Reading the oldies (pre-1994): would you give this book to a child? v. 5

The impetus for this thread arose in this discussion: Science Fiction for Children?

I explained what I was aiming to explore in the first post in the first instalment of the thread:

Reading the oldies (pre-1994): would you give this book to a child?

In brief, the focus of the thread is character representation in science fiction and fantasy published before 1994. The analyses, at least those produced by me, are NOT meant to be reviews--be prepared, for instance, to see literary, pioneering, technical etc. aspects of the work neglected, while any number of what may seem minor points could be discussed in detail.

Everyone is invited to contribute, whether you adopt the format I follow (in which case your information will be added to the summaries) or not.

Discussion of the premises or how they affect any given title, situation etc. is always welcome.

The summary of links to the first block of twenty titles, 1-20, is here; to the second block of titles, 21-40, here; to the third block of titles, 41-65, here.

Fourth block of titles, 66-100:

The numbers are links to posts; the titles are touchstones. Asterisks (*) indicate authors awarded the "Grand Master" title by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

66. The Galactic Rejects by Andrew J. Offutt
67. Dark dance by Tanith Lee
68. Ultimate world by Hugo Gernsback
69. Space cadet by Robert A. Heinlein*
70. No blade of grass by John Christopher
71. Ibis by Linda Steele
72. The world of Null-A by A. E. Van Vogt*
73. Nightwings by Robert Silverberg*
74. The Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley
75. 334 by Thomas M. Disch
76. Tetrasomy Two by Oscar Rossiter
77. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin*
78. The avengers of Carrig by John Brunner
79. Hot sleep by Orson Scott Card
80. Dark universe by Daniel F. Galouye
81. Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon
82. Past master by R. A. Lafferty
83. The Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs
84. The Rose by Charles L. Harness
85. The running man by J. Hunter Holly
86. The Master by T. H. White
87. Analogue Men by Damon Knight*
88. The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel
89. Gladiator by Philip Wylie
90. Fuzzy sapiens by H. Beam Piper
91. Doctor Rat by William Kotzwinkle
92. A dream of Wessex by Christopher Priest
93. Journey beyond tomorrow by Robert Sheckley
94. The Lion Men of Mongo by Ron Goulart
95. Gateway by Frederik Pohl*
96. Catseye by Andre Norton*
97. The weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann
98. Conehead by Gardner F. Fox
99. The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee
100. The Rakehells of Heaven by John Boyd

A basic analysis of representation in the first 100 works and their authors.

There were 100 titles by 80 unique authors. Author sex, race, orientation, minority status are given according to what information was available; please add or correct if possible.

A number following an author's name (e.g. Vance 2) means that there have been multiple works by that author, so that they need distinguishing by the order in which they came up (Vance 2=the second title by Jack Vance).

AUTHOR DIVERSITY

Women: 10/80 ; 12.5% (Norton; Randall; Dibell; Tepper; St. Clair; Hambly; Lee; Steele; Le Guin; Holly)

Persons of colour (PoC): 0/80 ; 0%

Relative minority, sexual orientation: 3/80 ; 3.8% (Gerrold; Clarke; Disch)

Other relative minority: 0/80 ; 0%

REPRESENTATIONS OF DIVERSITY IN THE WORKS

a) Main characters

Women: 6/100 ; 6% (Panshin; Pratchett; Lee 1 and 2; Steele; Varley)

PoC: 5/100 ; 5% (Norton; Heinlein; Panshin; Dickson; Pratchett)

Relative minority, sexual orientation/gender: 2/100 ; 2% (Gerrold; Varley)

Other relative minority: 0/100 ; 0%

b) Works with ANY appearance of:

Women: 94/100 ; 94% (none in Norton; Lem; Clarke; Campbell; Van Vogt 2; Lafferty)

PoC: 48/100 ; 48%

Relative minority, sexual orientation/gender: 19/100 ; 19% (Leiber; Brunner; Gerrold, Farmer, Moorcock; Randall; Ballard; Asimov; Robinson; Leiber 2; Pohl; Silverberg; Disch; Le Guin; Sturgeon; Kotzwinkle; Lee 2; Gernsback, Varley)

Other relative minority: 7/100 ; 7% (Moorcock; Stapledon; Tepper; C. Smith; Dick 2; Vance 2; Robinson)

RELATIVE SEXUAL MINORITIES

What are the attitudes to non-heterosexual/transgender characters and behaviour?

