From: Damien Broderick (damien@ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Jul 30 1997 - 18:40:56 MDT
Prof Gomes wrote:
>. In the future, it will be possible to change the colour of the
>hair, eyes or even skin... [snip] It will be good for us, whites, and for
the blacks as
>well... It will decrease any psychological difference, where possibly
>still exists (in both minds...).
One would expect so. On the other hand, an interesting probe into that
contention is Samuel R. Delany's 1976 science fiction novel TRITON (now
republished in the USA as TROUBLE ON TRITON in order to convey a certain
`pulp sf' flavour, a regrettable move). The protagonist is a misogynistic
and self-destructive son of a bitch in a heterotopic or `ambiguous' future
utopia, who tries to solve his problem by changing sex. He ends up as a...
what? a miserable female son of a bitch. Dem memes, dem memes, dem dry memes.
Chip Delany, BTW, is a black, gay, upper-middle class writer who lives with
a white former street person. (You can read about him and his fiction and
theories of textuality in my book READING BY STARLIGHT: POSTMODERN SCIENCE
FICTION.) His skin is not that dark, and his features would perhaps allow
him to `pass' if he wished to do so. These days he's pretty hefty and
heroically bearded and wears fearsome tats, and would probably find EvMICK
in all his leather-&-chains-glory *just* the kind of white meat he'd
fancy... Boo! (Gotta watch that give-away unconscious, old son, thrum
thrum the gears, screech the brakes.)
Damien Broderick
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