Conference noted::sf

    So far on my list of authors who include major non-white characters:
    
    - Octavia Butler (very consistently)
    - Marion Zimmer Bradley (ONCE, on Darkover)
    - Orson Scott Card (in Treason)
    - CJ Cherryh (Musa in Rimrunners)
    - John Varley (Calvin Green in Titan)
    
    Can anyone think of any others? 

    One novel I can think of off the top of my head is "The Unreasoning
    Mask" by Philip Jose Farmer.  I believe the main character was an
    Muslim Arab.  He was the captain of a starship(sound familiar) and his
    second in command was Japanese. It was suppose to be a
    multi-racial/ethnic crew.  It's not anything like Star Trek.

    Re .1
    
    Add Poul Anderson to your list of integrated authors.  He leans toward
    the European side in casting, but Chinese, Indians, etc. show up with
    fair regularity.
    
    "Eye of Cat" by Roger Zelazny stars a Navajo protagonist vs an amoeboid
    antagonist.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Oh yeah, add Ursula K. LeGuin.  One of the two narrators of "Left Hand
    of Darkness" is black, Ged, the hero of the "Earthsea" series is of an
    imaginary non-white ethnic group, and in general fair skins are rather
    rare on her stage.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    
    Try David Brin's Startide Rising. The protagonists include:
    
    - an oriental boy
    - a woman
    - several dolphins
    - a chimpanzee
    - Oh yeah, one token white male. :-)
    
    Bruce

    re: .5
    
    As I recall the so-called "oriental boy" is Japanese.  There were 2
    women characters.  The dolphins made up the crew of the spaceship. 
    "Startide Rising" is an excellent novel.  Brin's other 2 books in this
    trilogy are also excellent - "Sundiver" which is the prequel and "The
    Uplift Wars" which is the sequel.  In the "Uplift Wars", the
    protagonist was a chimpanzee.

    Another book that just occurred to me is "Stand On Zanzibar" by John
    Brunner.  I think one of the major characters is Black or
    African-American.  I forget the exact detail because I read it a long
    time ago.

For an allegorical 'multi-ethnic' treatment, there's always the 
Cordwainer Smith books, which were populated with 'underpeople' 
(genetic crossbreeds of 'pet-animals' and human tissue to create
a servant class, which is in rebellion during most of the stories
(Try esp. "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell")

- Steve

    HMMM.
    How about "PALADIN" by C.H.Cheyrrh(SP?)
    The Dragonsbone Chair and its sequel by Tad (I can't remember last
    name).
    
    -fjp-

    re: .0
    
    Considering that the earliest Lensman books are more than fifty
    years old, I wouldn't expect much ethnic diversity in them.  EE
    Smith's first book, "Skylark of Space" was written in 1920,
    although it wasn't published until much later.  I think he was
    literally born in the last century.
    
    Also, the Rah Rah spirit in them may be more a result of bad
    writing than racism.  I confess that I've never been able to read
    much of Smith.  You mentioned, though, that you had read several. 
    What drew you to them?
    
    /jlr

    re .10
    
    They were recommended by a voracious SF reader whose judgement I
    typically trust. I tried to convey in the basenote that I recognize
    that the time dictates style, and I didn't mean to imply intentional
    racism. But if you've read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, or even heard
    of it, perhaps you can understand that there comes a point after which
    I get sick of realizing that a large portion of the world is
    successfully pretending that I and my people don't exist.
    
    Put the shoe on the other foot. Imagine if no story ever had a character
    that you could relate to by virtue of sex or race. After a while, you'd
    notice something wrong. If you continued to read, you might eventually
    put your finger on it. But more startlingly, if ONE author dared to
    write something with a character like you, it would dawn suddenly and
    hard that you were being unconsciously ignored. And you would begin to
    crave characters like yourself. Then again, maybe you wouldn't care...
    
