Posts Tagged ‘racism’

Is today’s Star Trek fiction guilty of “lazy” quasi-racism?

In what is generally a favorable write-up of Star Trek: Seekers #1 – Second Nature, reviewer Steve Donoghue of Open Letters Monthly makes an observation I find troubling:

“In this first volume in the Star Trek Seekers series, Second Nature, Captain Terrell heads a somewhat predictably multi-racial crew — there’s a Vulcan, a Trill, an Arkenite, a Denobulan, etc. — and, unfortunately, Mack tends to lean on these race-implications just as so many Star Trek fiction writers have done before him. (It lends itself to an egregious laziness that would be condemned as simple racism if it were being applied to people from Lithuania instead of Alpha Centauri; countless times, Mack designates these characters by their races – “the Vulcan” this, or “the Trill” that).”

seekers1Considering how eagerly I and other Star Trek authors of recent years have strived to create a more inclusive portrait of humanity and of diverse ideologies and lifestyles in the novels, this note of his gave me great pause.

Have we been guilty of perpetrating a “lazy” and “casual” form of racism by using species identifiers in our prose? I know that I and some other authors do it to avoid pronoun confusion in scenes where several characters are of the same sex, and to avoid resorting to physical attributes (“the blonde,” “the tall man,” etc), or overusing the proper names to the point of distraction.

But now I’m curious. Does Mr. Donoghue have a point? Are writers of speculative fiction (including but not limited to Star Trek) committing a sin against the inclusive philosophy many of us consider important by using species identification as a form of literary short-hand? Or is this reviewer overreacting to an innocuous trope of the speculative fiction genre?

I’m not looking to pick a fight or incite people to pile onto Mr. Donoghue. This is a serious inquiry: How can we improve this aspect of SF and Star Trek fiction without creating clunky prose problems in the process? Or is this not even really a problem at all?

The Last Word on “…Your Last Battlefield”

Ugh. Is it really Thursday? Again? Yup, afraid so. Well, if I have to cope with it, so do you.

You know the drill: It is the day of Thor, god of thunder, so Dayton Ward and I present to you our latest pile of drivel: a recap and analysis of the third-season original series Star Trek episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” brought to you by the fine folks at Tor.com.

Ever bought a black-and-white cookie at a deli, bitten into it, and found out only then that it was stale? Well, this is kind of like that, except the taste lasts for 50 minutes.

As long as you’re online, catch up on our recaps-and-analyses of third-season Star Trek with this handy index:

  1. Spock’s Brain
  2. The Enterprise Incident
  3. The Paradise Syndrome
  4. And the Children Shall Lead
  5. Is There in Truth No Beauty?
  6. Spectre of the Gun
  7. Day of the Dove
  8. For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
  9. The Tholian Web
  10. Plato’s Stepchildren
  11. Wink of an Eye
  12. The Empath
  13. Elaan of Troyius
  14. Whom Gods Destroy

Please leave all comments at the Tor.com article. It makes them feel needed.

If this doesn’t permanently sour your appetite for all things Star Trek, we’ll see you again next week for The Mark of Gideon.” That ought to do it.

Word to your Vulcan.