“Stand By For Action… Anything can happen in the next half hour!” – so begins the opening narration of a British children’s TV series from 1964. Sixty years later, such a call for action and anticipation remains pertinent when considering our relationship with both ourselves and the world’s oceans.
4th October 1964 marked the seventh anniversary of the start of the Space Race, when the USSR launched Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit. It is noted that “Sputnik 1 demonstrated the feasibility of sending artificial objects into orbit. It inspired rapid technological evolution… Sputnik 1’s success accelerated research into new materials, propulsion systems, and miniaturization techniques.” Whether by coincidence or otherwise, the seventh anniversary of its launch also served as the launch date for “Stingray”, a ‘Supermarionation‘ children’s television series that explored another unknown frontier – Earth’s oceans; and although this TV series did not have the same immediate impact as Sputnik, it nevertheless pointed the way towards both technological and societal/attitudinal changes that would become as profound as the space program.
A Drop in the Ocean
“Most people think the bottom of the ocean is like a giant bathtub filled with mud — boring, flat and dark. But it contains the largest mountain range on earth, canyons far grander than the Grand Canyon and towering vertical cliffs rising up three miles—more than twice the height of Yosemite’s celebrated El Capitan” – Robert Ballard (2014).
Humans have had a relationship with the oceans since before we were human. Our earliest known ancestor may have been a microscopic aquatic creature over half a billion years ago. Subsequent aeons of evolution have left signs to show that we evolved from marine life and retain tantalising clues within our anatomy. Even as a modern land-based species, it appears that sea caves may have saved African homo sapiens from extinction less than 150,000 years ago. It is known that Australia’s own indigenous peoples have interacted with marine environments for probably over 50,000 years.
It might be said that looking up into the night sky – as Sputnik challenged us to do in 1957 – can fill us with awe as we contemplate that everything we know is merely a drop in an infinitely larger cosmic ocean. So too should we consider with awe that the Earth’s actual marine oceans comprise the planetary amniotic sac that birthed us, and were the home within which our distant ancestors grew and evolved. Such notions should be as natural to us as a human baby’s bradycardic response and “diving reflex”, or a child’s natural propensity to play at the beach.
And yet, despite the Australian tradition of visiting the beach and getting sunburnt, it appears that most people around the world cannot swim. In our quest for modernity, we have lost touch with our roots. Our imagination is one way we can cast a glance backwards (and forwards) to the oceans around us.
Photo of a turtle swimming underwater by Belle Co (Pexels)
Marine Science Fiction
Mike Nelson: “Underwater: That’s where I do my work.” – “Sea Hunt”.
There have been many imaginative attempts to explore underwater, oceanic or submariner worlds in literature, film and television. The earliest popular work is, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1870) by Jules Verne, and the most overlooked might be Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 film about a submarine shrunk to microscopic size and injected within a human bloodstream. Both of these explore the marine world that is within or around us, and our relationship to that environment. Both posit that we are a part of that environment and should treat it with respect and care.
Aside from “Stingray”, two other popular TV shows in subsequent decades have featured a submarine crew. The first was “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea“, a US series based on a 1961 movie of the same name; commencing its television run on 14 September 1964 – almost the same date as “Stingray” – and concluding effectively four years later, on 31 March 1968. Featuring Admiral Harriman Nelson and Captain Lee Crane, the submarine Seaview and its crew encountered adventures ranging from spies and nuclear alerts, to aliens and monsters of the week.
The other show was “SeaQuest DSV” (12 September 1993 to 6 June 1996), a series following the adventures of the Deep Sea Vessel (submarine) SeaQuest, operated by the United Earth Oceans organization (UEO). With a 1990s flavour, the show featured action adventure mixed with politics, environmental issues, intrigue, military adventures, and a teenage prodigy.
Both “Voyage” and “SeaQuest” followed the same formula of “Stingray” in that they feature military structures under the command of a male who is entrusted with a ship and a crew in pursuit of a mission. Other TV series with marine themes, such as “Sea Hunt”, “Flipper”, and Australia’s own “Adventures of the Seaspray” and “The Rovers”, were all programs that featured seaboard or shipboard life rather than submariner adventures, and moved outside the collegiate (teamwork) principles of “SeaQuest”, “Voyage” and “Stingray”, focussing on more individualistic stories (the “Stingray” production team would venture into this individualistic perspective in their later – and most successful – series: Thunderbirds”).
The Future Was Fantastic
“Marina, aqua Marina,
What are these strange enchantments that start
Whenever you’re near?”
– Barry Gray (musician), ‘Aqua Marina’, in “Stingray”.
“Stingray” was produced by the creative team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the same people who went on to create a variety of increasingly technologically and conceptually complex series, including “Thunderbirds” and “Captain Scarlet”, and some live action series such as “UFO” and “Space: 1999“. Consequently, “Stingray” seems to have been largely overlooked, overshadowed by its successors – although it was groundbreaking in its own way.
“Stingray” was primarily a children’s action-adventure series, prominently featuring model work and vehicles from the same team that would later wow the world with explosions and space age vehicles in “Thunderbirds” and other productions. The Stingray submarine and its drydock were reminiscent of the Skydiver and its dock that would later appear in “UFO”, and the launch of this submarine would later evoke images of the launch of the “Thunderbirds” in that subsequent Anderson series; a myriad of such futuristic vehicles would inhabit the other worlds of the Andersons and their production team. One critic acknowledged that a strength of “Stingray” was its powerful Anderson trademark special effects work:
“Anderson and his colleagues were always far better as technical wizards rather than tellers of compelling tales. And when the eponymous sub unleashed hell via its torpedo tubes, the result is explosive in more ways than one.”
For a puppet show, it may be surprising that some of the groundbreaking material in “Stingray” was in its implicit portrayal of humans. The series had a surprising amount of subtle humour, but also some serious underlying messages. Commander Shore was a disabled man in a hoverchair, unrestricted by his disability to exercise leadership of his military unit. Marina was a mute young mermaid woman who manages to live, love, communicate and engage in cross-cultural interactions despite her disability and her culturally alien background. Such portrayals are rare even today. Furthermore, Marina and Atlanta Shore are shown as capable, proficient and accomplished women in their own right, despite the restrictions of their world – this form of female empowerment also appearing in other Anderson TV shows, including “Thunderbirds”, “Captain Scarlet”, “UFO”, and “Space:1999” – during the concurrent rise of second-wave feminism.
And despite the limitations of the stories and the exotic, other-worldly setting of the series – simplistic, deep sea “shoot-’em-up” adventures at the bottom of an alien ocean environment – the budding romance between Troy Tempest and the Marina might be seen as a symbolic love for exploration, new knowledge and reconciliation. This quest is set up in the opening scenes of the first episode:
Co-pilot Phones: “There are people living under the sea, and I’ve got fairies at the bottom of my garden.”
Troy Tempest: “Okay you can laugh, but someday I’m going to prove it, and maybe sooner than you think.”