    At any rate, that is the experience I had after reading Octavia Butler.
    Reading about a future in which my race and sex aren't represented
    leaps out at me as misconceived, ill-contrived and false. Reading about
    a future in which my race is completely invisible leads me to believe
    that a.) we were anhiliated or b.) no one believes us capable of a
    significant contribution in our world's future. Reality clearly shows
    us that the world is quickly becoming ethnically diverse with all of
    its people's playing roles. I think its high time science fiction
    caught up with the late 20th century.

    I count eleven authors so far.  Concerning Card, let me add his Alvin
    Maker trilogy, "Seventh Son," "Red Prophet," and "Prentice Alvin."  The
    second book is ALL about Amerind-White conflicts around 1800 (in a
    parallel history), and the third book has a lot to do with slavery and
    abolitionism in the same setting.
    
    For a twelfth author, add R. A. MacAvoy.  Her "Tea with the Black
    Dragon" has an oriental hero, and the third book of her "Trio for Lute"
    trilogy has a black heroine.  The titles of "Trio for Lute" are
    "Damiano," "Damino's Lute," and "Raphael."  The protagonists of the
    three books are, variously, Italian, Finnish, African, and archangelic.
    
    Not all science fiction and fantasy is behind the times.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    You might (or might not) enjoy "How To Be Ethnic, In One Easy Lesson,"
    by Poul Anderson, a short story I last saw anthologized in "The
    Earthbook of Stormgate."
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Not one mention of Andre Norton, who has had some novels with
    Amerind protagonists?
    
    For short stories, there's also Craig Strete, who as a "militant"
    Amerind himself, tends to write about Amerind concerns. And William
    F. Wu primarily writes about Asian characters.
    
    --- jerry

    
    re .11
    
    Do you think the lack of representation of all sexes/races in SF has
    it's roots in the fact that most SF writers (in North America, anyway)
    are white males ? (I don't know this for a fact but it seems to be
    true). 
    
    I'm not saying these writers are deliberately ignoring other sexes/races. I
    think it has to do with the fact that a writer tends to write about
    things he/she knows about and to use familiar
    characters/environments/philosophies etc. If I were to write I suspect my 
    first instinct would be to use a white male protagonist. 
    
    Which leads to the question: Why are white males so inordinately 
    predominate as SF writers ? Any thoughts ? 
    
    bruce 

    I'm sure that's a big reason why; sci-fi writers are predominantly
    white male.  Although more and more women are taking a shot at it.
    
    The irony is, from what I understand, a great deal of the comics
    industry is multi-ethnic. You just don't find out.
    
    But still, it seems strange to look around my plant at Hudson, and see
    complete multi-ethnic diversity in the technological community; and
    then pick up science fiction and see only white people.
    
    My personal opinion is that it takes a while for an ethnic group to
    feel sufficiently assimilated into American culture for its members to
    start branching out into every aspect of occupations in sufficient
    numbers to be recognized. Right now, Time has been discussing the
    recent wave of Chinese novels (yeah, 4 is a wave!) since Amy Tan's book
    came out. Right now, it seems more important to focus on sharing the
    Chinese experience. It will take more time to see the maverick
    Chinese-American who says "I'm going to write a mystery! Or I'm going
    to write a Harlequin romance! Or I'm going to write an off-world
    adventure!" and for that person to be good enough to be recognized in
    that market. The same is true for any ethnic group. Only when 10s and
    hundreds are trying are a few going to be seen. So, we have Butler and
    Delaney. And someone else has named some Amerind/native Americans.
    
    But the thing that I'm really saying is that you don't NEED a special
    perspective to include an ethnically diverse character set! Just look
    around! We're already here! And every time a novelist or writer doesn't
    include anyone but white characters, the stereotype that other
    ethnicities can't be heroes, can't even fit into the big picture, gets
    perpetuated. Maybe its asking too much, but I think authors need to try
    a little Affirmative Action in their characters.

    
    Ok. Just thought of another one. 
    
    I recently finished "Queen of Angels" by Greg Bear. I liked it.
    
