SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Trying for the third time.

this is an interesting study on Classism in SciFi books. I ran across a synopsis on Slate here:

https://boingboing.net/2022/04/13/ana...

and then went to the full article that's linked at the bottom of the post

the conclusion is that "there are demonstrably more upper-class and wealthy characters than middle class and below in notable works of science fiction."

Andre Norton must have been a contrarian because a good percentage of her protagonists were originally poor kids

well, I guess it's the link to the real article that's blocked but I'll try it again

https://vector-bsfa.com/2022/03/30/jo...

The links work for me. Thanks for posting them.

My initial reaction was 'of course there's a class bias towards the wealthy in sff' so it's nice to have some supporting material for that stance. The obsession with wealthy individuals is one of the many reasons I dislike books such as Station Eleven, but enjoy World War Z. Max Brooks makes a point of focusing on people that have usable skills in a post apocalyptic setting rather than those able to pay others for the use of theirs.

On a related note, a conversation with Allison about her love of amateur sleuthing stories touched on protagonists who are sold to us in the blurb as doing some menial job but within a couple of chapters they're off doing things that they really shouldn't have the resources to do. That's my round about way in saying that even when given a working class character the job is often jettisoned to provide a plot. It's infuriatingly lazy and unimaginative.

it was the second link that kept killing the initial post for some reason

I wonder if the same would hold true for Fantasy books?

Fantasy books should be worse considering how many tales there are of monarchies, but then it does have a large number of stories where children are taken from squalor due to the discovery of a special, often magical, talent.

Does thievery count as working class?

I’m with Ryan that it seems a no-brainer that the main characters in SF novels are more often upper-class to wealthy.

I don’t think this is necessarily an SF phenomenon. It’s only been in recent (20+?) years that stories relating what real life is like for people at all levels of income have been published.

Thank you for the link to the article. I skimmed it, but plan on reading it more thoroughly when I have a moment.

I think the worst offender of the wealthy archetype sci-fi character is probably superhero fiction/graphic novels/comics. Some come from humble beginning like Superman. Daredevil is a small-time lawyer. But you have the Bruce Waynes, the Tony Starks. It's almost expected in superhero SF that the protagonist will be a billionaire able to afford all their superhero toys.

On the opposite end, IMO, is cyberpunk. The protagonist is usually an anti-hero, or a criminal, disaffected from society and fighting against large wealthy mega-corporations. The readers are usually thrust into characters who move through impoverished areas of megacities where the protag lives amidst crime and criminals.

Somewhere in the middle might be The Expanse.

What might skew some of the female Vs male writers is science fiction has gender bias toward male writers and male characters. I know female writers who have male pen names, but this is probably a more recent phenomenon, with a few exceptions like James Tiptree Jr. aka Alice Sheldon or maybe CJ Cherryh (but I think most people knew she was a woman).

the article goes into the gender bias and the gender of the authors as well. I wasn't aware that Cherryh was a woman until fairly recently but it didn't matter to me.

hey Al, we do not allow talking about books we're writing in any capacity outside the gr authors folder. I really like the rest of your comment and don't want to delete it, so I would appreciate if you could edit! thanks!

Allison wrote: "hey Al, we do not allow talking about books we're writing in any capacity outside the gr authors folder. I really like the rest of your comment and don't want to delete it, so I would appreciate if..."

Done! Apologies. I don't often post on the community forums and should probably take a moment to read posting rules.

many thanks! interesting too, I'm trying to think of cyberpunk books I've read. they still feel mostly white collar to me but maybe I read only the snobby criminal books haha

I think there needs to be a complete list of books she analyzed: columns: book, character, job, etc. She only mentions a few titles.
Also, I looked at the jobs and there was not one 'teacher.' This important profession is definitely underrepresented. :)

"Still, it looks like regardless of gender, authors are more likely to be in the upper-middle class, just like their characters."

Interesting--reminds me of what I've seen in STEM hiring, managers (quite often white and male) recruiting new hires who match what they see in the mirror.

It would not necessarily apply to fantasy either. Take Stephen King, a sub-section unto himself. His protagonists, the ones I've read, are underdogs. He represents a huge number of books.

I like a spread of characters across society in a book, and hopefully its's not too much of a tome. :)

The books they analysed are listed in the dataset linked at the end.

https://osf.io/ptqys/

M.L. wrote: "It would not necessarily apply to fantasy either. Take Stephen King, a sub-section unto himself. His protagonists, the ones I've read, are underdogs. He represents a huge number of books."

That's one of the cool things about this project though. If asked before reading this article, "What social class do you think a typical SF protag falls into?" I would have answered, "Middle, I guess?" There could be some surprises in a fantasy list too. (I'd be interested in seeing how many instances of literate protags existed, who were not scribes or religous clerics)

What would be interesting, and a deeper, reader-type dive, would be to analyze this group's monthly reads (by someone who of course has read them), for, say, two years (or more), and list the jobs of the MCs - and see if the results match. ;)

By the way, the reason this is interesting to me is that Stephen King said people love reading about 'work,' the kind of jobs people do. He mentioned it in the context of his book 11/23/1963 and the character was a teacher.

M.L. wrote: "By the way, the reason this is interesting to me is that Stephen King said people love reading about 'work,' the kind of jobs people do. He mentioned it in the context of his book 11/23/1963 and th..."

As mentioned above he does typically write about blue collar MCs. There are exceptions, of course, but he does seem to remember very vividly what it was to live paycheck to paycheck.

As a reader, as much as I enjoy that, I also understand a writer's tendency to get rid of money as a stumbling block. If the book is written well enough that the lack of reality in regards to finance doesn't take me out of the story, I'm okay with that. On the other hand, I hate when an MC is described as blue collar and their job given, but then to propel the story they are on the go and clearly NOT working for weeks on end. Who is paying for that???

Vibbert mentions that in the article, too. Access to travel was a part of her classification scheme: “No Visible Means of Support” is frequently listed as wealthy, because the character does expensive things (usually travel) without concern for cost.

Project Hail Mary features a teacher, a scientist, and a "no consideration of expenses" main character, all rolled up into one! Though to be fair, all are explained in the story and have reasonable explanations. (Though YMMV on "reasonable". :P)

When I looked back through the books that I categorized as SF most recently, Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah was the most recent one I read. It's a collection of stories, all set in a near-future world, and class and race and employment (or lack thereof) are BIG factors in nearly every story. And that made me further think about other stories by I've read by BIPOC writers and how the characters in their stories seem to generally have more real-world struggles and realistic issues - though I have read very little SF in this area to compare with non-SF books.

Anyway, these thoughts led me to wonder whether the author's race would play a role in the characters they choose to write and how they present their society and story in SF, (I think it absolutely does) but that doesn't seem to be mentioned at all in the article.