SF worthless? [was Foucault fans...]
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <19...@helios.TAMU.EDU>, elo...@rigel.tamu.edu (Ohlhausen, Esther LaNelle) writes:
>|>
>|> BTW, I get the impression that SF is regarded by the denizens of this
>|> newsgroup in general as worthless.
>
>Well, I for one so regard it -- but I have to admit that I have no
>idea why.
Well, I'm willing to stand up and be counted as a voracious SF reader, but
I'm not sure I can say anything that will sway those of you who dislike or
can't read the genre.
>In the past, attempting to massage my prejudice into the
>semblance of an argument, I have called on such pseudo-arguments as
>that SF's deliberate self-displacement from the author's world cuts
>off its characters, dialogue and descriptive writing from the feel of
>reality; but I have to admit that an entirely analogous displacement
>is fruitful for works I like, for instance Flann O'Brien's /The Third
>Policeman/; further, after reading Terry Eagleton, I will never again
>try to argue the virtue of literature from "the sensuous textures of
>lived experience," as he sneers it. (I may be misquoting.)
For one thing, I think many SF readers *like* the sense of being dis-
placed from reality. My own tastes in literature tend to the "exotic,"
a word my fellow anthropologists would be shocked to hear me using,
but it's nonetheless the appropriate one. I appreciate literature which
removes me from my own experience, not simply as a form of escape, but
for the sense of stretching myself. Science fiction, like anthropology,
can be a form of critique and exploration; I like to joke that they are
both sub-genres of the great genre of travel literature.
>Does anyone who suspects (as I do) that anti-SF readers like
>me simply don't know how to use the books, though we know how to use
>a motley mix of texts outside the genre, have an idea what kind of
>use they call for?
Well, Samuel Delany, among other SF writers and critics, has argued just
this. He's argued, among other things, that SF's approach to character is
very different from that of "mainstream" literature (which he calls simply
literary texts, or "mundane fiction"). My own perspective on this is that
characters in SF are often not simply persons, but environments, groups of
individuals, machines, aliens, etc., and for dedicated humanists this may
be hard to take. SF is also, generally speaking, a technophilic literature,
while mainstream American literature has traditionally been quite techno-
phobic. Thus the interest in technology and materiality (no matter how well
or badly described or extrapolated) may also be difficult for readers of main-
stream fiction to understand or enjoy.
I think that SF has a great advantage in portraying alienation and fragmenta-
tion, those watchwords of modernism and post-modernism; indeed, subjects in
SF are often literally alienated and/or fragmented. I think, too, that
readers of other genres may have trouble with just how literal SF can be.
Much of its subject matter is right there on the surface; it can be complex,
but many of us who delight in the complexities of writers like Wolfe
and Crowley and Dick and Russ and others too numerous to mention can also have
a lot of fun with writers who are far more straight-forward, whose power is
not necessarily in subtlety but in painting with broad strokes. Such writers
sometimes bridle at the idea that their work is symbolic or alegorical; they
*like* to see it as literal, objective, etc. I don't necessarily think that
the "plain old-fashioned story-telling" anti-pretensions that many SF writers
loudly boast of are the best thing for or about the genre; but SF has a his-
tory of dealing directly with big ideas and archetypes and settings and prob-
lems, not always with nuance or subtlety, but I think with great power.
Whew.
>As an old friend of wide and eclectic tastes once
>told me, "You have to get used to the idea that 99% of everything is
>crap."
Something like this observation has been attributed to Theodore Sturgeon, and
has been a sort of a defense by the SF community for many years. As Ursula Le
Guin has pointed out, taking this line of defense is something of an apolo-
gist's position, which is tempting if you don't really know or understand what
it is that makes SF work for some people and not for others. Of course, it's
true that lots of SF is trash. A lot of SF readers and writers value trash,
strange as that may seem. Many of the most "literary" of SF writers have em-
braced and transformed and otherwise used really trashy approaches (Delany's
space opera and barbarian tales, Wolfe's sword and sorcery, everybody's vam-
pire, werewolf and mad scientist stories) as popular sources of archetypal cul-
tural material. I kid you not.
>|> I got this bit of information from one of Fredric Brown's stories,
>|> most likely one of his science fiction stories (he also wrote mysteries),
>|> although exactly which one escapes me at the moment.
>
>Could this be the "use" of SF -- information? Seems perverse....
Yup. It is. Critique of the object, y'know. Literature of ideas and all
that. Sorry, my capacity for intellectually pretentious prose has suddenly
collapsed. We now return to our regularly scheduled program.
/Janet
--
send mail to: repn...@leland.stanford.edu
"We're living in a PROTESTANT POLICE STATE and all I'M worried about is getting
a job so I can help perpetuate the paranoid patriarchal DEATH culture!"
--Mo
Janet M. Lafler
>In article <55...@apple.Apple.COM> je...@Apple.COM (Jens Alfke) writes:
>
>>Philip K. Dick "The Divine Invasion" or "UBIK" or "Flow My Tears..."
>
>I think THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is superior to these, especially
>for non-SF readers.
I'd agree here. I especially would recommend AGAINST non-SF readers (or in-
deed anyone who hasn't read Dick before) starting with any of the books of the
Valis Trilogy, brilliant as they are. The problem with Dick is that his effect
is cumulative. You have to read about four or five of his books before you
start to understand what all the fuss is about.
>Samuel Delany "The Star Pit" [a novella]
>
>There is much Delaney I like, but I couldn't recommend any of his books to
>a non-SF reader.
Again, I agree. Actually I've never been a big fan of Delany's fiction, but
his non-fiction writing, including his SF criticism, is very fine.
>>Whew! I'm running out of steam. I should also generally recommend Ursula
>>LeGuin, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe ...
>
>LeGuin's THE DISPOSSESSED reaches non-SF readers better than, say, THE
>LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS does, in my opinion.
Hmm. I don't know about this. I lean towards _The Left Hand of Darkness_,
though both it and _The Disposessed_ may seem dated to people reading them
for the first time now. (Don't get me wrong; I'd nominate _tLHoD_ for a
spot in the top ten SF novels of all time.) I'm a big fan of Le Guin's fan-
tasy, and I highly recommend the Earthsea tetralogy. Don't be turned off
by the fact that it's labelled as children's literature.
>Gene Wolfe's best single-volume work, I think, is THE FIFTH HEAD OF
>CERBERUS.
No arguments here. (I just finished rereading it. Sigh.)
Phillip R. Scarr
>In article <19...@helios.TAMU.EDU>, elo...@rigel.tamu.edu (Ohlhausen, Esther LaNelle) writes:
>|>
>|> BTW, I get the impression that SF is regarded by the denizens of this
>|> newsgroup in general as worthless.
>
>Well, I for one so regard it -- but I have to admit that I have no
>semblance of an argument, I have called on such pseudo-arguments as
>that SF's deliberate self-displacement from the author's world cuts
>off its characters, dialogue and descriptive writing from the feel of
>reality; but I have to admit that an entirely analogous displacement
>is fruitful for works I like, for instance Flann O'Brien's /The Third
>Policeman/; further, after reading Terry Eagleton, I will never again
>try to argue the virtue of literature from "the sensuous textures of
>lived experience," as he sneers it. (I may be misquoting.)
Yeah, it doesn`t make sense to argue this line because it limits us to
our own narrow cultural experiences, don't you think? I mean, coming
from the north as I do, by this analysis I have no business reading
Faulkner or O'Connor, two southern writers, right? I think good
literature brings you into the world, gives you the signposts you need
to ground yourself in the universe the author is creating. I am by no
means arguing for the conduit metaphor, rather the author sets a stage
which is as important as the characters who perform upon it. SF writers
do this too, only the stage they create is drawn from speculation rather
than "reality" <-- note the important scare quotes! .
>
>Does anyone have any useful or interesting input on this? Does
>someone who feels the way I do (that the few SF books I do pick up
>are invariably lame and pointless) feel more articulate about why?
>Would an SF reader out there care to take up the torch for some good
>instance which might persuade me I'm wrong, or (see below) for the
>genre? Does anyone who suspects (as I do) that anti-SF readers like
>me simply don't know how to use the books, though we know how to use
>a motley mix of texts outside the genre, have an idea what kind of
>use they call for?
>
If I knew which books you tried out, I might be able to render some
analysis. But in the absence of that, it is difficult. I find that
when a SF book is good, it is very good (e.g. _Dune_, _Neuromancer_,
_Life During Wartime_(a true masterpiece!)) but when it is bad, it is
abyssmal! I find myself unable to finish 1 or 2 out of every 5 SF books
I begin because the writing is *so* bad!
>|> While I won't pretend that most SF is
>|> of supreme literary importance, I don't think it can be dismissed out of
>|> hand.
>
>Unfortunately, there is no genre "most" instances of which have any
>interest at all. As an old friend of wide and eclectic tastes once
>told me, "You have to get used to the idea that 99% of everything is
>crap." I like some poems, but browsing randomly in the poetry room
>at City Lights, I don't come up with much unless I've been given a
>hint.
>
And I have heard that this is doubly true for SF. I am a fan of the
genre but I refuse to succumb to much of the hype surrounding many
authors and many styles. I try to assess each book as I would any other
piece of fiction: first, does it make *sense* to have the characters do
what they are doing? second, are the characters 3D or better? and
third, does the author provide the reader with the tools to assess the
"reality" of the story?
>Vance
-Phil
--
(--)== pr...@virginia.edu === Phil Scarr === Department of Anthropology ==(--)
"Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended
in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture
to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore
not an experimental science of in search of law but an
interpretive one in search of meaning." -C. Geertz
Vance Maverick
|>
|> BTW, I get the impression that SF is regarded by the denizens of this
|> newsgroup in general as worthless.
Well, I for one so regard it -- but I have to admit that I have no
idea why. In the past, attempting to massage my prejudice into the
semblance of an argument, I have called on such pseudo-arguments as
that SF's deliberate self-displacement from the author's world cuts
off its characters, dialogue and descriptive writing from the feel of
reality; but I have to admit that an entirely analogous displacement
is fruitful for works I like, for instance Flann O'Brien's /The Third
Policeman/; further, after reading Terry Eagleton, I will never again
try to argue the virtue of literature from "the sensuous textures of
lived experience," as he sneers it. (I may be misquoting.)
Does anyone have any useful or interesting input on this? Does
someone who feels the way I do (that the few SF books I do pick up
are invariably lame and pointless) feel more articulate about why?
