SF - other planets heard from

kw: book reviews, science fiction, short stories, marginalized groups, anthologies

I need to preface a review of A People's Future of the United States, edited by Victor LaValle and Joseph Adams, with a brief statistical excursion. I begin with a concept I first read about in "The Outsiders" by Grady Towers, who was writing about IQ and social acceptance. First, a look at the Normal Curve, a graphical representation of how much some quantity varies around an average called the Mean. It is also called the Gaussian Distribution:

The symbol µ ("mu") refers to the Mean, the arithmetical average, and σ ("sigma") refers to Standard Deviation, a calculated  measure of how spread out the distribution is.

The Normal Curve is an ideal frequency chart of any quantity that is composed of additive influences, such as adult height (either for males or females, but not both together).

Where σ is small, a distribution is tightly clustered. Thus, for example, in the U.S., including all the genetic diversity of various populations, µ and σ are 70" and 4", respectively, for men and 65" and 3.5", respectively, for women. Thus, out of 10,000 men, chosen by some randomizing method (many giant books in statistics discuss just what methods of randomization work best!), about 9,972 will be between 58" and 82" tall; out of a sample of 10,000 women, about 9,972 will be between 54.5" and 75.5" tall. For both men and women, a very tiny minority, roughly 14 at each end, will be taller than these maxima, or shorter than these minima. The smaller σ for women's heights indicates that the distribution is a little more tightly clustered.

Considering that 82" is "only" 6'-10", we see that men with heights of seven feet and greater are very rare. The NBA selects for these extreme ones!

When applied to IQ, the curve was standardized a century ago with µ and σ set at 100 and 15, respectively. Thus a "three-sigma" high IQ is 145, and only about 14 out of 10,000 persons have an IQ that high. Grady Towers investigated the results of social isolation on persons having IQ's ranging from 140 to 180. Only one person in a million has an IQ greater than 180. He added a sociological observation, which I'll paraphrase thus:

Two people whose IQ differs by more than 30 points (2σ) will have difficulty communicating, and will have different interests.

The central band in the chart above represents the 2/3 of everyone whom we might consider "normal folks". Someone with an IQ of 145 will just barely be able to hold a conversation with people at the smarter end of "normal", but with anyone further over toward the "low IQ" end, which is a total of about 84% of the human race, it is rather hard, and gets harder the greater the difference is. Similarly, someone with a very low IQ of 55 will also be just barely able to converse with more "normal" people.

Grady Towers generalized this to other areas. Along any spectrum of human experience or understanding, there are about seven "positions". Using a modified curve to illustrate:

Section C represents just over 2/3 of us, who could be considered "centrist", whether the issue is political opinion, employability, or attitudes toward the issues of the day. Sections B and D represent smaller cohorts with more one-sided views or experiences, but they are able to communicate or empathize with those in section C, and to some extent, each with the other. Sections A and E represent extremists, typically only a couple of percent each, and the Fringes, AA and EE, are the tiny number of those with extremely rare experiences or attitudes at either end of the spectrum. For example, if this is a spectrum of employability, I am not sure what EE might represent, but everyone from about the middle of section B through E and EE ought to be able to find work whenever the unemployment rate is less than 6%. That rate has to drop to about 2% before anyone in sections AA and A, the "chronically unemployable" will be able to find steady work.

Let's take a different example, a sadly practical one, abortion-on-demand. Where the spectrum is one of opinion, and the issue is contentious, sections AA and EE take on special meaning. Statements that represent views in each section might be (first for A through E):

A - "We must vigorously fight for a woman's right to an abortion for any reason."
B - "A woman has a right to get an abortion."
C - "I say, live and let live. I do/don't like it, but it ought not be legislated."
D - "There should be legal restrictions on abortions; they shouldn't be done for just any reason."
E - "We must vigorously fight for legislation banning abortion for any reason."

Concerning section E, I have recently read of a number of doctors who contend that abortion is "never medically necessary". That's a different wrinkle, and maybe those doctors are in the EE section. In A and E above, "fight" is seen as a combination of lobbying and protest for or against an issue. As we have witnessed in recent years, Fringes AA and EE are willing to kill to "support" their viewpoint. Interestingly, on this issue, I haven't heard of anyone willing to die for it.

A similar spectrum, not so clearly defined, was presented to me in a Civics class about 50 years ago, when the meanings of the following terms were not the same as they are today:

Radical - Liberal - Moderate - Conservative - Reactionary, with the fringes, again, being those willing to take action, including killing. Remember Congressman Steve Scalise, who was shot by James Hodgkinson a few years ago, simply because the Congressman supported "conservative" issues that the Mr. Hodgkinson was rabidly against.

Now, how does all this apply to People's Future of the U.S.? The scale above can also be applied to xenophobia and our attitudes toward various "marginalized groups." This is the era of the victim, and equally, the era of expressing outrage, in a way much sharper than the protests of "the 60's", which ran from 1967-1975. Occasional news pundits decry the "polarization" of America, but much of America is actually fragmented, and more closely resembles the Italian Parliament, with dozens of special-interest groups vying for the public ear and for votes: I count at least 55 political "parties" in Italy, with new ones popping up and others vanishing, almost weekly.

The writers of the stories in this anthology are primarily members of, or strongly sympathetic to, the "special interest groups" among the American public who produce or provoke the loudest voices against the status quo. Many of the stories express their fear of what the country might become in the next few years or so. One even bases its drama on a turn in legislation to revoke the 13th Amendment and resume slavery.

Those who have more-or-less recently received more official protection, particularly the variously gendered and some immigrant groups, are still fearful of losing the rights so recently gained. Thus, nearly all the stories are post-Apocalyptic dystopian tales, with varying amounts of optimism. A number of them posit a kind of right-wing takeover, reversing all the social changes of the past six or seven decades, from the sexual revolution to the legalization of various recreational drugs.

Two of the stories are extra-hopeful, "The Wall" by Liz Huerta and "Harmony" by Seanan McGuire. The first, with the background of the US-Mexican border being thoroughly walled-up, has people escaping repression to enter Mexico, and Mexican scientists working on countermeasures or an antidote to a new kind of chemically-induced brainwashing of US soldiers (by the Pentagon). They seek to, I would say, "de-monsterify" them. In the second, people who still find themselves subtly marginalized escape a "perfect" utopian paradise, manage to buy a defunct town, and start over with a whole lot less conformity. I detected shades of "And Then There Were None" by E.F. Russell.

Six stories aren't in a realm I'd call science fiction, but are wish-fulfillment fantasies. However, two of them—"Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death" by N.K. Jemisin and "What You Sow" by Kai Cheng Thom—involve dragons, from quite different points of view.

I have mentioned before that I read to learn what and how people think. I believe that far too few people who fall into the "C" section of most social, political, and societal spectra have even the slightest care about what the "non-C" sections experience or think. I admit that some of the stories made me uncomfortable, but I count that a good thing. Just so y'know: Politically I am in section D, close to the boundary with C. In most social realms I fit in about the same. If IQ has any meaning, I am in section EE, but I've worked hard to counteract the "Outsider Effect" of Grady Towers' monograph, so that I can relate to a broader range of people.

I exhort folks of all sorts: Read this collection. It may open a few eyes. Are the scenarios exaggerated? Sometimes, but so what? The pain from which they arose is real enough, real enough indeed.