Dr. Jamie-Lee Campbell, 02.10.2024
What do German Science Fiction authors write about? What about representation of diversity? What are their topics? Jamie-Lee Campbell has analyzed more than 150 short stories from 2023. Here are the results.
On the Metropol Con 2023 there was a discussion about the representation of diversity within the authors of speculative fiction. That inspired me to figure out a new additional perspective. Besides the important discussion about an increase of more own-voice authors, it also might be interesting to get an idea about the diversity of the characters within the stories itself. Not as a symbolical change of discussion, rather as an additional perspective on how important it is to face diversity on a regular basis. Therefore, a look on the diversity within the stories could also tell us something about our own narratives as individuals as well as the speculative-fiction community.
Since I’m a scientist and love to build evidence bases for discussions, I made an in-depth analysis about the diversity representation in more than 150 short stories (all published 2023) with almost 1.800 characters. Although these results only conclude science fiction short stories, the results might also shed some light about the other German speaking genres in speculative fiction without being generalized to them.
So, if you have ever asked yourself one of the following questions, you are very welcome to have a closer look on the long read attached.
- How is the distribution of female vs. male vs. non-binary (or diverse) characters within our stories?
- Is it true that there are much more male protagonists than female? And if yes how much more are there? And what about the antagonist?
- How has the representation of queerness (identity and sexual orientation) developed into causal queernes?
- How often do you come by a character with a cultural background other than German or Anglo-American? And are these always the bad asses? How many are BIPoC? How culturally diverse do we as a community write and what are these characters doing in the stories?
- Are there any characters facing intersectionality?
- Do the figures face different sort of racism and other discrimination between the pages?
- How far have we come with the conscious representation of mental health, health issues and disability?
- Might there be a kind of German favorites when it comes to certain illnesses?
I can assure you it is much more than that what you can find within and between the lines, tables and figures. This is the main reason for my analysis and the choir of it. So, I hope you enjoy the reading, and be inspired to discuss certain points of it. If yes, please feel free to share it, so that others can read it too.
Here is a short excerpt:
Science fiction (SF) tells narratives about possible futures in time and space, full of creativity, science, and unique solutions for old problems. With SF, we experience the yet unthinkable. In line with this, the characters are one essential ingredient for a good story, because we perceive the underlying ideas, unexplored worlds, and distinct societies through them. We accompany our heroes in their adventures, witness their development, cry, hate, love, and laugh with them, and sometimes miss them when we move on. We read their minds, save their memories, feel what they feel, or we observe their actions from a wider perspective. It’s through the characters’ eyes that we enter these worlds and figures, which makes them vivid and colorful. Because of this central role, I was curious to see, who are those characters that we follow in German SF?
You can read the full article as an PDF-File. Just open it with the link below.