Would an SF reader out there care to take up the torch for some good
instance which might persuade me I'm wrong, or (see below) for the
genre? Does anyone who suspects (as I do) that anti-SF readers like
me simply don't know how to use the books, though we know how to use
a motley mix of texts outside the genre, have an idea what kind of
use they call for?
|> While I won't pretend that most SF is
|> of supreme literary importance, I don't think it can be dismissed out of
|> hand.
Unfortunately, there is no genre "most" instances of which have any
interest at all. As an old friend of wide and eclectic tastes once
told me, "You have to get used to the idea that 99% of everything is
crap." I like some poems, but browsing randomly in the poetry room
at City Lights, I don't come up with much unless I've been given a
hint.
|> I got this bit of information from one of Fredric Brown's stories,
|> most likely one of his science fiction stories (he also wrote mysteries),
|> although exactly which one escapes me at the moment.
Could this be the "use" of SF -- information? Seems perverse....
|> LaNelle Ohlhausen
Vance
Michael Hand
> ... "You have to get used to the idea that 99% of everything is crap."
I think this is Sturgeon's Law, after Theodore Sturgeon, an sf writer.
I hope this is correct. O irony!
Jens Alfke
college, I may be able to offer some advice on good SF -- whatever "good"
means. The SF reader's definition of "good" is usually weighted more toward
mind-bending concepts and sense-of-wonder than to innovative prose technique,
realistic character development, etc. I won't argue about whether this is
more of less valid than the metrics used by mainstream literature.
Here's a short off-the-top-of-my-head list of SF or SF-like books that should
appeal to the non-SF fan as well-written, good books:
John Crowley "Engine Summer"
This may be my favorite book of all. Each time I read it I end up dazed and
in tears, and I'm not a sentimental person. Crowley takes the cliche of after-
the-fall-of-Western-civilization and uses it to explore a different and
better(?) culture, while showing bits of our world twisted around and made to
seem strange and mysterious. "Presque vu" as literature.
J.G. Ballard "The Atrocity Exhibition"
Seriously warped, incredibly experimental short fictions that in one step
created the "industrial" aesthetic later to be adopted by music and performance
groups such as Throbbing Gristle and Survival Research Labs. The book is an
exploration of what the reducto ad absurdum of our civilization might be --
sex, death, automobiles, advertising, psychosis in collision. Ballard later
expanded the sex/violence/cars aspect in the novel "Crash", also highly rec-
commended.
[Some may claim that these stories aren't SF, although most of Ballard's other
work falls in that category. For them, I'll list an alternate, the short story
"The Voices Of Time". Quite different in subject and tone.]
Philip K. Dick "The Divine Invasion" or "UBIK" or "Flow My Tears..."
It's with qualms that I recommend Dick to non-SF fans. Despite the fact that
he's highly regarded by many mainstream authors and critics, the undeniable
fact is that in many ways his writing is very bad. He wrote everything in a
hurry, plots fall apart in midstream, gaping holes are left in the works, his
narration and dialog can be clumsy. Nonetheless, his writing is pure magic.
Dick had a number of personal obsessions that he explored through his writing
(solipsism/what is reality?/made-up worlds/what does it mean to be human?/
what does it mean to love?); reading his works is like a painfully honest
heart-to-heart discussion.
Samuel Delany "The Star Pit" [a novella]
I believe this has recently been reissued as half of a "double" book. Delany
can be excellent but all too often isn't. Of all his writing I recommend this
story. It's much harder SF than most of the above, with some wondrous ideas
and situations. "Dhalgren" is also very interesting (even if I've never been
able to finish it) but probably not classifiable as SF. "Stars In My Pocket
Like Grains Of Sand" is also good, but suffers from a weak ending.
Whew! I'm running out of steam. I should also generally recommend Ursula
LeGuin, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe ...
William Gibson's books are great, if you think a stylistic fusion of
Raymond Chandler and Jack Kerouac, set in the definitive cyberpunk near-future
[really a satire of the present day], would appeal to you.
Others may be able to come up with more. If you read only one, make it "Engine
Summer" by John Crowley. I'm not sure if it's in print. Or if you want to try
fantasy (but NOTHING AT ALL like Tolkien) try his "Little, Big".
Happy reading.
--Jens Alfke
Apple Computer
Mike Godwin
>Philip K. Dick "The Divine Invasion" or "UBIK" or "Flow My Tears..."
I think THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE is superior to these, especially
for non-SF readers.
>Samuel Delany "The Star Pit" [a novella]
There is much Delaney I like, but I couldn't recommend any of his books to
a non-SF reader.
>Whew! I'm running out of steam. I should also generally recommend Ursula
>LeGuin, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe ...
LeGuin's THE DISPOSSESSED reaches non-SF readers better than, say, THE
LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS does, in my opinion.
Gene Wolfe's best single-volume work, I think, is THE FIFTH HEAD OF
CERBERUS.
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, |"But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who
mnem...@eff.org | are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a
(617) 864-1550 | person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a
EFF, Cambridge, MA | suspect." Ed Meese, US News & World Report, 10-15-85
Jim Mann
> someone who feels the way I do (that the few SF books I do pick up
> are invariably lame and pointless) feel more articulate about why?
> Would an SF reader out there care to take up the torch for some good
> instance which might persuade me I'm wrong, or (see below) for the
> genre? Does anyone who suspects (as I do) that anti-SF readers like
> me simply don't know how to use the books, though we know how to use
> a motley mix of texts outside the genre, have an idea what kind of
> use they call for?
>
recommend books that other SF fans would like but that the average reader
of maintream literature would not. SF book reviewers generally have the same
problem. (One way to look at this is that they tend to recommend things that
are good SF -- often good adventure stories with futuristic trappings--but
not good FICTION.) For example, unless you like space adventure stories, you
probably won't like Larry Niven. (If you do, you will, since at his best he
writes good stories of this type.) However, many SF fans, if asked for
a recommendation, will without hesitation recommend Ringworld, since they and
most of their friends like it. The typical mainstream reader comes away
shaking his/her head.
There are, however, a number of SF books that mainstream readers would
probably like. Most would like at least a few of the following, for example:
Walter Miller A Canticle for Leibowitz
Robert Silverberg Dying Inside
Philip K. Dick The Man in the High Castle
Theodore Sturgeon More than Human, many of the short stories
Ursula LeGuin The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness
J.G. Ballard The Crystal World
Jim Mann jm...@vineland.pubs.stratus.com
Stratus Computer
Vance Maverick
|>
|> Yeah, it doesn`t make sense to argue this line because it limits us to
|> our own narrow cultural experiences, don't you think? I mean, coming
|> from the north as I do, by this analysis I have no business reading
|> Faulkner or O'Connor, two southern writers, right?
The argument from the "sensuous textures of lived experience" doesn't
necessarily refer to the experience of place; further, it can accommodate
the possibility of mystical transmission of experience. (What's the point
of literature, anyway, in this model, if the only experience it can evoke
is experiences, in the most limited sense of the word, which you already
have?) You and Faulkner and O'Connor share a bunch of literary culture,
which acts presumably as the medium. The argument is bogus, but not for the
reason you give.
|> I try to assess each book as I would any other
|> piece of fiction: first, does it make *sense* to have the characters do
|> what they are doing? second, are the characters 3D or better? and
|> third, does the author provide the reader with the tools to assess the
|> "reality" of the story?
OK, let's try /The Third Policeman/, my earlier example. No on all three
counts. So what do you make of the book?
Thanks for all the recommendations, by the way. And the 99% rule seems to
derive ultimately from an SF writer (at least according to you SF readers),
though there's some disagreement about which one....
Vance
James Hague
separate categories: "hard" SF in which the science is most important,
and "soft" SF in which the characters and story are more important than
the actual science. Until recently, the former has been dominant.
Part of SF's bad reputation comes from the hard category. Yes, there
is some good stuff out there (Clarke, Niven, Pohl), but there is also
quite a bit of "Zllarrmox, bring me the quantum death ray
neutralization device" garbage and pitiful Star Trek-ish glop. It's
the science and/or wild plots that sell, not the writing.
But there is no reason soft SF can't be good literature. In fact, such
writings have the benefit of being able to explore old concepts and
ideas in new ways.
I don't want to get in a big argument here. The only reason people
blindly attack SF is because they have only been exposed to trashy
"space opera" stuff and not to any well-written works. Having said
that, here is are some suggestions for persons who haven't read much
(or any) SF:
_Treason_,
_The Worthing Saga_,
_The Folk of the Fringe_,
_Songmaster_,
All by Orson Scott Card (yes, I am a fan).
_A Canticle for Leibowitz_
Walter M. Miller Jr. (out of print, I beleive)
_The Postman_
David Brin
--
James Hague
exu...@exurchn1.ericsson.se
Yes, my address ends with ".se," but I'm in Texas, not Sweden.
stephen_morris
> In article <1991Aug4.2...@agate.berkeley.edu>
> mave...@cork.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick) writes:
> >
> > Does anyone have any useful or interesting input on this?
> There are, however, a number of SF books that mainstream readers would
> probably like. Most would like at least a few of the following, for example:
>
> Walter Miller A Canticle for Leibowitz
> Robert Silverberg Dying Inside
> Philip K. Dick The Man in the High Castle
> Theodore Sturgeon More than Human, many of the short stories
> Ursula LeGuin The Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness
> J.G. Ballard The Crystal World
>
I am sort of a _reformed_ SF reader. I would add:
Stanislaw Lem The Cyberiad, Memiors found in a bathtub,
His Master's Voice, etc.
Lem is nearly always found in the SF section, although a lot of his stuff is
really more philosophical fiction, which happens to involve science. Conversely
Jorge Luis Borges is almost never found on the SF shelf, although some of his
pieces are, in a broad sense, similar to some sophisticated SF.
S. Morris.
I no longer recomend ringworld to anybody.
Tim Walters
M. Disch. His work straddles both SF and mainstream, and is marked
by mordant humor, exquisite prose, full characterization, and,
at times, a rather atypical (for SF) tone of bleak despair. I
recommend _Getting Into Death and Other Stories_, which is about
half science fiction, or _334_. Unfortunately, the one you'll
probably see in the bookstore is _The M.D._, which is not up to
par.
He also wrote _The Brave Little Toaster_ and _The Brave Little Toaster
Goes to Mars_, two wonderful children's books.