Other meta-analysis in the series revolves around Titania’s deference to their god, Teufel – a fish whose divine fishbowl-lens wisdom leads his adherents to constant defeat. Perhaps humanist Gerry Anderson is challenging viewers to ponder whether their seeking of knowledge through religious perspectives assists or hinders their lives; and is encouraging them instead to use the lens of scientific, evidence-based reasoning that was supposedly the basis for the philosophies of the victorious aquanauts.
Cold Waters, Cold War
“War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.”
– Carl Von Clausewitz.
Artist: Louis Chow.
Reflecting the era of Cold War and Space Race, “Stingray” depicted a Cold War between the land dwellers of Earth versus the underwater denizens of Titanica. Led by aquanaut Troy Tempest (captain of the underwater craft “Stingray”) and his crew, the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP) fought to repel the aggressive hostilities of King Titan and his spies and marine creature henchmen. On its most basic level, the series could be seen as a simple reworking of the traditional “good guys versus bad guys” theme, of heroes versus villains, as was later revisited in other Anderson shows particularly “Captain Scarlet” (humans versus Martians) and “UFO” (humans versus aliens). However, set in the domain of Earth’s largely unexplored oceans, “Stingray” metaphorically asked questions about who might win this underwater version of the Space Race; implicitly suggesting that the people of Marineville (land dwellers who were transitioning into people who explored the oceans) might be the best compromise for taming, colonising and exploiting this final frontier, and thereby win the quest for possible dominance of the world.
This was an era which we might now view in hindsight as being somewhat culturally problematic – women were portrayed in sexist, demeaning ways; James Bond movies were using “yellowface” to represent Asians – and while “Star Trek” was being created as an “Wagon Train in Space”, “Stingray” might be seen as an underwater version of the “western” template. The conflict with underwater denizens can now be seen as equivalent to an imperialist or colonial quest for dominance over indigenous people, complete with an Orientalist flavour and the placement of WASPS (or “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants” – a term that was becoming increasingly widespread in the 1960s) as the heroes by default. If “Stingray” was being produced today, it would undoubtedly be more nuanced in its portrayal of characters from both sides of the conflict. Children’s programs today are much more willing to explore discrimination, bullying, empathy and equality.
Photo by Pew Nguyen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-can-on-the-shore-11607726/
Treasure Down Below
“The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.” – Jacques Costeau.
There are many reasons why we should explore and protect the oceans. For one thing, it remains home to vast numbers of species and potentialities that we have yet to discover, leading Sir David Attenborough to compelled to declare in Blue Planet II that, “Hidden beneath the waves, there are creatures beyond our imagination.” The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concurs:
“Scientists estimate that 91 percent of ocean species have yet to be classified, and that more than eighty percent of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. While these statistics may sound daunting, they have not stopped the global scientific community from striving to amass as much knowledge as possible about ocean life.”
They also note that the oceans provide us with food and medicine, economic resources, and climate regulation.
But the oceans are the birthplace and cradle of life on this planet; the location of the natural terrestrial chemical laboratory within which natural tidal forces likely churned up abiogenesis, and the source of photosynthesis that created the oxygen in our atmosphere. These waters remain our largest unvanquished planetary frontier. We need to stop using them as a garbage can for our pollution, chemicals, wastes and plastics. Instead of worrying about treasures, pirates and monsters at the bottom of our seas, we need to tackle the problem of trillions of microplastic shards that humans have discarded, the species of marine life that we are making extinct due to overfishing; and the destructive impact of human-caused climate change upon the 70% of the Earth’s surface that makes ours the Blue Planet. Even NASA has joined the call, using space technology to further extend its mission to planet Earth.
To explore, respect and protect the world’s oceans is a worthy cause today, and groups such as Oceana and Ocean’s Harmony lead the way, with their appeals for support and volunteers and youth activism.
And let’s pay tribute to a humble children’s puppet series, launched sixty years ago today, that also contained a call for action regarding our oceans and marine life.
Seeking an annual Star Trek Day that really dares to Boldly Go
Cover of “Galaxy” magazine, April 1969, {isfdb.org]
Aiming for the Stars
A generation ago, SF author Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr) wrote one of the first Star Trek-related stories (and arguably, one of the earliest pieces of ‘Mary Sue‘ fan fiction) to ever be professionally published. ‘Beam Us Home‘ tells the story of someone who feels somewhat of an alien or outcast in their home world, but who finds shelter in utopian science fiction.
Although the story focuses on an individual, its collective title (‘Beam Us Home’) implies that such dreams and aspirations are universal. There are times when we all feel like we are alien, an outsider, a refugee from a hostile and uncaring world – somehow different – and science fiction can provide consolation, a community of likeminded individuals, recognition of shared identity or values, a sense of extended family, and optimistic inspiration for the future. This is why science fiction is filled with refugees: from Supergirl and Superman to Doctor Who (Burt, 2016). Star Trek has Kirk, Spock, Khan, Tasha Yar, Seven of Nine, the Maquis, and others who have been refugees at one time or another. Alien Nation features the Tenctonese; humans are refugees in Battlestar Galactica, Jericho, Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Blakes Seven – and more. The seeds of subversion are sewn into the fabric of science fiction. The words of Charlie Jane Anders should both inspire and challenge us as we look for utopia:
“When you think about the archetypal science fiction story, chances are you think of the bold explorer, setting foot on a newfound planet in the name of a secure homeworld. But possibly the most pervasive narrative in science fiction is actually the story of refugees. They flee from planetary destruction, war, or just from overcrowding and ecological crappitude. The refugee story is the flipside of the gung-ho explorer story, but it might actually be the most uniquely science fictional story of all.” (Anders, 2008).
One of the most important lessons we can learn (as an individual or as a species) when growing into maturity is to empathise with others – to share their perspective, to learn to “walk a mile in their shoes”. Human empathy teaches us not only about others, but also about ourselves.
L’Oiselle published in 1909 features the first super hero. [Wikipedia]. (Couverture dessinée par Albert., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who was one of the first three human beings to orbit the Moon, commented on his journey: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” Similarly, our fanciful fantasy journeys of space travel and science fiction – while enabling us to explore the cosmos in our imaginations – must also give us a ‘global’ perspective of ourselves, others, and of our shared aspirations.
Where No Man Has Gone Before
“We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.” – Ursula Le Guin.
Women comprise one group that has been traditionally marginalised, as noted by Tricia Rose in 1994 while exploring the idea that futurism can be contextualised by our past and present:
“If we don’t value the ways in which women create, it doesn’t really matter what we do or do not invent; we could stay on the farm and women would be just as oppressed. For that reason, I don’t really see science fiction models of the future as a necessarily more oppressive space for women than I do current fictions of an idealized past.” (Rose, 1994, p. 217.)
One stereotype in science fiction and related futurism is that traditionally, the genre was dominated by men until women became visible in the genre (as creators or readers) in the 1960s (thanks to Star Trek) and the 1970s (thanks to second-wave feminism).
