Standing Proud

 

A strength of science fiction is its ability to challenge social norms and assumptions. An area in which this is particularly effective is in questioning our society’s assumptions about human physical characteristics - race, gender, mental or physiological differences. Over the years a number of narratives have explored the life experience and roles of individuals with restricted growth - whether as a result of hormonal differences, genetic changes or simply occupying the extreme ends of the general distribution in height. Today I’m going to take a look at how science fiction portrays those with short stature.

 

[Important note: I have no personal experience of restricted growth, and am aware that this is a sensitive topic. I will try my hardest to treat it respectfully and with care, using currently favoured terminologies. I hope someone will let me know if I make a mistake. However it should be noted that acceptable use of language regarding this topic and individuals affected by it has changed over the years and no-longer acceptable terms are used in the text of many of the examples I will be mentioning.]

The Alien and Other

 

Particularly amongst older science fictions, but throughout the genre, representations of people with small stature commonly reflected the contemporary attitudes of society to such individuals - largely negative, representing people with dwarfism, restricted growth and related conditions as living outside of societal norms, Other and alien (in nature, or in literal extra-terrestrial origin). These were often associated with traditional outsider roles such as jesters, clowns or other entertainers.

 

The use of actors with restricted growth to portray aliens has been ubiquitous in television and film science fictions. On screen, visual differences are more impactful than on radio or in text, and the range of average human physical stature leaves little scope to change the outline and major physical characteristics of a sentient being. By contrast, those with physical differences offered film makers opportunities to change the silhouette and represent a different norm. As a result most television franchises have employed such actors in alien roles, with notable examples including races such as the Jawa and Ewoks and the droid R2D2 in Star Wars (played by actors including Warwick Davies and Kenny Baker), and individual aliens such as Sil in Doctor Who (“Vengeance on Varos”, ??, played by Nabil Shaban). Indeed, in some cases, such as the role of Alexander in Star Trek (“Plato’s Stepchildren”, 1968, played by Michael Dunn), or Rumplestiltskin in Star Trek DS9 (“If Wishes were Horses”, 1993, played by Michael John Anderson) the character is both alien and cast in the role of a traditional outcast, a jester and folklore figure respectively, such that their physical differences act to other them from the crew in both senses.

 

Returning to Earth, the theme of physical differences as synonymous with mental or social differentiation has also been common amongst human characters. Again, these often conform to traditional stereotype roles, as in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where actor Michael Dunn (who had been nominated for an Academy Award the year before [Dunn is also known for playing the marginally science-fictional mad scientist Dr Loveless in the television series Wild, Wild West.]) portrayed a clown with malign intent (and peculiar abilities) in “The Wax Men” (1966). However a specifically science-fictional stereotype is to associate a diminished physical presence with an enhanced mental one. This can be traced back at least as far back as H G Wells’ essay “The Man of the Year Million”, published in the Pall Mall Budget journal in 1893. In this, Wells extrapolated evolutionary and social trends into the future, predicting that industrialisation and intellectualisation would lead to larger brains and atrophied limbs, bodies and nervous systems. Examples of physically stunted but psychically gifted individuals are relatively common, and include John Wainwright - the subject of Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John (novel, 1935). Interestingly, such stereotypes can be slow to fade. As recently as 2024, Morris Gibbons, a scientific advisor for UNIT in Doctor Who, was portrayed by Lenny Rush (an actor with a congenital growth condition) in the role of a child genius who used a mobility aid.

A person of short stature taking centre stage in their own narrative is Miles Vorkosigan in the series of novels and short stories named for him by Lois McMaster Bujold. This follows the life and adventures of Miles, who is born with a bone formation disorder after being exposed to a chemical attack in utero. The result is restricted growth and brittle bones - resulting in frequent breakages and significant pain, as well as overt prejudice from many in his society. As an adult, Miles has a short stature and wears leg braces. Since Miles Vorkosigan is the grandson of Count Piotr Vorkosigan, the local ruler, and the son of the planetary Prime Minister (himself later Count), he fits into a long history of narratives in which the scion of a noble house is rejected due to some perceived physical or mental deficit (which, historically, has included gender or illegitimate birth, and in fantasy also includes the character of Tyrian Lannister in Game of Thrones). The feudal system on his homeworld Barrayar is unusual amongst known planets, having apparently emerged during “the time of isolation” when humans on this planet lost the capacity for space travel, and faces challenges from emerging democratic movements.