Incidentally, I think it's a sad commentary on the relationship
between SF and the rest of literature that there are so few authors
working in both camps.
felix power
steam at the mention of the words "Harry Harrison", I'd recommend
John Wyndham to any Non-SF readers.
Particularly "The trouble with Lichen" which was lovely and very
believable. Also "The Crysalids".
--
o____
(}:^) Felix
8----
Jim Mann
> Reading this thread, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Thomas
> M. Disch. His work straddles both SF and mainstream, and is marked
> by mordant humor, exquisite prose, full characterization, and,
> at times, a rather atypical (for SF) tone of bleak despair. I
> recommend _Getting Into Death and Other Stories_, which is about
> half science fiction, or _334_. Unfortunately, the one you'll
> probably see in the bookstore is _The M.D._, which is not up to
> par.
I agree with the above and would also recommend Camp Concentration. There is
also a collection of Disch's stories called The Fundamental Disch which
is quite good.
Richard Caley
jh> Non-SF readers need to realize that the genre is subdivided into two
jh> separate categories: "hard" SF in which the science is most important,
jh> and "soft" SF in which the characters and story are more important than
jh> the actual science. Until recently, the former has been dominant.
And should also note that that distinction is by no means universally
believed to exist.
jh> Part of SF's bad reputation comes from the hard category. Yes, there
jh> is some good stuff out there (Clarke, Niven, Pohl),
It's a personal choice, but _Niven_? Gag splutter :-)
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Daniel Read
>someone who feels the way I do (that the few SF books I do pick up
>are invariably lame and pointless) feel more articulate about why?
>Would an SF reader out there care to take up the torch for some good
>instance which might persuade me I'm wrong, or (see below) for the
>genre? Does anyone who suspects (as I do) that anti-SF readers like
>me simply don't know how to use the books, though we know how to use
>a motley mix of texts outside the genre, have an idea what kind of
>use they call for?
>
fiction is possible and actually exists. 'Most SF is worthless' is an
empirical proposition that just happens to be true. I can imagine an
alternative reality where (say) 'Proust is a hack' is true.
daniel
Ellen Keyne Seebacher
>probably see in the bookstore is _The M.D._, which is not up to par.
I understand that Disch is in such an ill-humor over the mainstream
reviews of _The M.D._ that he's sworn off SF entirely, to devote
himself to mainstream/horror henceforth.
If true, it's a shame.
--
Ellen Keyne Seebacher el...@midway.uchicago.edu
Curtis Yarvin
>|>
>|> BTW, I get the impression that SF is regarded by the denizens of this
>|> newsgroup in general as worthless.
>
>Well, I for one so regard it -- but I have to admit that I have no
>idea why. In the past, attempting to massage my prejudice into the
>semblance of an argument, I have called on such pseudo-arguments as
>that SF's deliberate self-displacement from the author's world cuts
>off its characters, dialogue and descriptive writing from the feel of
>reality;
I like yer objectivity.
For the "Sturgeonian 99%," you're quite right. It throws away the complex
tapestry of present reality and replaces it with a cheap plastic universe
colored entirely in black and white.
The same, though, is true for most mainstream-fiction bestsellers. Try to
keep your analogies straight. An SF reader wouldn't go around comparing,
say, Gene Wolfe to Danielle Steel, and thus deciding that mainstream is
trash; it's entirely as inappropriate to compare Thomas Pynchon to Terry
Brooks, and use it as evidence that SF is worthless.
Quality science fiction creates an alternate universe every bit as complex,
or even more so, than present reality. It's not common, but it can be
found. Some good recommendations have already been offered here. I'd like
to add some more recent work:
Lucius Shepard: _Life During Wartime_.
Rather like _Heart of Darkness_, set in Guatemala twenty years into
an utterly psychotic future.
Ian McDonald: _Out On Blue Six_
If you can take McDonald's mildly whimsical style and flexible
attitude toward scientific accuracy, you'll like this a lot. Like _1984_ or
_Brazil_, but the totalitarian dictatorship is genuinely benevolent, and
the society and characters far more richly evolved.
William Gibson: _Neuromancer_
This may be a bit too dystopian and stylized for some, but it's
certainly the most brilliant sf work of the 1980s.
Harlan Ellison: _Angry Candy_ or any post-sixties collection of short
stories.
Extremely negative tales with a strong emphasis on
characterization. It's worth buying any collection containing _I Have No
Mouth And I Must Scream_, if for that one story alone.
Dan Simmons: _Hyperion_
A Chaucer remake, four thousand years later. Quite well-done, but
don't buy the sequel.
Daniel Keys Moran: _The Long Run_
Brilliantly done "light reading." No literary pretensions; but
strong characterization, well-detailed setting, smooth and compelling plot.
Comparable perhaps to Ross Thomas, but IMHO better-written.
c
Doug Moran
>>Samuel Delany "The Star Pit" [a novella]
>There is much Delaney I like, but I couldn't recommend any of his books to
>a non-SF reader.
This would depend on the individual reader, I would think. For example,
a lit. major interested in the Grail mythos might want to read NOVA, for
an example of an extrapolation thereof. A linguist might find BABEL-17
interesting (I know at least one who did). A classics scholar might get
a kick out of THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION. And so forth.
--
Doug Moran | When he got to Nirvana, as a reward, Douglas was
pyramid!ctnews!zip!dougm | given his weight in fine, uncut Turkish hashish!
do...@zip.Convergent.com | Boy, did *he* live happily ever after!
Robbie
>jh> separate categories: "hard" SF in which the science is most important,
>jh> and "soft" SF in which the characters and story are more important than
>jh> the actual science. Until recently, the former has been dominant.
>And should also note that that distinction is by no means universally
>believed to exist.
>jh> Part of SF's bad reputation comes from the hard category. Yes, there
>jh> is some good stuff out there (Clarke, Niven, Pohl),
>It's a personal choice, but _Niven_? Gag splutter :-)
Well, Science Fiction is in fact the greatest form of fictional literature.
All other fictional literature can be considered a subset of science fiction.
For example, _The Old Man and the Sea_ is a science fiction book without very
much science in it, which, you know, is nobody's fault, not even Hemingway's,
and the lack of science doesn't really hurt the story anyway.
Furthermore, Larry Niven is the greatest science fiction writer ever, bar none,
although he is not the greatest writer because there are some writers who
write science fiction without very much science in it that compare favorably
with Larry Niven.
Thankyou.
-rob
David J. Murphy
In article <1991Aug5.0...@eff.org> mnem...@eff.org
(Mike Godwin) writes:
>
>Gene Wolfe's best single-volume work, I think, is THE FIFTH HEAD OF
>CERBERUS.
True, that is one of Wolfe's best books, but I think his BEST book is
_Peace_ (1975). It is the memoir of a 20th-century midwestern-
American. It isn't science fiction and although there are fantastical
elements I'd be hard pressed to call it fantasy. (It could be described
somewhat as a ghost story.) It is a very elliptical book and the
reader must continually read between the lines to get the full story.
The narrator does not always tell the truth about motive or actions
and clues to the "real" story are scattered throughout the book. I
have read the book 5 times and find something new each time. It is a
difficult book but very rewarding too.
In a recent interview Wolfe himself said that he thought PEACE was his
best work. Personally, I think his more recent work has been a bit
light; his best work is mostly from the 1970s through the mid '80s.
[On the original thread re 30: I know that when a story was sent in
parts a break in transmission was preceeded by "NO 30" indicating
there was more to come. I think that this does come from telegraphy;
I'll check the sources this week.]
--dave murphy internet: djmu...@wam.umd.edu
university of maryland at college park, department of history
--
"To the Officers: May they be killed, wounded or promoted."
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's toast prior to the Battle of San Juan (1898).
sometimes a Wombat
>mave...@cork.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick) writes:
>>Well, I for one so regard it -- but I have to admit that I have no
>>idea why. In the past, attempting to massage my prejudice into the
>>semblance of an argument, I have called on such pseudo-arguments as
>>that SF's deliberate self-displacement from the author's world cuts
>>off its characters, dialogue and descriptive writing from the feel of
>>reality;
I find the psuedo-arguement a bit wierd myself.
>For the "Sturgeonian 99%," you're quite right. It throws away the complex
>tapestry of present reality and replaces it with a cheap plastic universe
>colored entirely in black and white.
>
>The same, though, is true for most mainstream-fiction bestsellers. Try to
>keep your analogies straight. An SF reader wouldn't go around comparing,
>say, Gene Wolfe to Danielle Steel, and thus deciding that mainstream is
>trash; it's entirely as inappropriate to compare Thomas Pynchon to Terry
>Brooks, and use it as evidence that SF is worthless.
>
>Quality science fiction creates an alternate universe every bit as complex,
>or even more so, than present reality. It's not common, but it can be
>found.
This is one reason. The other ...
[soapbox on]
... is that because SF/F has such a greater range of settings, having
to invent it ex niliho (sp?). The author has more tools to use to work
on the characters, to apply more pressure to them. The characters'
world can be more exactly shaped for the purposes of the story.
I'm not wording that well, but it's my idea of the true (possible)
controbution of literature in general, if authors choose to take
up on it.
[off soapbox]
Of the list recommended by Curtis:
>Ian McDonald: _Out On Blue Six_
Seconded
>William Gibson: _Neuromancer_
This is an unfortunate choice to recommend to main-stream readers.
While Gibson is very good at creating setting, and is something of a
stylist, he canNOT *write*. His microwriting sucks.
>Dan Simmons: _Hyperion_
>
> A Chaucer remake, four thousand years later. Quite well-done, but
>don't buy the sequel.
Curtis neglects to mention the rather central role of John Keats.
That this volume is told more or less plain-style, and that the
other half of the novel (published because of length in two books)
_Fall of Hyperion_ is told through the dreams of a character, gives
just a surface idea of how much.
The six novellas strung together in _Hyperion_ are among the best
I've read. But he's right, _Fall of Hyperion_ is not as good.
Simmons emphasizes character much more than most, even literate, SF
writers, and is most at home in psychological horror novels.
>Daniel Keys Moran: _The Long Run_
>
> Brilliantly done "light reading." No literary pretensions; but
>strong characterization, well-detailed setting, smooth and compelling plot.
>Comparable perhaps to Ross Thomas, but IMHO better-written.
Helps to have read the book that comes before it, _Emerald Eyes_.
