CW: unethical medical research on human subjects
[2024-09-29 note: This was previously posted on Cohost, on 2022-11-18 at https://cohost.org/ireneista/post/341589-science-fiction but the irenes.space URL is the permanent one.]
[the following is a thread rescued from Twitter, originally written in February of this year. in hindsight, the cold open was a bit much, we hope it was at least a topic getting discussion that day! we're not going to try to write a more timeless intro for it, have fun.]
like to be fair to SF&F authors, we did actually read a fictional story back in the 90s about eye implants that were developed as a military project and tested on unwilling participants
which is like... it combines several elements of things that absolutely happen all the time, and did back then, too
it's just that at the time, we rejected the story because we didn't believe in that stuff (we were kind of jerks)
and neither the story nor the author was well-known or achieved much recognition in SF&F communities
instead, what does get accolades is the uncreative fiction that postulates that technology will automatically solve human problems, without ever having to engage with or even acknowledge those problems
so it's not that there aren't writers out there who've explored realistic concerns, it's that that isn't what the public wants to hear about
this train of thought inspired by https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1495131224322490375 but also, this is not in any sense a new thing
[that link goes to a qntm tweet linking to https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete which is headlined "Their Bionic Eyes are now Obsolete and Unsupported: Second Sight left users of its retinal implants in the dark". ]
we were basically raised by SF&F literature, and we had this entire personal character arc when we realized that the authors we saw as surrogate parents were actually terrible role models. it was a while Thing.
*whole
so we feel qualified to say that there's been a coherent strain of literature, from the very start of the genre, which tried to bring the perspective of marginalized groups into these settings. it's a very necessary perspective because the dangers it warns of are real.
... and that strain has been the underdog, again from the very start, because of misogyny and racism and just plain unwillingness to hear difficult truths.
we feel like we should end this thread with an example. here. here's the Wikipedia entry on a classic story from the 1950s (which is not the beginning; this is just an example).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_Equations
you can go find the original if you haven't read it and would like to. it is STRIKINGLY similar to the misogynist memo that James Damore published at Google in 2017, which inadvertently kicked off the tech labor movement because we needed to reply somehow (we were there :)).
it's similar in that it postulates the "difficult truth" that some people have to die, and then talks about science and mathematics as alleged justifications.
but it never made any sense, because that *wasn't* a truth. the replies to it started almost immediately, and have continued this day. here's a very, very good one from last year - full text at this link.
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ogden_12_21/
[The Cold Calculations by Aimee Ogden. We mention that just for preservation's sake, in case the link breaks. Highly recommended!]
(by the way, in the spirit of transparency: yes, we are deliberately linking you to the full text of the work that we believe deserves to be engaged with, and making you do your own search for the one that we think is bullshit.)
the actual disturbing truth that people don't let themselves hear is simply that bigotry exists. people would strongly prefer to ignore that.
oppressive power structures exist.
hatred exists.
capitalism hurts people because people's lives are nothing to the machine (we don't mean a literal machine).
these are the truths that deserve to be told more, to be studied. not the bigoted stuff.
not the "oh wow, cool toy!"
most readers who like this genre, including us, like it because we want to be part of building a better future, and imagining what could be is part of that.
the thing is that if we don't allow ourselves to imagine the dangers, the very human problems that stay the same even as technology and scenery changes, ... we wind up inventing the BAD future. we have to study these risks, to address them.
okay. we'll leave you with that. depending on who you are, it either feels obvious or it's a big thought that threatens your world view. if it's the latter, we're always here to talk. <3