    The protagonist is a female, originally white but "changed" to black
    by medical/genetic processes available in this future. The antagonist is
    black as well. Though set in Los Angeles, there are some interesting
    chapters set in Haiti as well.
    
    I really like Bear's books. He comes up with some interesting
    technologies and social environments. You'll probably experience some
    small amount of "culture shock" at the begining while absorbing the
    new environment (for example, in this future, a public defender is a
    cross between a cop and a prosecuter) but once absorbed the rest of the
    book flows smoothly.
    
    Anyone else read it/like it ?
    
    bruce 

    Perhaps the numerous white male SF authors are a little reluctant to
    create non-white protagonists.  Personally, I'd be reluctant to write 
    up a non-white protagonist because I'd be afraid of mis-representing
    him/her.  In fact, there are only two ethnic classes I'd be comfortable
    giving a protagonist -- my own, and a fictitious one.
    
    Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a large number of great mystery stories about
    Lord Peter Wimsey.  These stories are intensely English.  So much so
    that, when she brings Americans on stage, they almost always use turns
    of speech that are purely British. Sayers's books have been in print
    for half a century now; she's good.  But even she can be tripped up by
    little ethnic differences.
    
    On the other hand, sometimes mere bravery will do, and there's not as
    much difference as people might think.  Sayers's hero is male.  She was
    once congratulated on representing conversations between male
    characters so realistically, and was asked how she did it.  She
    answered that she just wrote conversations and never bothered her head
    about the genders of the speakers.
    
    Similarly, perhaps a WASP author could represent non-WASP protagonists
    without special effort.  But perhaps not.  And WASPs have been told for
    the last thirty years or so that, because their culture has dominated
    the media, other cultures remain hidden.  So they're reluctant to
    portray people of those hidden cultures for fear of doing it wrong.
    
    Of course, there's an obvious fix.  Go learn about these people.  Roger
    Zelazny lives out west, very near some Navaho folk; from them, he got
    background for "Eye of Cat," with its Navaho protagonist.  R. A.
    MacAvoy seems to have done some research on China to produce "Tea with
    the Black Dragon" (or maybe she just knows enough to fool me).
    
    Another, less obvious, fix is to use imaginary backgrounds.  If my
    protagonist lives on a 25th-century Earth colony, he's probably so far
    removed from present ethno-politcs that I can assign him any skin color
    I like.  Maybe that's what Brin did with his Japanese protagonist in
    "Startide Rising."
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    
    
    Some of my absolute favorites of all time:
    
    Clan of the Cave Bear...young white female raised by a different race,
    witten by Jean Auel
    
    The Peace War...young, black, brilliant child is the driving force
    behind overthrowing the Peacer Authority, by Vernor Vinge.  The sequel
    is Marooned in Realtime and the main character Wil Brierson is a black
    detective hijacked out of his own time.  Helping him to solve a murder
    is Della Lu of Oriental descent who lived during the days of the Peace
    War.  Very Excellent books.
    
    Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons, one of the main characters is a black
    female; she and a Jewish man  work to destroy "mind vampires". 
    Interestingly, now that I think about it, the mind vampires were a
    white socialite and a Nazi...
    
    A Planet Called Treason by Orson Scott Card, I think it's in reprint
    under the name Treason.  Political prisoners are held on an iron-poor
    planet until they can sell enough goods/service/ideas back to earth for
    iron to build a ship with.  Decendents of the original political
    prisoners divide into families based on the original's profession, ie:
    the geneticist (sp?) Mueller's family breeds rads,  Nkumai was a
    physicist so his family sold scientific theory, etc. 
    
    All the above books have given me permanent goosebumps.
    
    Helen

    Two novels by Larry Niven featured a Chinese character by the name of
    Louis Wu. They are "Ringworld" and "Ringworld Engineers."  

    Re: Sundiver, mentioned a while back by David Brin:
    
       I'm right now re-reading it, and the protagonist is of Cherokee
    heritage, so there's some Amerindian there too.
    