Further books:
Ursula K. Le Guin: _The Dispossessed_
My bid for best novel of the second half of the 20th century.
But I'm biased, being a physicist.
Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun, in four volumes
Another broken up into multiple books for length; very good
science fantasy. Very well controlled first person narrator. The
titles are: _The Shadow of the Torturer_, _The Claw of the Conciliator_,
_The Swored of the Lictor_, and _The Citidel of the Autarch_.
Philip K. Dick: an author to be handled sparingly, but good ones
to start with are _The Man in the High Castel_ and _Flow my Tears
the Policeman Said_.
Greg Bear: _Queen of Angels_
Not liked by most SF audiences because of the writing style.
Well created future and a very demanding plot.
Rebecca Ore: the Becoming Alien Trilogy: _Becoming Alien_, _Being
Alien_, and _Human to Human_
One of the few books with aliens and can actually let
myself recommend. The aliens are well done, and the alienness,
from culture, language, and biology, is brought through. Is also
a good coming-to-maturity story.
I'm blanking on others. More later, and from others.
The person who points out that recommending _Ringworld_ and the like
to the non-SF reading is a mistake is right. Personally, I don't
recommend it to anyone, but that's me.
Larry "Back to lurking" Hammer
\ "The work is rather too light, and bright,
L...@albert.physics.arizona.edu \ and sparkling; it wants ... a long chapter
The insane don't need disclaimers \ of solemn specious nonsense." --Jane Austen
Tom Maddox
>>William Gibson: _Neuromancer_
>
>This is an unfortunate choice to recommend to main-stream readers.
>While Gibson is very good at creating setting, and is something of a
>stylist, he canNOT *write*. His microwriting sucks.
Gibson's been accused of a number of literary sins, but this is the
first time I've seen his prose dismissed so casually. Care to back up this
fairly astounding claim with something in the nature of evidence and argument?
--
Tom Maddox
tma...@milton.u.washington.edu
"It is imperative to write invulnerable sentences." -- Hugo Ball
Curtis Yarvin
>>
>>Quality science fiction creates an alternate universe every bit as complex,
>>or even more so, than present reality. It's not common, but it can be
>>found.
>
>This is one reason. The other ...
>
> [soapbox on]
>
>... is that because SF/F has such a greater range of settings, having
>to invent it ex niliho (sp?). The author has more tools to use to work
>on the characters, to apply more pressure to them. The characters'
>world can be more exactly shaped for the purposes of the story.
Well, to play the devil's advocate... this can be a drawback as well as an
advantage. Far too many SF stories drop into the pitfall of "tour guide"
mode. The writer invents a universe so complex and interesting that she
doesn't have space to set up a plot, as her book spends all its time
trying to explain its setting in a suitably clever way.
[ recommending SF novels for mainstream readers ]
>Ursula K. Le Guin: _The Dispossessed_
>
> My bid for best novel of the second half of the 20th century.
>But I'm biased, being a physicist.
Aggh. There's this thing about "mainstream" (in the narrowest
English-department sense) literature; these days, it's not enough to be
good. No, suh. Good writers, dey grows on de trees. No, ya gotta be
meaningful.
So, when someone finds an SF novel that's actually meaningful (as opposed to
just plain old entertaining), they say, "AHA! This is so good, it could be
mainstream!"
Well, _The Dispossessed_ is certainly meaningful. I usually tend to prefer
the word "preachy," but I've read a lot of fiction lately that falls under
this category, so in future I'll use it only for the most extreme cases.
Suffice it to say that after a hundred pages of Le Guin, I'd developed an
itching desire to see all the characters jump into the nearest well,
preferably together with their weighty moral dilemmas and carryon political
baggage. Your mileage may vary.
And I did actually finish the goddamn thing. Didn't even defenestrate it
afterward. So I suppose my attitude may be a little hypocritical.
>Greg Bear: _Queen of Angels_
>
> Not liked by most SF audiences because of the writing style.
>Well created future and a very demanding plot.
Ahh, euphemisms, euphemisms. "Demanding?" Now, now, Larry. You could just
have said, "Bear creates interesting and brilliantly extrapolated far-future
cultures. However, most people find his writing about as interesting as
distilled pig bristles."
>
>>William Gibson: _Neuromancer_
>
>This is an unfortunate choice to recommend to main-stream readers.
>While Gibson is very good at creating setting, and is something of a
>stylist, he canNOT *write*. His microwriting sucks.
Well, I think Tom Maddox has already got his canines in you over this one,
as you might have expected. Since pit bulls and cyberpunk authors generally
don't let go until their quarry stops moving, I'm inclined to stay on the
sidelines this time.
c
Richard Caley
saw> This is an unfortunate choice to recommend to main-stream readers.
saw> While Gibson is very good at creating setting, and is something of a
saw> stylist, he canNOT *write*. His microwriting sucks.
Not sure what you mean by microwriting. If you mean writing at the
lowest level of putting together well structured, rhythmic, sharp and
effective sentences I have to disagree.
In fact I'd have to go the other way, Gibson's weakness seems to me to
be the larger structure of his work. I find his short fiction far more
effective than his novels for that reason. Fragments of a Hologram
Rose holds together in a way that Neuromancer doesn't.
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk Large, yellow somethings which hung in the
air in exactly the way that bricks don't.
Mike Godwin
>In article <1991Aug11....@arizona.edu> l...@soliton.uucp (sometimes a Wombat) writes:
>>>William Gibson: _Neuromancer_
>>
>>This is an unfortunate choice to recommend to main-stream readers.
>>While Gibson is very good at creating setting, and is something of a
>>stylist, he canNOT *write*. His microwriting sucks.
>
> Gibson's been accused of a number of literary sins, but this is the
>first time I've seen his prose dismissed so casually. Care to back up this
>fairly astounding claim with something in the nature of evidence and argument?
I was astounded as well. Not only because Gibson's writing ability is not
commonly regarded as deficient, but also because Larry Hammer calls him
"something of a stylist" in the very same sentence.
I've yet to come across someone who deserved to be called "something of a
stylist" and yet "canNOT *write*."
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, | "Someday, some way."
mnem...@eff.org |
(617) 864-1550 | --Marshall Crenshaw
EFF, Cambridge, MA |
Jeff Dalton
>I think that SF has a great advantage in portraying alienation and fragmenta-
>tion, those watchwords of modernism and post-modernism; indeed, subjects in
>SF are often literally alienated and/or fragmented. I think, too, that
>readers of other genres may have trouble with just how literal SF can be.
At the risk of oversimplification ...: Non-SF tends to address the
human condition directly, through characterization; SF can do that,
but it can also approach indirectly, through a non-human condition
(whether living or mechanical) or by giving humans a different mental
life (eg the character in Wolf's _Book of the New Sun_ who can talk,
and presumably think, only in quotations from the equivalent of Mao's
little red book), different bodies, and so on.
It can therefore have some of the same appeal / use as, say, _The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_, without being limited to
conditions that already exist.
Along the way, many things that would have to be metaphor in non-SF
can be literal: eg, my love is a rose. It's easy to generate such
ideas, but what do you do with them? Good SF is often based on the
quality of its generating ideas and on how they are developed.
One of the arguments against SF is that there are more effective and
worthy ways to accomplish the same sort of indirect understanding of
your own culture and thinking. Isn't it better, the argument goes,
to take up anthropology, or learn a foreign language, or try to
understand, however imperfectly, how the deaf think in Sign than
to read some SF novel. Indeed, isn't it objectionable to even
compare SF to such things, as if learning the French language,
say, were equivalent to reading the latest Asimov.
Well, ok, but wait a minute. We're not talking about reading SF
instead of becoming a better person; we're just talking about
reading SF instead of reading something else. And then I would
argue that SF is often worthwhile, not to mention fun.
-- jd
Philip G. Aaronson
>But there is no reason soft SF can't be good literature. In fact, such
>writings have the benefit of being able to explore old concepts and
>ideas in new ways.
>
I just finished an excellent book which I would classify as somewhere between
mainstream literature and SF/Fantasy. _Fool on the Hill_ by Matt Ruff,
excellent, I couldn't put it down. It had everything, pixies, God, the Devil,
Knights, dogs and cats ... the works. The plot comes together wonderfully at
the end and I won't even try to describe what happend along the way.
Later,
Red
Curtis Yarvin
>In article <1991Aug5.1...@exurchn1.ericsson.se> exu...@exurchn1.ericsson.se (James Hague) writes:
>>But there is no reason soft SF can't be good literature. In fact, such
>>writings have the benefit of being able to explore old concepts and
>>ideas in new ways.
>>
>> [Some excellent suggestions deleted]
>
>I just finished an excellent book which I would classify as somewhere between
>mainstream literature and SF/Fantasy. _Fool on the Hill_ by Matt Ruff
Seconded. At times _Fool on the Hill_ gets a bit too whimsical and
collegiate for me to stomach, but it's amazingly well written; a promising
first novel.
Interestingly enough, though it's definitely a fantasy novel, the publisher
markets it as mainstream. Could it be that the fantasy genre-ghetto has
gotten so cramped and narrow that anything which doesn't follow the thin
pulpy line of stereotyped swords and sorcery automatically falls outside its
walls? Lately I've even seen Tim Powers, an excellent fantasy writer but
normally considered a genre specialist, in mainstream sections. Harlan
Ellison, too. Hopefully hack-n-scribble fantasy is falling into itselves in
an endlessly accelerating frenzy, like one of Stephen Hawking's black holes,
dooming the genre to eventual collapse about a single point of
transdimensional stylistic plagiarism, the ghetto's crumbling stone walls
sucked inward to the status of a fossilized hollow column, enclosing a
single shelf of churning pulp suffused with the lurid glow of a thousand
thousand identically garish depictions of overgrown swords entwined vinelike
with rivers of disembodied but partially clothed breasts, the final
degeneration of cover art... well, maybe not. But hope springs eternal.
c
Janet M. Lafler
>separate categories: "hard" SF in which the science is most important,
>and "soft" SF in which the characters and story are more important than
>the actual science. Until recently, the former has been dominant.
I don't quite agree with this. I think the analogy with "hard" and "soft"
sciences is more apt for understanding the difference between "hard" and
"soft" SF than the technology vs. character cleavage. Of course, the "soft"
sciences, being concerned with people (generally) are more compatible with
an exploration of character, at least in the traditional sense of character.
