Short summary: Captain Benjamin Sisko, of Deep Space Nine, is unconscious and dreams he is a science fiction writer, in the US, during the 1950s. He is on the staff of a science-fiction magazine, and his being black is very much an issue (which it won’t be in the 24th century - why bother with racism when you can have speciesism?).
An important part of the episode concerns Sisko’s 20th century incarnation (who goes under another name) writing a story for the magazine about a space station called Deep Space Nine, commanded by one Benjamin Sisko. The story does not get into print because first the editor, then the publishers cannot countenance a black space station commander.
Now what I don’t understand about this is: how were the readers of the story to know? I understand readers of the time would assume science fiction space station commanders to be white, but for that very reason there would be no need to explicitly mention their race. Also the science fiction writers discussing why the readers won’t accept the story never suggest to just excise this bit of physical description of Benjamin Sisko, or that illustration. Or would ‘Benjamin Sisko’ be recognizable to a 1950s American public as the name of a black man? I assume there must be a reason why none of the reviews of the episode that I read raises this point.
Sci Fi writers often go to great pains to describe their protagonist. Case in point, in several Arthur C Clarke short stories and at least one novel, he described characters, both major and minor as obviously either black or white. Let’s not forget the Barsoom stories, either, with vivid colour descriptions accompanying certain moral charactersitics. In fact OVERpainting the descriptions seemed to be a norm, rather than exception, of writers in that time period.
So, yes it is feasible to assume that the readers would know very well the description of Sisko’s main character. Esp since he was apparantly making a point of it.
It’s obvious from all the other writer’s reactions that the characterization of the captain as a black man was explicit… Russell (Sisko) even had to make the story a dream to allow it to be published and even that was too risque for the owners of the magazine.
I think you’re right that in the episode Sisko as writer makes the lead character explicitly black and that he feels the injustice (that drives the entire episode) when he’s told that it just can’t be.
And at least one science fiction writer intentionally played games with his audience. Robert Heinlein dropped several non-white protagonists in without making it explicit. Rod Walker, Colin Campbell, Johnny Rico (he’s not latino!) were all non-caucasian and the point isn’t made clear unless one can put the pieces together.
