![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/this-alien-shore-300x479.jpg\")
<\/a>\t\n\t![](\"http:\/\/corinneduyvis.net\/images\/logo-bookshop.svg\"){kind=logo}
\n\t\t\t\tBUY ON BOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t\tBOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& support independent bookstores\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/article> \n\n\t<\/center><\/div>The planet Guera in C.S. Friedman\u2019s This Alien Shore<\/a><\/em> is an example of utopian disability worldbuilding. On Guera, everyone has a mental or sensory disability, including autism. Since everyone has one, disabilities are no longer stigmatized. Instead, they are codified and accommodated. Guerans are proud of their kaja \u2014 the cultural symbols denoting different disabilities, and see each kaja as an irreplaceable part of individual identity, bringing characteristic strengths as well as difficulties.<\/p>\nGuera is a much more accommodating place than our world today, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s free from problems. Elsewhere in the same book, societies exist where ableism is even more pronounced than today. On Earth, humans long ago wiped out all disabilities from their own population. So when Earth and Guera enter a power struggle over new forms of space travel, ableist prejudice and Guerans\u2019 reactions to it are what come to the forefront. Simply by imagining different ways of handling disability and their consequences, Friedman ends up with a complex world full of interesting conflicts for a story to center around.<\/p>\n
Dystopias serve as an even more direct social commentary than utopias. By showing the terrible consequences of something when taken \u201cto its logical conclusion,\u201d a dystopia serves as a straightforward critique of that thing. In this light, ableism is as good a basis for a dystopia as any other. But the critique offered by a dystopia works best when the imagined increases in ableism don\u2019t come out of nowhere; they should be attitudes and actions that could logically progress, with a little more time and technology, from the way things are today.<\/p>\n
![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/keas-flight-300x458.jpg\")
<\/a>\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\tBUY ON BOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t\tBOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& support independent bookstores\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/article> \n\n\t<\/center><\/div>One example of an autism dystopia that works this way is Erika Hammerschmidt and John C. Ricker\u2019s YA novel Kea\u2019s Flight<\/a><\/em>. Hammerschmidt and Ricker\u2019s premise sounds fanciful on its face \u2014 instead of selective abortion, developmentally disabled embryos are put into a spaceship, and flown far away, to colonize another planet! But the details that bring it to life on the page are drawn from present lived experience. The inflexible, infantalizing attitudes of the ship\u2019s able-bodied crew echo Hammerschmidt\u2019s own experience in special education classrooms. This is what helps the book ring true despite its science-fictional twists.<\/p>\nSimilarly, in Meda Kahn\u2019s short story \u201cDifference of Opinion<\/a>,\u201d what\u2019s really frightening about the dystopian future presented is that the attitudes of the people in the story aren\u2019t too different from people\u2019s attitudes now. Only the technologies they can use to keep autistic people out of the way \u2014 including a memory erasing procedure and a Committee for Eugenics\u2014have increased.<\/p>\n This kind of worldbuilding results in a heavy focus, not just on disabled characters, but on the social treatment of disabled people and ideas about how it should and shouldn\u2019t be done. Utopian and dystopian impulses are a good way to develop stories about <\/em>disability \u2014 and the social structures that keep it in place.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you want a softer approach. You want a world where everything<\/em> is a little different from how it is here and now \u2014 including our approaches to disability\u2014but you don\u2019t want approaches to disability to be your main starting point. This kind of worldbuilding is great and very doable; it results from building a complex world, and then tracing the implications of how the culture, magic, or technology in that world would affect an autistic person.<\/p>\n A really good example of this kind of worldbuilding is Rose Lemberg\u2019s Birdverse. One Nebula-nominated Birdverse story, \u201cGrandmother Nai-Leylit\u2019s Cloth of Winds<\/a>,\u201d centers around a family from a culture called the Khana. The Khana are deeply divided along gender lines: men are scholars who stay cloistered, while women travel and trade. Because men are scholars who read and write, a minimally verbal child named Kimi can\u2019t be accepted by the Khana as a man. So Kimi instead goes on adventurous trading journeys with their sisters. The underlying attitudes of different people towards Kimi \u2014 family who respect and support them, strangers who are helpful, and others who are not so helpful or who see them as a burden \u2014 are recognizable from life, but the culture of the Khana and of others in the story puts its own twist on how those attitudes are expressed.<\/p>\n Magic and technology can also affect how autistic people experience the world. Most obviously, some technologies are intended as assistive in nature. Even technology not intended to be assistive can change autistic people\u2019s experiences \u2014 think of how the Internet, for example, has affected the social lives of some autistic people who have a limited ability to socialize in person. Any technological (or magical) change potentially gives you an avenue like this to explore.