Top Ten List of Things/People Who Should be in the Next Star Wars Movie

We've been challenged (again!) this week to share our thoughts as to what should be in the next Star Wars movie. Although I've seen the movies and read a few books, it's been a long time since I've done either, and I'm not sure anymore what's canon and what isn't. Also, I'm not going to write scenes as Briane did so well, because, of course, who can follow Briane? So, instead, here's my Top Ten List of Things/People Who Should be in the Next Star Wars Movie:

10. A new villain/villains: Specifically, I propose they create a race of energy beings that can counter the Force, or even feed on the Force's energy. Let's call them Chlordivores for now. Perhaps they can even possess flesh-and-blood beings in pursuit of their goal. I think such a race will shake up the Jedis and give them a real challenge.

9. Ghosts of Jedis: Have a scene where Yoda, Obi-wan, and even Darth Vader (still a much more impressive name than "Anakinn") battle the Chlordivores.

8. Betty White as a Jedi mentor:

(I have no idea who originally created this image, which I found on Pinterest.)


7. New weapons: Sure, the lightsaber is awesome, but will they work on these energy beings? How about a weapon that can drain energy from the Chlordivores? Alternatively, we need a way to trap them.

Then again, something like this would be cool too:



6. New planets: For starters, maybe they should design planets that have more than one type of climate. As for what I'd like to see, perhaps settings underwater, or worlds sustained by UV light instead of the visible spectrum. The latter might be hard to film since it would be so dark, but maybe you could use bioluminesence as a light source.

5. New aliens/artificial life forms: I won't go into designing these here; I need to save some ideas for my own work.

4. Characters from the first six movies: Luke, Leia, and Han are obvious choices, even if they're older. R2-D2 and C3PO as well should come along for the ride.

3. The next generation: I remember reading in Timothy Zahn's books that Han and Leia had twins; I think they were a boy and a girl. What are they up to now? What are their skills? And did Luke ever have kids? Gotta pass on those midichlorians, after all.

2. The family black sheep: Maybe one of the kids has no talent for the Force, or maybe he/she wants to do something else with his/her life, something the older generation might disapprove of--until it turns out this talent or skill is the only way to defeat the Chlordivores. I want a protagonist who's complex enough to develop over a movie or three.

1. More named female characters: It's about time this franchise tries to pass the Bechdel test.

What do you want to see in the next Star Wars trilogy?

Five Reasons Why Diversity Matters in SF

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, we've been talking about diversity in science fiction/fantasy this week. Why is this so important? Here are five reasons:

1. To challenge the tropes. Stereotypes such as the passive damsel in distress subconsciously teach women that this type of behavior on their part is expected, even preferred. But why should women always be weak or men never show emotions? That's not healthy for either gender. Everyone, no matter what your gender, race, sexual orientation, physical abilities, or favorite Beatle is, should be allowed to be himself or herself and not confined to a narrow range of behaviors.

2. So other people can see themselves in the genre. Speculative fiction may not be the best-selling book genre, but it does do well at the movies. However, movies are often targeted to adolescent males. Why not broaden the appeal by including many different types of people in these stories? If you look at cosplaying, you'll see that some popular characters can be reimagined as a different character or race without losing their essence. (Unfortunately, not everyone believes a black cosplayer can/should dress as a white character; please check out the link. I was tempted to post some of Chaka's images here, but I won't to respect her copyright.)

3. To reflect the real world. By the middle of this century, whites/Caucasians are predicted to be a minority. Therefore, when I write about the future, I feel the need to show a diverse range of ethnic groups. For example, in Twinned Universes, Paul's best friend and romantic interest are both part black, the leader of the time travelers is Hispanic, Sean's wife and son are Filipino, Julia Kee from TwenCen Earth is Navajo, and so on. Although Paul as Sean's clone is 100% Irish, his sister is part Filipino and Native American, although those ancestors are several generations back and play more of a role psychologically than genetically. It is a bit ironic that I wound up with a white male as the main character, though Scott does counter tropes by referring to Paul as his magical white friend.

