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UTHOR at the International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts, which takes place each spring in Florida, USA. The conference theme that year was “Race in the Literature of the Fantastic. “ Other invited guests included Native American writer Owl Goingback, Chinese-American writer Laurence Yep, and Japanese science fiction scholar Takayuki Tatsumi. It was also the first year that more than a handful of the conference attendees were people of colour.
    I’d known since 2008 that I was going to be a Guest Author, and that I would have to speak to the conference theme during one the luncheons. And I’d been dreading it. Talking about difference and marginalisation in active science fiction community is rarely easy. 1 Although some of us are
people of colour and some of us non-Western, the community is dominated by white, middle-class people from the more “developed” nations of the Western world. Many of us are of an egalitarian bent, at least in principle. We are an intelligent, opinionated, and outspoken bunch. Many of us are geeks. We know too much about too many things that other people don’t care about. Many of us are socially awkward observers who often don’t quite get the hang of mainstream status signalling vis-à-vis dress codes, slanguage, mating rituals, and material possessions. We are often ridiculed by people who do understand those complex codes. We have created an active, passionate community centred on our love for science fiction and fantasy and devoted to the principle that no one should be singled out for being “different.“
    But principled does not de facto mean politicised. In practice, people in our community who try to talk about marginalisation are often seen as fomenting divisiveness. We become the problem. In this community, many of us will firmly call bullshit when we see it. But that doesn’t mean that our analysis is always informed, rigorous, or honest. Many of us come from backgrounds of relative privilege that we don’t perceive, and are ignorant of what daily life is like for those with less of that privilege (even keeping in mind that relative privilege is always contextual). Many of us don’t think beyond simplistic analyses of power that ignore systemic power imbalances in order to lay the blame on the victim. Just as much as the mainstream world, we are hierarchical. We can be dazzled by fame. Some of us are the cool kids and some are not.
    I’m told that when I originally gave this speech, some of the academics in the audience were offended that I used my time at the podium to discuss what they saw as an issue from the “fans” and therefore beneath them. In 2009, one of the
most far-reaching, paradigm-shifting (I fervently hope) community debates was burning up communications networks right beneath their noses, and they were proud of having been ignorant of it, and indignant that I would lump them in with fans.
    Active fannish community not only constitutes a significant and enthusiastic portion of our audience for science fiction and fantasy in all media, it is the community that organises, for love of the genre, the many annual conventions throughout the SF/F world which bring together artists and audiences to celebrate, share, debate, and critique the narratives of social and technological evolution in science fiction and fantasy stories.
    I love the science fiction community fiercely and I will call you to task if you ridicule it or dismiss it lightly. I have found friends, allies, and fellow travellers here, of many racial, class, and cultural backgrounds. I have found stories that entertained me, made me marvel, made me hopeful. But it is not a haven for the perfect meeting of like minds (thank heaven, because how dull would that be? Not to mention impossible). I speak not to belittle my community but to participate in it.
    It is common for science fiction and fantasy writers, most of whom are white, to say that they don’t write about people of colour