Scalzi is the authorial mind behind the „Old Man’s War“ series, behind the award-winning „Redshirts“ and behind the „Lock In“ series. It is\u2026<\/b>
\nScalzi is the authorial mind behind the „Old Man’s War“ series, behind the award-winning „Redshirts“ and behind the „Lock In“ series. It is the upcoming release of the new entry in that canon, „Head On,“ that prompted Salon to reach out to him about his book.
Of course, given that this is 2018 and politics has intersected quite closely with popular culture \u2014 and especially considering that „Head On“ deals with a future world in which people with physical disabilities can interact with the rest of the world using sophisticated robots called „Threeps“ \u2014 our conversation meandered quite a bit. Delightfully so, if I may be so bold as to offer that observation.
In what ways does your book try to address contemporary issues involving disability right both directly and through metaphor?
Scalzi: Well, one of the things that I always acknowledge, particularly when dealing with disability issues is that as an able-bodied person, I\u2019m coming to it from a place of needing to learn and to have knowledge. So one of the things that I always do is I keep in touch with folks who I know are part of cultures where what are usually considered disabilities by outside folks who are part of their everyday lives \u2014 friends of mine who are deaf, friends of mine who have other mobility or other issues. So I spend a lot of time watching and listening. One of the things that I\u2019m always very careful to do is to make the point that what I\u2019m talking about with regard to Haden is informed by what I observe but it\u2019s not one-to-one. So I\u2019m very wary of trying to put myself in a position where I\u2019m saying, \u201cWell, I\u2019ve read a lot about disability and therefore I have the ability to speak about this.\u201d
At the same time, one of the things that I want to do is when talking about the Hadens who are a community that what would generally be classified as a community of disabled people, that way that I\u2019ve developed that, and the way that they interact with the world, and the way that the world interacts with them has some resemblance in the dynamic as it happens with folks who are in disability cultures at least particularly here in the US.
With that regard, one of the things that I\u2019ve always been upfront about with people is I know I\u2019m going to screw things up. Tell me where I screw so that the next time when I screw up, it\u2019s not the same as before. But the other thing that\u2019s been really gratifying is folks from various communities coming to me and saying, \u201cThese are the things that you\u2019ve gotten right and that\u2019s great. Here are some things for you to think about in the future when you\u2019re building this universe of folks who are interacting with the able-body universe and the able-body universe trying to incorporate them into its world.\u201d So in that sort of sense, I do think that there are some resonances simply because part of my job as a writer is to pay attention, but again I\u2019m always hesitant to make any proclamations and also warning people. It\u2019s like the world that I created, I created specifically for fiction. There are going to be some resonances, but I would be very careful about saying, \u201cYes, this is exactly what disability communities have to deal with on a day-to-day basis today.\u201d
I think that\u2019s a very humble and wise perspective. Seriously, I love the Socrates quote, \u201cThe key to being wise is to admit what you don\u2019t know.\u201d
Scalzi: Well, and I think of this as the important thing. I mean of the things that fiction in the general sense, and particularly I think speculative fiction has been going through over the last decade, especially is two things: The emergence of folks who were previously marginalized coming in to the mainstream and basically claiming their place at the table in speculative fiction.
The other thing is, kind of the flipside of that, the folks who had previously just assumed that they could write about others and to have that otherness not be criticized or their attempt at the otherness not to be criticized because they should get at the very least credit for trying, that doesn\u2019t fly anymore either. So what has happened are two things:
(1) We do get more authentic literature because you have more voices and it serves notice to the people who like me had the ability to sort of cruise on reputation and good intentions that reputation and good intentions aren\u2019t enough. You actually have to do research, and you have to be better, and you have to make sure that what you\u2019re doing not only speaks to people who don\u2019t know that culture, but speaks to the people who do know that culture. It can be tough sometimes because, speaking as a straight white man, I\u2019m used to being right all the time, or at least thinking that I\u2019m right, and not having a whole lot of people correct me.
The good news is that I have people who are willing to correct me and have been reasonably gentle about it so that my developmental curve has been fairly non-disruptive, I think is the best way to put it. I think it helps that people do recognize that I want to get things as right as possible and have been willing to help me with that rather than assuming I\u2019m going to be antagonistic to them or that they need to be antagonistic to me.
You mentioned having gender male privilege and in your book, you make a point of not specifying the gender of the character, FBI Agent Chris Shane. Have you received any backlash from you fan base for that decision?
Scalzi: Not backlash. I received lots of criticism and I think we need to be clear that criticism is not necessarily the same thing as backlash, right, because there are folks who are gender fluid, or who are trans, or who kind of feel agender and they are looking at the representation of this and they\u2019re like, \u201cDoes this actually work or does it not?\u201d There have been folks who are like, \u201cNo. We see what he\u2019s doing, but we don\u2019t think it quite works.\u201d…
Legitimate criticism that I am trying to specify that Chris has no gender or not no gender, but I don\u2019t reveal the gender in many ways. Because Chris is a Haden that gender issues are either mitigated or sort of shuffled off, but they made a very cogent point of, well, be that as it may, there are certain things that, for example, women have to go through just because they are women that it doesn\u2019t seem like Chris is going through. Even if you don\u2019t reveal gender, this person believed that because of the nature of how Chris moves with the world, it signals heavily that Chris is male and I think that\u2019s a reasonable criticism and interpretation.
Something that when I was writing „Head On,“ I tried to incorporate into my worldview while I was writing because as I\u2019ve said numerous times, even before I started writing Chris, I made the decision that I would not gender Chris, that I don\u2019t know what Chris\u2019 gender is or whether is Chris is male or Chris is female, whether Chris considers themselves agender or just doesn\u2019t care and its nobody\u2019s business, and folks have said things like, \u201cWell, wouldn\u2019t Chris\u2019 parents have had a gender reveal party, or something, or so on and so forth?\u201d My feeling about it is that they kept it private and after a certain point, they saw no point in letting other people know. But ultimately, there is criticism of the portrayal and I think criticism of that portrayal is absolutely fair in part because, again, I\u2019m writing from perspective of someone who very definitely does have gender, definitely moves through the world with all the pluses and minuses of his particular gender.
Again, criticism is not something to be scared of. Criticism is not something that you have to run away from or something that you have to defend yourself from. Again, if you don\u2019t have criticism, if you don\u2019t have people coming and saying hopefully in good faith but regardless, these are the things that you\u2019re trying to do and here\u2019s how I think you\u2019re getting them wrong. If you don\u2019t have those people, then basically you don\u2019t get the benefit of being able to try to improve what you\u2019re writing from there on.
I\u2019ve been fortunate that again by and large, the criticism has been\u2026 there hasn\u2019t been a huge amount of backlash, but there has been substantial criticism. I certainly welcome the criticism and I think it has the potential usually to make future work in that universe better.<\/p>\n

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