Guest Author: Imagining Futures that Truly Reflect Our Reality, by K.B. Wagers

I’ll be honest, this mostly came about because I was sick to death of reading books about white men. I did a lot of that in my early years, and when I didn’t know any better, it was entertaining. These days, with a lot of things clamoring for my limited time, I’m super picky about what I read. I still do read those kinds of books on occasion, but it has to be really good.
However, I didn’t start out with the idea that the book would be set in a futuristic Indian culture. Hail just announced herself that way in my head when she showed up. Previous to starting the story, I’d read and enjoyed the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as well as works by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Manil Suri. I’ve always enjoyed Indian culture (sometimes a bit too much, being ridiculously appropriative before I knew better) and really wanted to do something different with the characters in Behind the Throne than I’d done with the other books I’d written.

It’s fascinating to me that we see so many science fiction stories about humanity moving out into the stars, but they’re so white-centric, it’s painful to read. As though we can’t conceive of the fact that a population of over a billion people with a space program of their own wouldn’t eventually make their way out into space.
As the story grew and changed, I realized I wanted the same feel as the epics and started to work on the setting of the book as much as the characters involved. I confess—and my writing partners will back me up—that sometimes this is a challenge for me. I could write a story that took place in a blank room and never blink an eye because I tend to get very focused on my characters rather than what’s going on around them. However, readers (myself included) like settings and backgrounds, and I didn’t want to write a story where humanity moved out into the stars and suddenly decided to build homes and cities without any hint of their culture to be found within or without.

Since the beginning of time humans have decorated their homes: painting cave walls, building statues, making pots and tools both for utility and for beauty. At some point along the way, science fiction started leaning toward the idea of sterile white walls and steel buildings. We’re seeing a good swing back in the other direction now with worlds that are rich in culture and tradition even though they’re set thousands of years in the future.
And this is something that needs to happen. There’s a massive deficit in the entertainment industry and specifically in publishing for characters of color, but the voices asking for — demanding — these characters are not silent. And the art is happening even if some of the bigger players continue to refuse to acknowledge it.
Women of color in particular are extremely underrepresented and we are all the poorer for it. They have been relegated to sidekicks and secondary characters, if they even appear at all. It’s time for people to step out of their comfort zone and start supporting works that show the diversity of the world we live in instead of the singular, narrow view that’s been at the forefront all these years.

I’m in complete support of movements like #ownvoices (started by author Corinne Duyvis) and think those should always be the priority. Stories like Sara Kuhn’s Heroine Complex, S.B. Divya’s RunTime, and recent Hugo-winner N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms are great examples of this, and we need more of them out in the world.
For my part, I want to be very careful in my writing and respectful of the cultures I’m writing about, and I want to use the privilege I have to amplify these voices in any way I can. Everyone deserves to read stories about characters who are like themselves—representation is so so important, and as long as I’m writing I want to do whatever I can to make that happen.