The third panel I attended at #Readercon was "The 21st Century Makeover of Class Struggles in SF/F" with @m_older, Sarah Smith, @catvalente, @CadwellTurnbull, and moderated by @TXWatson. So many good things got said! This thread will be a long one...
(Note: most comments will be paraphrases rather than quotes. If I think I got the words exactly, I'll put quotation marks around it. Otherwise, assume I may have rephrased a bit.)
During introductions, @m_older noted that traveling to and living in other places is a way to change your class without changing it.
From @m_older: As long as we have class, we have struggle - whether it's overt or not.
From Sarah: It's hard to write a myth without a hero, so we get a lot of exceptionalism in stories rather than ordinary people.
From @catvalente: When we're talking about science fiction, we're talking about a political fantasy.
More from @catvalente: Science fiction has post-scarcity societies which seem to grow from capitalism, and say there's only one class.
And another good point from @catvalente: In SF/F, we have heroes who've enough spare time to pursue a plot: nobility, or "nobility," or, at best, middle class.
From @catvalente: A lot of times, fairies stand in for the 1%. (Mentioned while talking about Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, which she described as an economic fantasy about drug cartels.)
From @CadwellTurnbull: In a novel, you often have to pick a person or group to follow, but in history, it's seldom just a small group.
And @CadwellTurnbull also noted that The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin talks about movements. SF/F could explore movements, large groups of people bringing about change.
From @m_older: we treat aristocracy as if it's over, but it's not. So much of it translates into current society: customs and pretensions that have solidified. For example, having breakfast buffets at hotels.
Also from @m_older: We continue to be fascinated by royalty, and it continues to influence us and continues to influence economics.
From @catvalente: We've been convinced not just to cheerlead capitalism, but to cheerlead certain players within it. Like being encouraged to root for Avengers to beat Avatar at the box office. We've been encouraged to be complicit in our own oppression.
From Sarah: We look for capitalist heroes.
Some nonfiction book recs from Sarah: Stone Age Economics, and Deductions from the World War. (At least, I think I got those right...)
From @m_older: We consume a lot of content, and it affects how our brains mediate the world. We start to put narrative frames around what we see based on what we consume, and we imagine things into place, like heroes and romances. We need to be critical about what we consume.
Further thoughts on this from @m_older: Sometimes, what we imagine is truth, because so many others have imagined the same narrative.
From Sarah: You can take this clash of frames and bring them into one book.
From @catvalente: Stories we believe, we're motivated to bring into the world, like painting Elon Musk as a hero.
More from @catvalente: People compare Musk to Tony Stark because we want to live in a world where Iron Man will save the day. We know we don't have that in reality, so we throw narrative energy at people like Musk.
And some more from @catvalente: We're always looking for a clear story and a world we want to live in, so we invest that in unworthy people like Musk.
From @CadwellTurnbull: Our characters are always really good at what they do. The challenge is looking at normal people who have to find their own heroism in the face of something traumatic, asking questions, moving their lives a notch, asking the community for help.
From @m_older: There are small stories that disappear immediately, but we know there's heroism that goes on every day. (Not the things we view as heroic.)
@m_older Also from @m_older: Pregnancy is a heroic journey with pain and danger at the end, yet we ignore it as mundane and unremarkable.
More from @m_older: There's heroism in things like struggling to maintain families.
From @catvalente: There's nothing in life that class doesn't permeate, yet it often doesn't permeate SF/F.
More from @catvalente: Where SF/F shines: We can write the more "nutritious" stuff in a way that's fun, with vampires and robots. It's pizza with spinach on it. And people will remember it more too.
From @m_older: Fun is a highly underrated quality in literature. (An example of stories with heavy themes that are also fun: the Murderbot Diaries)
From Sarah: Even in a classless society, someone will have something better. (For example, they might have a better blueberry pie.)
From @catvalente: We might need to get away from worshipping merit. The punishment for not winning the contest shouldn't be abject poverty.
Also from @catvalente: People are tribal. Our teams are things like race, gender, sexuality. Why can't class be our team?
From @m_older: There are lots of ways to organize society. Our experience is a really short slice of history.
Also from @m_older: We can look at different kinds of incentives and imagine new ones. No society will be perfect, but we can still try to change it.
@m_older I misattributed something higher up in this thread. The following was from @CadwellTurnbull: We might need to get away from worshipping merit. The punishment for not winning the contest shouldn't be abject poverty. (Thanks to @catvalente for catching that!)
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