It's stereotypical to comment that our field is the literature of alienation. Scratch most SF/F fans and writers and you'll find someone who more likely spent their teen years in the bookstacks rather than the malt shoppe or on the playing field. As I've commented before, all the cool kids were out having social lives while I hiding in the corner with a book.
Being a Third Culture Kid is all about alienation, but in a reasonably constructive form. Which is to say, not a terminal case of emo, but rather a fine infestation of polyculturalism. And you do see TCKs in our field (such as S.M. Stirling, Jeff VanderMeer or me). Also immigrant writers (such as squirrel_monkey herself), who have a lot in common with TCKs. I think it's the foundational sense of cultural dislocation that denormalizes our worldview sufficiently to have the thought processes to write SF/F.
So I present the Dangerous Poll. I shall also don my flameproof comment suit forthwith.
If you're a reader of science fiction and fantasy, would you consider yourself a Third Culture Kid?
If you're a writer of science fiction and fantasy (published or aspiring), would you consider yourself a Third Culture Kid?
Throwing out a few labels (always a dangerous game), which of these might you claim for yourself?
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →
← Ctrl ← Alt
Ctrl → Alt →