       I also just read a book by (Poul Anderson?) called "The Boat of a
    Million Years," which included long-lived persons from around the
    globe.
    
    					-mjg
    

    Sliding a bit sideways into comics (but, to keep from straying
    *too* far, I'll stick to those that are primarily science fiction,
    and not superhero fantasy)...
    
    Martha Washington, the protagonist of Frank Miller & Dave Gibbon's
    GIVE ME LIBERTY is a black woman. The story itself is rather violent
    and militaristic, so it wouldn't be to everyone's taste.
    
    The title character of Don MacGregor's SABRE (unfortunately no
    longer being published, but back issues can be found) was a black
    man, and the comic also featured one of the most sympathetic
    treatments of gay men (two of the supporting characters) I've
    seen in fiction.
    
    Tim Truman's SCOUT (also no longer being published) had an Amerind
    as the title character, and delved into Amerind mythology and
    culture. Truman is a white male himself, but has an abiding interest
    in Amerind history and culture. The comic also featured strong
    female and other minority characters. Like both of the above, though,
    it is of a violent, militaristic bent.
    
    --- jerry

    
    
    Greg Bear again, Eon.  Patricia Vasquez is one of the main characters,
    and there's lots of Russians, too.  Speaking of Russians, how about
    Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle?
    
    I looked at Boat of a Million Years the other day and put it back. 
    Maybe I should go back and get it.
    
    Helen

    _Islands_in_the_Net by Bruce Sterling has a female protagonist and, as
    it is set largely in 3rd-world countries (Grenada and Singapore), has
    relatively few significant white male characters.
    
    Also, I'd strongly reccommend John Brunner's _Stand_on_Zanzibar_ which
    is the best example I've found of a white author trying to portray a
    black man and his feelings about society.  Of course, as I'm white, I
    suppose I'm really not the best judge of Brunner's success or failure. 
    This is also a book with a stong multi-cultural thrust, with much of
    the action taking place in "Beninia" (an African country which appears
    to comprise Benin and perhaps part of Mali and Burkina Faso) and "the
    Democratic Peoples Republic of Yatakang" (Indonesia, more or less).
    
    As far as David Brin goes, _Startide_Rising_ not only has an
    interestingly varied car, but features an ongoing sexual flirtation
    between a male dolphin and a female human.
    
    -dave

    Rathole:
    
       Boat of a Million Years was OK.  Nothing too spectacular, but at
    least reasonably interesting.  My disappointment was that the hard
    science didn't get involved until near the end, and that part seemed
    rushed and not very well thought out at the rest of the book, which was
    more conventional.
    
    Re: multiethnic:
    
       Another interesting thing which I recall from Sundiver was that the
    reporter (I'm horrible with names.. Pierre LeRoque??) partakes in a
    recent fad to adopt regional accents which Jacob Demwa thought was
    silly.
    
    					-mjg
    

    If you are into political statements, I would recommend "Paradice
    World" and "Santiago" by Mike Resnik.  While there are various ethic
    backgrounds represented in the characters, the major focus is to use
    a futuristic setting to explore current geo-political situations.
    
    "Paradice World" strongly parallels South Africa, even though the
    African natives have been replaced by alien natives.
    
    "Santiago" doesn't have strong of a parallel, but deals in general
    about the empirial expansion era with central government vs. colonial
    freedom.
    
    Both books were enjoyable because of the focus on the individual
    characters and the devolpment of individuals during the storyline.
    
    Scott
    
    P.S. Pardon any inaccuracies in the titles or author's name - from
    memory only.

re: .24
    
>    As far as David Brin goes, _Startide_Rising_ not only has an
>    interestingly varied car, but features an ongoing sexual flirtation
>    between a male dolphin and a female human.
    
For a book that goes beyond just mere "sexual flirtation between a male
dolphin and a female human" i highly recommend _Easy Travel to Other
Planets_ by (someone-i-forget-who) Mooney. ;-)
								paul

If we are allowed to include made-up, even non-human, ethnics, I recommend the
following series of 3 books, by the author listed above.