--Positive/tending to positive: 9/100 ; 9% (Gerrold; Randall; Tepper; Pohl; Disch; Sturgeon; Lee 2; Gernsback; Varley)

--Negative/tending to negative: 10/100; 10% (Leiber; Farmer; Brunner; Moorcock; Farmer 2; Wilson; Leiber 2; Silverberg; Le Guin; Kotzwinkle)

OTHER RELATIVE MINORITIES

What are the attitudes to characters in other discriminated-against categories?

--Positive/tending to positive: 3/100 ; 3% (Stapledon; Tepper; Robinson)

--Negative/tending to negative: 3/100 ; 3% (Moorcock; Dick 2; Vance 2)

For the last 80 titles I looked at whether there were Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT) passes and fails. Overall, there were r-BT passes (at least two male characters conversing about something other than women) in 95% of the cases, but BT passes (at least two female characters conversing about something other than men) happened only in 25% of the cases, even with the lowest standards for conversation (e.g. a mere two lines such as "Where are you from?" "I don't know.")

The general conclusions haven't changed from previous summaries, but there's been a change in my criteria.

Regarding the "Main character" category, I'm no longer counting works that have multiple equally prominent main characters. With this change Randall's and Tepper's books, for instance, have gone from the count of works with female main characters. From now on, the final summing-up will include only "main" characters that would be generally recognised as THE hero of the story. To give an illustration of what I mean, consider Harry Potter. While the cast is large and there are many important characters, I think most of us would have no trouble identifying Harry as being THE hero, the one around whose character, doings, point of view and destiny everything else revolves.

Regarding "Persons of colour", while I baulk at making these back-of-the-napkin analyses more pretend-scientific, with every new phase I feel more dissatisfied with the lack of detail within the category. I've been trying hard to discover even just a possibility for imagining that a character is PoC, but in doing so I'm masking to some degree the sheer lack of, first, persons of colour on the broadest level, and second, the relative lack of certain groups within that category. I did mention before the lack of specifically black African characters among the PoC "main" characters (given that the genre is strongly dominated by American writers this is not by chance) but I wish I had been more systematic about noticing the function of the PoC, particularly of African descent, in the background.

While I can't go back in most cases, I'll make an effort to improve the analysis of this category.

The third subject that needs clarification, especially in regard to the PoC, sexual/gender minority and "other relative minority" categories, is what is meant by "representation". This, I think, is evident in my analyses, but I think it would be good to state it explicitly.

I counted as representation 1. the presence of characters belonging in this or that category, that is characters who are designated as such, and that whether they carry the plot or appear "off-stage", but also 2. mere mentions of these categories and related themes. Homosexuality, for instance, can be "represented" by a gay character, but also by talk about homosexuality (whether gay or not-gay characters are talking) or exhibited attitudes.

Occasionally this presents problems when it comes to tallying up "ANY appearance". I can't think of a way to be perfectly consistent on this point. In general, an "appearance" would require an actual character belonging to a given category, whether the character is actively carrying plot or existing in background, or even historical, dead or fictional (relative to the story). But even in the absence of such individual characters, I might count a reference to the category as an "appearance" of it if, to the best of my judgement, it sufficiently conveys a definite "attitude".

You can add another to the list of non-hetero authors - Thomas M. Disch.

>5 mart1n:

OMG, of course!!! Memory=sieve.

Thanks!

No. 101

 

They shall have stars by James Blish

Publication date: 1957 ; Story date: 2018 (with a prologue in 2013)

A scientific breakthrough is expected to let Americans claim the space, while the Soviets overtake Earth.

Main character: Col. Paige Russell, male

Secondary characters: Senator Bliss Wagoner, male; Robert Helmuth, foreman on Jupiter project; Anne Abbott; receptionist

Minor characters: Giuseppi Corsi, physicist; Francis X. MacHinery, FBI director; Harold Gunn, Anne's boss; Charity Dillon, male, chief engineer on Jupiter project; Eva Chavez, operator on Jupiter project; General Horsefield; other named and unnamed male characters.

Representation of women: This is very much an example of a "it's 1952 forever, except with flying cars" fifties book, but the two female characters aren't complete clichés. For one thing, Anne the receptionist gets to deliver much exposition, and that information is of the type that necessarily entails having intelligence and competence. Her looks are repeatedly criticised and patronised--Russell suspects immediately there's more to her function at the company because she is not decorative enough for a simple receptionist. He also correctly guesses that her link to the company is through a family relation, and indeed her father is one of the scientists there. (Un-possible to make it her mother! What's this, science fiction? :))

As for Eva, she is judged "the worst operator" at work, "apt to become enthralled (...) precisely at the moment when cold analysis and split-second decisions were most crucial." If she's truly like that, it's a wonder anyone would waste billions on shipping and maintaining such a person on Jupiter, when we get detailed explanations on the rigorous quality control that went into judging every widget for the project. But there's more to the character than this, she's not there just to be beaten down.

