Sep 14, 2015

Because I write a lot of satire, I am no stranger to taking positions on political issues. They don’t usually come as close to home as the one I engaged with last week, though.

There was an article in the Toronto Star (Canada’s largest circulation daily newspaper) about a move at last weekend’s Fan Expo to promote safe cosplay. The article was a pretty good, if brief, overview of why it happened. I thought the briefness could use a little historical context, so I wrote a letter to the newspaper explaining that science fiction, which was once viewed as a bastion of nerdy white maleness, had been attempting to diversify its fan base over the last decade or two, and this was just one manifestation of that. I ended the letter applauding the diversity of fandom.

The letter was published, more or less in toto, yesterday.

For anybody familiar with my writing, this should come as no surprise. The main character of my first three novels is a black woman (based, loosely, on my Web Goddess). The main character in the novel I am currently working on is a lesbian (as, indeed, are most of the other people who work in her organization). And, of course, the whole premise of Both Sides. NOW! is that all of humanity becomes transgendered, not a group overrepresented in speculative fiction, or, for that matter, fiction generally.

I don’t consider myself a champion of diversity in my fiction, so don’t be casting that medal just yet: to be honest, I’m just sick to death of straight white male protagonists and want to read about a wider range of human experience. Characters of different ethnicities and sexual orientations are also just another manifestation of my desire (for good or ill for my career) to tell stories that other people aren’t telling.

Still, the impulse to celebrate diversity is there in my fiction for those who want to find it. And, it was nice to be able to carry it through, in this small way, into my life.