The War on Science Fiction and... Marvin Minsky?

Izz said:

When i first saw 2001 i wondered when a human character would be brought into the plot.

Click to expand...

When I first saw 2001 I wondered when a coherent plot would be brought into the film.

I can't off-hand think of a first-rate SF or Fantasy that was about reproduction rights. Plenty of second rate SFF is, and some is decently written. But the change-your-life SFF?

(Okay, Mote in God's Eye was about reproduction rights, but not human reproduction.)

There are also plenty of genres that can deal with human mating habits better than SFF does. Mysteries deal with jealousy and passion awfully well. Romances deal with deceit and betrayal. Thrillers deal with abuses... Gothic horror deals with perversities...

There's a narrow window in which SFF can contribute distinct insight on romantic love and human mating habits, but that's nothing like represented in the tonnes of sex 'n' love-themed stories busting out of SFF sections in bookstores.

Sex sells, of course. And whimsy-as-garnish sells it just fine as the makers of Barbarella can attest. And I can enjoy a good love story as well as the next beer-drinkin bloke (long as nobody's looking). But it isn't the subject I most look for on SFF shelves.

Ruv Draba said:

I can't off-hand think of a first-rate SF or Fantasy that was about reproduction rights.

Click to expand...

No love for "A Handmaid's Tale?"

dolores haze said:

No love for "A Handmaid's Tale?"

Click to expand...

I haven't read it -- heck, I haven't even seen it on the shelves -- but I looked it up. It's exactly the kind of cutting thought I reckon SFF should apply to gender and reproduction issues. I'm glad it exists and thank you for the reference. [So now I know of one strong treatment in SFF. ]

Curiously, Atwood was chary about using the term "Science Fiction" for the novel (this despite winning an Arthur C. Clarke award and a Nebula nomination). She saw it as 'speculative fiction' -- meaning 'it could happen'. Which is what I'd normally call 'hard SF'. It's a bit sad when a successful author of spec-fic social commentary disses the genre... it rather supports my point that it's a market choked with populism.

Atwood distances herself from what she considers to be "ordinary" writers of spec fic only to further her own interests, which involve maintaining the respect of the so-called "literary" establishment. Certain other writers have done the same thing, so I don't hold it against her (or them) much. But it's amusing (in a laughing at way) that her most well-regarded work is sf.

A writer named Michael Chabon has done the opposite. He started out with the literary establishment's adoration and managed to squander it by writing "populist trash", as I suspect Ruv would phrase it (and correct me if I'm wrong, Ruv).

SPMiller said:

A writer named Michael Chabon has done the opposite. He started out with the literary establishment's adoration and managed to squander it by writing "populist trash", as I suspect Ruv would phrase it (and correct me if I'm wrong, Ruv).

Click to expand...

Oh, I wouldn't say 'trash'. My shelves are full of populist books, or what Sol Stein calls 'transient fiction'.

But they are quite transient. They're squatters on my shelves. I purge them every other year and give them to charity, and more transient fiction replaces them. But obviously, I'd really rather buy books I want to keep. Every genre needs its populism; I'm just bemoaning that two of my favourite genres seem to be forgetting how to think.

But speaking of intransient, has anyone read Doris Lessing's SF? She got a Nobel in Literature two years back. She's known for writing Canopus in Argos, yet as much as Atwood doesn't want to hang out with stinky SFers, I hardly know any SFer who knows Lessing. (Like SF has so many Nobel-winning authors that we can afford to ignore one).

She's still on my reading-list. I've yet to pick up anything she's written. (Oh, and that name Doris? Definitely a gurl's name.)

Sometimes a person doesn't want steak. I like cheeseburgers.

The same holds with books. There's nothing wrong with trash - speaking as someone who has been picking up Dirty Harry, Vampirella, Star Trek and Batman paperbacks for over a decade. All kinds of glorious trash.

I'm not a fan of Lessing. The Canopus series strikes me as offensively, boringly didactic, and awfully reminiscent of Ayn Rand; I bailed after the third book though.

I read quite a bit of Lessing in my late teens/early twenties but not since. I found Shikasta (the first of the Canopus in Argos) series a bore and I didn't read the rest of the series. I much prefer Briefing for a Descent into Hell (which I would call slipstream) and the Children of Violence series (the last volume of which, The Four-Gated City, has an epilogue set in the future after a nuclear holocaust). Oh, and I read The Golden Notebook too.

Doris Lessing is the only Worldcon (1987, Brighton, England) guest of honour to win a Nobel Prize.

Children of Men would be a SF about reproduction.

Pretty amazing movie, but I never did get around to reading the original story.

Ruv Draba said:

I can't off-hand think of a first-rate SF or Fantasy that was about reproduction rights.

Click to expand...

The Female Man by Joanna Russ?

I'm genuinely puzzled by the commenters who didn't see misogyny, but only homophobia in that article. The entire article operates under the presupposition that women/girls never invent, explore, or accomplish anything and that any time spent catering to any group besides men is a waste of time. How is that not misogynist?

clintl said:

The Female Man by Joanna Russ?

Click to expand...

Again with the gurl authors. I said first rate. First rate! Y'know... with rocket-ships and zap-guns and... guys killin stuff.

(Seriously, thanks. A Nebula nomination in 1975 -- not bad going! According to Wikipedia it's a seminal contribution from women in SF. Not sure if it's a reflection on changing times, or the genre or just me that I'd never seen it. Did it see many reprints, I wonder?)

The last time The Female Man was published in the UK was in 1985 from The Women's Press. It's now out of print, but used copies can be had from Amazon and presumably the usual other places.

Ruv Draba said:

But speaking of intransient, has anyone read Doris Lessing's SF? She got a Nobel in Literature two years back. She's known for writing Canopus in Argos, yet as much as Atwood doesn't want to hang out with stinky SFers, I hardly know any SFer who knows Lessing. (Like SF has so many Nobel-winning authors that we can afford to ignore one).

Click to expand...

I've read two of Lessing's Canopus in Argos books and was bored by both of them. Try her short stories ("England vs. England" is a favourite); or try The Golden Notebook (novel) which I also enjoyed. Her recent The Cleft was quite fun - a creation myth from a time when all humans were women and suddenly men started to be born, narrated by a Roman noble. It's quite stereotyping the genders and setting up clear male vs. female lines, so it may not be for everyone.

I had a male friend who once claimed that he could tell whether an author was male or female by the content of the books, and that he only liked male authors because he didn't like all that relationship crap. As an example of an author he didn't like, he cited Bruce Sterling. When I told him that I'd seen Sterling on TV talking about his books and he'd looked extremely male to me, he insisted that he was a ringer, hired by some woman to go out in public for her.

It was then that I realized that some men can be complete morons about this sort of thing, and I stopped listening to him.