I wonder if the next five years of fantasy releases will have books that have a ‘token gay’ in the cast, just to make em’ more edgy. Makes me think of how Billy Dee Williams nearly turned down the part of Lando Calrissian in Empire Strikes Back for some reason. It’s a shame really.

“Should editors play a greater role in this? Should they be the ones to intervene in a story and point out a lack of variety?”

That way lies madness.

Ultimately, it’s your choice what you want to write, and no one should ever feel an imposition to pander to demographics they’re simply not interested in (so long as they’re not writing related non-fiction, obviously).

That said, it’s a fairly humbling, if not quite depressing, picture being painted. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why a lack of diversity is still the norm, except to put forward the notion that a lot of these guys are 40+, and grew up in a different generation to me and you. You and I. Whatever.

That’s a blanket stereotype, I confess, so even I wonder how much water it holds.

“Does is matter that more books don’t address minorities or gender equality?” Yes absolutely so. I’m female, and a minority, and I’ve wrestled with this (blogged about it here). I think it’s important to remember that what we leave out of our stories is as telling of our cultural values, as what we put in.

I’m encouraged by what’s been going on in the blogosphere, and I’m hopeful it will eventually trickle up to whomever really has the power to change things. I don’t know if it’s the readers, writers, publishers, or editors, that have the power. It might be a combination of all those elements.

A quick look at Wikipedia (I know, I know) doesn’t confirm the story I heard that he didn’t want to be the token black in SW:ESB (this was in 1980)… however the Wiki entry does say he auditioned for Han Solo. Can you imagine how freaking awesome that would have been? I love me some Harrison Ford, but Billy Dee Williams was one smooth talkin’ hustler back in the day.
Back on topic though… I realise I’ve made one of the characters in my story gay, and I need to ask some hard questions about whether it serves the story, does fit the personal story of that character, or have I, as you say, just accessorised the novel with a gay character to show how achingly progressive (Warning: sarcasm) I am.

I’ve not been able to stop thinking about this, as it’s a subject pretty dear to my heart.

I think my baseline presumption about the topic is a generally optimistic one. For my part, I reckon it’s a problem that’ll erode with the passage of time – as more (newer) writers rise to the fore, winning awards and becoming bestsellers, it’ll show that the landscape is already changing as a byproduct of the cultures those writers live in, rather than highlighting a need to force any kind of change by artificial “token gay guy” means.

My confidence in this comes from how much more accepted homosexuality has become in the last 20-30 years, as well as how much more prevalent the notion of sexual equality has become. Talk about a sea change, right? Now, when a government votes down gay marriage, they’re often seen as repressive and unfair by a wide swathe of the population, and that’s a sign of the times. Obviously, individualism counts for more than anything else, but people in their 20s and 30s are children of a different mindset to those in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

In short, as it’s become more common and natural for us to attribute sexism and homophobia as “something idiots and grandparents do”, the same attitude will eventually filter through to the genres, once those people in their 20s and 30s now are wielding widely published, massive back catalogues in the future.

In my humble opinion, time will tell.

A.

You know, reading all these blog posts has-once again-brought up feelings of anger, rebellion, and me wanting to wrap my hands around history and choke it.
As an African-American man, I tire of the majority of conservative white male Fantasy fiction and the underrepresented mixed Fantasy fiction. For this year’s Nebula, I’m happy that Nnedi and Jemisin are on that list, but did we really need to wait that long for African-American women to get on his list?
I agree with Jemisin’s thoughts on Fantasy fiction being a reflection on society yet, in my terms of today’s Modern Fantasy, I believe it reflects America than the world as a whole. Why else would Arabs be the enemy, Black people as the enemy, and the White man still a dominate factor?
I’ve never been one for sexual preference, as I really do not care what you love, but I’ve never given it consideration in the role of SFF. “Token Gay Guy?” First, why does he have to be “Token” and not normal like the conservative straight white man.
A bit of a rant, but a novel I’d been expecting, now released, has sent me into a state of confusion, despression, and anger. Why? Because the novel seems similiar to current American society and what I percieve of that through these eyes; a world dominated by White males.
That’s all I have to say, but in the end, Fantasy should be equal.

Given sci-fi often has inter-alien sex, i’m surprised that sexual orientation remains an issue in sci-fi – if anything it should have been the genre that allowed such things to be metaphorically explored in a time where it wasn’t “allowed”.

