Saturday, May 4, 2019

Diverse Position Sci-Fi

There's a very colonialist theme in Dawn by Octavia Butler, and it's not subtle. The main protagonist is a black woman, whose family was lost years and years before the start of the book. She was kidnapped, but her captors claim they saved her. When the story starts out, she's imprisoned, isolated, confused, and she doesn't know why, or for how long. Kept alone until she's ready to face the alien race that took her away from Earth. The reason for all this? Integration. Much like Bloodchild, the extraterrestrial creatures use the unfortunate circumstances of the humans to their advantage, and while it may not be moral, or welcomed, the result seems to be in the best interest of both races.

There seems to be a trend of science fiction stories that take modern problems and expand them into the larger universe. Of course, any genre does this, but transcending the boundary of reality and universe gives the opportunity to present the problem in a new context. Sometimes, all an audience needs is a new viewpoint to understand the issue at hand. Sometimes.

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