<\/p>\n Magic and technology can also cause problems for a worldbuilder, though \u2014 because at some point, technology will emerge that could be used as a \u201ccure.\u201d There are already a lot of stories depicting what might happen if autistic people were offered (or pressured towards) a cure, and in general, it\u2019s a story that many autistic readers are tired of hearing. But if people in your story can magically or medically rewire people\u2019s brains, how do you justify not simply turning autistic characters neurotypical?<\/p>\n A simple answer is write your story so that the technology exists, but not everyone wants to use it. Maybe nobody does. Maybe some people do, but those who don\u2019t are respected and given other viable options. Maybe cost, risk, and other factors make the technology inaccessible or undesirable for some. If respect for autism as an identity exists in your world, then you can pull this off without making it the focus of the whole story.<\/p>\n Even This Alien Shore<\/em> does this to some degree: Guerans have the technology to change parts of their brains. But most don\u2019t use it, because they are proud of their kaja, and see changing their kaja as sacrificing a part of themselves. Some do choose to make that sacrifice, to a degree \u2014 usually opting to reduce some of the effects of the kaja rather than erasing it altogether \u2014 and that choice is also respected.<\/p>\n A second example comes from another Birdverse story, \u201cGeometries of Belonging<\/a>.\u201d The main character, Healer Par\u00e9t, is a mind-healer who can magically tinker with many aspects of a patient\u2019s mind. An autistic teenager named Ded\u00e9i is sent to Par\u00e9t, by their abusive family, to be cured. But Ded\u00e9i does not want to be cured. Par\u00e9t refuses to perform the procedure, because it is important to him to never use his magic without consent. Instead, Par\u00e9t befriends Ded\u00e9i and helps them find a way to escape.<\/p>\n Magic, technology, and cultural customs are one thing; attitudes are another. By combining these intelligently, you can build worlds where your autistic people are respected and supported by the people around them \u2014 in ways that are very different, yet recognizable, to readers who live here and now.<\/p>\n What if your secondary world isn\u2019t that different from the real world? Maybe you want to write an autistic character, right here and now, who just happens to meet wizards or vampires or aliens. Or maybe you want to write a few hundred years in the future or past, but you don\u2019t want to fixate on how autism might be different in your setting; you want your autistic character\u2019s experiences to be drawn straight from life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s totally fine to write a story where nothing \u201caffects\u201d your characters\u2019 autism \u2014 they just have it, and go on magical adventures anyway. A good example of a magical realist story like this is Nino Cipri\u2019s \u201cA Silly Love Story<\/a>.\u201d Jeremy, the protagonist, is a young man who\u2019s described only as \u201cneurodiverse,\u201d but who can easily be read as autistic or as having a related disability. His autism has an effect on him: most notably, he\u2019s having difficulty with the transition to adulthood, and with school\/jobs. But that\u2019s not the focus of the story. It\u2019s on his cute budding romance with a person named Merion, and on that pesky poltergeist in his closet! The result is fun and heartwarming, and none the worse for its lack of emphasis on Jeremy\u2019s neurotype.<\/p>\n But of course, there\u2019s also the other reason you might want to set an autism story here and now. You might not want to write a character who \u201cjust happens\u201d to be autistic; you might want to write about the problems that real autistic people<\/em> have here and now, while also including science or magic. It\u2019s OK and important to center these things, too.<\/p>\nCulture Shock: Worldbuilding Through Autism<\/h5>\n
The Rest of Us Just Live Here: Worldbuilding With Autism<\/h5>\n
![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/2312-300x450.jpg\")
<\/a>\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\tBUY ON BOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t\tBOOKSHOP<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t& support independent bookstores\n\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/article> \n\n\t<\/center><\/div>Stories where autistic people just matter-of-factly have the same adventures as anyone else are great, and you don\u2019t have to stick with modern magical realism to make them work, either. You can write them in almost any genre. All that\u2019s required is that the differences between how autism is treated in your storyworld and how it\u2019s treated here and now are small enough to fade into the background without being confusing. So for example, you can have a story like Kim Stanley Robinson\u2019s 2312<\/a><\/em>, set three hundred years in the future with spaceships and hollowed-out asteroids. Fitz Wahram, an autistic androgyn, has adventures with politics and romance and getting stranded on dangerous planets. There are a couple of scenes that mention aspects of how he manages being autistic (he takes vasopressin, for instance), but the focus isn\u2019t there. It\u2019s on the adventures!<\/p>\n
![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/disabilityinkidlit.com\/test\/wp-content\/uploads\/on-the-edge-of-gone-300x455.jpg\")
<\/a>\t\n\t