 

On his first appearance in The Warrior’s Apprentice (novel, Bujold, 1986), after failing to enter the military training academy traditionally attended by his family, Miles Vorkosigan undertakes a journey from the planet of his birth to his mother’s home planet and semi-accidentally becomes general of his own band of space mercenaries. Over the course of a long series of subsequent stories he lives a full and adventurous life, is described as cunning and shown as having powerful skills in rhetoric. He certainly isn’t defined by his condition. On the other hand, he is also bitter and sardonic about his physical impairments - which his affectionate parents obviously feel guilt for provoking - and their effect on his life. He certainly faces prejudice and is treated differently as a result of his condition.

 

Setting this character against a science-fictional, multiworld culture gives Bujold opportunities to explore variants on the theme of such narratives (notably including a clone-brother for Miles born without the same condition), and to present societies which are not so overtly prejudiced as that of Barrayar, but ultimately this is a retelling of a familiar story, set against a feudal background and mindset that could be lifted from the late-medieval, early-modern period [In all fairness, I haven’t read all the stories, so this might be a mistaken impression from the early volumes.]. Miles succeeds, but largely relies on his vastly privileged family position, to do so. Perhaps one of Bujold’s messages in this representation might be interpreted as being that however far humans travel, human nature and the way it treats those outside the norm is unlikely to change.

 

Heroic support

 

Another strand of science fiction avoids ridiculing or intentionally othering those with restricted growth but places them instead in a subordinate or supportive role for the main protagonist - essentially acting as the hero’s sidekick.

 

An interesting example here can be found in the Lucky Starr juvenile science fiction novels written by Isaac Asimov (using the name Paul French, starting with David Starr, Space Ranger, 1952). Starr himself is a young troubleshooter answering to the Council of Science on Earth. In his first adventure he makes a friend called John “Bigman” Jones on Mars, who accompanied him in all his later adventures. Bigman’s height is given as 5’ 2’’ but he is usually described as very short, pugnacious and with a gnome-like or pixyish face. Throughout the series he is sensitive to comments about his height, insisting on use of his nickname from all, and reacting with physical violence in “Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury” when a local bigshot, Urteil, sneers:

“How about these two? What are their complaints? Hormone deficiency, for one thing, I suppose.” His eyes fell lazily on Bigman Jones as he said that.
There was a breathless interlude in which Bigman turned a deathly white and then seemed to swell. Slowly he rose from his seat, his eyes round and staring. His lips moved as though forming the words “hormone deficiency”, as though he were trying to convince himself that he had actually heart the words and that it was no illusion.
Then, with the speed of a cobra striking, Bigman’s five foot two of cord-whip muscle launched itself at the broad, sneering figure before him.”

 

In this case, Lucky intervenes to restrain his companion, and the exchange is as much about showing Urteil as villainous as it is showing Bigman’s reaction. Bigman is nonetheless loyal, helpful, intelligent and brave - at one point swallowing his pride and volunteering for a dangerous crawl through tight ventilation spaces in order to prevent a huge explosion and save lives (in the Oceans of Venus). In most of the series, he acts largely as a semi-comic foil for Starr, but is nonetheless given his own views and strengths and weaknesses. His restricted growth actually becomes a poignant plot point in the final story, Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn, when Starr confronts a group of human colonists from Sirius who believe in eugenics - breeding for their conception of excellence in physical form. Bigman faces verbal and physical abuse from this group, who question not just his fitness to breed but his very humanity. In this story, Asimov skillfully turns Bigman from a character young readers might laugh at to an object lesson in not judging an individual’s humanity and value by their physical appearance.

