I think that at the outset the idea that these marginalized groups were "destroying" science fiction or fantasy was meant to be satiric. There were certain fans that have been called "sad puppies" who said things like "Women are destroying science fiction." So it seemed to me that these special issues started with "Women Destroy Science Fiction" to twist the tails of these "sad puppies".
Subsequently, members of these groups have let it be known that science fiction and fantasy were portraying them negatively or not meeting their needs as readers. So they actually did mean to destroy science fiction and fantasy in the sense of re-conceptualizing it. They had visions of science fiction and fantasy that would be more inclusive. Their Destroy series issues would be about why some science fiction and fantasy was problematic for them, and what they wanted to see in these genres.
I am particularly interested in disability issues. So I am now going to proceed to my review of Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction.
There were two stories in this issue that really impressed me.
My favorite story in Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction is "Disconnect" by Fran Wilde. I feel that this story is more magical realism than science fiction. There is a veneer of science because the plot involves scientific studies, but so many things that happen in this story are fantastical. Readers may believe that these events are the protagonist's hallucinations. The protagonist has constant crippling anxiety and she lives in what I considered a Kafkaesque context which exacerbated her anxiety. I expected this story to have a pretty dark ending, but instead it's a triumph. I thought that "Disconnect" was astonishing and original.
The fiction editor, Dominick Parisien, said in his introduction that not all the stories in the issue would deal with disability prominently because identity is complex, and disability is only part of a disabled person's life. "The Frequency of Compassion" by A. Merc Rustad, the second of the stories in this issue that I considered excellent, has an autistic protagonist, but wasn't primarily focused on autism. It involved the ethics of first contact and gender. I found it powerful.
The two essays that I liked most were the first and last that appeared in the essay section. They were wide-ranging essays that brought up numerous issues.
I thought that " Design A Spaceship" by Andi C. Buchanan was the most extraordinary because it gave me so much food for thought that I felt stuffed with reflections. Buchanan asks a great many pointed questions.
There was one question that I would like to bring up in this review because it brought to the fore some thoughts I'd already had about a particular character. Is assistive technology in science fiction for the purpose of making the able audience more comfortable with disabled characters? This had actually occurred to me with regard to Star Trek: The Next Generation's blind character Geordi La Forge's visor. The audience doesn't have to see his blind eyes. Of course the actor Levar Burton isn't blind, but I think that it could have been possible to give him blind eyes in post-production. Instead they found a way to hide his eyes. Then it occurred to me that we never saw Geordi in his cabin with his visor off because Geordi didn't have a personal life. I feel that he was largely an undeveloped character. And then he was cured which made able viewers even more comfortable with him. This really irritated me.
"The Future Is (Not) Disabled" by Marieke Nijkamp also asks a plethora of provocative questions.
Nijkamp poses questions about the idea that all disabilities will be cured in the future. Will these cures have side effects? Can everyone afford them? Is health care a right or for profit?
This last essay in the issue also proposes some assistive technologies. I'd actually seen one in a short story that appeared in a 2018 indie science fiction and fantasy anthology for stories centering on disabled protagonists called A Different Kind of Hero. "Difficulty: Unlimited" by Anthea Sharp had a protagonist with a wheelchair that could hover above the ground. I found it to be a well developed story. One assistive technology mentioned by Nijkamp that I'd like to see is robot service dogs especially if the robot dogs are very advanced AIs who could become fully developed characters.
Among the poems in this anthology, I preferred the narrative poems that had a story line. The only narrative poem that focused on disability was "You Wanted Me To Fly" by Julia Watts Belser. It also contained some wonderful poetic phrases and made a strong statement.
Finally, there is a section of personal essays that are about personal experiences of the authors. I had two favorites. One was "Nihil de Nobis, Sine Nobis" by Ace Ratcliff which focused on Ratcliff's criticism of ableism in The Expanse which Ratcliff tweeted about. I also loved "The Only Thing Faster Than Tonight, Mr. Darkness" by deaf contributor Elise Matheson which is about auto-captioning on You Tube. I had also noticed their inaccuracy. I found a recent article about this problem which appeared this year in The Atlantic Monthly called When Is A Caption Close Enough? by Linda Besner. To be fair, You Tube auto-captions have improved. Google is quoted in Besner's article saying that they have improved by 50% since 2015 which is a great deal of progress.
I would recommend Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction.Readers may find stories, essays or poems in this issue other than the ones I've mentioned that feel significant to them. I would also like to point out that Uncanny has recently published Disabled People Destroy Fantasy which I look forward to reading when I have enough time to devote to it.
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