SF and disabilities
Jun. 14th, 2017 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrAfter reading a post by ysabetwordsmith on disabilities in SF, I got to thinking.
First one I recalled was Arthur C. Clarke's "Islands in the Sky" with a legless guy on a space station (someone else with a better memory reminded me that he was the commander of the station).
That lead me to recall that the Commandant of the Patrol Academy in Robert Heinlein's "Space Cadet" was blind.
And now that I think more, there was Baslim the blind and crippled beggar in Heinlein's "Citizen of the Galaxy" (who turns out to be a lot more than you'd think).
Then I recalled Murray Leinster's "Space Platform" where a good chunk of the workers building (on the ground!) the first space station (they launched it in one piece!!!) were midgets/dwarfs because they could work in tight spaces.
at one point it's suggested they they launch a smaller setup crewed by some of them as a stopgap because they don't need as muchg space, air or food as regular sized people.
And these were all in the 50s!
Later came Anne McCaffery's "The Ship Who Sang". And a book whose author and title I forget whose main character was blinded (on purpose by some nasties) and used a prosthetic that let him see thru the eyes of nearby people or animals. He managed to take advantage of this to figure out what everyone had been trying to do for a long, long time and "map" hyperspace.
C.S. Freidman had a book where one of the cultures was built around almost all the people in it being neurodiveregent in one way or another. And being *designed* to accomdate them.
Anyone else have some stories to add? Fantasy stories are ok too.
ysabetwordsmith on disabilities in SF, I got to thinking.First one I recalled was Arthur C. Clarke's "Islands in the Sky" with a legless guy on a space station (someone else with a better memory reminded me that he was the commander of the station).
That lead me to recall that the Commandant of the Patrol Academy in Robert Heinlein's "Space Cadet" was blind.
And now that I think more, there was Baslim the blind and crippled beggar in Heinlein's "Citizen of the Galaxy" (who turns out to be a lot more than you'd think).
Then I recalled Murray Leinster's "Space Platform" where a good chunk of the workers building (on the ground!) the first space station (they launched it in one piece!!!) were midgets/dwarfs because they could work in tight spaces.
at one point it's suggested they they launch a smaller setup crewed by some of them as a stopgap because they don't need as muchg space, air or food as regular sized people.
And these were all in the 50s!
Later came Anne McCaffery's "The Ship Who Sang". And a book whose author and title I forget whose main character was blinded (on purpose by some nasties) and used a prosthetic that let him see thru the eyes of nearby people or animals. He managed to take advantage of this to figure out what everyone had been trying to do for a long, long time and "map" hyperspace.
C.S. Freidman had a book where one of the cultures was built around almost all the people in it being neurodiveregent in one way or another. And being *designed* to accomdate them.
Anyone else have some stories to add? Fantasy stories are ok too.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-15 08:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-15 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-06-15 01:05 pm (UTC)In the Seventies I read a novel (very forgettable except for how bad it was) where a doctor had to be sent to the base on the Moon to treat an injured man (they were all men, there). After considering and rejecting several "little people" with medical training, they picked a small woman doctor because she would (just barely) fit in a cargo mission about to launch.
I remember the "blind guy maps hyperspace" novel, but neither title nor author.
There was a cheap SF movie on the Skiffy Channel about a decade and a half ago. This had a genetically engineered branch of humans called "Toolies" who were very small and also had one arm replaced with a powered multitool.
no subject
Date: 2017-06-15 03:12 pm (UTC)And not disabled, but Hugh Walters(?) wrote a bunch of novels involving a space program running out of Woomera.
In the first one they used a teenager as the first man into space.
(yet another set of books from my youth that I'd like to have copies of. Not that they were that great, but they're now a sort of "period piece")