 

Another character with restricted growth who acts primarily in a sidekick role is technician Mike Scandia in Murray Leinster’s Joe Kendrick Trilogy: Space Platform, Space Tug and City on the Moon (juvenile novels, 1953, 1953, 1957). In Space Platform, Scandia (described in the text as a “midget”) is one of a number of little people who are employed in an effort to build the world’s first (weaponised!) space station. They are specifically tasked with reaching constricted areas and completing fiddly construction or electronics work in confined spaces. In the story, he assists the protagonist in repairing a damaged gyroscope, and later leads his fellow little people as a group in helping to repel a concerted attack on the nascent station by saboteurs. Indeed, the role played by this group leans into and subverts the stereotypes about their stature - the crew of little people act as spies, integrating themselves into other groups with the apparently harmless and naive curiosity of children, before reporting back.

 

Mike Scandia himself is treated with respect by all his colleagues - who include others from marginalised backgrounds, such as Mohawk native americans - and is also shown as being highly technically skilled. He is also given the opportunity (albeit in conversation with friends rather than a formal setting) to make a valid scientific case for a role for little people in pioneering space flight:

 

“You’re gonna land a man there. He weighs two hundred pounds. He uses twenty pounds of food and drink and oxygen a day.” [...] “But take a guy like me!” said Mike bitterly. “I weight forty five pounds, not two hundred. I use four pounds of food and air a day. A cabin for me to live in would be five feet high and six across. Being smaller, it wouldn’t need as much bracing.

 

As he points out, the whole idea of building a giant space platform would become unnecessary in such a scenario.

“Put four of us small guys in a ferry-rocket”, said Mike sardonically. “We’d have grub ad air for months! Put in a hydroponic garden and communicators and we’d be a Platform right away! Send up another ferry to join us and we’d have missiles. Send up three ferry-rockets with us as crews, and we could join ‘em and have a Platform in orbit and working - and what’d be the use of sabotaging the big Platform then? There’d be no use in it, because we could do everything the big one’s wanted to do! But,” he demanded bitterly, “do you think anybody’ll do anything as sensible as that?” (pg 93)

 

Mike also makes a critical contribution to the survival of his friends in the second novel (coming up with a quick way to cut through a sealed airlock door) and remains a prominent figure in the third book in the sequence, with the focus for the most part on his skills and competence rather than his stature. He nonetheless remains a supporting character, and an anomaly in a space programme otherwise dominated by tall, robust men. The cruel realities of this are not often confronted in the text and their occasional appearances are more impactful as a result. In the second novel, for example, a painful sequence describes the humiliation of a parachute crash landing in a rural area where the locals assume, as a result of his stature, that he is not human but rather an extraterrestrial.

A small person who puts Scandia’s theory into practice with extraterrestrial experience is Jack O’Shea in The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C M Kornbluth (originally published as Gravy Planet in Galaxy Science Fiction, 1952). This is a narrative of a hyper-commercialised future, in which an advertising firm is attempting to sell Venus as a destination for settlement and future commercial exploitation. Described as ‘a midget’, O’Shea is thirty-five inches tall, and was supported by his parents to train as a test pilot despite his stature. When the first demonstration rocket to Venus was being developed, a conventional pilot was ruled out for requiring too many resources, and then a robotic or electronic pilot proved far too heavy to install. O’Shea was selected, succeeded in travelling to Venus, landing and returning, and became an overnight celebrity - and a notorious philanderer.

 

“Until the age of twenty-five he had been a laughable sixty-pound midget, with a touch of grotesquerie in the fact that he had doggedly made himself a test pilot. At the age of twenty-six he found himself the world’s number one celebrity, the first man to land a ship on Venus, an immortal barely out of his teens. He had a lot of loving to catch up on.”

 

O’Shea is a minor character, as the book is focussed instead on an advertising executive who is betrayed by corporate infighting on their overcrowded world. O’Shea also suffers under the stress of his celebrity and his story does not end well. He is nonetheless one of the tools the protagonist attempts to leverage in the pursuit of his own goals.

Despite their trials, Scandia and O’Shea represent strong and relatively early representation of this marginalised group in SF. In fact, as an indication of how far ahead of his time this was, the role (and character) of Mike Scandia in the narrative of the Joe Kendrick stories is echoed quite closely in another SF character, from a far more recent publication.