Despite the sexist elements in their description and handling, I give props to Blish for making both Anne and Eva sound more like full persons than I've seen so far in similar period-bound narratives. I found the conversations between Russell and Anne to be believable and sympathetic in the depiction of their reactions to each other, and refreshing in the absence of the usual "battle of the sexes" stereotypes. They relate to each other like real people.

Besides Anne and Eva, there are only two short very general references to women in the background--Anne's boss makes a lying excuse to Russell involving a "female technician", and the second one is a mention of "men and women" working on Jupiter, although Eva's the only one we see.

Representation of race and ethnicity: There is no specific identification of anyone as non-white, people's faces go "white" with anger or fear several times, and yet discussing Eva, whose name is Chavez "but" she's a blonde, it is asserted that all of humanity is by now "mixed race". Too vague and unsupported by what little physical description there is, I think that's best overlooked.

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, lots of r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: yes. Would have things to say about some notions regarding science and "faith", though.

Up next: Friday by Robert Heinlein

>8 LolaWalser: I'm off to get some popcorn for this one...

Ha! *looks at cover* "Friday" is the character's name? I think I can see why she's no "Monday".

Well, that didn't last long... abandoned in the second chapter. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I judge that the "philosophy" on rape and sex in evidence through there isn't likely to get challenged, criticised, let alone abandoned later on, and therefore is a "feature not a bug" of the narrative. In which case analysis is superfluous--people who think there are degrees of rape that can be more or less enjoyed, that rape is worse for men than for women, that all men are essentially rapists and therefore rape should be tolerated (why that conclusion? From that premise the more logical conclusion would be that therefore all men should be killed or at least stringently culled and controlled.), that a woman being gang-raped could or would study her rapists and grade them in terms of which ones she might like in a consensual encounter--such people aren't waiting to have their minds changed. And those who find this attitude repulsive also don't need me to tell them what's so repulsive.

Up next: Why call them back from heaven? by Clifford Simak

>11 LolaWalser: There are two Heinleins; one that wrote things like The Green Hills of Earth and Podkayne of Mars (I was pretty young when I read this, and would NOT recommend it for a kid nowadays), and that loathesome creature that he became, later on. I struggled through Stranger in a Strange Land, trying to understand what friends were seeing in it. Life is too short. I started one of the books he wrote after that, and realized that either he'd changed, or that other person had been there all along, but just restrained. After reading The Door Into Summer with adult eyes (as opposed to the nine or ten year old that I'd been), I decided not to spoil any more of my childhood memories. I recommend all those early works; Friday is (IMNSHO) a waste of paper, and of time. Yes, I've read parts of it. There is no toothbrush for the brain, sadly.

I have a certain fondness for Simak; I await your verdict.

I was going to get popcorn too, for enjoying your evisceration of Friday, but respect your decision to quit where you did. It doesn't get better. Agree with Lynda re: the dual personality of early and late Heinlein. Also a Simak fan, but I don't remember this one.

Heh, I just finished looking at reviews here and on GR and there's some evisceration going on in the 1-star group. The whole thing sounds even worse than what stopped me in my tracks.

If Heinlein weren't so well-known or the problems in this book less blatant, I'd feel more of an obligation to go through with it, but as it is, it just can't be the case that I can say anything new.

So Friday ends up married to one of the men who gang-raped her... insert "I can't even" emoticon here.

No. 102

 

Why call them back from heaven? by Clifford D. Simak

Publication date: 1967 ; Story date: unspecified future

Waiting for immortality, humankind puts real life on hold.

Main character: Daniel Frost

Secondary characters: Ann Harrison; Marcus Appleton; Franklin Chapman

Minor characters: Ogden Russell; Mona Campbell; more than a dozen named male characters.

Representation of women: The two named female characters, while wildly outnumbered, at least have relatively important roles. Ann Harrison is a lawyer, a courageous person with a conscience who dares to challenge the omnipotent corporation in the name of justice, and Mona Campbell is a gifted mathematician whose work is key to the scheme for immortality. The only other two mentions of women are of someone's secretary, and a non-speaking submissive character called Mary among the "Holies", the religious cranks on the margins of society led by a patriarch.

But just when I was about to think Simak had improved in some ways since the fifties, he makes Mona, the brilliant mathematician, think thusly:

...it was the thought of someone such as she--a middle-aged and dowdy woman who too long had been concerned with matters that were unwomanly. Mathematics--what had a woman to do with mathematics other than the basic arithmetics of fitting the family's budget to the family's need? And what had a woman to do with life other than the giving and the rearing of new life?