4. To learn about others. Although Paul is the main character of Twinned Universes,the next book in the series will feature Julia instead. I have been researching the Navajo culture and the Navajo Nation to prepare for writing from her perspective. (She would refer to herself as Dine, with an accent on the "e.") I've learned a lot, but it is a bit intimidating trying to learn about the Navajo language (which I'm not sure I can write accurately). It would be great if I knew someone I could interview about this culture, but you can't expect one person to represent an entire culture either. In the end, I will have to do the best I can with what resources I can access.

5. To develop empathy. I recently read The Golden Theme, which emphasizes that despite our diversity, we are all still the same in our wants and our needs. That's what makes us human, and that's what allows us to develop empathy for someone else. Reading is one of the best ways to immerse yourself in someone else's world. As authors and as readers, let's keep spreading empathy. I have a dream that that is one way to make Dr. Martin Luther King's Promised Land a reality.

Let's Celebrate How Far We've Come... By Doing Better!

So, it's Martin Luther King week. And as such, it's an opportunity to discuss the topic of diversity in fiction. That's something I've had to stop and take a deep breath about before I started typing a bunch of words about. For once, I decided to think about something first... then type.

Once, in my youth, I took a college history class in which I had to, among other things, write a story from the POV of a young black girl in the south during Dr King's, I have a dream, speech.

Doing so was an opportunity for me watch the speech in its entirety for the first time, not just the famous part, and to do some research into the cultural and political scene of the country of the time. I interviewed an elderly gentleman that was a young man during the 60's, and told me his personal experiences. They horrified me to the core.

People are so mean. I couldn't understand how someone that went through so much suffering could still be such a well adjusted, happy man.  For folks like me, people who most closely associate the world and its attitudes with the 80's going forward (despite living through most of the 70's, I don't think I had an awareness of much of the larger world until the 80's), it was a disturbing to think that the world was a radically different place only 20 years prior.

What happened, I think, is that white folks stood around, looked at each other, and said, "Well, I guess we don't get to racist anymore," and then carried on. And so the violent, aggressive, openly hostile acts of racism mostly stopped.

But just because you no longer have the freedom to tie a man to the bumper of your car and drag him down the road until he dies any longer, didn't change the underlying superiority complex a lot of people dealt with at the time. It just made racism a bit more... well, passive.

People who were denied education, training, access to information, whatever else you can imagine, were now told the world wasn't racist anymore, but that they didn't have the proper education, training, or experience to take on the jobs they were applying for. So, we have to give those jobs to white people now. Again, not racist, they swear it isn't.

And on and on it went. So today, when people look at diversity in SF&F it isn't just about race, it's about gender too. Well, it turns out that SF&F has traditionally been a equal opportunity discriminator. It used to be the case that a woman wanting to write in genre had write under a male pen name to be taken seriously. James Tiptree jr, for example, one of the greatest SF writers of all time, was, after all, secretly, a lady named Alice.

I, for one, and happy that all that is behind us. And as I've always considered myself a pretty forward thinking fella. I guess that means you'd be able to see that in my reading choices too. To prove it, I took a picture of my tbr pile here in my office.

Aside for a few things there, it's mostly books I'm intending to read*. The LOTR dvd's are there because my wife put them there, no explanation given. The graphic novels are mostly already read. But the books there, that's what I wanted to look at. How many there are written by minorities and women?

Well, I took some numbers down. Here they are:

Number of books: 102
Fiction Books: 95
SF&F Books: 92
Number of SF&F Books Written by Women: 5
Latino: 1
African-American: 0

Huh... That doesn't speak so well to me, does it? It's long since been discussed that the SF&F community is underrepresented by women and minorities. But this is stunning. I pulled one of those books off my shelf because the author had initials listed as their author name, and I wasn't sure of the gender. I saw the photo here on the back page.

So, I guess it's probably not a woman. Unless the cat wrote the book, and the man is just there because he had to hold the cat.

