Thread by @bogiperson

Thinking about multiple discussions this past week (in multiple languages) re: men and women writing "hard SF" - i.e., science-based work.

I'm a nonbinary person (I'm also intersex) and a scientist :), who writes hard SF, but it almost *never* gets discussed in that context -

It gets discussed a lot in other contexts.

So it's not about my writing specifically, but how we as a field categorize stuff? I feel it might be worth poking at this for a thread's duration...

(and I just got through a lot of work email and need a break!)

It often gets categorized as fantasy.

Now, I do write fantasy too, and also science fantasy where there are spaceships and magic.

But I also write very straightforward hard SF. And that gets called fantasy too, even though I'm much more a science fiction writer.

So of course I'm wondering why.

People sometimes say that it has to be fantasy because the writing itself is poetic. (-ish?)

That's a bit sad, because I'd like to read more poetic science-based science fiction; it exists, I publish it sometimes as an editor :)

So I feel that hard SF is categorized / stereotyped as having bland prose.

I feel that is unfair both toward work currently categorized as hard SF, and work that is but somehow falls through these cracks.

I always wonder how much of the "poetic, therefore cannot be hard SF" is gendered, specifically in my case when I am often gendered male online.

(I am not! I'm not female either.)

It feels like a LOT of it is gendered, but it ALSO exists independently of gender as a stereotype.

I also feel like there is a separate stereotype about trans writing.

Namely that trans writing can only be about gender, which is a social sciences / humanities topic (as the preconception goes - I'm not saying this is true), therefore it can only be fantasy or soft SF at most.

Last week I was in discussions repeatedly where people said that trans people do not write hard SF.

I am a trans person who does and was literally right there :/

(I do not like the hard/soft terminology tbh.)

I feel another thing that gets people confused is that certain elements are stereotyped as "this can only be fantasy"

Especially elements that are not FTL spaceships.

Seriously -

At this point, I'd say that FTL spaceships have arguably less of a scientific basis than precognition. (Just to bring up Campbell's topics a bit. ;) )

But the inclusion of FTL spaceships does not "demote" a work to "this cannot be hard SF" or even "real SF" in my experience.

However, e.g., I had a story which was based on biology (actual biology, which I studied at university, and which in fact did not age so well since then - which I explicitly incorporated into the story)

but it had a group mind that was unexplained in the same way FTL tends to be

That element immediately pushed it into the "this cannot be hard SF" territory despite the core of the story referencing specific scientific concepts with their technical terminology.

And I think this is gendered too. Not re: my gender, but anything "the mind" is often feminized

And thus cannot be hard SF.

These concepts are so ingrained in SFF discussion that even progressive people often do not stop and say "wait, this is actually a hard SF story because it is literally about science".

It just doesn't get categorized that way.

Plus I think there is a race/ethnicity element, where people who are minorities along these axes also "do not write hard SF"

Except so many people do, it just gets ignored because, *throws up hands*

Especially if the story has ANY element that has to do with race/ethnicity.

Then it becomes a "minority story" and not a "hard SF story," as if those could not coexist.

I have wondered a LOT how to counteract these trends.

Some of my stories have the relevant research papers formally cited at the end.

This is not a solution (though I love it as a reader when other people do it) because editors repeatedly cut the citations.

Also sometimes I have managed to squeeze in the citation, but it gets cut off when the story gets reprinted, etc.

(I personally think citations should be normalized. You'd cite people's work in a nonfiction paper too. Though I had citations removed FROM my SFnal nonfiction too!)

I have experimented with incorporating the citation into the text of the story itself. As in, people explicitly refer to a research paper within the story.

This often goes unnoticed tbh in the same way every other "hard-SF-like" element goes unnoticed?

I also tried to run up and down and yell "SCIENCE!!!" (only slightly exaggerating.)

This did not help fwiw ;) but I like to do it.

I also tried explicitly discussing the science aspects of my work at length in interviews. (They are a major aspect of my work, so it is easy for me to bring up the topic.)

These are the interviews that generally don't get published.

(Which I didn't really think about before, but it's true. I would link you now to interview X, Y, Z... except those are davka the interviews that never actually appeared.)

I think the reverse is also true, namely that if you are a white man who writes hard SF that is categorized as such, the gender aspects of your work get entirely ignored.

Greg Egan was absolutely a pioneer when it came to trans topics in SFF, but is never discussed as such.

(He had characters with nonbinary pronouns in 1995. Quick, how many authors can you name pre-2010ish who did that? .....I actually have a list for this on Bogi Reads the World, it's not very many)

A lot of this thread is "I feel that" or "I guess" which is not because I'm wishy-washy

(I am kind of wishy-washy, ok..)

but because I genuinely do not know and a lot of this has only been discussed in very simplified framings, ans generally also while keeping the gender binary

+ I was also asked "oh sure but where are all those women and trans people who write hard SF" and...

Certainly I can make lists. I hear "Book list" and my brain goes AAAAAa!!! XD But.

I feel that people have often *read* that stuff already but did not *categorize* it that way

(Side note: Pls do not point out how "women and trans" "women and nonbinary" etc is not phrased well. I have an entire article about my preferred phrasings of stuff :) - bogireadstheworld.com/why-women-nonb…

The above tweet is paraphrased from actual questions I got)

And sure, if I make a list, that will help people reassess their own readings and go like "wow, really, that one too! Coming to think of it!"

But can we also try it as an exercise before I do the list?

Like this:

Think of work by authors of ANY marginalized group (not just gender) that you've already read -

Consider how it relates to science. How closely it is science-based. If yes, why? If not, why not? What would you categorize as "hard SF"? What criticizes science? (hard SF can!)

(The threads I have seen have been primarily about gender this past week.

But again, I do see these marginalizing mechanisms that we as a group need to counteract, related to other marginalizations as well, *especially* race and ethnicity. + Non-Westernness too.)

A reminder that science as an enterprise has often been explicitly imperialist, colonialist, etc. And *of course* one can criticize that while still focusing on science.

(Whether all editors equally like those stories is a different matter. I personally CHERISH those stories)

So if we exclude criticisms of science from engagement with science, or alternate framings of knowledge-seeking (especially Indigenous and/or non-Western ones) from science, then of course it gets much easier to exclude racialized/ethnicized/migrant/etc. authors from "hard SF"

Ok, I am forcing myself not to go on a massive tangent of the history of formal logic systems that were not related to the ancient Greeks.

I might have that later as a separate thread :)

I think this is enough for a thread now and let's discuss!

* Your own fiction/poetry that is related to science in some way
* Other people's work that you enjoyed
* Every thought you might have!

yes, feel free to recommend your own work too, I'll do my best to retweet! :)

I'll wait for the discussion to move around a bit, and then I'll also add my own work, but I know about my own work, I want to know about yours ;)

and in a framing it probably does not get framed in, most of the time in SFF.

Oh since this came up in the comments, I should probably also put it in the thread (I am disorganized!)

I've edited a whole anthology of SFF with protagonists who are scientists of marginalized genders.

It has a lot of sciencey bits!

galli-books.co.uk/2019/05/28/ros…

(Preorders coming)