   Becoming Alien
   Being Alien
   Human-to-Human

Granted, the human protagonist is white, and male, but he is definitely near the
bottom of the totem pole.

						-- Spencer

I've read mostly his shorter works, but assuming this is the same
universe as "Kirinyaga", I agree, Resnick's stuff is appealing and
definitely from a non-white perspective.

Speaking of short fiction, Resnick's "Bully!" (up for a Hugo), while it
"stars" Teddy Roosevelt, is set in Africa and is rather sympathetic to
the Africans (and a ripping good yarn, to boot) -- and different enough
from Kirinyaga that it wasn't until just now when I was looking up
names that I realized it was the same author.

And while I'm scanning the Hugo list, "The Coon Rolled Down and
Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk", by Daffyd ab
Hugh, while it does include a white male as the primary human, is
mostly told from the perspective of a skunk, as the name implies (and
probably features a dog more prominently than the boy).

Re .20:  It's been a few years since I read Ringworld, but was there
anything Chinese about Louis Wu besides his name?

    I recently read a book entitled _Sword_of_Winter_ by (I can't remeber). 
    The protagonist is female.  This book is not SF but Fantasy you so might
    not enjoy it.  The women in this book played a very dominate role in
    society.  I thought it was great.
    
    I think you should also include Heinlein in this list as well.  Many of
    his characters were of various races and there were a few women as
    well.  I also recently read RAMA II by Clarke and Lee and it also had
    characters of both sexes and several races.
    
    Also, The Riftwar Saga series has characters with a distinct oriental
    social system and values.  Daughter_of_Empire by the same author has 
    a woman protagonist of this same oriential-like race.  Unfortunately I
    can't remember the authors name.  I've a bad memory for names.
    
    Many of Ann McAffrey's charaters are female.  Read the Dragonriders of
    Pern series and the spin-off series as well.
    
    I've enjoyed all of the above.  Hope you will too!
    
    Stu

    
    Almost forgot. One of my favourite books too. 
    
    Neuromancer by William Gibson. One of the protagonists is a black femme
    fatale "street samurai" named Molly. She also has some walk on roles in
    the following books "Count Zero" and "Mona Lisa Overdrive".
    
    It's an excellent book. Hugo and Nebula winner I believe.
    
    bruce

    I've already mentioned R. A. MacAvoy's "Raphael" and "Tea with the
    Black Dragon."  She also wrote "Third Eagle," with a protagonist who is
    a spacefaring, transgenic Amerind.  Unfortunately, I can't say that I
    liked it, but others might.
    
    Sherri Tepper's "Revenants" has a very multi-ethnic cast.  Even the
    protagonist is multi-ethnic -- it keeps changing shape and sex, and has
    done so daily since infancy.
    
    Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" has a WASP (well, WASC) male
    protagonist, but almost all the other characters, including strong,
    protagonist-calibre supporting ones, are Hispanic (when they aren't
    nonhuman).

If we go to the limit, there is also a quite good story without any human 
at all ;-)
"Crucible of Time" from John Brunner is probably the only example of SF
litterature which features only non-humans.

GLT

I've been too busy to note for a few weeks and you folks have gone crazy! I'm a
hundred notes down. Time to catch up.

Jack L. Chalker's G.O.D. series has a Black female protagonist.

Margaret Wiese's new series (the title has left my brain, one of the books is
THE_LOST_KING) has one of the minor protagonists as a Black male. Her other
series ROSE_OF_THE_PROPHET has Arab heros. 

liesl

Oh yeah, Judith Tar's AVARYUN_RISING (I know it's not spelled right) has a Black
male hero. liesl

    
    Gee, how could I have forgotten Odetta/Detta/Suzannah from Stephen
    King's Drawing of the Three.  She was black, and schizoid.  One
    personality was busy trying to further equal rights, the other was busy
    trying to kill anything white.  
    
    I haven't figured out, tho, whether these books are SF, fantasy,
    fiction or western yet.  I'm still kinda ripped at what's happening
    with the sequels.
    
