I had a hardcover book sitting on my shelf. Got it at a yard sale a while back. “The 13 Crimes of Science Fiction,” it was published in 1979 and most of the stories are much older.

The level of racism was pretty amazing. One story referred to a mugger as a ‘black buck’ Another was set centuries in the future and had an anthropologist keeping some ‘primitive’ people in high tech chains and cages.

Agatha Christie is probably one of the most popular writers of the 20th Century, and one of her classics is now published under the title “And Then, There Were None.”

If you’ve ever seen a movie, play, or game where a group of people are invited to a house only to be killed off one by one, you’ve seen something influenced by “And Then, There Were None”.

Generally the victims are symbolized by figurines on the mantelpiece which get gradually destroyed one by one as the murders progress, eventually leaving “none”.

The previously published title was the incredibly culturally insensitive “Ten Little Indians”, and the figurines were just that.

The original published title, in the UK, in 1939 - an era when we DID IN FACT KNOW BETTER was “Ten Little removeds”.

They did not change the title in the UK until 1985(!)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Then_There_Were_None

Is quoting Wikipedia now banned on Lemmy? I was under impression arsehole censoring mods here were mostly focused on removing mentions of Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

so for anyone else confused…

“Content not viewable in your region”?

Now I’m more confused.

There you go. This censorship is getting ridiculous. Next time people born in Fucking, Austria won’t be able to explain where they are from.

Chuds not being able to post the N word for a day — challenge level: impossible.

Like, it was so important for you to post this. It was life or death for you. Not saying slurs physically makes your skin crawl.

I would personally send you to the gulag.

As an Australian who has never studied Agatha Christie in any context, I literally had no clue what the censored word was. I was, and am, appreciative of the context that was provided by other commenters. Be careful when you make blanket statements like “we all knew what the book was”, because you’ll almost always be confidently incorrect.

Be quiet, nerd. Nobody needs your anecdote about how stressed you were not knowing the specific slur.