Introduction

Our theme is “Imagining Diverse Futures” to provide a focus that asks our zine creators to share their fears and their hopes. But it is not meant to be prescriptive—writers should say or do as they please for zines cannot be contained. To imagine is a radical act of freedom! "What if? is the heart of what sf is, and all one needs to ask to be doing it.

Science fiction is an aspirational literature. Zines arose out of science fiction. Both zines and sf bring “newness” to culture. We live in a turbulent era of disconnect; zines build community. SF, even in its dystopias, posits that there is a future for us.

The editors of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements explain that all Social Justice movements are sf because such movements imagine a world that does not yet exist:

“All Organizing is Science Fiction” (2015) by Adrienne Marie Brown

“Rewriting the Future Using Science Fiction to Re-Envision Social Justice,” Walidah Imasha

SF and Social Justice

“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.”--Octavia Butler

SF is a literature of “otherness,” focused on the unknowns of the universe, the future, and the alien. Sf is “good to think with,” a tool for thought experiments, giving a space for wondering or commenting on what seems to be the way things are...but not how they always have to be.

Feminist sf (emerging in the 1970s) and Afrofuturism (named in the 1990s but much older) have transformed science fiction from the inside and out since zines first appeared. Both movements are part of but also beyond science fiction, working as larger cultural movements for justice.

Other, newer movements beyond Afrofuturism and Feminism are also arising and seek Social Justice, including an emergent Latinx or “mundos alternos” movement, Silkpunk (which explores a particular kind of Asian-American sf), Indigenous Futurisms, Queer Futurisms, “Cli-Fi” or SF Climate Fiction, and more.

Below are relevant critical readings from voices speaking for some of these groups, explaining where they are coming from and what SF can do to frame questions and make a better world:

Octavia Butler, “The Monophobic Response” (1995). Butler’s brilliant, brief (two page!) essay on aliens and alienness in sf and the profound questions raised.

Samuel Delaney, “Racism in Science Fiction” (1998). Delaney, a Queer Black writer, examines his long history as a sf writer to confront the systematic racism of the genre he loves.

Jamie Broadnax, “What the Heck is Afrofuturism?” (2018) At the moment the first Black Panther movie provided a pop culture example of the form, the creator of Black Girl Nerds smartly explains Afrofuturism with some helpful inks.

Catherine S. Ramírez, “Afrofuturism/Chicanafuturism: Fictive Kin” (2008). Ramírez names the emergent Latinx sf movement, helps define it, and speaks to its roots in Afrofuturism.

Ernest Hogan, “Chicanonautica: Scenes from a Manifesto” (2015). Excerpts from Hogan’s manifesto on Chicano SF, from the author of the first Latinx sf novel, Cortez on Jupiter (1990).

Ken Liu, “Silkpunk: Redefining technology for The Grace of Kings” (2015). Ken Liu, award-winning author and translator, defines and describes his development of a unique Asian-based alternate history sf for his new series of novels.

Rebecca Roanhorse, “Postcards from the Apocalypse” (2018). A leading novelist of the emergent Indigenous Futurisms movement explains what the movement means to her and her work.

Ursula Le Guin, “Acceptance Speech at National Book Awards” (2014). SF writer and Feminist Ursula Le Guin exhorts sf writers to dream better futures in a recent influential speech.

A Final Note: We welcome creators focusing on such movements (and creating new ones!). But all “Zines to the Future” really seeks is that we leave the unexamined default monochrome future behind. (One has to wonder where all the people—the POC—went in those old sf stories? What terrible calamity stripped the world of its diversity? One fears, actually, that the writers of such works never even considered the problem and just assumed—and that assumption is the one we seek to leave in our wake as we sail into the future.) Any story or article, or what have you, in your zine that leaves that default behind fits the theme. Like a new kind of music that everyone should listen to? Have a book that everyone should read? You are advocating for newness—be a fan, or write your own story or poem. What stories need to be told? What poems await you to write them?

The theme, “Imagining Diverse Futures,” uses zines to give us a space to think ourselves forward into the future. That's it. What do you think?