I also don't agree with you that the two categories are so completely sep-
arate.
>Part of SF's bad reputation comes from the hard category. Yes, there
>is some good stuff out there (Clarke, Niven, Pohl), but there is also
>quite a bit of "Zllarrmox, bring me the quantum death ray
>neutralization device" garbage and pitiful Star Trek-ish glop. It's
>the science and/or wild plots that sell, not the writing.
There's some bad "soft" SF out there too, especially what's often called
"science fantasy."
>I don't want to get in a big argument here. The only reason people
>blindly attack SF is because they have only been exposed to trashy
>"space opera" stuff and not to any well-written works.
As one of SF's defenders, I'd like to opine that that's not the only reason.
Some people just don't like the idiom. (Though they're not the ones who
generally "blindly attack" SF.)
On another note, I've recently realized that I tend to get more out of dis-
cussions about SF when I'm talking with people who also read other types of
literature. I'm not sure why this is, execpt that such people have a less
ghettoized attitude towards books and reading.
/Janet
--
send mail to: repn...@leland.stanford.edu
"We're living in a PROTESTANT POLICE STATE and all I'M worried about is getting
a job so I can help perpetuate the paranoid patriarchal DEATH culture!"
--Mo
Jeff Dalton
>In article <1991Aug11....@arizona.edu> l...@soliton.uucp (sometimes a Wombat) writes:
>>Ursula K. Le Guin: _The Dispossessed_
>>
>> My bid for best novel of the second half of the 20th century.
>>But I'm biased, being a physicist.
>Suffice it to say that after a hundred pages of Le Guin, I'd developed an
>itching desire to see all the characters jump into the nearest well,
>preferably together with their weighty moral dilemmas and carryon political
>baggage. Your mileage may vary.
_The Dispossessed_ was ok, but it's the sort of SF that gets taught in
lit classes, but not very well.
At least we're not getting recommendations for _The Left Hand of
Darkness_. Stanislaw Lem made some, to my mind, telling criticism of
that work; but I don't really know, because I never saw the original
article (or whatever it was), just some extracts in an intro to some
anthology (one of the _Women of Wonder_s perhaps). So go ahead --
flame me.
-- jd
Duncan Peter G. Thornton
>At least we're not getting recommendations for _The Left Hand of
>Darkness_. Stanislaw Lem made some, to my mind, telling criticism of
>that work; but I don't really know, because I never saw the original
>article (or whatever it was), just some extracts in an intro to some
>anthology (one of the _Women of Wonder_s perhaps). So go ahead --
>flame me.
[Contemplates writing, "Jeff, you ignorant slut," but then realizes
that if he's in the U.K. Jeff might not recognize the catchphrase and
realize that it's a joke.]
[Fights valiantly the temptation to say, "I remember someone once
posted telling reasons for not taking Jeff Dalton seriously, though
I can't remember what they are just now."]
Okay, Jeff, but _why_ don't you like _The Left Hand of Darkness_?
- Duncan
Duncan Thornton | An odd thought strikes me - we shall receive no
tho...@ccu.umanitoba.ca | email in the grave.
Janet M. Lafler
>At least we're not getting recommendations for _The Left Hand of
>Darkness_. Stanislaw Lem made some, to my mind, telling criticism of
>that work; but I don't really know, because I never saw the original
>article (or whatever it was), just some extracts in an intro to some
>anthology (one of the _Women of Wonder_s perhaps). So go ahead --
>flame me.
I think I know the extracts you're talking about; they are indeed in one
of the _WoW_ anthologies, though I can't remember which one. As far as
I can remember, in the extracts quoted Lem focusses on what he sees as
the lack of psychological realism of the book. He suggests that in a sit-
uation in which people didn't know what sex they would be in any given
period of kemmer there would be a lot of anxiety and worry about how things
would turn out. I believe he also talks about the possible frustration if
two lovers end up being the same sex for the kemmer period. (In this last,
he seems to have misread the book; Le Guin clearly speicfies that once one
kemmer partner has established a sex, the other is triggered to assume the
"opposite" role.) As far as the anxiety caused by not knowing what sex you're
going to be, I think Lem again missed part of the point of the book, which
is that when people are androgynous most of the time, gender is non-existent
and so the difference between the sexes is minimized; what sex you are during
kemmer just isn't that important to the Gethenians.
I think that the most interesting criticisms of _tLHoD_ have come from Le
Guin herself, in her essay "Is Gender Necessary (Redux)," which is included
in her anthology of essays _Dancing at the Edge of the World._ She talks
about the problem of the Gethenians seeming like men, not androgynes, and
she talks about the book's heterosexism; of course, these self-criticisms
were the result of her listening to criticisms that others had made of her
book.
_tLHoD_ is still one of my favorite SF books. I think it's an emotionally
and ideologically rich book, for all its flaws.
Janet M. Lafler
>At least we're not getting recommendations for _The Left Hand of
>Darkness_. Stanislaw Lem made some, to my mind, telling criticism of
>that work; but I don't really know, because I never saw the original
>article (or whatever it was), just some extracts in an intro to some
>anthology (one of the _Women of Wonder_s perhaps). So go ahead --
>flame me.
I think I know the extracts you're talking about; they are indeed in one
of the _WoW_ anthologies, though I can't remember which one. As far as
I can remember, in the extracts quoted Lem focusses on what he sees as
the lack of psychological realism of the book. He suggests that in a sit-
uation in which people didn't know what sex they would be in any given
period of kemmer there would be a lot of anxiety and worry about how things
would turn out. I believe he also talks about the possible frustration if
two lovers end up being the same sex for the kemmer period. (In this last,
he seems to have misread the book; Le Guin clearly speicfies that once one
kemmer partner has established a sex, the other is triggered to assume the
"opposite" role.) As far as the anxiety caused by not knowing what sex you're
going to be, I think Lem again missed part of the point of the book, which
is that when people are androgynous most of the time, gender (that is, the
social concept of gender identity) is non-existent, and so the difference be-
tween the sexes is minimized; what sex you are during kemmer just isn't that
important to the Gethenians.
I think that the most interesting criticisms of _tLHoD_ have come from Le
Guin herself, in her essay "Is Gender Necessary (Redux)," which is included
in her anthology of essays _Dancing at the Edge of the World._ She talks
about the problem of the Gethenians seeming like men, not androgynes, and
she talks about the book's heterosexism; of course, these self-criticisms
were the result of her listening to criticisms that others had made of her
book.
_tLHoD_ is still one of my favorite SF books. I think it's emotionally and
ideologically a very rich book, for all its flaws.
Janet M. Lafler
>At least we're not getting recommendations for _The Left Hand of
>Darkness_. Stanislaw Lem made some, to my mind, telling criticism of
>that work; but I don't really know, because I never saw the original
>article (or whatever it was), just some extracts in an intro to some
>anthology (one of the _Women of Wonder_s perhaps). So go ahead --
>flame me.
I think I know the extracts you're talking about; they are indeed in one
of the _WoW_ anthologies, though I can't remember which one. As far as
I can remember, in the extracts quoted Lem focusses on what he sees as
the lack of psychological realism of the book. He suggests that in a sit-
uation in which people didn't know what sex they would be in any given
period of kemmer there would be a lot of anxiety and worry about how things
would turn out. I believe he also talks about the possible frustration if
two lovers end up being the same sex for the kemmer period. (In this last,
he seems to have misread the book; Le Guin clearly speicfies that once one
kemmer partner has established a sex, the other is triggered to assume the
"opposite" role.) As far as the anxiety caused by not knowing what sex you're
going to be, I think Lem again missed part of the point of the book, which
is that when people are androgynous most of the time, gender is non-existent
and so the difference between the sexes is minimized; what sex you are during
Janet M. Lafler
computer was telling me) that it wasn't getting posted, so I kept trying.
Oops.
Joseph Brenner
>In article <52...@skye.ed.ac.uk> je...@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>At least we're not getting recommendations for _The Left Hand of
>>Darkness_. Stanislaw Lem made some, to my mind, telling criticism of
>>that work;
>As far as I can remember, in the extracts quoted Lem focusses on what he
>sees as the lack of psychological realism of the book.
>I think that the most interesting criticisms of _tLHoD_ have come from Le
>Guin herself, in her essay "Is Gender Necessary (Redux)," which is included
>in her anthology of essays _Dancing at the Edge of the World._ She talks
>about the problem of the Gethenians seeming like men, not androgynes, and
>she talks about the book's heterosexism
I'm afraid I found _The Left Hand_ very dull when I read it.
I'd heard great things about it, and the premise of the
androgynous aleins sounded really promising, but LeGuin hadn't
really done anything with it. There's just *one* powerful
moment in the whole novel, the scene near the end where the
alein goes into Kemmer while crossing the ice with the human
character.
I think the problem is that it's essentially a piece of utopian
fiction, the main premise being that without gender differences
there would be no conflict. No conflict, no story.
By the way, there's some fairly strong criticism of LeGuin in
Delany's _The Jewel-Hinged Jaw_ (very roughly, he points out that
when _The Dispossessed_ touches on things he has experience with,
the story seems unrealistic).
There's some even stronger criticism written by Charles Platt
and Gregory Benford, "The Pompous Rose". I've only seen it in
the unfortunately obscure _Patchin Review_. As I remember it,
they accuse LeGuin of concealing a totalitarian impulse beneath
her utopian attitudes.
Matt Austern
> I'm afraid I found _The Left Hand_ very dull when I read it.
> I'd heard great things about it, and the premise of the
> androgynous aleins sounded really promising, but LeGuin hadn't
> really done anything with it. There's just *one* powerful
> moment in the whole novel, the scene near the end where the
> alein goes into Kemmer while crossing the ice with the human
> character.
There are other scenes that I would describe as "powerful" (Genly Ai's
visit to the people who predict the future, for example), but yes, I
would agree that there aren't terribly many.
But then, why should there be? It isn't so much a powerful book as a
subtle one.
> I think the problem is that it's essentially a piece of utopian
> fiction, the main premise being that without gender differences
> there would be no conflict. No conflict, no story.
Utopian fiction? That's doing Le Guin a disservice. She certainly
isn't saying that if we all become androgynous then life will be
wonderful: she is, rather, trying to explore the nature of gender, and
to determine to what extent our ideas of what it is to be human depend
on that notion and what, if anything, is left when it is removed.