Margaret Cavendish, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This ignores the reality that Margaret Cavendish wrote Blazing World in 1666; Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert wrote “Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes” (“Lord Seton’s Voyage Among the Seven Planets”) in 1765: Mary Shelley (often considered “the mother of science fiction”) wrote “Frankenstein” in 1818; and Begum Rokeya wrote the Bengali Muslim feminist utopian fantasy, “Sultana’s Dream in 1905. In more recent times, Ursula Le Guin helped establish science fiction in Australia through her work as a Guest of Honour at Aussiecon (Melbourne’s first World Science Fiction convention) in 1975; and Australian SF writer Norma Hemming – although dying at the tragically young age of 32 – left a legacy including an award (from 2010 to 2020) to honour diversity in SF.
For decades, Star Trek and other science fiction portrayed women in ways that we would recognise today as being patronising: often called “girls” instead of “women”, they wore mini skirts or other minimalist clothing and were judged for their physical attributes rather than their intellectual prowess; they were helpless and needed saving from salacious aliens; they served as background decoration or romantic conquest for heroic male astronauts. In this sense, science fiction looked not so much into the future as the past, reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes and role models. (I remember being in a group of young fans watching an episode of the Logan’s Run TV series in the late 1970s, in which the fictional character Jessica stood by helplessly while the men fought fisticuffs. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she picked up a discarded blaster pistol and stopped the fight by taking command – and the young audience around me spontaneously cheered. Science fiction had finally caught up to women’s lib and the highest ideals of its young fandom!)
Feminist perspectives benefit mainstream science fiction because they add layers of nuance, empathy and reality to the genre. They add the life experiences and consequent wisdom of half the world’s population. They add decades of background activism as advocates of intersectionality, such as “slash” fiction (the arguably queer-friendly fan fiction* which turned Star Trek into a multi-billion dollar franchise, even though the franchise creators still wilfully ignore this audience demand even today). They avoid the male gaze and the complaints of privileged white men who bemoan that Doctor Who became a woman, that Star Trek “genocided white men” by adding some powerful women of colour, or that gender and other diversity is being reflected in the literary SF scene. Such examples demonstrate the need (and potential) within science fiction to educate and inform its audiences and practitioners about creating and building celebratory inclusion for the future.
Joanna Russ spoke of the background problem for women in 1970, and we can speculate on how much has changed in the generation since then:
“Of course, you don’t want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you’re intelligent. You don’t want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don’t want me to despise myself; you only want the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous tribute to your natural qualities. You don’t want me to lose my soul; you only want what everybody wants, things to go your way; you want a devoted helpmeet, a self-sacrificing mother, a hot chick, a darling daughter, women to look at, women to laugh at, women to come for comfort, women to wash your floors and buy your groceries and cook your food and keep your children out of your hair, to work when you need the money and stay home when you don’t, women to be enemies when you want a good fight, women who are sexy when you want a good lay, women who don’t complain, women who don’t nag or push, women who don’t hate you really, women who know their job and above all—women who lose. On top of it all, you sincerely require me to be happy; you are naively puzzled that I should be wretched and so full of venom in this the best of all possible worlds. Whatever can be the matter with me? But the mode is more than a little outworn.
As my mother once said: the boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.” (Russ, 1975).
Gender inequity remains a terrible problem around the world, and science fiction is one way to recognise this and propose solutions. The genre encourages us to ponder the plight of “the other”; in learning about AIs or aliens, we can learn about ourselves. But when we realise that “the other” is also ourselves, we can begin our own journey towards reconciliation and healing. In acknowledging our weaknesses as a species, we finally find our possible strengths.
Indigenous Worlds
“Science fiction is often concerned with the ways in which cultures interact. By allowing writers to dramatize negotiations among radically differing world-views and ways of life, the genre becomes what Mary Louise Pratt calls an “art of the contact zone.” A contact zone, according to Pratt, is a space “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths…. ” (Attebery, 2005, p. 385).
Australia beholds the Milky Way (Pixabay image)
Science fiction might seem to be a genre that includes exploration of indigenous cultures which could be found on other planets or across the boundaries of space-time. And yet for every “Fantastic Planet” story depicting truly alien worlds or cultures, there are dozens of others featuring human invasions, colonisation and conquests of indigenous alien worlds – or engaging in wars for supremacy, most obviously in stories of first contact or interplanetary warfare, where these can metaphorically (or more literally) recall ‘slipstream’, ‘native apocalypse’, or ‘returning to ourselves’ inherent in indigenous speculative fiction.
This offers a major opportunity for science fiction (metaphoric or otherwise): to truly explore strange, new worlds, and maybe learn from them. Jeanine Leane introduces the possibilities of reading First Nations Australian science fiction as one example:
“For weird mob everywhere and everywhen, our brave and strange thinkers, feelers, lovers, warlords and healers – those who are dreaming up new ways to tell our stories and are pouring them back into the river of our collective culture for the benefit of all.” (Leane, 2022)
Another example can be seen in the work of Kalem Murray:
“Yeah, you see that tree there, that one with the fan lookin’ leaves there?”
Shane lifted the gear up again and sighed. “You mean the pandanus?”
“Yeah, pandanus. You know what that means when you see a bunch of pandanus around?”
Shane wiped the built-up sweat from his brow with his free hand and onto the hessian sack.”It means water. It meant water the first time you asked, and it meant water last weekend. You literally ask me this every time we pass these trees.” (Murray, 2022).
Such earthy naturalism, amidst a speculative fiction story featuring horror and possible loss, provides a solid grounding for the material and keeps the audience grounded in reality even as fantastical developments emerge. Populist science fiction could learn from such pragmatic perspectives.
Instead, populist SF often perpetuates the binary colonialist views of yesteryear. For example, how much might we see Han Solo and Chewbacca from Star Wars mirror earlier portrayals of The Lone Ranger and Tonto? In Star Trek, indigenous cultures suffer a similar fate as native peoples from traditional “cowboys and Indians” stories, with the indigenous tribe in the Star Trek TOS episode, The Paradise Syndrome and Chakotay from Star Trek Voyager (complete with his tokenistic indigenous Maori tattoo) being victims of the same racist stereotyping:
“… Chakotay’s culture, as portrayed in the series, provides a perfect example of the generic “Indian” culture found in early American newspapers, where many individual cultures were merged into a single “Indian” culture.” (Adare, 2005, 45).
Beyond that, Star Trek featured a scattering of planets containing indigenous cultures that were predominantly white humans (many with nose bumps), except most notably for Next Generation episode Code of Honour, which is largely proclaimed as being openly racist due to its antiquated stereotypical depictions. (Brownhill, 2019; SFDebris, n.d.).
Tied to our wider collective human memory, our future visions and dreams have the power to dismantle and replace those earlier constructions of race and repression:
“The boy without a body watched as people who had similar faces to those he once called family, used majik and tech against the very people who destroyed his country. He watched as purple-green spears flew into the bodies of those as white as the linen they wore on Sundays. He watched as they fell on the ground, ans hands springing from the earth claimed their souls. Those who weren’t like him couldn’t see those hands or hear the words that were being chanted from underneath the soil, remember us, remember us, remember us…” (Gesa-Fatafehi, 2022).
“The notion of Afrofuturism gives rise to a troubling antinomy: can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures? (Dery, 1994, p. 180).