So, as a reader, it's up to me to seek out a more diverse set of authors to read from. I will read more. I've heard amazing things about Nnedi Okarafor, Samuel Delany, and the deceased Octavia E. Butler.

As a writer, I pledge to do better. To make sure my characters are more diverse. Because the whole world isn't a bunch of middle aged white dudes. And that means not just making someone as a stand in for a whole ethnic community either, I mean to have characters that are well rounded individuals that just happen to not be white dudes. I need to start expanding those horizons, so to speak.

The complaint I've heard, and disheartens me the most, is that some US minorities have dismissed SF&F out of hand because it's perceived as a white man's club. Who knows what child that could have been of of the great contributors of all time to the field decided that they weren't allowed to because it was a place they weren't welcome.

*In my defense, my kindle tbr pile is much better. That the bulk of my physical books are from traditional publishers, and mostly from the big 5, probably has something to do with that disparity. Although I still take it upon myself as being ultimately responsible for what I read.

How Diverse Are You?

I first really got into science fiction and fantasy when I was in middle school. A friend of mine gave me a copy of Split Infinity by Piers Anthony for my birthday, and I just went from there. [I had stayed away from fantasy before that because, any time I got any book with magic in it (other than the Narnia books),  my dad would throw it away. Perhaps because it was a birthday present, no one took it from me. Or, maybe, it was because I didn't advertise it. Anyway, this isn't about what I was "allowed" to read when I was a kid.] Thinking back on it, now, basically everything I read was... well, it was "white." In fact, the only sci-fi/fantasy books I can think of that I read back then with a non-white lead was Bio of a Space Tyrant by Piers Anthony (because I spent years reading everything that Anthony wrote).

Not that it's really a sci-fi/fantasy problem; it's just a book problem. Or, at least, an American book problem. Or, maybe, a Western book problem. And there's plenty written about the lack of diversity in literature, so I'm not really going to get into that. It's a huge problem with no easy answer, except, hopefully, now that publishing has more options, we can hope that a more diverse body of writers begins to develop.

That said, the whole question of diversity, this being the day after MLK Day, made me think about diversity in my own work. I mean, I'm a white dude which, when it comes to books, is about the least diverse you can get. Okay, not "about the least;" it is the least. Going back to Piers Anthony: the guy's written something like 150 novels but only a handful have significant non-white characters (at least up to the point that I stopped reading him) and, actually, that's probably pretty good.

Honestly, before this topic came up in one of our IWM discussions, I hadn't given much thought to how diverse I am in my writing, but, after thinking about it, I'm not displeased.

Tib, in Shadow Spinner, is bi-racial.

His father is, well, you should just read "The Evil That Men Do" to find that out. I wouldn't want to throw out any spoilers. Not that I tried to write him "racially;" I wrote him as a kid struggling with the kinds of things that kids struggle with, and his issues are not race issues; their being different issues, which, I suppose, most kids feel that they are at some point or another. Basically, I didn't make the race thing an issue; it's just something that is. It was just... natural.

However, when I wrote "Christmas on the Corner," there was more premeditation about racial ideas. Not that I was trying to be racially diverse; I just thought back to my own childhood and growing up in the South and decided that I wanted Sam's best friend to be black. Having black friends was normal to me when I was a kid... right up until almost middle school when I wanted to bring one of my friends, who happened to be black, to church with me, and my mother wouldn't let me. [It wasn't, I don't think, because of any prejudice of her own that she wouldn't let me, because she had never said or done anything about me having black friends (in fact, the only friends she ever protested where the other "smart kids" I was friends with, because they were "weird"). She was worried how people would react at our all-white church.] Since House is set in the South, I wanted to be able to explore race issues, so Sam's best friend is black.

All of that said, I don't recommend throwing in diversity for the sake of diversity; that smacks of trying to hard. If I had been thinking, "I need to be racially diverse, here," I probably would have messed it all up, but, as it is, I think it all comes off pretty natural. It has to be something that's there without "being there." It has to be there without calling attention to itself. Probably, the best way to accomplish that in writing is to be more diverse as a person. That sounds like a pretty good goal to me.