two points on the latest episode of stupid behavior among writers of science fiction

[lolaraincoat]

Okay, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, naraht has been saving up links here. Go browse.

So in my own browsing, I have come across two assertions that I know to be factually incorrect. Certainly other claims that are Wrong On The Internet have been made, but here are the two that I want to argue about.

Wrong Idea #1: "Until recently, all readers of genre fiction/visible fans of SFF have been white." No. That is a lie.

I joined my hometown's SF fan group in 1977, when I was 14, because my best friend invited me, which she did because her mom ran it. And neither of them were white. Most of the people who attended regularly were white, but not all. We were all happily reading and discussing the then-new SF dealing with race and/or gender - Delaney! LeGuin! Tiptree! Russ! My friend's mom took her and her older sister to Boskone every year (she took me too, a couple of times; she was a great mom to a lot of people to whom she was not related) so it's not like they were invisible - at least in the non-metaphorical sense - to the white fen who now are claiming that my friend and her family didn't exist. This claim about the whiteness of SF's Good Old Days is a flat-out lie, and an excuse for present-day racist speech or behavior based on this claim is no excuse at all.

Wrong Idea #2: Alternate Timestream stories

I actually meant to say something like this about Elisabeth Bear's pseudo-Elizabethean fantasy series, with apologies to friends who I know really liked the books, so now I will say it about them and about the premise for P. Wrede's new book (which I haven't read, sorry) as well: Please leave the past alone. Just make up crap about the future! You will keep the historians from rending their garments and smacking their foreheads! Thank you!

More specifically, Wrede's new book is based on the premise that in some other universe, our planet's history was basically the same except that 1. there was such a thing as magic and 2. the big animals of the Americas did not die out when the glaciers receded and 3. the Americas were never populated until Columbus arrived. And yet the story is set in a recognizable version of 19th-century Minneapolis. Well ... okay, if there was enough magic to do all the work of clearing the land that was, in our universe, accomplished by swidden agriculture practiced by native people in some places or by herds of large animals managed by native people in others. Buffalo, sheep, cows, goats: whether or not the animals came with Columbus, it was local people whose uses of them changed the landscape. And there would have to be enough magic to come up with a suitable replacement for manioc, the food staple invented by Andean people that right now provides more calories than any other food eaten in Africa, because I guess Wrede's story does include African slavery, and all those enslaved people had to eat, right? Whereas here in North America, we are as we have been for millenia the People of Corn, and so I guess magic would have to replace corn as well (since it was bred up in the Valley of Mexico by native people there.) And if there weren't pre-existing gold and silver mines, what would have motivated the Europeans to bother with conquest at all? They had been following the cod stocks across the north Atlantic for centuries before 1492 and never troubled themselves with settlement or exploration, after all.

The general point is that the past is more tightly woven together than you think, and no amount of "world-building" can salvage a project that starts with such sweeping assumptions but ends up in such a familiar place anyway. I'm not usually all that much of a materialist, as historians go, but jeeze, you can't just ignore the interconnectedness of everyone's material existence, either.

The best description of how dependent Europe was on the Americas, in material terms, and of the relationship between demographic catastrophe in the post-conquest Americas and changing forms of labor is still to be found in Alfred Crosby's sadly outdated The Colombian Exchange. (Just say no to Jared Diamond and that silly-ass 1491 book, all right? Thank you.)

eta I realize that I should have pointed out that the most important thing about Wrede's three assumptions is that she (fictively) erased all the peoples of the Americas, which is to put it very gently an erasure with uncomfortable relationship to the needs and desires of writers and readers who sit at the top of the racial hierarchy in the anglophone world, and would prefer not to have to notice that the hierarchy exists at all - much less that non-white people exist. But, um, you know all that already, right? and you know I know that. So.

Comments

[pauraque]

I never heard of this Wrede person before, and I wish I never had because holy shit. Who ever told this person it was acceptable to DO that? I'm not asking them to self-flaggelate over European conquest of the Americas, but is it too much to ask for them to not, you know, DO IT AGAIN?