And that, incidentally, is the story. (Whether or not it involves
"conflict" depends on what conflict means to you.) It is no accident
that the main character of the book is an alien: the book isn't
fundamentally about the Gethenians' ideas about gender, but about
ours, and these ideas are mirrored in Ai. The story is about his
gradual reevaluation of his beliefs, and his recognition of
relativity of concepts that he had thought to be universal.
--
Matt Austern ma...@physics.berkeley.edu Lots of things worth saying
(415) 644-2618 aus...@lbl.bitnet can only be said loosely.
Richard Caley
jb> There's just *one* powerful moment in the whole novel, the scene
jb> near the end where the alein goes into Kemmer while crossing the
jb> ice with the human character.
Certainly that is the central point of the book, but to say that it is
the _only_ powerful moment is, to me, like saying that the only
powerful moment of the Book of the New Sun is when Severian meets his
old master and the dog (hopefully that is vague enough not to be a
spoiler).
jb> I think the problem is that it's essentially a piece of utopian
jb> fiction, the main premise being that without gender differences
jb> there would be no conflict. No conflict, no story.
Did you read the same book as me? There were palace intrigues, wars
and secret police. It was hardly a utopia and certainly not lacking in
conflict. In fact Le Guin's point seems to have been to try and
counteract the notion you accuse her of supporting. She is saying that
gender or not, people are people and will fight.
jb> There's some even stronger criticism written by Charles Platt
jb> and Gregory Benford, "The Pompous Rose". I've only seen it in
jb> the unfortunately obscure _Patchin Review_. As I remember it,
jb> they accuse LeGuin of concealing a totalitarian impulse beneath
jb> her utopian attitudes.
Sounds unlikely to me.
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Janet M. Lafler
(Matt Austern and Richard Caley have already said most of what I wanted to
say in response to this, but there are just a couple more things I want to
add.)
>I'm afraid I found _The Left Hand_ very dull when I read it.
>I'd heard great things about it, and the premise of the
>androgynous aleins sounded really promising, but LeGuin hadn't
>really done anything with it. There's just *one* powerful
>moment in the whole novel, the scene near the end where the
>alein goes into Kemmer while crossing the ice with the human
>character.
>
>I think the problem is that it's essentially a piece of utopian
>fiction, the main premise being that without gender differences
>there would be no conflict. No conflict, no story.
I don't think that _tLHoD_ can be called utopian, by any stretch of
the imagination; I don't even think that the aspect of the book which
is about genderlessness can be called utopian. As for conflict, Le
Guin sets up a situation in which *war* is unknown; but even this isn't
specifically attributed to gender (a non-androgynous planet, Chiffewar,
is mentioned as never having had a war). But war isn't the only sort
of conflict, and there's plenty of conflict in _tLHoD_, as far as I can
see. Much of it is internal conflict on the part of Genly Ai and Estraven,
and not only around the issue of sexuality, but there's plenty of political
intrigue as well. The overtly political aspect of the book isn't what
makes it gripping for me; I've read lots of books that are more politically
complex. But I don't think Gethenian society can really be shown to be
without conflict.
>By the way, there's some fairly strong criticism of LeGuin in
>Delany's _The Jewel-Hinged Jaw_ (very roughly, he points out that
>when _The Dispossessed_ touches on things he has experience with,
>the story seems unrealistic).
It's a very interesting article, and I highly recommend it. I agree that
there are big problems with _The Disposessed_, especially its sexual poli-
tics and sexual psychology. It's a very ambitious book, and though it has
wonderful moments, it's not one of my favorite of Le Guin's works.
>There's some even stronger criticism written by Charles Platt
>and Gregory Benford, "The Pompous Rose". I've only seen it in
>the unfortunately obscure _Patchin Review_. As I remember it,
>they accuse LeGuin of concealing a totalitarian impulse beneath
>her utopian attitudes.
This is pretty odd, since her primary political identification seems to be
with anarchism. I think what may be bothersome to people is that in order
to be happy in the cultures that Le Guin favors, you would have to have a
very particular kind of personality and ethos, and an attitude towards life
which is very different than the one we are supposed to have in the modern
U.S. Most utopias are really only utopias for certain kinds of people; the
problem with utopias in general is that it's just about impossible to imagine
one in which *anyone* could be happy. Utopias assume that people are brought
up and acculturated so that they *can* be happy; I don't think that I could
be happy in one of Le Guin's utopias as I am now, but sometimes I wish that I
had been brought up among the Kesh.
Also, I think that Le Guin has a very strong commitment to ideals that seem
oddly conservative (considering her overall outlook); she favors stability,
slowness, tradition (though not "our" tradition), home, hearth. She doesn't
seem to have a taste for what most of us would call adventure, radical move-
ment, rapid change. My reading of Le Guin is such that I see something daring
and truly radical in her work, despite what may seem like a reactionary con-
cern with order, tradition etc.
Jeff Dalton
invite people to flame me, and there's hardly a flame in reply. Instead
we have a serious discussion.
Janet Lafler gave a reasonable account of Lem's criticism as I
remember it. Then:
As far as the anxiety caused by not knowing what sex you're going to
be, I think Lem again missed part of the point of the book, which is
that when people are androgynous most of the time, gender is
non-existent and so the difference between the sexes is minimized;
what sex you are during kemmer just isn't that important to the
Gethenians.
It is debatable whether this would be true of actual Gethenians,
though presumably Le Guin wanted it to be true. This, I think,
was Lem's point.
>>There's some even stronger criticism written by Charles Platt
>>and Gregory Benford, "The Pompous Rose". I've only seen it in
>>the unfortunately obscure _Patchin Review_. As I remember it,
>>they accuse LeGuin of concealing a totalitarian impulse beneath
>>her utopian attitudes.
>
>This is pretty odd, since her primary political identification seems to be
>with anarchism.
And that can't conceal a totalitarian impulse?
Libertarians and right wing anarchists are not all that far,
ideologically speaking, from Thatcher et al, and I don't think
anyone would find it surprising to have _her_ called authoritarian.
(Yes, I know that isn't quite the same thing.)
> I think what may be bothersome to people is that in order
>to be happy in the cultures that Le Guin favors, you would have to have a
>very particular kind of personality and ethos, and an attitude towards life
>which is very different than the one we are supposed to have in the modern
>U.S.
And if you don't have that attitude? Are you just ... unhappy? I
don't think Le Guin has thought it through very well, and I sometimes
suspect that she thinks people will automatically develop in the right
way (so that they would be at least reasonably happy) once that culture's
structures were set in place.
-- jd
Lesley Grant
>remember it. Then:
>
> As far as the anxiety caused by not knowing what sex you're going to
> be, I think Lem again missed part of the point of the book, which is
> that when people are androgynous most of the time, gender is
> non-existent and so the difference between the sexes is minimized;
> what sex you are during kemmer just isn't that important to the
> Gethenians.
>
>It is debatable whether this would be true of actual Gethenians,
>though presumably Le Guin wanted it to be true. This, I think,
>was Lem's point.
But surely non-anxiety about gender is true of the "actual Gethenians",
the ones Le Guin wrote about? Genly Ai worried plenty about Gethenian
gender, but the Gethenians didn't. Lem seems to be saying that Winter's
inhabitants would necessarily be worried about whether they would be male
or female this kemmer, but I can remember no evidence about this in the book.
Rather, it is Ai, the outsider who gets hung up on the whole thing, finding
it strange, for example, to remember his host has both fathered and given birth
to children. I must agree with Janet: if Lem thought Gethenians would be
worried about their gender, he was wrong, for their society made nothing
of it.
Lesley
gordon e. banks
>>with anarchism.
>
>And that can't conceal a totalitarian impulse?
>
>Libertarians and right wing anarchists are not all that far,
>ideologically speaking, from Thatcher et al, and I don't think
>anyone would find it surprising to have _her_ called authoritarian.
>(Yes, I know that isn't quite the same thing.)
>
Although I'm not sure LeGuin is really an anarchist, and if she is,
she is more like a left-wing anarchist, still I can't let
this pass. While there are many free-market anarchists, and they
may share some notions with Thatcher (or she with them) about the
desirability of letting markets decide, they certainly don't share
notions with conservatives about authoritarianism. An authoritarian
libertarian or anarchist is a complete oxymoron. Even more so
a totalitarian one. If you detect totalitarianism in LeGuin (I don't),
then if it co-exists with anarchist tendancies, she is better
classified as "schizophrenic". While in Western Democracies, the
tendancy has been for conservatives to defend market forces and
liberals to want more state control during the past 100 years, this
is not necessarily a natural affinity, nor a permanent one. In
the former USSR, in fact, it was the opposite, with the conservatives
being against the market which is (not without justification) seen
as promoting bourgeois liberalization and loss of authority.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon Banks N3JXP | "When in danger, or in doubt
g...@cadre.dsl.pitt.edu | Run in circles, scream and shout" --Heinlein
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Dalton
>In article <52...@skye.ed.ac.uk> je...@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>Janet Lafler gave a reasonable account of Lem's criticism as I
>>remember it. Then:
>>
>> As far as the anxiety caused by not knowing what sex you're going to
>> be, I think Lem again missed part of the point of the book, which is
>> that when people are androgynous most of the time, gender is
>> non-existent and so the difference between the sexes is minimized;
>> what sex you are during kemmer just isn't that important to the
>> Gethenians.
>>
>>It is debatable whether this would be true of actual Gethenians,
>>though presumably Le Guin wanted it to be true. This, I think,
>>was Lem's point.
>
>But surely non-anxiety about gender is true of the "actual Gethenians",
>the ones Le Guin wrote about? Genly Ai worried plenty about Gethenian
>gender, but the Gethenians didn't. Lem seems to be saying that Winter's
>inhabitants would necessarily be worried about whether they would be male
>or female this kemmer, but I can remember no evidence about this in the book.
An author can invent fictional entities with arbitrary characteristics,
but could such creatures actually exist? Are they even plausible?
Le Guin seemed to think that creatures with certain properties would
(or could) have certain other properties. Can one not question this?
Surely that sort of question is not unusual in SF criticism.
-- jd
Jeff Dalton
>In <52...@skye.ed.ac.uk> je...@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>
>>At least we're not getting recommendations for _The Left Hand of
>>Darkness_.
>Okay, Jeff, but _why_ don't you like _The Left Hand of Darkness_?
I think it has some virtues, and might even recommend it to some
people. I do not think that would be a good way to convince most
people that SF is worthwhile.
