Some Thoughts on Colonialism and Science Fiction

Within the context of the recent Hugo Awards, science fiction writer, Cixin Liu made the following comment, “If the aliens would like to attack us, they would never consider whether you’re from China or the U.S.”   The comment is obviously meant to reference a common humanity, one that spans the divide between two countries who have a long history of conflict.  It also implicitly references a common interest of Chinese and U.S. fans in science fictional narratives.  So, we’re all human, and we all like science fiction.  At the same time, it also mirrors a curious remark made by Ronald Reagan to an apparently perplex Mikhail Gorbachev during diplomatic talks.  Reagan evidently noted that the two countries would by necessity unite in response to a common Martian threat.  It should be noted that this narrative structure has been used in a lot of popular science fictional narratives to imagine a United Earth, from blockbuster movies to far more esoteric narratives.  But, does this basic premise hold up?  I don’t think so.

It operates on the premise of an alien attack that lacks any tactics, strategy, or any subtlety.  When we turn to the history of colonization, which these narratives from the time of H.G. Wells[1] have been referencing, we see a far different approach to attack.  Within those context, whether the destruction of the indigenous populations of the Americas or the colonizing projects in Asia and Africa, we see a process in which the colonizers make temporary alliances with local elites, create divisions within populations and exacerbate already existing tensions.  This process is intimately linked with the process of knowledge production and categorization. The enlightenment’s love of the construction of taxonomies and the process of the primitive accumulation of capital are profoundly intertwined.  Perhaps to put it more simply, the desire to understand through category is not easily separable from a desire to control.  Within this process, knowledge production is not simply a reflection of existing conditions, but an active reshaping of those conditions, at times deliberately, at times accidentally.[2]

 So, if we look at India, for instance, we see an entire religious category, the “Hindu”, constructed out of a multiplicity of religious traditions that often overlap, but also often contradict one another.  These categories then are taken up by the populations themselves and often take a life of their own, for instance, in the form of “Hindu Nationalism.”[3]  We can see a similar process in the creation of the concept of blood quantum designed by the United States government to decide who qualifies for tribal membership or the construction of townships in South Africa.  In effect, colonial governance continues along the same lines as imperialist aggression, constructing an elaborate and hierarchical taxonomy of the governed population, creating divisions and rivalries built upon the always inadequate resources distributed by the colonial regime.  In that process, the categories constructed become lived experience for those who are classified under them.  After all, it defines what access they have to resources, education, and employment.  It also often constructs local elites whose power is enhanced by the colonial process, who are invested in the imperial government.[4]

This all adds up to a very elaborate way of saying that there is a very good chance that our future alien overlords may care very deeply about the differences between the United States and China, and further divisions that may in fact be deeply incomprehensible or meaningless to us.  I see no particular reason why an aggressive alien species that has clearly developed the advanced forms of military technology needed for such an invasion wouldn’t also be able to develop the same set of knowledge skills that allowed Europe to transform itself from a backwater into the center of the world system.

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[1] War of the Worlds, First Men on the Moon

[2] Too many sources to be mentioned

[3] The basics of this get covered by Karen Armstrong in her book, Fields of Blood, but there’s a lot more scholarship on the topic, particularly on the part of post-colonial scholars.

[4] See Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, which this analysis borrows heavily from

On the Hugo Award finalists

     I thought I would write a very brief update to the comments that I posted on Tuesday, March 21st, while on spring break.  Within that post, I noted that I planned on writing about the upcoming Hugo Awards, notably discussing my voting process.  I also expressed my hopes that the award finalists would not be as affected by the chicanery of the Sad and Rabid Puppies, two groups of conservative fans who had previously attempted to manipulate the nomination process through slate voting.  Both groups attempted to present their manipulation as an effort to bring forgotten and suppressed works back on the finalists list, either in the name of traditional science fiction or in the name of a suppressed politically conservative science fiction, but both groups tended to create their lists based on group identity, nominating friends of the primary organizers of both groups.  The work itself ranged from mediocrity to abject failure with a small number of exceptions.

      I was fairly optimistic that we weren't going to see the same kind of influence that we saw in the past couple years.  The Sad Puppies had abandoned the slate process last year and embraced a largely ineffectual and unpromoted recommendation list  They even abandoned that pretense this year, and presented no recommendations.  The Rabid Puppies didn't entirely abandon the fight, but presented a list of recommendations that only included one or two recommendations per category.  With both groups ending their efforts to choose the entire slate of finalists, it was fairly probable that, barring some secret and highly unlikely cabal of slate organization, we were going to see a list of candidates that more faithfully represented the interests of science fiction fans and readers.  Now that the finalists have finally been released, we can see that the influence of the puppies is fairly minimal.  Only sixteen of the list of twenty-two Rabid Puppy nominees were nominated, and three of those were disqualified. (look here for a more thorough analysis)  Additionally, it would be easy to imagine that the work of a number of the endorsed nominees (for instance, China Mieville and Neil Gaiman) would have received nomination without the influence of the slate, which further reduces the impact of the slate.  A number of people have given credited the recent reforms in the voting process for the reduced impact of the slates, but if there was an impact, it was more in its encouragement to abandon the practice of slating than in its actual impact on the vote totals.

     The resulting list of finalists is fairly exciting, and I'm looking forward to the process of reading the works.  For the most part, it's material that I have not read yet, although I read N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season, which her recent nomination, The Obelisk Gate is a sequel, along with the first two books in the series by Cixin Liu.  I've also seen all of the nominated films, except Hidden Figures, and have been a fairly faithful reader of Ms. Marvel, which received another nomination. However, it's material that seems to have received primarily positive critical attention, and looks like a distinct step away from the tedium that defined too much of the last couple years of nominations.  I'm currently in process of placing the novels available at the library on hold.  Additionally, I'm hoping that this breadth of quality works will also translate into a more interesting competition.  My voting choices over the past year were also largely chosen by the majority of other Hugo voters.  I think that this is less a sign that my views are representative of that majority, and more a sign of the lack of meaningful choice among the nominees.  I suspect that the introduction of some real competition will lead to much less predictability in the winners, which will also make the process more interesting.

     You can still get involved in the voting process if you are interested.  You just need to get a supporting membership for $40 and you can vote.  Recently, voters have received electronic packets with some of the nominated material, a process which will probably be repeated this year.  You can find information here.