38 • SFRA Review 52.3 • Summer 2022 FEATURES FEATURES Fictional Foresight and Autism Advocacy: Te Role of Science Fictional Narratives in Unearthing Eugenic Motivations Ryan Collis At the end of August 2021, a research project named “Spectrum 10K” launched in the United Kingdom. Its goal: to collect the genetic data of 10,000 autistic people to “investigate genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the wellbeing of autistic individuals and their families” (spectrum10k.org/). Tis quickly became a lightning rod for controversy as the autistic community wrote articles and circulated petitions against the project. Te backlash eventually grew so strong that the project voluntarily paused, with project representatives “apologiz[ing] for causing distress, and promis[ing] a deeper consultation with autistic people and their families” (Sanderson). Te reason for the strong condemnation of the project, as well as the formation of a community specifcally to oppose it, is the subject of this paper. Te fears of the potential eugenic use of DNA brought together a community that had a unifed understanding of what DNA, genetics, and eugenics are, which was mostly based on the way they are presented in the fantastic. While there are real world examples of DNA editing, such as CRISPR (Le Page), most people’s understanding of what genomic medicine is comes from science fction. Further, through the proliferation of autistic-coded characters in SF (such as Spock, Data, and the Terminator), negative stereotypes and misrepresentations of the autistic community further infuence public perception of what it means to be autistic. Te claims by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen, one of the lead researchers, that the purpose of the Spectrum 10K project is benign, must be viewed in light of fantastic representation of genetic science and eugenics. Non-autistics consider Baron-Cohen to be one of the most knowledgeable voices in autism research. Autistics have a signifcantly less positive opinion of him, because while his claims have a wide reach, they are mostly “bad takes”—a slang term used to fag what is commonly seen on social media as a clear error in judgment made even more regrettable for having been published at all (Dias). He once ran a study that produced results so improbable that the authors of the sofware he used objected to its publishing (Bach and Dakin). To end the controversy, the research team ran the experiment again and had to retract their original results (Tavassoli et al.). To expand the scope and source of Baron-Cohen’s negative impact on the autistic community, we can also turn to science fctional representation. In SF, the autistic-coded alien/non-human (e.g., Spock or Data) ofen does not understand or experience emotions, thereby placing them outside the realm of the human. I use the term “autistic-coded” because the authors of these texts were not necessarily intending the character to be autistic, but there is a link between this type of dehumanized character and the archetype of the emotionless autistic who lacks empathy. Tat depiction of ‘what an autistic person is like’ comes from Baron-Cohen’s “empathizing-systemizing theory,” which claims that males are systemizers and females are empathizers, a conclusion he reached based