    Helen

	Try `In the Country of the Blind' by Michael Flynn.  The protagonist
	is a black female.  There several characters of varied cultural and 
	ethnic back grounds.

	_kate_

    Re: .36
    
    Not only was Odetta/Detta/Suzannah a young, black, woman schizoid, she
    was a young, black, PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED woman schizoid!
    
    K.C.

    In the AMAZONS science fiction short story collections (Amazons I,
    Amazons II...etc...edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson) there's an
    author named Charles R. Saunders, who writes African-style fantasy with
    female protagonists.  In book I, I think, he has a character named
    Dossouye, who he carried I believe into an entire book after that.
    
    -Jody

RE -.1 that character appears in a couple of MZB's Sword and Sorceress
anthologies. liesl

    He's also written a number of stories (collected into a book) about
    a black male character named Imaro.
    
    I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but in F.M. Busby's
    novel ZELDA M'TANA, the title character is a black female.
    
    --- jerry

How many non-white science fiction authors are there that get published
in English-speaking countries?  For that matter, how many non-English-
speaking science fiction authors are there that get published in translation?

Based on the fact that writers tend to "write what they know", it's not too
surprising that protagonists tend to share a lot of characteristics of their
authors.  I suppose that as the culture being portrayed gets more and more
removed from present day English-speaking culture, this need not be so
great a tendency...but it seems to me that you'd have to be either awfully
good or somewhat arrogant to suppose that you could accurately portray the
life experience of somebody in this culture (or one like it) who had to grow
up dealing with it from a markedly different perspective.

Right now i can only think of Samuel R. Delany as a non-white author and
Stanislaw Lem as one published in translation, but then my brain isn't
firing on all cylinders today.
								paul

    David Wingrove's _Chung_Kuo_ has a pretty substantial cast of Chinese
    characters.  It's a curious throw-back to the old Imperial China
    though, given that the story is set in the 23rd Century.  (See topic
    885 for more discussion.)
    
    --Simon
    

    re: .42
    
    It's extraordinary how little SF seems to make it from other
    languages into English.  The only authors of consequence that I
    can think of are Jues Verne (of course), Stanislaw Lem (Polish), 
    Boris and Arkady Strutagasky (Russian) and Pierre Boulle (French). 
    Does anyone know if a non-English story has ever won a Hugo or
    Nebula?  I wouldn't be surprised if none had ever even been
    nominated.   
    
    The USSR and Eastern Europe seem to be the only other places where
    SF is strong.  Perhaps with perestroika we'll be seeing more from
    there.
    
    /jlr

    Re .42
    
    If I remember rightly, Stephen Barnes, who has collaborated with Larry
    Niven on a few novels and at least once with Niven and Pournelle, is
    black. However, I don't know if has any solo works published.
    
    Clive

Specifically, Thai?  If so, then S.P. Somtow (ne Somtow Sucharitkul)
has done a number of things; generally, though, my memory is that his
protagonists are usually white (i.e., Anglo-Saxon American) males.  (He
did a delightful clash of cultures short sometime in the last 2 years,
though, in Asimov's, that was set in Thailand, where most of the
characters were Thai.)

I can't confirm his colour, but Stephen Barnes wrote _Street Lethal_, and a 
follow-on whose title has slipped my memory...





Cheers,


Ian S.

    Try the new Mary Gentile book - Rats & Gargoyles.  I bought it
    based on two of her earlier works I enjoyed - Golden Witchbreed
    and Ancient Light.  This one is REALLY different.  It takes place
    in either heaven, hell, or on earth (pick one!).  The main
    characters are rats and simian-type humans with tails.  TYhe
    gods are either stone Sphynx-type of things of half human, half
    snake.  
    
    It took some persistence to get through it, but the heros are
    different.  Might be easier to work your way into her writing
    with the first book, Golden Witchbreed, which is very well done.

re: .50

That raises the question of whether works whose main characters are
animals should be considered fantasy or science fiction _by definition_.
Something like _Watership Down_ certainly seems like a good case for
that, although it's set in contemporary England (especially the eerily
psychic rabbit Fiver: "you are closer to death than I"...brrrr!).