The term “Afrofuturism” was coined by Dery in 1994, but the phenomenon has been present as a cultural influence since at least as far back as 1931, thanks to George Schuyler (Loughrey, 2018), an African American who futuristically satirised the contemporaneous idiom of, “Get out, get white, or get along.” Afrofuturism gestated as a movement exploring what the concepts of science or futurism mean to people living within the continent upon which the human species originated – or the diaspora who have left and settled elsewhere because of fair means or foul. From our human cousins who are mindful of their past and present, what might embody their visions of the future?
“… a cultural movement that pulls from elements of science fiction, magical realism, speculative fiction and African history. Undergirding this movement is a longing to create a more just world.” (Monáe, 2022)
Since then, AfroFuturism has expanded to encompass many forms of artistic expression:
“Afrofuturism is one of the rare aesthetics that can encompass the visual medium, fashion, the written word, and music, and tackles themes such as feminism, alienation from your people, the grotesque, water symbolism, and reclamation of one’s identity through their roots.” (Author unknown, n.d.)
Through a combination of artistic, visual and audio media, Afrofuturism can marry past and present and give birth to a challenging and inclusive vision for the future. I try to imagine what Star Trek would be like if it took its predominantly white and American vision for a futuristic utopia, and combined it with edgy and exciting African multiculturalism, using new and bold forms of audio-visual presentation to present a more inclusive and more intimate version of a futuristic utopia borne from human struggle.
“The struggles I face in Botswana are emblematic of the broader issues many activists confront. Despite these difficulties, I am driven by the belief that my voice and my art can inspire change.” – AdAstra
One modern example is the music of “Adastra”, whose stage name comes from the Latin: “ad astra: to the stars” which ties strongly with the Afrofuturist perspective of aiming for a utopian future through science-fictional or speculative creativity. The gritty realism of Adastra’s appeal for a future without war (and its consequent suffering and injustice etc) presents a vibrant and no-nonsense message, with confronting imagery of real-life war and death, but threaded together with resilience and optimism – all for a fraction of the cost of one of Hollywood’s white-washed, sanitised studio fables.
VIDEO: Why War? by Adastra (used by permission).
[content warning on video: some warfare and carnage]:
The marriage of past and future, the intertwining of present alternate universes (African and western perspectives) can highlight our sense of awe and wonder – or of our alienation:
“It had been almost a year since we came to Mars. That was what I called this place although it had another name. It was Kensington Park or Windsor Estate or something like that but I couldn’t have said (t)hat because I could never remember it.” (Kwaymullina, 2022).
The cradle of humanity, and the cradle of civilisation, has a rich heritage from which to draw inspiration for its future – and maybe for the future of us all:
“With joy filling his heart, Pale Fox danced in Mother’s Garden, and a great river of stars washed over the sky.” (Jerry, 2022, p. 475).
To Asia and Beyond
City lights of Asia and Australia (NASA Earth Observatory photo)
“Science fiction is the literature of dreams, and texts concerning dreams always say something about the dreamer, the dream interpreter, and the audience.” – Ken Liu, 2016.
The European origins of modern science fiction are seen to have inspired similar literature around the world – because dreams are universal. Following the publication of Jules Verne stories, the first Indian Hindi science fiction, Aaschary Vrittant [“The Strange Tale”], was written by Ambika Dutt Vyas and serialised between 1884-88 in Peeyush Pravah magazine (Patel, 2021). Japanese author Shunro Oshikawa published The Undersea Warship: A Fantastic Tale of Island Adventure, in 1900 (Nathan, 2017); China followed with Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo [“Tales of the Moon Colony”] by Huangjiang Diasou, serialised in the Xiuxiang Xiaoshuo [“Illustrated Fiction”] magazine between 1904 and 1905 (Isaacson, 2013, p. 33).
Subsequent Asian science fiction has been complicated with layers of Sinofuturism, Orientalism, and colonial/postcolonial ruminations (Briel, 2023). Vouloumanos asks why the western response to Sinofuturism is a racist perspective:
“Why does Asian-ness always lend itself to being the futuristic “other” for Western audiences in science-fiction visions of the future?” (Vouloumanos, 2019).
While Star Trek and other western science fiction entraps and stereotypes Asian characters as “convenient plot devices”, the local Asian response is much more complex. Chinese science fiction (kexue xiaoshuo) has evolved into Techno-Orientalism, an intersection of technology and race (see Ho, 2017). More widely, Xia Jia suggests that science fiction plugs into the “Chinese Dream” and it could be argued that this is much the same way as Hollywood SF taps into the “American Dream”:
“Chinese Dream” here refers to the revival of the Chinese nation in the modern era, a prerequisite for realizing which was reconstructing the Chinese people’s dream. In other words, the Chinese had to wake up from their old, 5000-year dream of being an ancient civilization and start to dream of becoming a democratic, independent, prosperous modern nation state. As a result, the first works of science fiction in Chinese were seen, in the words of the famous writer Lu Xun, as literary tools for “improving thinking and assisting culture.” On the one hand, these early works, as myths of science, enlightenment, and development based on imitating “the West”/“the world”/“modernity,” attempted to bridge the gap between reality and dream. But on the other hand, the limitations of their historical context endowed them with deeply Chinese characteristics that only emphasized the depth of the chasm between dream and reality.” (Xia, 2014)
The overall genre, from “The Three Body Problem” to anime, plugs into a variety of vibrant and varied material that ultimately spans our entire global village from the culturally troubled Middle Eastern nations to the “ciencia ficción” bookshelves of the Latin American subcontinent. Our culturally western, white and winsome genre lacks the depth of the full human experience.
“In reading Western science fiction, Chinese readers discover the fears and hopes of Man, the modern Prometheus, for his destiny, which is also his own creation. Perhaps Western readers can also read Chinese science fiction and experience an alternative Chinese modernity and be inspired to imagine an alternative future.” (Xia, 2016)
The Vulcan “IDIC” symbol from Star Trek, representing Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
Hollywood Futurism: Pride and Prejudice
The current series Strange New Worlds is one of the better Star Trek franchise products underway at present. It revisits some original Star Trek characters and episodes in a way that is respectful of the original material but fresh and modern. Old characters like Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Chapel are rebooted to suit twenty-first century audiences. New characters like Ortega and Aspen provide tantalising hints about modern understandings of diverse gender and sexuality. We even see one crossover episode with another Star Trek series (Lower Decks) which references animation as perhaps a stepping stone to link with the universe of anime.
Strange New Worlds promotes the ideals of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who postulated that the human adventure is just beginning and that we should make it so by celebrating the Vulcan concept of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations). New viewers are invited to explore familiar but strange new worlds, and the positive philosophies that such visits inspire.
