Dystopian future story

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I had this story plotted, I asked my husband to go through the plot and give me some advice. My story was the first tale in planned series about the aftermath a virus having long lasting effects on the entire word. Massive death tolls, generational reduced physical strength, mental functions, and sharp decline in fertility. In the outline it affected every race but the negro. I'm a white Jew, my husband is black converted Jew, and he took one glance and said, "My advice, don't write this. They call you a racist, a white hater, or black hater, you can't win with this. Just don't write the stories. Baby, this is just BNWO shit with a biological reason for the fall of the white race."

So, needless to say, I'm not as enthused as I had been.

What do you fine folks think?

 

[NotWise]

I lean toward your husband's opinion.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

It threads that line for sure. If the unaffected race was white, then I can almost guarantee you would be pegged as a racist. My advice is to make it so the virus doesn't affect certain types of people, like a blood type, certain genetics and so on, rather than race or sex. I had to edit this to suggest a fun twist. Maybe make it so it doesn't affect adults who are still virgins

 

[ElectricBlue]

Your husband might be right. It doesn't sound... subtle. And it's not as if you don't understand racism.

But you'll get just as many people saying write what you want to write.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

I thought about an invasion from space of a conquring race who believed in their own superiority to every other species. But hasn't that been done to death? Nazi's from space better known as V.

 

[ofbuttons]

Probably best to avoid if you yourself want to avoid the possible fallout and reaction.

But I'm curious, was there an in-world reason for why black people aren't affected?

 

[NoTalentHack]

Your husband is right. I get what you're going form there, but no matter how well you write it, it's going to be poorly received. There's possibly some directions you could go that might work, but even those are likely to be attacked. Anything that smacks of racial bioessentialism when it comes to this type of topic is going to go badly.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Probably best to avoid if you yourself want to avoid the possible fallout and reaction.

But I'm curious, was there an in-world reason for why black people aren't affected?

Yes, it is a bioengineered virus which was supposed to attack black people, but something went seydveyz (sideways) and worked backwards of what was intended. A white supremacist thing gone kaca.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I will say, for an excellent sci-fi story with a race-based "culling" component, the Space Traders segment of Cosmic Slop starring Robert Guillaume as a conservative politician having to deal with a group of intergalactic "traders" that come to Earth offering fantastic technologies in exchange for everyone that has a melanin content above a certain level was fantastic. Directed by Reginald Hudlin, with another segment that was written by the great comic book writer/artist Kyle Baker.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Part of the genesis of this story, (doesn't it make sound really smart using the word genesis for original source) was the debate over COVID19 being an escaped lab experiment. Recent reporting suggest it may have been. There is also the theory that the vaccine might be also be a plot to introuduce some sort of nefarious agent into our bodies. (Oh there's another smart person word, nefarious, it sound quite ominous doesn't it? and smart).

 

[lovecraft68]

Why write it? This was every night on MSNBC and CNN for an entire year.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Yeah, and Fox, facebook, twitter, BBC America, and everywhere else. But it is an interesting and frightening concept. As is DNA specific poisons, which was a major plot point in No Time to Die. It's just standard Sci Fi bill of fare writing, a little from column a, some from column c, and dash from column d. My story was a not so slow descent for a ruling class into the role of servants and slaves. A reversal of fortunes story. But I see that it can be construed as racism.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I told you that your black on top, white on bottom, was a bad idea for a story or series.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Sadly, our tolerance has grown prickly edges and, as proposed, no matter how well-written, no matter how well-intentioned, I think you would be leaving yourself open to attack. As suggested, a partial genetic immunity, one not based on colour, might be better.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Besides, this has already been done to death. The book and movies based on the book "Planet of the Apes" were tongue-in-cheek stories about a world turned upside, with the blacks (represented by the white supremacist views of blacks being apes) used to rule over a mute white race. An excerpt from a review of the movie, "That sly allegory was hatefully perverted by white supremacists, even deemed derogatory by some in the Black Power movement, but its provocation is unmistakable as one directed against the forces of institutionalized racism." If Serling couldn't avoid the attacks by white supremacists and black leaders, how do you expect to? I love you, Mary, but Rod Serling, you ain't.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Both the book and movies speak to the natural tendency of those in power to persevere power by any means. And honestly, I hadn't even considered how thorny a subject this might be.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I had this story plotted, I asked my husband to go through the plot and give me some advice. My story was the first tale in planned series about the aftermath a virus having long lasting effects on the entire word. Massive death tolls, generational reduced physical strength, mental functions, and sharp decline in fertility. In the outline it affected every race but the negro.

One of the reasons this is a recipe for grief is that "the negro race" isn't a well-defined group. A story like this would require you to figure out rules for exactly who is and isn't "negro", and that is historically an EXTREMELY thorny area even when you don't have the additional requirement of making it scientifically plausible.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

One of the reasons this is a recipe for grief is that "the negro race" isn't a well-defined group. A story like this would require you to figure out rules for exactly who is and isn't "negro", and that is historically an EXTREMELY thorny area even when you don't have the additional requirement of making it scientifically plausible.

I addressed that in the outline, 40% or higher, DNA were unaffected, but anyone testing under 50% in the stories were considered inferior by law. I know this is would be rather high threshold, but not all that high historically, as the nazi's deemed anyone with higher than 10% Jewish lineage to be inferior.

 

[djrip]

I like the 'aimed at black people but it backfired and got everyone else' angle. Or, could have the virus hit the intended group, but turn them superhuman. Either way, poetic justice is the only justice you need in fiction! Making the outcome feel deserved rather than random or unfair. But yeah, some people will be vocally offended no matter how the specifics are handled.

