Whose Future Is It Anyway? Jess Maginity reviews Jordan S. Carroll’s “Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right.”

Los Angeles Review of Books ^ | November 12, 2024 | Jess Maginity

[Angelino97]

In the world of science fiction, this culture war has been evident in online forums, publications, and awards campaigning. The fight is for ownership of the genre.

In the mid-2010s, the Hugo awards served as the primary battlefield for this front of the culture war. A group of right-wing science fiction fans and creators calling themselves the Sad Puppies formed a voting bloc to advocate the return to the genre’s supposed roots: pulpy outer-space hero stories.

The Sad Puppies’ campaign was a populist one: they argued that elites, disparagingly referred to as “literati,” were pushing a political agenda and were silencing the true values of the people by presenting awards to more underrepresented authors whose stake in the genre was often, the Puppies insinuated, inauthentic. The Rabid Puppies emerged a few years into the Sad Puppies’ efforts.

As their name suggests, the Rabid Puppies were unapologetic in their misogyny, homophobia, and racism. Whereas the Sad Puppies wanted the Hugos to celebrate the science fiction they were nostalgic for, the Rabid Puppies wanted to burn the Hugos to the ground.

Why did a genre built around speculation and infinite possible futures spark such an impulse towards exclusivity?

In his new book, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, Jordan S. Carroll argues that the stakes of this cultural battlefield boil down to one question: who deserves to write the future?

[Steely Tom]

“The demand for racism far exceeds the supply.”

[sauropod]

The condescention fairly drips off of Jess’s prose.

[spankalib]

Jordan S. Carroll argues that the stakes of this cultural battlefield boil down to one question: who deserves to write the future?

What hogwash. The real question is:

Who decides who deserves "to write the future" (whatever that means!).

Leftists are always obscurantist (insert epithet here).

[Da Coyote]

LA Times?
Isn’t that a bunch of (ptui-ptui) “journalists”.
No one believes that crowd any more.
As for real science fiction, written by talented writers, no one reads the woke crap.

[Rurudyne]

And the need for “homophobia” likewise. Tolerance of their fetish is rampant even as they press harder for more perversion and even madness.

[PIF]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sad_Puppies

[TomEd]

My take on this question:

Futures for sale https://www.lewrockwell.com/2004/09/tom-smedley/futures-for-sale/

[Salgak]

I was one of the Sad Puppies.

[texas booster]

And who won?

I was an avid reader of pulp sci-fi. Started with swiping my Dad’s Analog magazines, and now roam the barren plains of Half Price Books searching for 70’s and 80’s books.

I used to get the “Year in Review” compilations, but saw that they had degenerated in to hopeless “proper” sci-fi, and couldn’t stand to read them.

[Salgak]

That depends on who you ask. The CHORFs will tell you that they won. Those of us who supported the Puppies will tell you that we won.

We proved the Emperor had no clothes, and that the Hugo and Worldcon were increasingly irrelevant. That it had been rigged for years...(and what is it with Leftists,that they constantly find it necessary to rig elections ?). Fandom now looks to DragonCon and the Dragon Awards.. .