posted 16 May 2001

What Broad Universe Means To Me
by Amy Axt Hanson

Amy Axt Hanson grew up reading science fiction and trying to be as smart as the heroes. Her reading dwindled during microbiology grad school when she found it hard to find aliens portrayed with any kind of sympathy, and it wasn't long before she jetted off to another planet, too. She thrived as a science reporter for various newspapers, PR offices, health letters, national magazines, and the "Bill Nye the Science Guy" TV show. Life got wacky long ago when her home planet was invaded by small life forms that commandeered all time, attention, and resources. She promises to have the novel finished before the smallest life form starts college.

I was recently asked why we were forming Broad Universe — really, what was the deal? I couldn't answer with a quickie soundbite, and I probably wasn't very convincing to someone whose shelves are bulging with Golden Age novels.

Because the reality is, Broad Universe just simply appeals to me. In a deep fundamental way, it feels right. I'm a woman who loves science fiction--love it, love it, love it. But I dislike the actual stories. Boy Coming Into His Power. Mankind Taming A Hostile Planet. Humans Triumphing Over Powerful Aliens. That was all fine when I was a teenager but I've moved on. Now I want to see how families live in outer space — really live, not this fantasy stuff with replicators making endless spare parts and pizzas. I want to know what they do when they run out of toilet paper. I want Deep Space Nine the way it was the first few episodes, when parents had to change their careers for the sake of their families, and somehow make it all work. Not this warfare stuff, I want real life.

But real life is alien to science fiction.

At least, I can't find it. I can barely find the most basic thing, which is stories with believable children in them rather than, as Nancy Kress calls it, "furniture with diapers." I once sat down with four years of Asimov's, Analog, F&SF and Omni, every single issue from '93 through '96. Fewer than 10 percent of the stories had children in them at all, and the ones that did — every single story save two — had children standing by quietly at the edges. (The two exceptions were "Margin of Error" by Nancy Kress and "The Moon Garden Cookbook" by Laurel Winter.)

My kids mummify Barbies in the back yard, juggle water balloons in the living room, and raid my hidden chocolate. My kids have never been furniture, even when they were in diapers. Can you imagine what they'd be like on a spaceship? Would they drive the captain nuts or what? But I ask you, what would a spaceship be like if the captain had to take a day off because his kid barfed?

Clearly, something is missing. Something huge.

But why? There are 1,200 authors in SFWA and many of them have children. A few authors, male and female, do write about families, but overall, it's still teen stories or single-people stories or married-with-no-kids. Are family stories so hard to write that even the professionals don't dare try? Well yeah, kids get in the way — that's their job. They do foul up the plot line, but children are a great source of tension. Think about stories where the heroine has to breastfeed her baby every three hours (Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring) or genetically altered children who never sleep (Nancy Kress's Beggers in Spain trilogy).

Is there another reason why I can't find these stories: Are the writers so busy with their day jobs and their child-rearing that what they really want out of their writing time is escape? That they'd rather be forced into a solar corona by an enemy fleet than give nose drops to a toddler in zero g? Not to disparage male writers who don't have an easy time of it either, but I wonder if women who might write about families are getting their writing time squeezed even further because according to every study ever done, women bear the major burden for child care, housework, and family health crises, not to mention holding down an outside job. If time is a problem, Broad Universe will help. It'll give us a way to get together and give each other the encouragement and suggestions we need to keep going despite all the daily frustrations.

Maybe time isn't the issue. Maybe stories like these are being written well enough, but are turned away by publishers because they're not Grand In Scope and Ambitious. I hope that's not the case because it's no secret that romances (which are hearth stories and character-driven stories like the SF/F I envision) outsell SF/F by nearly five to one. Independent bestsellers are driven by book clubs, most of which are groups of women. Even a small convention like Wiscon (the feminist SF/F convention) has a mailing list of over 8,000, and every single one of us is looking for something we can't easily find. The audience for hearth stories and character-driven stories is there, and it's huge.

Broad Universe will help reach them. It'll give authors a way to write their own book catalog blurbs and discuss the issues in their books they think are important. It'll give readers a way to ferret out more books like the ones they love. It'll give writers a place to confab on sympathetic editors and agents, and share ideas for getting around publishing roadblocks and writing obstacles. It will improve sales, which will help get a greater diversity of books accepted.

When that happens, I can only hope that the cover art for my kind of book will show families and not the usual rockets tilted at phallic angles or spacesuits firing ray guns. Give me a little symbol on the cover — a chair with diapers and a slash through it — something to let me know that this book is different, that these kids are realistic. And for heaven sake, don't let the cover blurb natter on about conquest and heroism when the real story is the effects of an altered day-night cycle on the mental state of the community.

Which brings me to the final frustration. What good is it if my kind of book is being written and published, has a great cover and a perfect blurb if it's not getting ink from reviewers? I've subscribed to a number of review magazines over the years and they never review the books I want to read. Why is that? Are hearth stories dismissed as less interesting than heroic fiction? Are reviewers so swamped for time that they can only focus on writers they've already read a million times before? Are authors so pressed for time that they're not sending reviewers the information they really need?

I don't know. It's probably a combination of factors. Either way, Broad Universe will help. Broad Universe's listserv and newsletter will let writers share ideas for doing the most effective PR they can in the least amount of time. The book catalog will give them a way to advertise their work to a worldwide audience. We'll work on ways to encourage reviewers to look beyond their usual fare at the same time we are trying to get more women doing reviews. And it'll give us all the kind of moral slap on the back we need to get our butts out there and start hustling.

That's what Broad Universe means to me: Resources to help get a wider spectrum of books written and published. An easier way to find them on the shelves. And colleagues who are fun and interesting and, well, broad.