As a science fiction fan - fanatic, even - I am continually disappointed by the lack of  diversity  in film and novel. Everything is so America-centric. NASA saves the world, or doesn't.  The main protagonist is usually white, occasionally middle class black - never with any other ethnic identity. Moonfall, for example - The entire planet is at risk from moon failure and alien attack, with earthquakes, tidal force fails and meteors smashing everywhere, with grand and improbable rescue missions, but all of this only happens in America.  China was mentioned as helping, once.  One of the minor characters was a foreign student working as an au pair.  One character had a fake British accent and played the fool.  A brief background news flash of “thousands” dying in Bangladesh. But in 2.5 hours, this was meagre fare.  It was alienating, no pun intended… 

Sci fi novels are a little better in terms of representation of race and gender.  But the main "human" is rarely anything but conforming to Western norms.  Maybe it's because I do not read enough non-western sci fi - recently I found a book of dystopian sci fi stories by Arab authors: Palestinians, Egyptians, Emiratis.  It isn't available in print in the UK, though.  Perhaps that's my assumption  - that wherever we come from, we like to read about ourselves most of all; we want protagonists like us so that we can feel vicariously successful when they triumph.  But who defines who "we" are?  In the UK at least, I don't feel part of "we" when we are represented in mainstream media of any sort.  Whenever the "other" is represented it has characteristics that are frightening and different from the status quo, the hegemonous norm. Where is the Indian, African, South American sci fi?

Gaming media is ahead of the curve.  Here you can define yourself, build your avatar with your own characteristics, to a point.  You still mostly need to have two arms and two legs which you walk on.  You still generally look "good" according to an external standard of whatever someone else has decided "good" is.

In a world that is increasingly culturally global we need sci fi that reflects us.  Our diversity in terms of race, age, size, accent, attitudes and beliefs, neurocapacities, physical disabilities, even wearing glasses when that isn’t part of the stereotype.  Imagine a sci fi heroine like me - older, plump, brown, terribly short sighted, odd hair, big family, liberal politics, lacking in confidence and with a fondness for tidying.  I'd fall off my chair if I saw me on Netflix.  The diversity in itself would become the story, rather than the story.  

Bridgerton was a great start on addressing the lack of diversity on television. Not sci fi, of course, but a start. Drama that captured the chemistry, glamour and romance of the Victorian age with a wide range of character representations which subverted the stereotypes of behaviour and expectations, with a thoroughly modern representation of characters of colour, size, shape and sexual identity. Now we need to see this on the science fiction blockbuster list and screen.