 

[TheRedChamber]

As is DNA specific poisons, which was a major plot point in No Time to Die.

Funnily enough, when I was about fourteen I plotted out my own Bond movie based on the the idea of DNA-specific viruses. The white supremisists released the black-targetted virus and the black supremisists released the white-targetted virus and everyone died* (see there was a lesson there!). I eventually scrapped it when I realized that the villian trying to kill in everyone in the world** was a hell of a lot more fun and easier to navigate than the villian trying to kill just one race of people. The people who wrote No Time To Die obvious had no intention of ever making any part of it fun***, so it fit well there.

(* Can't remember how/if I dealt with Asians/other races)
(** Admittedly the plot of Moonraker is kill everyone and then regrow the population with a handful of very very blonde people)
(*** Okay Paloma the kick-ass Cuban spy was fun for about five minutes before the film yanked her away and said 'No more fun for you, it's suffering time'.)

One of the reasons this is a recipe for grief is that "the negro race" isn't a well-defined group. A story like this would require you to figure out rules for exactly who is and isn't "negro", and that is historically an EXTREMELY thorny area even when you don't have the additional requirement of making it scientifically plausible.

Race is thorny for sure, but if Wollstonecraft writes this (and I'm not saying she should), it's very easy to just say 'everyone with Gene J72Q59 is immune' and have that gene more prevalent in the relevant populations.

This goes a bit beyond the usual black bull/white cuck stories common for the site and seemingly more extreme fantasies. If you had a more general 'world gone to shit' story and have the particular area that the characters are travelling through be dominated by a black led organization would that work? Or is there something about the fact its global which is particularly appealing?

 

[NoTalentHack]

I thought about it a little bit more, but what if it wasn't specifically race-based genetics that saved people, but something like sickle cell anemia? That' something that already evolved to make a population resistant to malaria, so it making them resistant to another parasitic disease isn't outside the realm of possibility. And it's something that is massively more prevalent in Black folks.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I addressed that in the outline, 40% or higher, DNA were unaffected, but anyone testing under 50% in the stories were considered inferior by law. I know this is would be rather high threshold, but not all that high historically, as the nazi's deemed anyone with higher than 10% Jewish lineage to be inferior.

This is one of the traps: "blood quantum" (percentage of ancestry from X group) is popular with the kind of people who make racial laws and want to make it sound like their ideology has a scientific basis, but medically speaking it doesn't tell you a lot about an individual.

Here's a photo of a couple and their twin girls:

Counting by ancestry, both those kids are the exact same percentage "white", but that's not reflected in their looks. In this case, what will have happened is that each parent has a mix of lighter- and darker-skin genes; by chance, one girl has ended up with most of the lighter-skin genes from both parents, and the other has ended up with more of a mix, maybe a few more dark than light.

Another pair of twins, same deal:

If the virus is targeting a particular genetic marker, or set of markers, the inheritance of those markers isn't going to be any more consistent than the inheritance of skin colour - you'll have people who are "90% white" who happened to get protection against that virus from somewhere in the remaining 10% of their ancestry, and people "90% black" who didn't get that protection.

In writing a story that defines race on blood quantum, and presents that quantum as medically decisive, there's a risk of inadvertently giving credence to pseudo-science that was developed for racist ends. It's a bit like the author who wrote a fantasy story a few years back and was shocked when some Jewish readers saw elements of the story as an antisemitic stereotype - AFAIK she had no antisemitic inclinations, but she'd been drawing heavily on traditional European folklore without being aware of how some of that folklore related to traditional European antisemitism.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Yeah, I know, it's a complicated set up and I haven't thought it out enough from the get-go. I still have things about it I like. I'm thinking we jump ahead a thousand years or so, and we have the effects present with out knowing the causes. But not sure it flies well no matter how I structure the story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Race is thorny for sure, but if Wollstonecraft writes this (and I'm not saying she should), it's very easy to just say 'everyone with Gene J72Q59 is immune' and have that gene more prevalent in the relevant populations.

Yes, that's about as close as you can get with a scientifically plausible basis - the difficulty then is that either you have a virus which doesn't draw the line between "black" and "white" in a way that most humans would do (see my previous post), or you end up misrepresenting the science in order to make it match those human ideas.

Bending the science in the interests of a fun story often works out fine (I enjoyed "The Core"!) but given the history of race and genetics/eugenic "science", this is a more touchy area than just resurrecting dinosaurs or making up a new element.

This goes a bit beyond the usual black bull/white cuck stories common for the site and seemingly more extreme fantasies. If you had a more general 'world gone to shit' story and have the particular area that the characters are travelling through be dominated by a black led organization would that work? Or is there something about the fact its global which is particularly appealing?

Could still keep the bit where the world goes to shit due to a virus, too. It's not implausible that racial tensions would amplify after such an event - we've already seen that happen in the covid pandemic - but if it's possible to do that without the virus itself being race-specific, that greatly reduces the number of landmines that need to be avoided.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Another pair of twins, same deal:

Am I a horrible person for looking at that photo and going 'well, there's my next story right there...' (well #37 in the queue anyway.)

Yes, that's about as close as you can get with a scientifically plausible basis - the difficulty then is that either you have a virus which doesn't draw the line between "black" and "white" in a way that most humans would do (see my previous post), or you end up misrepresenting the science in order to make it match those human ideas.

If it were that important to you, you could have 80% of the immune being 'black', but then have the 'white' 20% killed off by the oppressors who are offended by their existence (and thus getting into real New World Order teritory) - more kindly you could have the white immune shipped off to their own segregated colonies. Hmm, the problem with this kind story is it's almost impossible to avoid it becoming some kind of allegory.