Accessible Space… the Final Frontier?
We constantly hear metaphors of disability used to describe the “problems” with the world around us: in our crippling economy, when we hear that our politicians are blind to the issues, how our interests are lame, how people turn a deaf ear to the real issues. Our media perpetually shows us tropes of disability: the self-loathing cripple, the cure narrative that solves everything, how people with disabilities just need to really try hard to not be disabled and they will become “normal” people…
Our society is perpetually creating fictions about disability, fantasies that serve its purpose, but at least Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror are clear about the fact that they are creating fictions when they deal with disability.
This is not to say that our speculative genres are free of culpability. They, like other media, are constantly reinforcing tropes that limit disability, that constrain it within a stereotypical box that marks disabled bodies as tokenistic. Science Fiction is all too inclined to find a medical cure for disabilities. Apocalyptic fiction tends to evoke the horror of the end of humanity by first showing it twisted in the form of disabled bodies. Horror relies too keenly on the idea of body horror and the disgust evoked by the thought of disability or the sight of disfigurement. Fantasy is all to inclined toward the magic cure and tends to delight in perfect, archetypal bodies.
As people with disabilities, we often look into the world and see these archetypes reflected back to us—the world telling us that our bodies are horrors, our erasure from the future since it is a “better place,” or fantasies where we can be made able-bodied with a flick of a wand with the assumption that all of us want to be able-bodied. Even our fictions erase us, contain us, and seek to expel us out of this world. So, it is beautiful when a collection like this comes along that plays with the idea that we, the disabled, are out of this world and takes us to other worlds, to futures that consider our bodies, and, most importantly, into fiction that doesn’t limit us to genre tropes.
It is too easy for most literature to project its fictions onto the disabled body. We expect it. The rest of our society lauds it (particularly when they can give an award to an able-bodied actor for playing disabled, or to an able-bodied author to really capture the suffering of the disabled protagonist). Our bodies become a site where authors can explore so many of the themes that they enjoy: the quest for a solution, the plot of “overcoming,” the character with a past that haunts them and that is etched onto their body,
We, the disabled, have always appeared in fiction, but always pushed into roles as the wise mentor for the able-bodied hero, the cautionary tale for the youthful character, the self-loathing cripple who becomes a villain because he or she wants to be able-bodied. We have always been put into narrative positions that support the protagonist, and I suppose this is why I am so excited about Accessing the Future, because it centres the disabled body. It puts us in the role of the heroes and it gives us the depth and breadth of experience that our lives create.
Many of us have spent our lives looking for ourselves in our fiction, projecting ourselves into the pages of our fantastic literature with the hopes of finding a resonance, but have so often been met with disappointment as our roles in that literature are constrained by our bodies, pushing us to the margins and inking over our complexity. Many of us have spent our lives asking: Where is the braille on that space ship? Why don’t they try signing to that alien—is the whole universe really so dependent on hearing and verbal speech? Did the architecture of that space station take into account any diverse mobility concerns? Maybe someone who is not quite so neurotypical could better get into the mind of that entity?
It is time for us to CRIP the light fantastic, write ourselves into the perception of the future, to push the boundaries of expectations about our bodies, and to shift the way that disability is imagined.
Accessing the Future is so exciting because it imagines new ways to think about access and it invites those of us with disabilities into a generally inaccessible space (whether it be “space” as in “place” or “space” as in “the final frontier”), the writing of our own bodies, our own identities, and our own futures. The range of disabilities invites an awareness of bodily and cognitive diversity and portrays disability as something that is not limiting, but rather expansive, opening up a whole range of new imaginative possibilities and ways of being. These narrators are not meant to be inspirational as so many disabled heroes are portrayed in popular ableist media, but are rather human and full of the same flaws and complexities of any other character. Not only does this collection play with a range of disabilities, but it explores the intersection of identities, whether between gender and disability, race and disability, or sexual orientation and disability.
While a character’s disability does not define them in the stories in this collection, it does permit them nuanced ways of understanding the world. From a character with spina bifida (Nicolette Barischoff’s “Pirate Songs”) who discovers how societies find convenient ways to hide their social undesirables and hide them away from public view (an issue that perpetually faces those of us with disabilities as our society seeks to erase disability from public perception) to a character with LD (learning disabilties) discovering that societies will use people with disabilities to test technology before marketing it to neurotypicals as enhancement (Sarah Pinsker’s “Pay Attention”), to exploring how the neuroplasticity of disability allows us to better explore possibilities that are unthought of by the neurotypical able-bodied mind (Jack Hollis Marr’s “into the waters i rode down”), the disabilities of these characters invite new ways of exploring the world.
Technology is not portrayed in these stories as it is in so many scifi stories by non-disabled people as a “cure all,” but is instead in a nuanced relationship to disability. It is questioned, interrogated, and ends up in a space of question, which is as it should be. Our technology should be open to imaginative possibilities and questions. Characters in this collection question whether their essential self is the self that pre-dates technology, or the integrated self that incorporates tech (“Pay Attention”; Louise Hughes’ “Losing Touch”). They explore the possibility that technology is an invasive and inadequate way of interacting with others. They question the limits of the fleshy body and our relationship to health care, which has always been problematic. They invite questions about the visibility of our bodies and the use of biometric technology (Samantha Rich’s “Screens”; Margaret Killjoy’s “Invisible People”). They question pharmaceuticals and our engagement with them and the meaning we can take from our use of pharmaceuticals (Kate O’Connor’s “Better to Have Loved”). They explore which technologies are available to us and under what conditions (Toby MacNutt’s “Morphic Resonance”; David Jon Fuller’s “In the Open Air”; Joyce Chng’s “The Lessons of the Moon”; Rachel Jones’ “Courting the Silent Sun”)… and, of course, which technologies are not available to us due to price, restricted use, and limited access. They ask what types of technologies question the limits of what we define as “human” and how far we can push these limits. These are not easy questions, nor do the authors provide simple answers, but rather open up more ways of questioning our engagement with our technology and the ways that it can extend our experience of the world. Technology doesn’t become the traditional sci fi fix all, but is instead engaged in a complicated relationship with disability.
These stories explore the tropes that are written onto disabled bodies and disrupt them—playing with the reader’s expectation of reading about characters who are vulnerable because of their disabilities, want to be cured, or want social support… and then subverting these expectations, turning them on their heads and disrupting the tropes that have been taken as norms in our society.
Whether battling rogue droids (Sara Patterson’s “A Sense All its Own”), negotiating with space pirates (“Pirate Songs”), being fitted with surveillance devices (Samantha Rich’s “Screens” and A.C. Buchanan’s “Puppetry”), engaging in telepathy or other forms of communication with alien or other non-human beings ( “into the waters i rode down”; A.F. Sanchez’s “Lyric”), exploring war (“Puppetry”) and other types of civil unrest (Petra Kuppers’s “Playa Song”; “Courting the Silent Sun”), the stories in Accessing the Future create those ramps, braille instructions, sign languages, and neuro-diverse environments for us to engage in a future rich with potential for disability. The future just got more exciting by providing us with an accessible space (the final frontier).