Breaking barriers in science fiction while challenging AI dominance in medicine
The science fiction world just witnessed something extraordinary. On June 7, 2025, when Anselma Widha Prihandita stepped onto the stage to accept her Nebula Award, she wasn’t just claiming a trophy she was making history. As the first Indonesian author ever to win this prestigious honor, her victory represents far more than personal achievement. It’s a powerful statement about the universal language of storytelling and the urgent need for diverse voices in speculative fiction.
But here’s what makes her story even more remarkable: just days after winning the Nebula, she earned her PhD in language and rhetoric from the University of Washington. Talk about a week that changes everything.
The Story That Changed Everything
Anselma’s winning novelette, “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being,” isn’t your typical space opera. It’s a deeply thoughtful exploration of what happens when technology becomes our master instead of our tool. The story follows a human doctor working in a future where manual diagnosis is illegal—she can only treat patients using artificial intelligence systems.
Everything changes when she encounters a patient from a rare alien species, survivors of genocide whose medical data doesn’t exist in any AI database. The translation device struggles with their language, leaving gaps and misunderstandings. Yet instead of giving up, the doctor chooses to sit with the alien, to listen despite the barriers, to show kindness to someone completely different from herself.
“This story is about resisting oppression both epistemic and material but above all it’s about kindness,” Anselma explained during her acceptance speech. “It’s my way of saying that I hope we’ll always find a way to be kind even to those we cannot understand.”
Why This Matters More Than Ever
In our current moment, when artificial intelligence dominates headlines and ChatGPT is reshaping how we work and think, Anselma’s story feels prophetic. She’s not anti-technology—she’s warning us about blind faith in machines that don’t understand the full spectrum of human experience.
“If we over-rely on AI for everything, we risk allowing it to monopolize our knowledge, while AI isn’t free from bias,” she told The Jakarta Post. “So there must be forms of knowledge that cannot be included, for example, the knowledge that exists in our bodies, experiences and emotions.”
Think about it. How many times have you encountered a medical form that doesn’t capture your actual symptoms? How often has a translation app missed the emotional nuance of what you’re trying to say? Anselma’s fictional doctor faces the ultimate version of this problem trying to heal someone whose very existence has been erased from the data banks.
The Power of Indonesian Perspective
What makes Anselma’s victory particularly significant is how it brings Indonesian and Southeast Asian perspectives to the forefront of global science fiction. For too long, speculative fiction has been dominated by Western voices, often missing the rich cultural insights that come from different parts of the world.
Indonesia, with its incredible diversity of languages, cultures, and traditions, offers unique perspectives on what it means to be human in a connected yet divided world. The country’s history of colonialism, its ongoing struggles with identity and modernization, and its position as a bridge between different civilizations all inform the kind of stories that can emerge from this region.
Anselma’s success opens doors for other Indonesian and Southeast Asian writers to share their visions of the future. It proves that the best science fiction doesn’t just predict technology—it explores the human condition from every possible angle.
Breaking Down the Nebula Awards
For those unfamiliar with the Nebula Awards, think of them as the Oscars of science fiction and fantasy writing. Established in 1965 by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), these awards recognize the best works published each year in various categories including novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories.
What makes the Nebulas special is that they’re voted on by professional writers in the field your peers judging your work. Winners receive a distinctive transparent trophy with an embedded galaxy-like design, but more importantly, they gain recognition as one of the year’s most outstanding voices in speculative fiction.
Past winners include legends like Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, and Neil Gaiman. The fact that Anselma now stands among these giants speaks volumes about the quality of her work and the universal appeal of her storytelling.
The Medical AI Dilemma
One of the most compelling aspects of Anselma’s story is how it tackles the increasing role of AI in healthcare. Right now, machine learning algorithms are being used to diagnose diseases, recommend treatments, and even perform surgeries. While this technology has saved countless lives, it also raises serious questions about bias, representation, and the loss of human judgment.
Medical AI systems are trained on existing data, which means they often struggle with conditions that primarily affect underrepresented populations. If your symptoms don’t match the patterns the machine has learned, you might not get the help you need. Anselma’s alien patient represents the ultimate version of this problem a being whose medical needs are literally unknowable to the system.
The doctor’s choice to show kindness despite this knowledge gap offers a hopeful vision of how we might navigate our AI-assisted future. Technology should enhance human compassion, not replace it.
Writing Through Cultural Barriers
Creating science fiction that resonates across cultures isn’t easy. You have to balance universal themes with specific cultural insights, making your work accessible to global audiences while staying true to your own background and experiences.
Anselma’s success suggests she’s mastered this balance. Her story about an alien patient works because it taps into universal experiences—feeling misunderstood, needing medical care, showing kindness to strangers—while also addressing very contemporary concerns about technology and bias.
This approach could serve as a model for other writers from underrepresented backgrounds who want to break into international markets. The key isn’t to abandon your cultural perspective but to find ways to make it speak to broader human experiences.
The Future of Diverse Science Fiction
Anselma’s Nebula win comes at a crucial time for science fiction. The genre has been actively working to become more inclusive, recognizing that the future belongs to everyone, not just a narrow slice of humanity. Awards like the Hugo and Nebula have been honoring more diverse voices in recent years, but representation is still far from perfect.
Having an Indonesian winner matters because it shows young writers around the world that their stories deserve to be heard. It proves that science fiction can be enriched by perspectives from every corner of the globe, not just the traditional publishing centers of New York and London.
What Writers Can Learn
For aspiring science fiction writers, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, Anselma’s journey offers several important lessons:
First, don’t be afraid to tackle big themes. Her story works because it connects personal moments of kindness to larger questions about knowledge, power, and technology. The best science fiction has always been about more than just cool gadgets it’s about what it means to be human.
Second, your cultural background is an asset, not a liability. The details that make your experience unique are exactly what global audiences are hungry for. Don’t try to write generic science fiction—write your science fiction.
Third, persistence pays off. Anselma earned her PhD while pursuing her writing career, showing that success often comes from sustained effort across multiple fields. Your day job might actually inform your creative work in unexpected ways.
The Kindness Revolution
Perhaps the most important message in Anselma’s story is also the simplest: kindness matters. In a world increasingly divided by technology, politics, and cultural differences, choosing to show compassion to those we don’t understand feels almost revolutionary.
Her alien patient represents everyone who’s ever felt like an outsider, everyone whose needs don’t fit neatly into established categories. The doctor’s response to sit with them, to listen despite the language barriers, to offer care without full understanding provides a template for how we might treat each other in our own complicated world.
Insights
As we celebrate Anselma’s historic win, it’s worth considering what comes next. Will her success inspire a new generation of Indonesian and Southeast Asian science fiction writers? Will publishers become more interested in diverse voices telling stories about our technological future? Will readers embrace narratives that challenge Western assumptions about progress and humanity?
The early signs are promising. Science fiction has always been about imagining better futures, and those futures will be richer and more inclusive if they incorporate voices from every part of our world. Anselma’s Nebula Award isn’t just recognition for past achievement it’s an invitation to imagine what science fiction could become.
In her acceptance speech, she hoped we would “always find a way to be kind even to those we cannot understand.” In a genre often focused on conflict and conquest, that’s a radical vision. It’s also exactly what we need as we navigate our own uncertain future, surrounded by technologies we’re still learning to understand and fellow humans who sometimes seem as alien as any creature from the stars.
The future of science fiction just got a little brighter, and it speaks Indonesian.