 

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a 2014 novel by Becky Chambers. It focuses on a female character, Rosemary, who runs away from trouble at home to join the spaceship Wayfarer and its crew of freelancers working to build hyperspace tunnels between stellar systems. Amongst the crew is computer technician Jenks. In this future of routine and casual gene tweaking (adjustment of adult organisms as well as at conception), Rosemary initially assumes that his very short stature is elective. It later becomes clear that Jenks’ mother had joined a return-to-nature survivalist sect that eschewed medical interventions as a young woman, only leaving it when it was suggested that her infant son be exposed and left to die.

Jenks never shows any particular distress at his stature and, despite being raised in a culture with access to gene tweaking, never amended it. Indeed it is sometimes an advantage in his work to squeeze into small spaces in order to work on the computer (just as it was for Mike Scandia and his colleagues in Space Platform). His primary narrative role in the novel’s narrative is bound up in the romantic relationship he forms with the spaceship’s sentient AI. However it’s interesting to note that despite his general contentment, Jenks has a penchant for body piercing and does appear to be drawn to those outside the norm of society, including Lovey (the AI), and the enclave of technicians, hackers and ‘modders’ at Port Coriol:

 

“Jenks felt at home in the caves, and not just for the endless rows of neatly packaged, hard-hacked goodies. Many of the folks there were hardcore modders, people prone to removing their own limbs in favour of synthetic replacements. Walking through the caves, you might see metallic exoskeletons, or swirling nanobot tattoos, or unsettlingly perfect faces that betrayed a weakness for genetweaks. Facial patches, dermal ports, home-brewed implants. Alongside such oddities, his small stature was nothing special. It was hard to feel weird in a place where everybody was weird. He took comfort in that.” (pg 109)

 

As the ship’s computer technician, Jenks has a pivotal role in the success of the crew’s mission, and indeed their survival. He works closely with the ship’s engineer, and is shown as highly skilled. He is nonetheless a supporting, rather than focal character in the novel.

Normalising short stature

 

Despite these examples of supporting characters, science fiction has often leaned into and reinforced stereotypical representations of little people. Even in the stories of Jenks and Mike Scandia, where the characters receive substantial characterisation, their stature is a defining feature of their position. It is relatively unusual to see a person with restricted growth shown in a ‘normal’ role and going about a ‘normal’ life in science fiction.

 

Sometimes normalised short stature is a result of evolving on high gravity worlds (as, for example, in the Leagues of Votann in SF tabletop game Warhammer 40,000 or the Sontarans in Doctor Who). Here, those with restricted growth are shown as living undistinguished lives, simply because everyone else in the culture experiences the same restrictions - negating any differences. Another example can be found in the Family d’Alembert novels, largely written by Stephen Goldin (novel series, 1976-1985), based on “Imperial Stars” (novella, If, May 1964) by E E ‘Doc’ Smith was credited posthumously as a co-author on the whole series. [Smith died in 1965. An editorial that accompanied the initial magazine publication of Imperial Stars noted that it was intended as the first of a series, and it is possible that Goldin drew inspiration from some of Smith’s notes.]). The titular family are circus performers from a high gravity world, with the lead characters performing as aerialists (e.g. trapeze and high-wire artistes) and using this to cover their activities as interstellar spies and peacekeepers in the “Service of the Empire”. While described as beng short, the d’Alemberts are also highly muscled and agile.

 

While characters from high gravity worlds are often depicted as short, they continue to be othered, as demonstrated by the connection made with the traditional role of those with restricted growth as entertainers and circuses performers. Even where they are normalised, this does little to combat audience preconceptions regarding non-high-gravity humans with medical conditions or genetic predisposition to short stature. However a couple of examples from relatively recent series of Doctor Who are notable in this regard.

