Disability in the Fictional Space Future
The question about disability in the mass effect universe (which I don’t have enough information to answer well) touches on an issue I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last few years with regard to disability in science fiction. Namely, in a technologically advanced future, what types of disability will still be around (common or not), and under what circumstances? And which ones will still be considered disabilities?
(As an example of the last question, consider that someone who is very near sighted is not considered to be disabled in our society, because glasses are readily available and taken as a norm. Someone two thousand years ago would have found the same physical issue a profound disability.)
We can reasonably extrapolate current research in all sorts of different directions. Prostheses are getting better in leaps and bounds (thanks largely to war, and advances in trauma care that make people more likely to survive traumatic amputation). People are also fascinated by the processes that allow some amphibians to regrow severed limbs. We’re poking at the human genome, looking for ‘answers’ to a host of genetic diseases — does the space!future include an easy fix for those? A difficult fix? Or do we discover that changing those three genes really fucks up something else?
I strongly believe in having people with disibilities represented in spec fic. I also think that they are both potentially more powerful and far easier to write well if the disability itself is something we recognize currently, or very similar. So that raises the question of “Why does character X have Y condition in an era with cloning/stem-cell-magic/miracle-hearing-aids?”
I’ve come up with a list of potential reasons and angles to consider, which is behind a cut due to extreme length.
(via disabilityinkidlit)