Photo by Lisa Fotios: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-toy-6942407/
Yet it has not always been so. Star Trek has traditionally been militaristic, patriarchal and colonialist – its Federation serving as a metaphoric American empire across the galaxy, populating worlds with white culture. While much of Star Trek is posited as being progressive and forward-looking, we can see that much of its reality is the opposite. While it has been suggested that, “Star Trek is not just any utopia. It is a specific American utopia…” (Geraghty, 2008, 19), it is worth asking whose America is being represented in this fictional portrayal of a futuristic world. Its birth as a space age version of a western TV series (“Wagon Train to the Stars”) meant that conceptually, logistically and practically, it was overloaded with baggage from past times and past insularities. Even its glimpses of Africans (Uhura and M’Benga) and Asians (Sulu and Kim and Keiko O’Brien) were in the context of Americanised cultural traditions, wherein most people outside of the straight, white male stereotype were treated as second-class characters, often denied promotion, character development, or even first names.
Disability and sexuality also received very little (usually patronising) attention and were presented from the perspective of a straight, white, ableist male culture portraying lazy or stereotypical caricatures.
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
“The past is written. But the future is left for us to write and we have powerful tools… Openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity.”
– Jean-Luc Picard, ‘Broken Pieces’, Star Trek: Picard, 2020.
Amidst all this error, there was a spark of idealism. The original Star Trek always strove to be anti-racist, even if it was unable to understand and express racial equality beyond tokenistic white colonialist perspectives; nevertheless, its aspirations for equality and infinite diversity have enabled the franchise to attract a diverse fan base and survive. Star Trek has recently been rebooted, with characters including strong women of colour and a married gay male couple. We see similar evolution in the Star Wars franchise, where Princess Leia transformed from a helpless damsel in distress (in the 1970s) to a mature army general leading a rebellion (in the 2010s), and a young woman (Rey) take the mantle from Luke Skywalker. Meanwhile, modern audiences are flocking to a Marvel Cinematic Universe that has begun to explore Afrofuturism and other forms of diversity; and in Doctor Who, we see a white man transform into a woman and then into a gay Rwandan. Perhaps soon we will see further expressions of such diversity, epitomised in the writing of Ghanaian author Ivana Akotowaa Ofori:
“One of the TARDIS features the Worm adopted was the outer-appearance camouflage. In the Worm’s case, to readapt to its Ghanaian environs, it took on the shape of a dull brown shipping container – the kind that corner stores operate out of…
“She’s speaking Dagbanli, a language I recognise by its sound, but neither speak nor understand. Not that it matters, this close to the Worm; automatic, telepathic translation is yet another TARDIS thing it picked up.” (Ofori, 2022, pp. 428 & 430).
The world of literary science fiction today is likewise filled with diverse people – especially women – in a field that used to be seen as the predominant purview of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and other white men writing space opera. Science fiction – a glimpse of possible futures – is no longer tied to the “space westerns with ray guns” mentality; it now explores ideas and speculations ranging from anime to cyberpunk and AI and beyond. Cultural acclimatisation across human societies must surely follow.
Solen Feyissa, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Our dreams will not remain white bread; they will become as diverse as are our audiences and aspirations. In this sense, I look forward to a Chinese version of Star Trek, where aboard the starship Tiananmen Square, Captain Wang speaks to her crew in her mother tongue, and I am required, as a western audience member, to read subtitles and learn of new words, concepts, cultures and truly alien adventures outside of my personal life experience. With such steps, we will soon glimpse worlds and wonders as daring and diverse as human cultures and creations will allow; and where our dreams lead, reality may follow. We may begin to become the genuinely united world that is often alluded to within utopian science fiction and other visions of the future; a global village that is genuinely global; a federation of minds and cultures; an empire of disparity and dissidence. Within the next generation of dreamers, there will be fewer distinctions and binaries such as male or female, queer or straight, Israeli or Palestinian, western or Asian or African; the only ‘race’ that will matter will be the human race. Nigerian speculative fiction author Dare Segun Falowo points the way by presenting old perspectives through new eyes:
“In search of origin and motherworld, followed by the freed ori of Biscuit, the Offspring left behind the humans who took over in elevating their spirits beyond any dreams of gods. Guardians held on to nurturers, fathers held on to fathers, mothers to mothers and caregivers to the wise, as their Offspring took off for a forgotten home, shooting up into the eternal blue of Milk’s skies, leaving nothing behind but vapour trails.” (Falowo, 2022, p. 495).
From Alien Nation to Unification:
Science Fiction is a genre that looks ahead, pondering alternatives, and asking “what if?” It is the terrain of the explorer and adventurer; the literature of the outsider and the refugee; constructed in the language of the dissident and curious. Postulating possible futures is a way that we can explore what may lie ahead, and perhaps learn what future possibilities we actually want to forge and create. The ‘final frontier’ is time, not space, and Star Trek – postulated as boldly going into strange new worlds – remains constrained by its commercial and cultural limitations. Ahead, the future beckons; let’s explore myriad futures together, unshackling ourselves from the chains of traditional mindset and culture. Let’s boldly go into a future that is welcoming and inclusive of the whole human family.
“We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams.” ― Arthur O’Shaughnessy
= = =
(*The issue of LGBT+ civil rights in science fiction, including Star Trek, has previously been discussed here (exploring the history of SF as a wider genre) and here (exploring fandom versus canon), and will be explored further in a subsequent blog.
= = =
Bibliography:
Adastra, 2022. Why Wars?, independent music video, uploaded to YouTube on 22 July. Used with permission.
Sierra S. Adare, 2005. “Indian” Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction: First Nations’ Voices Speak Out. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Charlie Jane Anders, 2008. “Science Fiction Is The Literature Of Refugees”, Gizmodo, 16 May.
Brian Attebery, 2005. “Aboriginality in Science Fiction”, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, November, pp. 385-404.
Holger Briel, 2023. “Asian Futures or Western Futures? The Increasingly Varied Faces of Science Fiction”, Europe Now, 12 September.
Marie Brownhill, 2019. Where No Racist Has Gone Before: Code of Honor and the Representation of Blackness, Game Industry News, 20 June.
Kayti Burt, 2016. “From Supergirl to Doctor Who — Refugees in Sci-Fi TV”, Den of Geek, 7 April.
Mark Dery, 1994. “Black to the Future”, in Flame Wars, Durham & London: Duke University Press, pp. 179-222.
Dare Segun Falowo, 2022. “Biscuit & Milk”, in Thomas, Ekpeki & Knight (eds.) Africa Risen, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, pp. 477-495.
Lincoln Geraghty, 2008. “Eight Days that Changed American Television: Kirk’s Opening Narration”, in Geraghty, L. (ed.), The Influence of Star Trek on Television, Film and Culture, Jefferson: McFarland & Company Inc Publishers, pp.11 – 19.
Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi, 2022. “Today, We Will Rise”, in Rafief Ismail & Ellen Van Neerven (eds.) Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak and Black Fiction, Fremantle Press. [eBook]
Tamara C. Ho, 2017. “Review: Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media by David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, and Greta A. Niu, eds”, in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3, November, pp. 587-591. [JSTOR]
Nathaniel Isaacson, 2013. “Science Fiction for the Nation: Tales of the Moon Colony and the Birth of Modern Chinese Fiction”, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1, Chinese Science Fiction, March, pp. 33-54. [JSTOR]
Danian Darrell Jerry, 2022. “Star Watchers”, in Thomas, Ekpeki & Knight (eds.) Africa Risen, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, pp. 467-475.
