Is that the Volnoth King?”

“Yes,” Thor-quentin said. “That is my aunt’s Mate.”

Grievous felt his jaw drop. So he’s not wearing a cat suit. Ken Doll came to mind. Or paintball splashed, shop window mannequin. No rude bits and bobs to worry anyone. But that warhand was a nasty piece of work.

The extraordinary fellow held up an unrolled scroll, rather like something you might see in an ancient Egyptian or Biblical movie.

“Why is he shredding that thing with his wicked fingernails?” And why are you all looking scared shitless?

The War-star Leader spoke for the first time.

“Viz-Igerd, the Gravenclaw, the King of Volnoth, has issued a ‘Claw’d’, which is a limited declaration of war, to be settled by mortal combat between the challenger and the accused in a public arena.”

“Grievous, he has challenged me to a fight to the death,” Thor-quentin said.

“You, son? What the hell for?” Grievous spread his arms in the sort of appeal against unfairness that any umpire or referee would understand. “What can we do about this? It’s obviously a mistake. Can’t we get this mess straightened out?”

Parallel Universe: I Share That Dream by Pauline Baird Jones

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” —Martin Luther King, Jr.

I spent a lot of time mulling the topic of diversity for this blog event and found my thoughts doing a homing pigeon to a recent experience I had during a panel on civil rights at a science fiction convention. I came to the panel in support of a friend who is wise, kind and sees people by “the content of their character, first and always.” She doesn’t have to say she is not a bigot, because she lives her life in a way that you know it.

big•ot•ry
1. stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own.
2. the actions, beliefs, prejudices, etc., of a bigot.

At its heart, bigotry is a denial of and a rejection of the individual as a person. By refusing to see the individual instead of the group, by denying the basic humanity of someone, the bigot can feel comfortable with their perception because this or that group isn’t “real” or valuable. At its most extreme, this denial of “realness” can lead to denial of the right of life, liberty and any pursuit of happiness.

So one would reasonably expect a panel on civil rights to embrace individual rights and reject bigotry in all its forms, right?

Despite the promise of a “civil” discussion, I was—sadly—unsurprised when one of the panelists—a white guy—began his introduction by stating, “I am not a bigot.” Before he continued, I knew he really was a bigot, but—in his estimation—he was an “acceptable” bigot. He was bigoted against anyone who didn’t agree with him or made choices outside his box of “right” and comfortable with those “boundaries.”

For that hour, I felt under attack by a man who claimed to support a woman’s right to choose—and then didn’t—not a state conducive to bridging any gaps between misunderstood groups. Over time emotion faded, replaced by a mulling of what I would have said if I’d been seated on that panel.

From the program guide, the purpose of the panel was to score SF/F authors and literature on “how we treat our fellow humans and how literature and media deal with…civil rights issues.” There was a general desire that there be a more equitable representation of all groups in the industry—a desire marred by the comfort too many in the audience had with the one panelist’s bigotry.

It is my belief that these types of attitudes are now, and will be, detrimental to the future of science fiction romance—not to mention society as a whole—if we allow acceptable (i.e. popular) bigotry to dismiss or silence the voices that we don’t agree with.

Science fiction, and by extension, science fiction romance, are rooted in imagining the impossible, but we are so often limited by our own shortcomings and blind spots. There is a difference between not liking a book because it isn’t what we like to read and dismissing one because it doesn’t fit into our paradigm of how the future “ought” to be, or worse, because it doesn’t fit a currently popular point of view.

For me, truth can stand a challenge on all fronts and, to endure, it should be challenged by opposing ideas, and yes, even by bad ideas. I don’t believe we will triumph over bad ideas or bigotry by silencing those who hold them. That just drives them underground where they fester and grow, where they can hide until we grow complacent or look away. We need to expose all ideas to the bright light of day again and again. Ideas grow or shrivel when light hits them.

I believe SF/SFR has a role to play in shining this light. At its most basic core, science fiction requires a rigorous freedom to endure and flourish. SF/SFR authors can explore ideas in boundary breaking ways. We can set them in fictional motion and show how, if left unfettered, they might play out in the future.

If we set boundaries on how writers can portray that future, if we accept the limitations of “acceptable” bigotry, we risk losing more than a good read. I believe we need to reject all bigotry everywhere we find it—starting within our own hearts and minds.

BUT and this is a big BUT, true diversity of thought comes from acknowledging that people have a right to believe what they want to believe.

We need to despise bigotry while defending the right of people to feel it, believe it, and yes, write about it. Even though that panelist made me feel uncomfortable, I would never, ever seek to silence him.

We have a right to not like what someone else likes, but we also have a responsibility to defend their right to write the book they want to write. Freedom of expression will only endure if those who want it extend it to all expression.

Remember that every scientific advance, every new idea has been met with resistance by people who thought they knew what should and shouldn’t be. I think that is what struck me the most about the panel: how little had changed from flat world times. Humankind still thinks they’ve cornered all knowledge, when the evidence of history says all we’ve “cornered” is—once again—hubris.

Ideas triumph when people embrace freedom of expression as a basic right. When we seek diversity, I hope we can remember to seek it for all and not just a popular few. It’s so terribly easy to become unpopular.

***

Pauline Baird Jones is the award-winning author of nine novels of science fiction romance, action-adventure, suspense, romantic suspense and comedy-mystery. her latest releases are Girl Gone Nova and Out of Time (wide digital /limited print release). She's also written a steampunk novella called Tangled in Time that will release in 2010. She's written two non-fiction books, Adapting Your Novel for Film and Made-up Mayhem , and she co-wrote Managing Your Book Writing Business with Jamie Engle. Her seventh novel, Out of Time , an action-adventure romance set in World War II, is an EPPIE 2007 winner. Her eighth novel, The Key won an Independent Book Award Bronze Medal (IPPY) for 2008 and is a 2007 Dream Realm Awards Winner. She also has short stories in several anthologies. Originally from Wyoming, she and her family moved from New Orleans to Texas before Katrina.