IDIC and the problem with gatekeepers
When I started writing what I loved (science fiction) in about 2007, I didn’t have the impression that science fiction was US-centric. In fact, I thought that science fiction was like Star Trek’s philosophy of IDIC. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Wasn’t science fiction supposed to be like that? I mean, I did submit stories before and one even got published. That was in 2000, when I was fresh out of university, armed with a postgraduate degree. So, when I started writing in 2007, I thought it was still peachy, and a writer like me — a writer from Southeast Asia — would be easily accepted. My steampunk story “A Matter of Possession” was published by Crossed Genres in 2010 in their issue on alternate history. It was my first entry into an interesting scene (I couldn’t use ‘community’ — didn’t feel much of it, though). I realized, to my shock, that people like me, people living outside the United States, had (still have) difficulty getting their stories published. The gatekeepers of serious science fiction were standing at the gate and barring entry to those trying to find their way in. Often, the accepted stories were written by white men. I wondered who made the gatekeepers gatekeepers? Who had set the rules and regulations? Is science fiction going to be a pub where unwanted and unwelcome folk are kept outside the window, desperately staring in while the accepted cliques mingle, laugh and have fun? Who chooses who will write our future(s)?