I think I tend to side with NK Jemesin on this one but it’s definitely a two way thing. Authors need to write the “non-standard” fantasy to see whether it can find a market. If it can’t find a market then it really isn’t the author’s fault (and by extension the traditional authors can’t be held as accountable). I’m sure that ten years ago people were complaining there wasn’t enough paranormal romance out there but it’s now a bestselling genre. So I guess what needs to happen is that a publisher takes a chance on a really good alternate take on a fantasy that then becomes a bestseller. If one of those things fail then it’s very hard for it to get a foothold as i suspect publishers aren’t inlined to risk the same thing twice.

Just wanted to clarify: I was speculating we may see a trend of writers who employ a ‘token gay’ in their cast of characters just to pay lip service to progressive SFF, rather than strip down the segregation that Hal so eloquently speaks about. The fact that very expression has the word ‘token’ in it flags up how false (or just hollow) the concept is.

As a straight, white would-be writer I think we need to be sensitive of how we portray these characters and don’t just think ‘oh, cool, I’ll totally make this character gay and then the marketing team will be able to say how amazingly progressive I am when the review copies go out.’ That’s a pretty extreme and brazen example of what I’m talking about, but you get my drift.

Anyway, I think Aaron summed it up best with:

“In short, as it’s become more common and natural for us to attribute sexism and homophobia as “something idiots and grandparents do”, the same attitude will eventually filter through to the genres, once those people in their 20s and 30s now are wielding widely published, massive back catalogues in the future.”

We can but hope, and sooner rather than later!

“Epic fantasy is dominated, if not by male authors, then by a “masculine” aestheticism, ethos, and structural focus (it’s “the hero’s journey”, not the heroine’s).” Well, there are still lots of hero’s journey stories where the hero is female. Suggest you look at http://www.clickok.co.uk/index4.html ; it’s not as male dominated as you think.

An intriguing discussion — and a fight in which I (a soon-to-be debut author with an Islamic-tinged epic fantasy on the way) have a big, slobbering dog.

A few points:

- I think we might get further if we break down the ‘epic fantasy’ of the OP into component parts. Do we mean readers? Editors? Writers? I think we come to pretty different conclusions re: the hypothesis depending on where our emphasis is.

I think there’s undeniably an editorial bias toward the conservative/’familiar’ right now, though happily not a universal one. When we were shopping my book, more than one editor explicitly mentioned that a quasi-Muslim epic fantasy would be a hard sell to fanboys. I’d like to give a shot out here to Betsy Wollheim at DAW, who bought both WHO FEARS DEATH and my trilogy in part BECAUSE they were doing something a bit different.

As far as writers go, I’ve been thrilled at the supportive response my own work has met with from other writers, even those who themselves write more traditional epic fantasy.

And as to readers… Well, I suppose the numbers will tell. To be continued, and all that rot.

- Re: Hal Duncan’s brilliant response. I agree with everything, except perhaps (and I truly mean ‘perhaps’, as I’m genuinely conflicted on this) the line “It’s a desire for integration, plain and simple — nothing more, nothing less.” I think one of the conflicts liberation movements have always faced has been the issue of equality vs. integration. They aren’t the same thing of course, and some rather brilliant writers from Malcolm X to Michael Warner (“The Trouble With Normal”) have made the argument that the former is much more worth fighting for than the latter…

Saladin: A very good point. I’m sort of collapsing nuance here, to be honest. For me there’s a distinction to be made between integration and assimilation, with the former as a practical project aimed at tackling specific mechanisms of separation that perpetuate abjection. I don’t see that as requiring the reconstruction of my queer identity a la assimilation, but rather aimed (ultimately) at changing the relationship between queer and normative.

Actually, I’m sort of with the radicals in so far as I see assimilation as compromise with inequality. Like, assimilation is faux integration where it parses to a bunch of accepted abject roles (GBF, Magic Negro) which basically mean “you can sit at the front of the bus if accompanying your master.” And it’s *still* faux integration if the queer (by whatever marker of deviance sets them as such) has to downplay difference, adopt a mask of normativity to be accepted. That means, “you can sit at the front of the bus if you’re in whiteface.”

So I can totally see where a queer politics might reject the focus on gay marriage in the present liberation struggle, for example, if the underlying thesis is that the “happily married gay couple” are sufficiently “normal” they can’t reasonably be denied the right of official validation of their relationship. “Their whiteface is *perfect*! Of course, they get to sit at the front!” It’s not equality, just an *exception* to the inequality; they’ve jumped through the right hoops, eschewed behaviours that signify deviance, assimilated. The basic relationship of inequity remains though, with the queer abjected by the normative. For me, that means it doesn’t actually count as integration.

Still, I can certainly appreciate contrary views here: that integrationism practically ends up as assimilationism; that it’s treating symptoms rather than root causes; and so on. I just thought it was worth clarifying that for me integration means unconditional inclusivity for the queer *as* queer. If that makes sense?