I happen to find the book rather boring. I find the political
intrigues uninteresting and the other ideas (eg that androgynous
creatures would be unlikely to have wars) unconvincing. Indeed,
I think it's hard to come away from Le Guin's own criticism of
the book ("Is gender necessary (redux)") with the impression that
it's something one really must read.
It has some interest as a singnificant work by an important SF
author, but I don't see why that should matter to someone starting
from the position that SF is worthless.
-- jd
Jeff Dalton
>Guin herself, in her essay "Is Gender Necessary (Redux)," which is included
>in her anthology of essays _Dancing at the Edge of the World._
I looked at this again last night, in my copy of _Language of the
Night_ (something like that). I was surprised. I'd remembered that
book as very good. Indeed, I'd looked for and bought a copy after
first reading it from a library. But I found it almost painful (or
maybe embarrassing) to read it now. Perhaps it all made sense in
1982 or whenever it was, I don't know.
For example, consider "American SF and the Other" and compare it to,
say, the section of 50's SF films in Peter Biskind's _Seeing is
Believing_ for its treatment of the Other. Ok, "American SF" is much
shorter. But even in something that length it should be possible to
recognize greater variety. For instance, it's not really right to say
that space empires were all based on the British Empire and the white
man's burden. Even Asimov's Galactic Empire often seems more like the
Chinese empire to me.
-- jd
Richard Caley
jd> In any case, there are more relevant observation about anarchists.
jd> For one thing, they tend to have problems with many forms of democracy,
jd> because people might vote to set up a state. They also often suppose
jd> that there's only one right way of thinking and that they know what
jd> it is. The democratic project is more modest, and more pragmatic.
I think you have that completely backwards. However this isn't the
place to talk about it, so I'll just let my assertion stand as a
balance :-).
--
r...@cstr.ed.ac.uk _O_
|<
Jeff Dalton
>Although I'm not sure LeGuin is really an anarchist, and if she is,
>she is more like a left-wing anarchist, still I can't let
>this pass. While there are many free-market anarchists, and they
>may share some notions with Thatcher (or she with them) about the
>desirability of letting markets decide, they certainly don't share
>notions with conservatives about authoritarianism.
They share more notions than that with Thatcher. Nonetheless, my
point was not that any anarchists were Thatcherites, only that it
was not necessarily that big a step.
In any case, there are more relevant observation about anarchists.
For one thing, they tend to have problems with many forms of democracy,
because people might vote to set up a state. They also often suppose
that there's only one right way of thinking and that they know what
Kenn Barry
>Are we talking about Lem's MICROWORLDS, by the way? I own a copy, I
>believe, but I haven't read all the essays in it. Lem's criticisms of
>American SF always seem to me to be a bit off, as if he were unclear about
>what American SF writers are trying to do.
I have heard (yes, mere rumor; anyone who knows more, please
post) that Lem's impressions of American SF were formed by badly
translated and heavily abridged European editions.
Kayembee
Michael J. Hennebry
>Chinese empire to me.
He claims a Roman model.
--
Mike henn...@plains.NoDak.edu
"Afterplay was a little rough, but not fatal." -- Mrs. Beard
Mike Godwin
>people. I do not think that would be a good way to convince most
>people that SF is worthwhile.
>
>I happen to find the book rather boring.
I have to agree with this criticism of THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS
(although I suspect I'd like it better on rereading). THE DISPOSSESSED
seemed less dull to me, perhaps because I was more interested in the working
out of left-anarchy system than I was in genderless beings.
(LeGuin's short story prequel to THE DISPOSSESSED, which is called, I
think, "The Day Before The Revolution," is quite moving, IMHO.)
I always have to think hard to come up with good SF recommendations for
people who like SF. Typically, SF fans just recommend their favorites
(DUNE is an example), but their favorite books tend to assume an SF reader
and outsiders need not apply.
>It has some interest as a singnificant work by an important SF
>author, but I don't see why that should matter to someone starting
>from the position that SF is worthless.
A different sort of genderless society pops up in Joanna Russ's THE FEMALE
MAN, a book I thought was pretty eye-opening when I first read it, but
whose polemics seem a little dated now. (I still enjoy it, though.)
--Mike
--
Mike Godwin, |"Eros and language mesh at every point. Intercourse
mnem...@eff.org | and discourse, copula and copulation, are sub-classes
(617) 864-0665 | of the dominant fact of communication."
EFF, Cambridge, MA| --George Steiner
Mike Godwin
I think one can always criticize the created beings a science-fiction
author comes up with for not being too real. But that seems to me to miss
the point of science fiction, which is to develop people and phenomena
that *aren't* real in order to shed light on what *is* real.
LeGuin's work is an act of imagination: What would humanity be like if
there were no such thing as gender? To say that this work is unrealistic,
or that such creatures could not actually exist, seems to me to be a
technically accurate but misguided criticism.
Are we talking about Lem's MICROWORLDS, by the way? I own a copy, I
believe, but I haven't read all the essays in it. Lem's criticisms of
American SF always seem to me to be a bit off, as if he were unclear about
what American SF writers are trying to do.
--Mike
TCDE...@ysub.ysu.edu
recommended _Dreamsnake_. IMHO, a good starter ... interesting and easy
to read.
Kenneth Freeman
an intriguing premise? Granted, Le Guin isn't a Star Trek script
writer; as a novelist, her verisimilitude has to stand on its own
internal evidence, but an idea is an idea, and I think she has fleshed
hers out quite well. And, hey, once we have a global culture, you can
be unhappy too!
---
If people did not sometimes do silly things,
nothing intelligent would ever get done. -Wittgenstein
---
UUCP: {hplabs!hp-sdd ucsd nosc}!crash!pnet01!kfree
ARPA: crash!pnet01!kf...@nosc.mil
INET: kf...@pnet01.cts.com
Joseph Brenner
remarks calling _The Left Hand of Darkness_ an "essentially
utopian" novel, but maybe it would've been better if I
hadn't used the word "utopia" to describe the society.
Clearly it's not supposed to absolutely perfect. Maybe I
should've called it an "omelas" -- an *almost* perfect
world.
By the way, I dug up the article I mentioned by Platt and
Benford. I am going to post some selected quotes from it
that seem relevant under a new heading (On Leguin: "The
Pompous Rose"). Though, for what it's worth, it looks to me
like Janet Lafler and Charles Layton already have a good
handle on the the arguments.
Jeff Dalton
>
>>An author can invent fictional entities with arbitrary characteristics,
>>but could such creatures actually exist? Are they even plausible?
>>Le Guin seemed to think that creatures with certain properties would
>>(or could) have certain other properties. Can one not question this?
>>Surely that sort of question is not unusual in SF criticism.
>
>I think one can always criticize the created beings a science-fiction
>author comes up with for not being too real. But that seems to me to miss
>the point of science fiction, which is to develop people and phenomena
>that *aren't* real in order to shed light on what *is* real.
The criticism isn't that they aren't real; that would be like saying
"the problem with this book is that it's fiction". Le Guin has created
certain creatures and with them addresses certain issues. The criticism
is that she has made her task too easy by supposing, without sufficiently
good reason, that certain problems would not exist. Le Guin says these
creatures would behave and think in certain ways and Lem says they wouldn't.
Of course le Guin can invent whatever creatures she likes. But Le Guin
is supposing that creatures with certain physical characteristics would
think and behave in certain ways -- something it's perfectly reasonable
to question.
>LeGuin's work is an act of imagination: What would humanity be like if
>there were no such thing as gender?
Actually, it's more like: what might humanity be like if gender wasn't
fixed and humans were androgynous most of the time but had brief periods
in which they felt they absolutely had to have sex. Much less interesting,
IMHO.
However, if we take your version as the question, Lem's claim is
that Le Guin's wrong about what humanity would be like if there
were no such thing as gender.
>To say that this work is unrealistic, or that such creatures could not
>actually exist, seems to me to be a technically accurate but misguided
>criticism.
I think you are basing this far too much on some accidents of phrasing
such as "could such creatures actually exist". (I don't have access to
the exact words from my earlier messages today, though, because they're
on a machine that's down.)
>Are we talking about Lem's MICROWORLDS, by the way?
I don't know where it originally appeared. One of \Janet's messages
had the most detailed information.
-- jd
Jeff Dalton
>MAN, a book I thought was pretty eye-opening when I first read it, but
>whose polemics seem a little dated now. (I still enjoy it, though.)
I like Russ's style in any case.
Jeff Dalton
>How thoroughly does an sf author have to think it through, 'it' being
>an intriguing premise?
So that _no_ criticism is justified?
sometimes a Wombat
>I think I stirred up some interesting comments with my
>remarks calling _The Left Hand of Darkness_ an "essentially
>utopian" novel, but maybe it would've been better if I
>hadn't used the word "utopia" to describe the society.
>Clearly it's not supposed to absolutely perfect. Maybe I
>should've called it an "omelas" -- an *almost* perfect world.
Which is perfect use of term whose time has come --an Omelas,
which is near Utopia (about 50 miles south ;-{). And like the
former, the class is named after an invented land. But, but, ...
... the adjective? What is the adjective? Omelian? Word-smiths,
you are needed!
Larry "Mr. Obvious Follow-Up Man" Hammer
L...@albert.physics.arizona.edu \
The insane don't need disclaimers \ Purple Mage Publications is now hiring
Janet M. Lafler
>do...@elaine50.Stanford.EDU (Joseph Brenner) writes:
>>I think I stirred up some interesting comments with my
>>remarks calling _The Left Hand of Darkness_ an "essentially
>>utopian" novel, but maybe it would've been better if I
>>hadn't used the word "utopia" to describe the society.
>>Clearly it's not supposed to absolutely perfect. Maybe I
>>should've called it an "omelas" -- an *almost* perfect world.
I'd just like to interject here that I don't even consider Gethen
to be an "omelas." Certainly neither of the political systems that
we see at work is worth emulating...
>Which is perfect use of term whose time has come --an Omelas,
>which is near Utopia (about 50 miles south ;-{). And like the
>former, the class is named after an invented land. But, but, ...
>
>... the adjective? What is the adjective? Omelian? Word-smiths,
>you are needed!
Omelian sounds fine to me. Or how about Omelasian?