But that may not address the question raised by .0, although i'm not
sure if we haven't found enough exceptions to satisfy that (given
that '30s and '40s science fiction may not be representative of the
genre as a whole...and even '30s and '40s fantasy of the "Conan" and
A. Merritt ilk was pretty multi-racial).
								paul

    Re .51
    
    I don't think the various non-human protagonists and supporting
    characters mentioned here really satisfy the request for multi-ethnic
    SF, since the phrasing of the request seemed to me to ask for
    characters derived from non-WASP ethnic groups of current political
    interest.
    
    On the other hand, it's worth noting that, in a great many cases,
    aliens in SF are clearly symbols for human foreigners.  Wells's
    Martians were to Earthlings as marauding Europeans were to the rest of
    the world (though Wells worked more on the analogy of humans preying on
    animals).  Burroughs's Martians were to John Carter like the various
    barbarous and civilized orientals to a British adventurer.  And this
    tradition has continued.  In LeGuin's "Lathe of Heaven," nine-foot-
    tall turtle-like aliens end up being the latest wave of immigrants,
    with a tendency to start up small businesses like hot-dog stands and
    hardware stores.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

  Actually, I think appearance of ERB's Martians was ripped off in  
  toto from Madame Blavatsky's "Lemuria" stuff.  But I agree with
  you about cultures and behaviors being a backdrop for an adventure.

  JP

    re.48 The follow up to 'Street Lethal' by Stephen Barnes is titled
    "Gorgon Child". The two works together are excellent. The hero
    is a black athlete named Aubrey Knight, who is framed for murder
    while training for the sport of null-boxing (zero gravity.)

    
    Another interesting series is George Alec Effinger's "cyberpunk" books;
    "When Gravity Fails", "A Fire in the Sun", and "The Exile Kiss". The
    protagonist is male, but the setting is very, very Arabic. Interesting.
    
    bruce

    I haven't read it yet, but I have a copy of Michael Bishop's "No Enemy
    but Time".  The protagonist was born of a chance encounter between a
    black American soldier and a Spanish prostitute.

    re -.1
    
    Well, if you want to go that route, Cirraco Jones, the principal
    character in John Varley's Wizard/Titan/Demon series was the result of
    the rape of her mother by an Iraqi prison guard during a border
    incident with Kuwait (did he know something we didn't?).

    Well, dropping in here once every 3 months makes for a lot of reading
    and "tail-end charlie" replies.
    
    Adding to the list:
    
    Talbot Mundy's JimGrim stories (Chullunder Ghose & Narayan Singh)(sp)
    Wilson Tucker's YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN's central character is a black
    male.
    
    ...And I'm sure I'd find more if I looked.  (I also have collections
    of French & Soviet SF, and maybe one or two more if I look.)
    
    However, if all the books mentioned in this note were laid end-to-end
    across a typical Book Corner they wouldn't reach from wall to wall,
    so the point is well made.  But I do feel SF readers accept stories
    having protagonists that are of the opposite sex (or other), different
    color (prismatically speaking), non-human (still haven't gotten over
    putting myself in the character of a space traveling female bipedal 
    feline 'tho it's been a long time since I read the last Chanur novel),
    and etc.  Speaking for myself, I generally tend to overlook the human
    protagonist's race/color unless it has a direct bearing on the story,
    and even then I forget sometimes and get surprised when he/she reacts
    ethnically (for want of a better word).  And I'd venture a guess I'm
    not the only one who "adapts" central characters.  The bottom line here
    is if you can't identify with the character then the book will usually
    fall flat (and closed).
    
    Anyone have any statistics on SF readers by sex, color, religion, etc.?
    Anyone have any statistics on SF writers by sex, color, religion, etc.?
    I wonder how closely they'd match...  
    
    							Don