[lolaraincoat]

I know! Jeeze!

It's saddening because some of my best internet friends have been fans of Wrede, of Bujold (her big supporter), and for that matter of Elizabeth Bear (who kicked off the first iteration of RaceFail '09.) And I am, and remain, a fan of Jo Walton's books, but her review of Wrede's book is where this whole mess started.

Also I am not in a good position to write about most of these authors because, Walton aside, I find them unreadable. But mileage varies, as we know ...

[pauraque]

Oh, I also wanted to ask, what's the story with the book 1491? I saw it at this store in Berkeley called Gathering Tribes, which is a native-owned shop that mostly has native art and stuff. I only looked at it for like a second, but I actually have it on hold at the library because it looked like it might be interesting. Should I not bother? :)

[lolaraincoat]

I haven't read it, mind you, so I can't say for sure. But the mention of it makes pretty much every specialist I know in pre-colonial or colonial history of the Americas roll their eyes, and I know a lot of those specialists. But, you know, your mileage may vary ...

[elgoose]

I had to read it for my first Latin American history class. I'd be interested in knowing why your colleagues roll their eyeballs. Two obvious answers, neither of which makes it a useless book:

1) it was written by a journalist, not a historian

2) it deals largely with the archaeological record and the politics of archaeology, which I get the sense not a lot of historians deal with.

The book had its problems, but its main point was that the history of civilization in the Americas pre-contact is a lot more complicated and hard to understand than most people are aware. Considering that that land bridge theory and blah blah that I was taught in fourth grade is still being taught, I think he has a point. Especially since that old-fashioned stuff seems to be informing Patricia Wrede's work, among others, which means it's all still out in the world, like mold spores.

1491 is not the greatest book, either. It's rather scattered and obviously written for a general audience. It was pretty good fodder for undergrad discussion, though, and it introduced a lot of information in a reasonably accessible manner. Because it was journalistic, it crossed disciplines shamelessly and even recklessly, but I guess you can't have everything. I don't have my copy here so I can't check this, but I do remember thinking that he played a little bit fast and loose with some of his discussions of biology.

Tell me, how do historians and archaeologists generally get along?

[lolaraincoat]

Wait, historians don't deal with archeology? That's an odd claim to make. I mean, I don't personally collaborate with archeologists, but then I study the past fifty years. The farther back you go, the more overlap between the fields there is. My pal the colonialist - I mean, she studies early Canada, not that she's conquering anyone - she hangs out with archeologists all the time, goes to their conferences and everything.

As to why the eyeball-rolling, see my response to Arch, downthread ...

[elgoose]

I saw your response to Arch after I posted this, but honestly, that doesn't seem like a substantive reason to dismiss the book, which is a journalistic attempt to synthesize and popularize ideas from a lot of different fields, not really an attempt to do what historians have already been doing for years. I guess it's partly a matter of popularizing already existent ideas for an audience which isn't already familiar with them.

The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it's anecdotal. YOu know a historian who is familiar with archaeology. The guy who wrote 1491 spoke at UC last year and his work was apparently a revelation to historians and archaeologists alike (at least as I remember it being described, I didn't go). One of the most interesting parts of the book had to do with the turf wars in archaeology, with so much fighting going on for so long to determine who gets to say what and be believed. It seems to me to be such a huge field that a historian involved with her own work would have a hard time acquiring more than a passing acquaintance with the field. And, as you say, if a person's work doesn't tend to coincide with the archaeological record, how likely is it that they'll stay abreast of it all or any part of it? That's what I meant by historians not dealing with archaeology. Considering that archaeologists can't even seem to agree on what the archaeological record means, it seems that historians would be getting the information at second remove (if not further).

