The Ethics of Race, Failure, and Asian American (Ethno)Futures

This essay explores the ethics of the "unexpected" by examining three examples of contemporary Asian American science fiction: Ted Chiang's "Division by Zero" and "Story of Your Life", and Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. With each focusing on a form of negative critique, new theorizations of possible futures are developed, routed through representations both analogous and common to Asian American literature: affect, relations with the dead/past, and the immigrant family. The authors bring strategies for envisioning the future to crisis to engage an ethnofuturist project decoupled from traditional notions of historical meaning and sociological certitude.