Le Guin says that the name "Omelas" came from reading the roadsign for
Salem (Oregon) backwards. Now, what does that say about Salem's place
in the scheme of Utopias...
gordon e. banks
>For one thing, they tend to have problems with many forms of democracy,
>because people might vote to set up a state. They also often suppose
Not only that but they might vote in Adolf Hitler (as 95% of Germans
and Austrians did). Yes, indeed, they do have problems with democracy,
as well they should.
>that there's only one right way of thinking and that they know what
>it is.
Well, the anarchists don't seem to have a monopoly on that around here,
now do they?
marc.colten
> I think I stirred up some interesting comments with my
> remarks calling _The Left Hand of Darkness_ an "essentially
> utopian" novel, but maybe it would've been better if I
> hadn't used the word "utopia" to describe the society.
> Clearly it's not supposed to absolutely perfect. Maybe I
> should've called it an "omelas" -- an *almost* perfect
> world.
>
Most of the comments on this novel seemed to focus on the gender chaning
and whether this was good or bad in the society. There are two other
stories that I know of where gender changes are used as a key, and
both had a decidedly different and ominous slant on it.
One is the novel "The Mote is God's Eye" and the other is the short
story "Second Game" by Charles V. DeVet and Katherine MacLean. I was
wondering if anyone else had read these and what their feelings were.
marc colten
Mike Godwin
>
>The criticism
>is that she has made her task too easy by supposing, without sufficiently
>good reason, that certain problems would not exist. Le Guin says these
>creatures would behave and think in certain ways and Lem says they wouldn't.
Okay--I understand the character of the criticism better now.
If LeGuin's experiment is unconvincing, she's still done us a service,
of course, since she's (in a very loose way) falsified her thesis about
gender.
Me, I thought her Gethenians were real enough.
Doug Philips
mnem...@eff.org (Mike Godwin) writes:
+In article <12...@castle.ed.ac.uk> je...@castle.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
+>
+>The criticism
+>is that she has made her task too easy by supposing, without sufficiently
+>good reason, that certain problems would not exist. Le Guin says these
+>creatures would behave and think in certain ways and Lem says they wouldn't.
+
+Okay--I understand the character of the criticism better now.
+
+If LeGuin's experiment is unconvincing, she's still done us a service,
+of course, since she's (in a very loose way) falsified her thesis about
+gender.
Unless I've missed (or misread) an article or two, you cannot claim
that she falsified her thesis about gender, but merely that she failed
to prove it, which are hardly the same things at all.
Having never read the Lem criticism, I can't comment on his argument.
I would certainly hope that it goes beyound "Well, they just couldn't
act that way."
-Doug
Matt Austern
> >LeGuin's work is an act of imagination: What would humanity be like if
> >there were no such thing as gender?
>
> Actually, it's more like: what might humanity be like if gender wasn't
> fixed and humans were androgynous most of the time but had brief periods
> in which they felt they absolutely had to have sex. Much less interesting,
> IMHO.
I believe that the original poster was using gender in the sense
that is common in modern feminist writing: not as a synonym for sex,
but to mean the social constructs associated with the division of
humanity into two sexes. (In this sense, of course, gender means
something different in different human cultures.)
And in this sense, since Gethenians are not divided into two sexes,
there is indeed no such thing as gender in their society. That
situation is, I think, what Le Guin was interested in exploring. See,
for example, her essay "Is gender necessary?".
(Incidentally, I haven't read as much modern feminist work as I ought
to have. Does anybody have any favorites that they'd like to
recommend? Something that doesn't have too much Derrida, preferably.)
--
Matt Austern ma...@physics.berkeley.edu What if everything is an illusion
(415) 644-2618 aus...@lbl.bitnet and nothing exists? In that case,
aus...@theorm.lbl.gov I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
Kenneth Freeman
fully fledged worlds than others, that's all.
Kenneth Freeman
The sticking point -so to speak- for the Moties wasn't their system
of gender but that they couldn't control their reproduction.
marc.colten
>
>
> The sticking point -so to speak- for the Moties wasn't their system
> of gender but that they couldn't control their reproduction.
I'm not so sure it was "couldn't", but "wouldn't". After all, they
could and did invent "birth control pills" and could be celibate or even
genetically barren like the mediators. their uncontrolled birthrate
starts with genetics and then moves on to other matters:
1. No one wants to die, and it seems that cyclical childbirth was not
so tough on them that they prefered to die.
2. The political and economic system they developed, which could have
been replaced by another, reinforced this position. More births
meant more power, but also the greater need to think of oneself
instead of society as a whole. If they developed a more collective
outlook, thought of their entire society instead of their "clan"
they could have solved the problem with limited childbirth and
chemical aid to prevent death.
the problem could have been solved, but there was no incentive to do
so.
marc colten
Wilson Heydt
In article <1991Sep13....@cbfsb.att.com> col...@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (marc.colten) writes:
>In article <1991Sep12.2...@crash.cts.com>, kf...@pnet01.cts.com (Kenneth Freeman) writes:
>>
>>
>> The sticking point -so to speak- for the Moties wasn't their system
>> of gender but that they couldn't control their reproduction.
>
>I'm not so sure it was "couldn't", but "wouldn't". After all, they
>could and did invent "birth control pills" and could be celibate or even
>genetically barren like the mediators. their uncontrolled birthrate
>starts with genetics and then moves on to other matters:
The great irony is, that while the unrestrainable birth rate was
needed for the plot--there is continual need to expand living space or
the civilization will crash from overpopulation--Niven & Pournelle's
*model* for what the Moties needed is exactly what we have.
What they seem to have been unaware of is that the classic
birth-control pill works by fooling the wwomans body into "thinking"
it is already pregnant. Such a pill would be just what the Moties
need. (Though it would destroy the plot.)
--Hal
=======================================================================
Hal Heydt | Practice Safe Government
Analyst, Pacific*Bell | Use Kingdoms
415-823-5447 | (seen on a bumper sticker)
whh...@pbhya.PacBell.COM |
Newsgroups: rec.art.sbooks
Subject: Re: The Left Hand of Darkness (was Re: Good SF (was Re: SF worthless?))
Summary:
Expires:
References: <1991Sep12.2...@crash.cts.com> <1991Sep13....@cbfsb.att.com>
Sender:
Reply-To: whh...@PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Followup-To:
Distribution:
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Keywords:
In article <1991Sep13....@cbfsb.att.com> col...@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (marc.colten) writes:
>In article <1991Sep12.2...@crash.cts.com>, kf...@pnet01.cts.com (Kenneth Freeman) writes:
>>
>>
>> The sticking point -so to speak- for the Moties wasn't their system
>> of gender but that they couldn't control their reproduction.
>
>I'm not so sure it was "couldn't", but "wouldn't". After all, they
>could and did invent "birth control pills" and could be celibate or even
>genetically barren like the mediators. their uncontrolled birthrate
>starts with genetics and then moves on to other matters:
The great irony is, that while the unrestrainable birth rate was
needed for the plot--there is continual need to expand living space or
the civilization will crash from overpopulation--Niven & Pournelle's
*model* for what the Moties needed is exactly what we have.
What they seem to have been unaware of is that the classic
birth-control pill works by fooling the wwomans body into "thinking"
it is already pregnant. Such a pill would be just what the Moties
need. (Though it would destroy the plot.)
--Hal
=======================================================================
Hal Heydt | Practice Safe Government
Analyst, Pacific*Bell | Use Kingdoms
415-823-5447 | (seen on a bumper sticker)
whh...@pbhya.PacBell.COM |
Kenneth Freeman
>In article <1991Sep12.2...@crash.cts.com>, kf...@pnet01.cts.com (Kenneth Freeman) writes:
>>
>>
>> The sticking point -so to speak- for the Moties wasn't their system
>> of gender but that they couldn't control their reproduction.
>
>I'm not so sure it was "couldn't", but "wouldn't". After all, they
>could and did invent "birth control pills" and could be celibate or even
>genetically barren like the mediators. their uncontrolled birthrate
>starts with genetics and then moves on to other matters:
>
> so tough on them that they prefered to die.
>
>2. The political and economic system they developed, which could have
> been replaced by another, reinforced this position. More births
> meant more power, but also the greater need to think of oneself
> instead of society as a whole. If they developed a more collective
> outlook, thought of their entire society instead of their "clan"
> they could have solved the problem with limited childbirth and
> chemical aid to prevent death.
>
>the problem could have been solved, but there was no incentive to do
>so.
>
>
>marc colten
Quite right. So there's the Moties' incentive for making the harrowing
journey to human space. I'm looking forward to seeing how Niven and
Pournelle work out the _how_!
---
If people did not sometimes do silly things,
nothing intelligent would ever get done. -Wittgenstein
James Davis Nicoll
>
>The great irony is, that while the unrestrainable birth rate was
>needed for the plot--there is continual need to expand living space or
>the civilization will crash from overpopulation--Niven & Pournelle's
>*model* for what the Moties needed is exactly what we have.
>
>What they seem to have been unaware of is that the classic
>birth-control pill works by fooling the wwomans body into "thinking"
>it is already pregnant. Such a pill would be just what the Moties
>need. (Though it would destroy the plot.)
Actually, the moties *had* invented birth-control pills, but
in the Niven-Pournelle model of Motie social interaction, larger populations
always had sufficiently greater power than smaller populations that the low
birthrate nations got overun by their more fecund neighbors. Note that I'm
not saying whether or not I find it plausible. I will even refrain from
mentioning the Amish in this posting :)
James Nicoll
Mike Wojcik
>(Incidentally, I haven't read as much modern feminist work as I ought
>to have. Does anybody have any favorites that they'd like to
>recommend? Something that doesn't have too much Derrida, preferably.)
Is this a FAQ yet? It seems to me this question last popped up a few weeks
ago (no offence, Matt). As far as feminist literary theory goes, I usually
recommend Toril Moi's _Sexual/Textual Politics_, a nice, short overview of
(what Moi sees as) the dominant American and French feminist theories.
(Interestingly, she doesn't discuss British feminist theories, although she
teaches at Oxford.) It's fairly easy to see where her biases are when you
read the book (she prefers Kristeva over most everyone else). There's not
much Derrida, and the two or three pages that deal with him are quite lucid.
--
Michael "J" Wojcik
Represent IBM? They can't even get my middle initial right.
". . . I said, 'I need to put my soul into my work and it is well known that
computers haven't got a soul.' My father said, 'The Americans are working
on it.'" Sue Townsend, _The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4_