Which, going back to the issue of P. Wrede, shows that it's no surprise that she's promulgating a use history and science that is about as sophisticated as a fourth grader's diorama of cave men. Should she have done more research and been smarter? Absolutely. If I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she did some (because isn't that what alt-history is all about?), then she rejected the complexity to tell a story stupidly. If she didn't do the research, bad too. Either way, she deserves all the shit that gets thrown at her over this one. Because, as you point out, the complexity of history cannot be ignored. If anything, 1491 does a reasonable layman's job of making that case and showing that the complexity is greater than is popularly known.

Also, I think Wrede's a Carleton alum. Oh, the shame.

[fledgist]

One of the more intriguing problems I've encountered has been the way that archaeology gets (a) integrated into the historiography of the post-colonial world and (b) done.

Some years ago, for example, I was told by one of the people who'd worked on a dig in Jamaica that they'd come across evidence that indicated that there was trade between pre-Columbian Jamaica and the Central American mainland. However, I've not seen that mentioned by any historians. I suspect there are reasons for this having to do with what historians of Jamaica are interested in, little of which has to do with the aboriginal population -- which is generally perceived to have been extinguished by the first European colonisers. There's also the problem of how and by whom archaeological research is funded.

[pauraque]

Thanks for your reply about the book. I did decide to read it, because as I'm not a historian, I'm the proper audience for it. I'm enjoying it so far. As you say, he's not claiming to be an expert or that anything he's saying is new or original research. He says at the outset that he's NOT an expert, but that he wants to share what he's learned from them, because that information has not been successfully disseminated to the general public. Which is true.

So, I guess I'd counter the expert eye-rolling with a question: What do they want out of a general-audience book about their field? Is there a better one written by someone in academia? If not, isn't that a bit of a failure on their collective part? Why *are* outdated things still believed? (Perhaps this is addressed somewhere in 1491 and I haven't gotten there.)

Don't get me wrong, I understand it's hard, as an expert, to read a general-interest book about your field. It's painful for me to read a beginners' explanation of something I am extremely knowledgeable about, because I know what a simplification it is. It's hard not to fall in the trap of rolling one's eyes about it, but how else is anyone supposed to learn? It's valid to learn a little about something; not everyone has to learn a lot.

(I replied to elgoose but it's directed at both of you, or anyone/everyone.)

[idlerat]

As a non-historian, I will actually second Lola's recommendation of Alfred Crosby. I read his Ecological Imperialism year's before Guns, Germs, and Steel, and it was a huge eye-opener for me (and almost suspiciously readable). I have not read or read about 1491, but the critiques I've seen of Jared Diamond are very squicky.

[pauraque]

Thanks, I'll check out Ecological Imperalism too.

Squicky in what way?

[idlerat]

I know that one of the places I got the impression that there was something reckless and racist going on was in this NYT article about organized objections to his work by archeologists, anthropologists, and historians:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/science/25diam.html?em&ex=1198731600&en=8d854ae725ab442f&ei=5087%0A

More recently, some people in New Guinea have sued him for libel because of an article he wrote in the New Yorker:

http://www.newser.com/article/d97nnpmg0/new-guinea-tribesmen-sue-author-jared-diamond-for-libel.html

[pauraque]

Interesting, I didn't know about some of the naysaying. I have read Guns, Germs, and Steel, but not Collapse. I can see what they're saying about taking such a vast view of human development as almost pre-ordained by ecological advantages or disadvantages. I'm trying to remember how the rise and fall of empires was explained when I was in school -- I think it was a lot more personality-driven the way they told it, attributing change to the brains and personalities of specific leaders.

There is kind of a tendency to see a lot of things in history as unique to the personalities that oversaw them. Like, when we say Edison invented the lightbulb, it's as though NO ONE ELSE could or would have done it. Usually not saying that in so many words, but sometimes actually doing so -- you know that meme about the inventions of African-Americans? Suggesting that if not for them, we wouldn't "have" the things invented by them. Which really I think is obviously incorrect -- someone else would have developed traffic lights. Just not at that moment.

Well, I'm rambling, but that's what comes to mind when I see that criticism of Diamond. Maybe Diamond is also taking it to an extreme and not giving individuals enough credit/discredit.