I’ve been thinking a lot about how many of the semi-formative series in sci fi/fantasy I read as a kid were written by white people, often men, often with serious issues.

Like Asimov—a serial harasser whose depictions of women were...not the best. Or Robert Jordan, who was better in some regards, but seemed to think that women liked being inconsistent. And who wrote a civil war series under another name that glorified the Southern way of life.

Or Tolkien, whose issues around race bleed into his world building.

It’s not that I want these people canceled or struck from history.

But seeing who else is out there and what they have done—Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, N.K. Jemisin—makes me wonder how many brilliant, semi-formative authors we missed during SFF’s so-called golden years.

There’s a lot of talk of “canceling” going on, and I don’t want anyone canceled per se. I’m actively excited about adaptations of Foundation and the Wheel of Time.

But the people who were *actually* canceled are the ones we never hear about, and I want us to care about *them* just as fiercely.