 

“Nightmare in Silver” is a 2013 episode featuring Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor and his companion Clara. [Note: Spoiler ahead!] Taking two children to what was once a famous theme park, they discover the abandoned ruins of the amusements in decay. Indeed it soon becomes apparent that the fall of the planet is associated with an infiltration by perennial Doctor Who enemies the Cybermen. Of interest here is the character of Porridge, played by veteran actor (and science fiction legend) Warwick Davies. He is initially discovered assisting a showman in the role of a Mechanical Turk [The Mechanical Turk was a chess-playing automaton constructed in 1770 and toured around Europe, whose apparently mechanised moves were in fact directed by a master human chess-player concealed inside.]. However he soon proves a staunch and intelligent ally in the resistance against the Cybermen. In a twist towards the end of the episode it is revealed that Porridge is in fact the concealed, absconding persona of the Emperor of known space, whose head and shoulders (albeit in somewhat stylised form) are familiar from coins and statues all over known space.

 

Interestingly, little direct mention is made of the character’s short stature (one of the children refers to him briefly as a “little bloke” when comparing him with a distorted statue of the emperor, but it otherwise passes without comment). There is no indication that any of his subjects make any value judgements associated with it, and Porridge (or Ludens Nimrod Kendrick Cord Longstaff XLI, to give him his full name) has no hesitation in wielding the enormous power at hand once he ends his charade and returns to his imperial role.

 

Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor featured in an episode a few years later, alongside companions Bill and Nardole. The Pyramid at the End of the World (2017) described the appearance on Earth of a pyramid occupied by a species of aliens who claim that the world is about to end without their intervention. The Doctor traces the world-ending catastrophe to Agrofuel Research Operations, a biochemical lab which is undertaking experiments on the chemical treatment of plant life.

 

The primary scientist in the pivotal experiment is Erica, played by actress Rachel Denning. When the venture fails catastrophically, it is not a result of her short stature, but instead a consequence of the fantastically mundane: Erica’s reading glasses are accidentally broken by her husband and her lab partner Douglas is hung over, so that neither notices when a decimal point is misplaced in a chemical recipe. This causes a virulent and deadly bacterium to emerge. As with many of the examples mentioned above, Erica is not the lead character in the episode, but she is shown as brave and calm in a crisis. Importantly, she is also shown to live a normal, even humdrum life, drives herself to work and plays a prominent role as a professional biochemist, without any mention of her restricted growth or adjustments to her working environment other than a higher than average lab stool.

Such examples of normalised short stature in science fiction may be limited, but another important example exists not in the narratives of the field but in its creation and curation. Judy-Lynn del Rey (née Benjamin) was the science fiction editor for Ballantine Books (and later Random House) in the early 1970s, and creator of the del Rey publishing imprint in 1977, responsible for bring a huge range of fantasy and science fiction to mainstream American audiences through the 1970s and 1980s. These included the novelisations of the Star Wars saga and its spin-offs, as well as of Star Trek: The Animated Series (in the form of the Star Trek Log series adapted by James Blish). Before working for Ballantine she had worked her way up through the publishing ladder at the well-known monthly magazine Galaxy Science Fiction, becoming its managing editor between 1969 and 1971. Her attitude tended away from the literary and focussed on good plot and, to some extent, escapism. Speaking to Tangent magazine in 1975 she noted that:

“There are enough problems in the world already; people are depressed enough. But you don’t need somebody to tell you it’s polluted outside, you can look out the window and see for yourself. You don’t need science fiction to tell you this.”

Del Rey was a highly respected figure in the publishing world, receiving accolades from authors such as Phillip K Dick and Isaac Asimov, and overseeing a vastly successful stable of authors. If anything she was deemed too successful by contemporary genre critics, accused of prioritising commercial interests over quality. However del Rey was not only a female editor working at the junction of traditionally male-dominated fields (science fiction, fantasy and publishing) but also a woman with dwarfism. This may well have played a role in her interactions with some individuals, but on the whole, authors appears to have recognised her enormous skill and influence as an editor. Indeed, the vast majority of readers of del Rey novels through this period would have assumed they were named for a man, and had no idea that they were named for any one with physical differences.

