Fijian author redefines science fiction through Pacific perspectives

Dr Gina Cole is introducing Pasifika futurism at the Stardome Observatory in Auckland, exploring how Pacific knowledge and culture can shape our views of the future.

On Thursday, the award-winning writer of Fijian, Scottish, and Welsh descent will present The Space Between Science and Fiction, a lecture on how indigenous perspectives can reframe science fiction.

“Pasifika futurism is basically science fiction from an indigenous, Pacific Ocean point of view,” she tells Nemai Tagicakibau on Pacific Days.

“It’s anchored in Pacific sciences like wayfinding, celestial navigation and waka building … they are incredible models of physics, and they’re the epitome of indigenous science.”

Born and raised in Auckland, Cole identifies as a self-described “science fiction nerd”. Her early love for Superman, Star Trek and Doctor Who inspired her to imagine worlds beyond Earth, but she wanted to see more representation.

“There were no Pacific people in any of those programmes. There weren’t really any people of colour except for Lieutenant (Nyota) Uhura in Star Trek, and I thought ‘Well, I want to write us into existence in the genre of science fiction’.”

Watch Dr Gina Cole's full interview below.

Her short story collection, Black Ice Matter, won Best First Book of Fiction at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Cole’s writing draws on cultural principles such as the vā, the relational “space between”, and the idea by Fijian anthropologist Epeli Hau’ofa that the Pacific is “a sea of islands”.

“The vā can be the space between two things or two people, and it’s not empty space, it’s a space of connection,” she says. “It’s a matter of imagining ourselves in the future and what our culture will look like in the future, because culture doesn’t remain static; it evolves and it adapts.

“I like to look at space as an ocean in the sky mirroring the ocean, which is a galaxy, and the two exist together in these two realms and connected by the vā, the space between.”

Dr Gina Cole has written a sci-fi trilogy, set in the Pacific, along with winning an award for her collection of short stories. Image/Huia Publishers

A future imagined and told by diverse voices

The former lawyer received the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writer’s residency in 2023 after publishing Na Viro, a work of fiction that incorporates space travel and Pacific wayfinding through the galaxy.

In her creative writing thesis, Cole argues that space stories can provide a lens “to examine the histories and ancestral knowledge of Indigenous peoples adversely impacted by colonialism; and as a way of reclaiming and re-growing Indigenous knowledge that has survived”.

For Cole, reimagining the future is a decolonising act. “What will kava bowls look like in the future? What will waka be made out of? Where will we be living? What kind of clothes will we be wearing? I think that we have to be able to imagine ourselves in the future, hundreds of years in the future.”

Her advice to young Pacific writers is simple: “Just start writing. Start writing from your point of view about the future from a Pacific Ocean point of view, whatever that might be.”

Tickets and information for The Space Between Science and Fiction are available at stardome.org.nz.