More fodder
Jan. 21st, 2006 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Nicked from the UN report, via a post of mine:
Three Earths in 2100:
While I freely admit that migration in the past has seen small groups provide disproportionate fractions of migrants and that population models are often incorrect, this seems to me to indicate that all other considerations being equal, the pasty white with the occasional visible minority in the background model used in a lot of SF set in near future interstellar settings is likely to be wildly incorrect.
Three Earths in 2100:
Growth Scenario Region Low Medium High Africa 27.5% 24.9% 23.1% Asia 52.1 55.4 57.5 Latin America and Caribbean 7.4 8.1 8.4 North America 5.8 5.2 5.0 Europe 6.6 5.9 5.6 Oceana 0.6 0.5 0.5 Population 5.5B 9.1B 14.0B
While I freely admit that migration in the past has seen small groups provide disproportionate fractions of migrants and that population models are often incorrect, this seems to me to indicate that all other considerations being equal, the pasty white with the occasional visible minority in the background model used in a lot of SF set in near future interstellar settings is likely to be wildly incorrect.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 08:16 pm (UTC)Just glancing over the 40 most present posters,
http://netscan.research.microsoft.com/reportcard.aspx?tp=14&sd=12/12/2005&ng=rec.arts.sf.written
I know that a number of the posters are Jewish but that seems to be the largest minority group. I am not seeing a lot of Asian names, for example. Given the history of the New World, guessing at skin colour from surnames is iffy at best but offhand I can only recall one living poster who has mentioned that they are black [1].
1: On the other hand, so few conversations about SF go "And so I think CRYPONOMICON could have been vastly improved with fewer pages and by the way I am naturally tanned." This is because Cryptonomicon is about as SFnal as Heck Ramsey.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-21 10:58 pm (UTC)