Ambelin Kwaymullina, 2022. “Fifteen Days on Mars”, in Rafief Ismail & Ellen Van Neerven (eds.) Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak and Black Fiction, Fremantle Press. [eBook]
Associate Professor Jeanine Leane, 2022. Foreword in Mykaela Saunders (ed.), This All Come Back Now: An Anthology of First Nations Speculative Fiction, University of Queensland Press.[ebook]
Ken Liu (ed.), 2016. Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, Tor Books, 1 November.
Clarisse Loughrey, 2018. “Black Panther brings Afrofuturism into the mainstream”, The Independent, 13 June.
David Medlen, 2008. “I Wasn’t Expecting That: The Career of Norma Hemming”, Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature Volume 17, Number 1, pp. 3–17.
Janelle Monáe, 2022. “What is Afrofuturism? An English professor explains”, The Conversation, 17 June.
Kalem Murray, 2022. “In His Father’s Footsteps”, in Mykaela Saunders (ed.), This All Come Back Now: An Anthology of First Nations Speculative Fiction, University of Queensland Press.[ebook]
Richard Nathan, 2017. “Ahead of Time: Japan’s early science fiction”, Red Circle, 10 October.
Ivana Akotowaa Ofori, 2022. “Exiles of Witchery”, in Thomas, Ekpeki & Knight (eds.) Africa Risen, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, pp. 425-440.
Dr. Hemantkumar A. Patel, 2021. “Evolution of Science Fiction in Indian Writing in English”, in International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR), Volume 8, Issue 3, July. www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138).
Mary-Louise Pratt, 1991. “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Profession 91, New York: MLA, pp. 33 – 40; cited in Brian Attebery, 2005.
When I was young and idealistic, I helped to start a Star Trek club which will soon celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Over the intervening decades, I have had many people thank me for starting the club, because it introduced them to lifelong friends or partners, or because it literally saved their lives by giving them a form of inclusive, accepting family when they were feeling otherwise alienated, different and alone. To my mind, any club that can have such impact is remarkable.
Of course, any such impact was none of my doing, but is testimony to what it means to be a fan – that often-maligned cohort of people – and what their life journey can teach all people.
Academic Matthew Hills summarises the most popular problematic stereotype for fans: “… the stereotype of “the fan” has been one of geeky, excessive, and unhealthy obsession with (supposedly) culturally trivial objects such as TV shows.” According to this stereotype, science fiction and media fans are often post-adolescent young men who live in their parents’ basement, spend their days on the computer, and can’t get a date for Saturday night. From my decades of involvement with the fan community, I know this stereotype is dismally wrong. Ironically, it may even have been encouraged by sexist portrayals of related female gender stereotypes: the groupie, the fangirl and the shipper (see Gerrard, 2022).
The negative stereotype of sci fi fans has created difficulties for people who enjoy some literary and entertainment franchises, and who seek social connection within science fiction fan communities that are proudly inclusive of those living with autism and other forms of diversity. In its most harmful manifestation, fans of gaming or social media are linked to hikikimori, which is now recognised as a “mental health phenomenon” resulting in chronic social withdrawal for over a million people.
And fandom – the collective networking of fans within community groups sharing common interests – is actually much more than a few socially awkward people coming together.
In my childhood, I was told that the word “fan” was short for “fanatic” – with an 1885 sports report in a Kansas newspaper using that exact terminology. This opens up the definition of “fan” to encompass people from sports enthusiasts to those who love music or stamp collecting. From pottery clubs to Potterheads; from dog walking enthusiasts to furries, fans are everywhere.
But modern dictionaries such as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary remain conflicted between defining fans as being either enthusiastic hobbyists, or excessive, uncritical zealots. I see ample evidence that this negative stereotype remains common today across a broad range of fandoms: Are country music fans racist? Are cinephiles unable to have jobs or sex lives? Should certain football fans stop stealing cars, living off Centrelink, wearing moccasins, and aspiring to romance their cousin after he/she gets parole?
Clearly, society needs to outgrow its childish and patronising attitude towards fandoms that are inclusive and diverse. This is true in no small part not only because we need to stop discriminating against others, but because such attitudes also harm ourselves.
We are all fans.
Fandom of the Opera
Fandom and its constituent parts (fan fiction, fan films, cosplay, clubs etc) have a long and complex entanglement with intellectual property rights, copyrights, and modern understandings of literature and culture. Indeed, fandom predates those modern understandings. Everything from Shakespeare’s plays to the Shades of Gray novels are themselves forms of fan fiction that are evocative of other, earlier, inspirational material. So much of our culture proceeds from fandom of our daily soap opera. As I noted in an earlier blog post:
Fan fiction (otherwise known as fanfic or fic) has a long and obscure history. In olden days, before writing was common and oral stories were more popular, it may be that myths and legends, and heroic tales such as those of the Trojan War, Atlantis, Robin Hood, Cleopatra and Hypatia may have included types of fic. In later times, Shakespeare and other authors created classic fic stories.
For example, one only has to ponder the original tales of King Arthur, stories of a local Saxon king who helped to banish the Romans from Britain. Those original tales may now be lost forever in the Dark Ages, but after centuries of oral fan fiction, and getting mixed with the medieval French culture featuring knights in shining armour, chivalry and Camelot, our legends of the boy who pulled the sword from the stone and grew up to lead the Knights of the Round Table, are forever etched in our folklore.
These days, there is even religious fan fiction, which harks back to the origins of mythology and folklore: any difference between the historical and mythologial construction of religious figures was all fan fiction. Collecting and deciding which fan fiction (oral folklore) to accept as Biblical canon was a process that effectively took centuries, and there is dispute even today over whether this was ultimately achieved at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.
Fandom is as old as humanity.
Fandom of the Opera
Arguably, the first people to become widely accepted under our modern definitions of “fans” were the Janeites, a fandom originally comprised largely of male professors, publishers and readers, who enthused over the works of Jane Austin after 1870. One modern Janeite speaks of the world of plenty now afforded their fandom and, by metaphoric extension, to many others:
“We are fortunate in our fandom to have a sumptuous buffet of pleasures before us. First and most importantly, we have the novels. We also have the wonderful (and not-so-wonderful) film adaptations; we have biographies and histories; we have sequels, retellings, and fan fiction; we have book bags, bumper stickers, and Regency gowns. We can pick and choose from all these delightful manifestations of our chosen obsession, and in true Janeish style, perhaps poke a bit of gentle fun at the more ridiculous. We are all Janeites, under the skin, and in our hearts.” (Elliott, 2001).
From around the same time as the birth of Janeites, arose the Sherlockians, enthusiasts of Sherlock Holmes who not only wrote some of the earliest modern fan fiction, but actually influenced the fictional life and death (and resurrection due to popular demand) of Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes is often seen as the birth of modern fandoms because of the intersectionality of its meta with real life. As Michael Saler notes:
“The wonderful irony of this situation is that at the same time that Doyle was criticized for claiming that fairies were real, many of his readers were claiming that Sherlock Holmes was real. Indeed, Holmes was the first character in modern literature to be widely treated as if he were real and his creator fictitious.” (Saler, 2003, p. 600).