Del Rey’s name is less well recognised since the imprint was closed in 1990 (five years after her death). However Judy-Lynn del Rey herself is beginning to gain recognition as a pioneering role model, and was recently the subject of a 2024 PBS documentary (“Judy-lynn del Rey: The Galaxy Gal”) in the United States. Indeed Lois McMaster Bujold (author of the Vorkosigan saga mentioned above) was amongst the interviewees and commented on Goodreads that “I'd never actually met Judy, and did not know she was afflicted with dwarfism, because no one in SF who talked about her work ever thought it important to mention”. Despite that, between an increasing recognition of disabled pioneers and the continuing admiration for her work and legacy, it is likely her name will continue to be remembered for years to come.

 

Standing Proud in Science Fiction

 

To some extent, the othering of those with physical differences can be traced back into prehistory, and its application to those with restricted growth was likely influenced by folklore of “little people” (and other supernatural creatures) usually portrayed as shorter than typical humans. This tradition carried forward to influence the Little Green Men trope of small aliens in science fiction. Traditional views that physical differences, including the various medical causes of dwarfism, must reflect mental or moral flaws have also had an influence. The long historical record of forcing those experiencing such conditions into entertainment, positions of ridicule and other subservient roles have also produced a cultural conditioning that is hard to break.

 

However the medical and scientific evidence is clear. The vast majority of those with any of a range of physical conditions that inhibit regular growth and physical development experience no mental or psychological impairment. Such individuals are as capable of attaining technical and scientific qualifications or other skilled professions as any other human being. While standard equipment in laboratories and vehicles is often not designed for use by those with limited reach, there is no reason it couldn’t be - as the character of Erica in Doctor Who demonstrated.

 

On the other hand, space flight in its contemporary and primitive form, remains a field which prioritises physical strength and agility. Astronaut training remains extremely physically taxing - both because of the forces astronauts must endure due to rocket flight and due to the very real risks of emergencies that will require intense physical activity. Current space vehicles are limited in both space and weight, such that duplicating equipment with necessary adjustments for atypical body shapes might be impossible to accommodate. Unlike in the compact exploratory vehicles envisaged by Leinster, Pohl and Kornbluth, it is unlikely that little people would be outfitted with solo missions and arranging equipment for dual use for those with more typical stature would be more challenging. Contemporary astronauts are also typically required not to have health conditions in need of ongoing or likely treatment due to the limited availability of medical care in space environments. Unfortunately, until spaceflight becomes far more accessible to a wide range of individuals, this appears unlikely to change.

 

However, as recent commercial flights carrying elder adults have demonstrated, physical strength and health is not a prerequisite for space travel. In speculative futures with more routine space travel, better orbital lift capacities and larger vehicles, there is no particular reason why equipment adjustments couldn’t be made. The science fiction narratives mentioned above contain a number of robust examples of characters with short stature which demonstrate this. Miles Vorkogisan, Mike Scandia, Bigman Jones, Jenks, Porridge, Erica and others are able, intelligent, courageous and often gifted leaders of others. That this needs to be pointed out by the writers of their narratives (with the notable exception of the recent Doctor Who stories) reflects the implicit biases which are often unrecognised or unquestioned in our society, as well as more overt prejudice in many cases. The evolution of such stories since the earliest examples does recognise increasing awareness of this prejudice and modern attempts to eliminate or at least suppress it. The recent highlighting of Judy-Lynn del Rey and recognition of her pivotal influence on the SF and Fantasy genres is part of this process. However it is clear even from the more recent SF examples that there remains some way to go before such characters cease to be the subject of comment (ironically, including this blog entry).

Almost since the start, science fiction and the space race that evolved in parallel with it have been at least as much about appearance and aspiration as about fact and scientific extrapolation. The genre offers opportunities to ask “what if?” questions and to point out realities which are unacceptable in contemporary culture. While there is still a long way to go before prejudice and presumption is overcome, the potential for those with short stature to contribute to science - and science fiction - is now widely recognised. Perhaps future Solar System exploration will indeed demonstrate this. As the narrative character in Murray Leinster’s Space Platform noted as early as 1953, there is no rational argument for the exclusion of those with restricted growth from research and exploration, and many arguments in favour of their inclusion…

“...if only men would have consented to be represented by people like Mike - who would have represented them very valiantly.”