The Culture War over History and Fiction

In this post I have three parts to present. First, the context of my piece: a battle is being fought over who should tell the narrative of history. Second, I demonstrate that the same fight is taking place in fiction: who gets to be the storytellers is changing. Third, I discuss how these cultural wars have played out in the fiction genres of science fiction and mystery. 

All of these lead up to my next three posts, a look at how this has played out in the split between The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021 and The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021, two anthologies that used to be one.

History

Over the past decade the United States has experienced some particularly nasty fights over questions of what should be included or excluded from its historical narrative. 

I certainly grew up with the relentlessly heroic white American narrative. As a child, cowboys were good guys and Indians were the villains and this fit into games we played, much as we played cops and robbers. (I preferred being the Indian because shooting someone with a suction cup arrow was more satisfying than pointing a toy gun and saying bang-bang.) George Armstrong Custer was an unquestioned hero, played on the screen, in one turn, by Ronald Reagan. But times were changing. The television show Custer (1967) which glamorized the exploits of the general was successfully booted off television following Native American protests.

Custer's exploits in a Dell Book. George Maunder from the 1967 series as Custer. That wide-open mouth suggests he ate his enemies.

There is this line from Arsenic and Old Lace, a Joseph Kesselring play from 1941. The protagonist, Mortimer Brewster, is citing his crazy ancestors, "You know in those days the Indians used to scalp the settlers, [his ancestor] William Brewster used to scalp the Indians." Which was standard funny way back when. However, historically, the settlers scalped the Native Americans at a much higher rate. General bounties were set on the lives of Native Americans and scalps were proof of kill. Dark skin Mexicans and Mexican-Americans often became victims: their hair and skin could "pass." 

I love history. But what I love about history is that it is not the simplistic story I was told as a child with memorizing dates and often memorizing the prejudices of my teachers. (As a child my experiences took place in public schools.) Sometimes the prejudice was eye-popping to me, even as a gullible kid. From a Southern teacher in a New Mexican school: first of all, Abraham Lincoln was the ugliest person who ever lived.

Those who would attack a multi-perspective history often use the term "Critical Race Theory." Critical Race Theory has become an umbrella to cover all history that some people don't want to hear. More than that, it has become a selling point for fear-driven narratives in the same line as Sharia law taking over America, Happy Holidays means "War on Christmas," or Obama must have been born in Kenya. All of these are nonsense except to the very uncritical. 

This is not to say the liberal view of history is right, and the conservative view is wrong. History is more complex than that. I am saying the conservative view of history permeates the narrative. Including multiple points of view fills the picture.

Culture Wars as Played Out in Fiction

Sixty years ago, the white male narrative was the overwhelmingly dominant story. Even when minorities figured as part of the stories, those stories were written by whites. (Sometimes to great effect such as To Kill a Mockingbird. Often in cringeworthy forms.) As America became more diverse in its population, voices with authentic experience have had a greater opportunity to speak for themselves. 

The Growing Diversity of Storytellers.

I first became interested in the question of male versus female authorship when I performed analyses of those books chosen as the 100 greatest mystery novels by the Mystery Writers of America (1995) and by the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain (1990). Before I ran the numbers, I suspected female authors would be on parity with males. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, among others would match, novel for novel, those of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and Peter Lovesey. Of the 67 authors who wrote the novels that appeared on the MWA list, 16 were female and 51 male. Of the 64 authors who wrote the novels in the CWA list, 17 were female and 47 male. 

Times are changing. There has been no update to the CWA and MWA all-time best mystery lists, so I directed my attention elsewhere. I went on to analyze male versus female authors as to who had the most weeks atop the New York Times Adult Fiction Bestseller list and how that has changed. From the years 1960 to 1990, books authored by men were on top 81% of the weeks. Some years, even into the 90s, men had the top seller every week of the year. In the 2010s, women were on top more often than men. This switch may have occurred a decade sooner, except that, with the popularity of the Harry Potter books, the New York Times evicted JK Rowling from Adult Fiction sending her to a newly invented bestsellers list, Childrens Literature. She was later kicked off that list in favor of a list for series books. Dan Brown was safe. 

The percentage of weeks and total weeks of male and female authors having the #1 New York Times Bestselling Fiction. In this graph, the 2010s include through 2015.

It would make an interesting study to see how many weeks The Da Vinci Code would have been #1 if it was explicitly up against Harry Potter. When science switches over its methodology, it usually continues for a time with a "legacy" calculation: how the figures would rank using the old method.

The Changing Demographic of Genre Fiction and the Puppy Wars

The changing demographic of authorship extends beyond more female authors. Blacks, Latinos and Latinas, and other minorities began infusing fiction and genre fiction with distinct perspectives. Some saw this as an affront, dismissing their achievements as being praised because they were minority voices. Others saw this as finally getting in after a history of exclusion.

With inclusion came backlash. One ugly example took place in the 2010s in science fiction as some authors and supporters of the "traditional" alpha-male explore the stars and kick alien butt, felt crowded out by the diversity of voices of minority writers who were dominating the genre. Those who felt disenfranchised created a manifesto, calling themselves the "Sad Puppies" with the more aggressive becoming the "Rabid Puppies." Some members of these groups resorted to personal attacks against those favoring the newer inclusive science fiction and its minority authors, hurling invective, and threatening authors with violence. 

The Hugo Awards accepts nominees via voting at the World Science Fiction Convention. The puppies attempted to seize control of the 2015 awards. Their supporters flooded the nomination process so that every nominee in every category were those from their slate. One author, not wanting to be associated with the puppies, withdrew. The judges replaced that nominee with Liu Cixin and his novel The Three-Body Problem. He became the winner. As for the other categories, none of the nominations from the puppies were given awards.

This article from NPR, on the other hand, said the puppies won by losing.

Female authors have come to dominate science fiction awards. The Nebula award for best novel has gone to women in ten out of the last eleven years. The fresh perspectives provided by the recent writers have been thrilling, including my favorite, three-time Hugo winner, NK Jemisin.

There is a general rule behind this. Authors are often "strangers in a strange land" (a Bible verse and the name of a famous Heinlein novel). Marginalized groups can have a fresh perspective on the world we live in and they provide us their eyes. Life experience is broad and varied. Great authors who are white can also see as strangers: Joseph Conrad or Truman Capote. Conrad was an immigrant to England from Poland and could see colonialism more clearly than British authors. Capote, being gay, was an outsider who had a calculating eye when it came to describing the world.

Being a Latino who looks nothing like a Latino, I have often thought of myself as an undercover spy. Over the years, racists have confided in me, saying remarkable things.

Coming Up Next. A Divide in the Mystery Writing Community

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I have several short stories coming out soon, including ones in Mystery Magazine and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. A science fiction story has been accepted in El Porvenir ¡Ya! Chicano Scifi Anthology. It has a Kickstarter page now, a new experience for me. My late mother, a Chicano activist, would be proud.

Martin Hill Ortiz is a Professor of Pharmacology at Ponce Health Sciences University and has researched HIV for over thirty years. He is the author of four novels and numerous short stories and poems.

https://mdhillortiz.com/