Saler goes on to note the Holmes franchise as the progenitor of many secular reworkings of older mythological or religious traditions in the modern era that have inspired millions of fans to become conversant in alternate realities of fantasy, living in a mixture of cultural appropriation and continuing the tradition of adding to the original material.
Fandom is part of belonging to a human community; the wisdom is to know what is healthy, helpful and best expresses our humanity.
Future Perfect
Are you a fan of sport, literature, art, music, the Olympics, a political or religious philosophy, pet animals, gardening, certain books or TV shows, your favourite actor or singer, poetry, crosswords, science fiction, anime, astronomy – or a million other topics? Welcome to the family. Just please stop looking down on your brethren in other forms of fandom.
Meanwhile, as my local fan community approaches its half-century of Austrek, we should recognise that fandom as a human movement is larger and older than we can conceive. And ahead, the future beckons.
Michael Saler, 2003. “’Clap If You Believe in Sherlock Holmes’: Mass Culture and the Re-Enchantment of Modernity, c. 1890-c. 1940”, The Historical Journal, Vol. 46, No. 3 (September 2003), pp. 599-622 (JSTOR).
In memory of Helena Binns
22 December 1941 – 18 September 2023
Helena with Apollo 16 astronaut John Young in Melbourne, November 1987 (photo from Helena’s collection).
Sometime around the mid-1980s, Helena Roberts (later Helena Binns) chatted to me conversationally about her involvement in the Space Association of Australia. She noted that she had recently suggested a slogan for their advertising flyers: THE CHALLENGING ENTERPRISE OF DISCOVERY (she got the inspiration for the slogan by combining the names of three NASA space shuttles). To me and to many of her friends, those themes within that slogan – challenge, enterprise and discovery – also embodied much of her life and efforts.
Helena at the microphone in Southern FM for the Space Show, Space Association of Australia, June 1991 (photo: Geoff Allshorn).
Learning to Look Up
In 2009, she wrote an autobiography that began:
“I was born Margaret Phyllis Duce, at Lilydale Hospital, 2 weeks after Pearl Harbour. My early years were spent with my family at my grandfather’s house on the outskirts of Healesville. When I was 8, we moved to East Warburton, where my father, with a gang of immigrant workmen, was building a bridge for the Country Roads Board. Later, when I started High School, we lived near and then in Alexandra.”
At the age of five or six, this country girl was introduced to science fiction through a visual medium (an illustrated book of Buck Rogers stories), becoming hooked on its fascinating attraction and its call for suspension of disbelief: “I knew that talking animals weren’t possible, at least in this world. I wasn’t sure about rocket ships and worlds other than our own, but it all looked so fascinating that I didn’t care whether it was real or not, I just wanted more of it.”
The Orion Nebula, an incomplete painting gifted to me by Kelvin Roberts in the 1990s.
This mixing of the visual and the intellectual, the excitement and the awe, would sustain Helena throughout her life – from her interest in astronomy (joining the Astronomical Society of Victoria at age 14) and science fiction, to her later passions for artwork and photography (as an interesting blend of these interests, science fiction local Dick (‘Ditmar’) Jenssen recalls taking Helena on a tour of the Meteorology Department of Melbourne University around 1990; she also became an unofficial photographic historian for the Space Association.
The Stars Beckon
Helena aspired towards academia, and she topped her class in primary and high school with a particular passion (she called it an obsession) with Maths and Science, especially Astronomy. Yet she later reported how this aspiration ended:
“At the end of Third Form (Year 9) before my 14th birthday, my scientific education came to a grinding halt. My country High School did not have a Science course in Fourth Form, only Agricultural Science. I begged to be allowed to study science by correspondence, but was refused. I was offered a teaching scholarship but my parents wouldn’t give permission for me to take it. (If I failed, they might have to pay back the money.)”
Helena with Darth Vader (David Prowse) at the Galactic Tours convention in Melbourne, March 1986 (photo by Kelvin Roberts, from Helena’s collection).
Despite her lack of opportunities in a post-war rural setting, she sought loftier inspiration. Over the years, Helena became something of a renaissance woman who explored many communities and philosophies, including media and literary SF fandom, a variety of science fictional and speculative fiction clubs and conventions (becoming a life member of Continuum in the early 2000s), the Melbourne Science Fiction Club (of which she became a life member in 2009), the Melbourne-based Star Trek club, Austrek, the aforementioned Space Association of Australia (to which she introduced me), and Tolkein-inspired artwork. Some mutual friends indicate that they knew her primarily though one or another of these activities, or through either of her husbands, but I felt privileged to know her through all of these avenues, bar one (Tolkein) – but even then, I note that much of her artwork features flying horses or mythic women/characters, with long-flowing manes or hair or apparel that flutter aeronautically behind them.
Helena and Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, Melbourne, circa 1990 (photo from Helena’s collection).
Melbourne Science Fiction Club
Co-founder Race Mathews reports that five young men, including Merv Binns, formed the core group that ultimately founded the Melbourne Science Fiction Group (later the Melbourne Science Fiction Club, or MSFC) on 9 May 1952. Nearly six years later, 16 year-old Margaret Duce visited the Club on 14 January 1958, initiating her own involvement and friendships that lasted a lifetime. She also began attending SF conventions, continuing this practice for decades. Meanwhile, she also pursued tertiary qualifications that did not lead to the artistic career she had hoped for.
MSFC 50th anniversary cake cutting in 2002: Dick Jenssen, Paul Ewins, Helena and Merv (photographer unknown, photo supplied by Bruce Gillespie)
Although Helena was made welcome within the MSFC, her active involvement apparently faltered somewhat over subsequent years as she diversified her involvement with other groups, leading Fancyclopaedia to suggest that she gafiated from fandom sometime in the 1960s and returned after marrying Merv in 1998. However, this assessment overlooks her heavy involvement with other forms of fandom during the intervening years. I met her sometime in the late 1970s through Star Trek fandom (where she created fan fiction, expository writing and artwork) and I saw her regularly at both literary and media SF conventions and space-related activities – clearly because she obviously enjoyed being involved in all these forms of fandom. Perhaps her involvement also shifted (in part at least) beyond literary SF because its fandom had traditionally been predominantly male-oriented, whereas media SF fandom was always more inclusive and encouraging of women during that same era.
Counterbalance
In 1965, Helena married Kelvin Roberts, a commercial artist who specialized in photographic retouching. He later accompanied her to MSCF nights when they showed movies. Kelvin was a big fan of adventure stories such as those of Hammond Innes and Alastair MacLean, and hadn’t read a lot of science fiction, but he appreciated its imaginative and innovative qualities, especially in movie form, and read a lot of the same books as Helena. He even assisted her in creating Star Trek artwork for one piece of fan fiction.
It was during her time with Kelvin that Helena felt the freedom to explore alternate philosophies, becoming something of what her niece Ana refers to as a ‘hippie’. In the early 1970s, she wrote to ‘maverick Georgian guru Gurdjieff’, asking for his sage advice about changing her name from Margaret to Helena. He replied that she should do what she liked – and she did.
Kelvin in his garden (photo from Helena’s collection).
Many of the friends who knew Kelvin will remember him with fondness and affection, recalling him as a gentle-natured and kind gentleman. One old friend, Greg Franklin, got to visit the couple regularly for dinners at their home in Albert Park, and he recalls them to be a perfect counterbalance for each other: Kelvin was dyslexic and gregarious, whereas Helena aspired to be academic but remained somewhat reserved. Like Greg, I remember visiting their home and seeing Kelvin’s bank of television sets, each one tuned to a different channel (in the days before streaming services) so he could skim the content of all channels simultaneously. His imagination enabled him, despite his dyslexia, to write and illustrate a children’s book, and he told me once how he had thought of the plot of a perfect bank robbery story, but he had decided never to write it down because it involved possible harm to innocent bystanders and he feared someone might copy the details in real life.
Kelvin died in 1991.
Photo Opportunity
Helena and R2D2 at the Galactic Tours convention in Melbourne, 1986 (photo by Kelvin Roberts, from Helena’s collection).
“I had a small talent for art as well, and wanted to study that too, but I looked forward to it more as a hobby or diversion, certainly not a practical way to earn a living.” – so observed Helena in 2009, explaining how her interest in artwork had been moderated by the harsh limitations within her life. And yet, armed with an Olympus film camera in the pre-digital age (and later with digital cameras kindly gifted to her by Eric Lindsay and Dick Jenssen), she became somewhat well-known as a dedicated photographer at community events. She and Kelvin became official photographers at the Aussiecon, Australia’s first ever World Science Convention in 1975. She attended many events and chronicled those times.
Helena (centre, middle row, wearing red jacket and Star Trek IDIC medallion) with friends at an Austrek reunion held on 19 June 2004 (from Geoff’s collection).
Early Austrek member Paul Murphy recalls Helena’s high-quality photography during production of the fan film, City on the Edge of the Yarra. Over the decades, she amassed photo albums and CDs full of photos that documented scores of people from literary and media science fiction communities; proud compilations of professional-quality photos documenting people in their prime, and clubs during the vibrant halcyon days before digital technology changed the nature of social interaction. I would suggest that the only modern Australian SF community photographer to rival Helena in scope is Cat Sparks, who recalls of Helena’s prodigious photography: “She and I used to share photos between each other of the various conventions we attended. She was a lovely lady and I will miss her.”
From Space to Space Age
Merv and Helena at Continuum 2009 (photo by Cat Sparks).
Merv Binns’ involvement with McGill’s Bookshop and the MSFC, and later with Space Age Books, reveal how significantly he had been in helping to establish Melbourne as a locus of science fiction. He is remembered by many thousands of people in Melbourne (and beyond) as the proprietor of the latter bookshop, which serviced literary and media science fiction communities. I once had the pleasure of telling him that, as a teenager, I had found visiting Space Age Books to be as magical as entering Oz or Hogwarts, and I know many others of my vintage who felt similarly. Merv had remained friends with Kelvin and Helena for decades, but after Kelvin’s death, Helena began to more seriously reconnect with Merv. She later wrote that Kelvin had, towards the end of his life, encouraged her to seek companionship with Merv and that subsequently: “Merv started inviting me to attend conventions with him, which helped me to remain in touch with the science fiction community. We were not yet a couple, although we had been friends for over 40 years.” They were married in 1998.
Helena and Merv at Continuum in 2009 (photo by Cat Sparks)
Helena’s increased involvement within literary SF fandom after that was undoubtedly due to Merv’s encouragement – and maybe also because she found that fandom to now be more inclusive of women. Together, she and Merv became regular attendees at a variety of conventions, and they dabbled together in creating personal fanzines. I was honoured to attend regular dinners with Helena and Merv (and a variety of their peers) at the Rosstown Hotel, Caulfield, sometimes celebrating their birthdays or other events. It was here that I got to chat most closely with Merv, while Helena looked on approvingly.
Meanwhile, Helena maintained her interest in the space program, regularly attending meetings of the Space Association until her failing health, or other factors, made such visits no longer feasible.
Helena and Kelvin (front – far right) at their home in Caulfield South hosting a BBQ for the Space Association of Australia on 16 December 1990 (photo: Geoff Allshorn).
I last spoke to Helena in 2020, when she rang me from the hospital to inform me that Merv had passed away, and we talked about how a funeral or memorial service would not be possible at that time due to COVID lockdowns. When I offered to help her in any way that the lockdowns allowed, she thanked me for the offer and said that she would be in touch. I never heard from her again, although her family was able to keep me informed when she went into a nursing home.
From Fringe to Focus
(photo: from Geoff Allshorn’s collection).
Despite a division between literary and SF media fandoms, Helena fitted effortlessly within both communities. I recall dressing in costume while attending a literary SF convention in 2004, and Helena welcomed me into the building with a humorous flourish by addressing me as my fictional persona from TV sci fi series UFO: “Hello, Commander Straker!” As a veteran Trekker, she later came to a meeting of the Star Trek club, Austrek, when I gave a talk on the club history, and she introduced herself to a new generation of Star Trek fans. Although she saw herself as being on the fringe of fandom, she actually was a quiet and diligent participant, observer and historian of this culture, using her connections within the locus of these activities to photograph and record the lives and times of her people. In doing so, she captured for posterity the youth, vitality and culture of allied communities during half a century of social and technological change. She recorded the images of friends and colleagues, many of whom are now departed from our midst. She became an archivist of culture at a particular moment in time and space, providing raw historical material for social historians and anthropological scholars. While history records the era as the dawn of the space age, Helena helped to record the lives and impact of space age culture and ideals upon ordinary people. In whatever way that twentieth- and early twenty-first century science fiction fandom will be remembered, Helena will have contributed significantly to that memory.
It is hoped that some of Helena’s science fiction photos will be published online through appropriate clubs and archival sources, so that her legacy can be preserved and shared.
The author acknowledges that some of this background information came from Helena’s autobiographical material.
Sources:
Anonymous, last updated 20 October 2023. ‘Helena Binns‘, Fanlore website.
Anonymous, last updated 29 September 2023. ‘Helena Binns‘, Fancyclopedia 3 website.
Leigh Edmonds, 2020. ‘A luminary of Australian science fiction’, in The Age, 18 April.
Bruce Gillespie, 2023. ‘Bruce Gillespie’s memories of Helena 1941- 2023’, in Bruce Gillespie (ed.), *brg*132, October, pp. 8 – 9.
Race Mathews, 1995. ‘Whirlaway to Thrilling Wonder Stories: Boyhood Reading in Wartime and Postwar Melbourne’, in The University of Melbourne Library Journal, Vol. 1, No. 5, Autumn/Winter, pp. 18 – 31.
With thanks:
Thanks to Helena’s sister, Barbara Staffieri, and her nieces: Ana Wines and Stephanie Precht.
Thanks also to Cat Sparks, Bruce Gillespie, Elaine Cochrane, Dick (‘Ditmar’) Jenssen, David and Jenny McKinlay, Greg Franklin, and Paul Murphy.