It's meant seriously, there's no further comment, she doesn't "snap out" of it or something.

This, to me, is the most offensive a writer and a man can be. Deriding women, attacking women, writing endless rapes of women is one kind of problem. But positing women's passive acquiescence and embracing of misogyny in this way, imagining a woman, of extraordinary gifts at that, who trashes herself and her life's work in this way--that is another order of magnitude of offensive. And of stupid.

Representation of race and ethnicity: None.

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, lots of r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: no.

Up next: The sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett

No. 103

 

The sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett

Publication date: 1953 ; Story date: Mars-relative far past

Man channels god, makes world peace.

Main character: Matt Carse, ex-archaeologist

Secondary characters: Boghaz, male, Valkisian thief; Ywain, female, princess of Sark; Rold, Sea King; Emer, Rold's sister; Rhiannon, male, disembodied presence.

Minor characters: Shallah, female; Jaxart, male; Garach, Ywain's father; other male named and unnamed characters.

Representation of women: This is an interesting example of non-stereotypical portraits of women existing in a stereotypically sexist world. Both Ywain and Emer could easily have been clichés and yet both are somehow unexpected and treated with dignity. Ywain is believably a formidable warrior, without the bombast that too often accompanies female figures who are meant to be scary, and Emer the fey seer's authority is similarly conveyed simply through the respect those around her accord her. Props also to having the female Swimmer Shallah be the one to communicate with Matt, when her male mate is there as well. I mean, nothing is more typical than to have the male part of a couple be the one who is foregrounded, so it's as nice as it is rare to see the opposite.

That said, men as usual dominate with sheer numbers.

Representation of race and ethnicity: It's often somewhat difficult to know what weight to give to creatures in fantasy or what analogies one could draw to real life human differences, and I suppose any oppressed "creature" species could be discussed as the Other. In this story there are good and bad Halflings (the latter being humanoids who took on reptilian characteristics) and Emer herself might be Halfling or someone who bridges the differences between them and humans. So, on the one hand there are no mentions, among humans, of anyone other than whites, but the story's ethos is one of embracing diversity even greater than that of our "real life".

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, lots of r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: yes.

Up next: The final circle of paradise by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

>17 LolaWalser: One thing that always surprised me with this one was that Rhiannon was male. I had only ever come across Rhiannon as a woman's name before (eg in the Mabinogion)

>19 TimSharrock:

And, curiously, Ywain/Yvain is usually a male name, no? Could be Brackett's bit of fun. Ywain (the character) does say she was brought up as the son the king didn't have.

>20 LolaWalser: I missed that, thanks. Yes indeed!
(and thanks for the thread, I don't often comment, but I appreciate it, and makes me realise just how much slipped passed without my noticing when I read them decades ago.

Oh, thanks, that's nice to hear.

Today I've come across a new review of Clifford Simak's The Cosmic Engineers - as the touchstone offers three alternatives, none of which are correct (!), here's a link:

http://www.librarything.com/work/178477

- which I thought had already featured in your series of discussions; but on checking, I see that it hasn't. Followers of this thread may find the three reviews, especially the most recent, interesting. Of course, the review hasn't been written with this thread's criteria in mind, but it might interest nonetheless.

(The book is still in my monstrous TBR pile, so I can't offer comment myself.)

I'm not convinced about the title of this thread. When I thought my children were ready to explore adult themes in books I wanted to prepare them for the experience, not censor it. For instance, they needed to know that (1) The author's voice is a perspective, not an authority, (2) the protagonist is not necessarily a role model, and (3) attitudes change over the years, so what was seen as acceptable in the past is not seen that way now.
If they don't know those lessons then it isn't just 20 year old sci-fi that will confuse them - the whole of human history will confuse them too.
But, supposing that you might want to curate someone else's reading experience, and have committed to reading 100 titles to do so, the project could be future proofed, at least in part, by recording whether the protagonist: Ate meat; drank alcohol; smoked; swore; blasphemed; engaged in profligate energy consumption; practised violence; sought to ensnare another person in a monogamous relationship or rejected the authority of agents of the state.

>24 d.r.halliwell: I'll Let Lola answer this, I think...

>24 d.r.halliwell: I suspect that many of us reading (and sometimes contributing to) this thread were given free access to a library of some sort or another in our formative years, and we read pretty widely and indiscriminately through that library. That is how we developed the ability to make judgements on the merits or demerits of particular books. But certainly when I was young, I had a sense that what went before was different to what I was seeing then, and - more particularly through reading science fiction - what was yet to come might well be different and hopefully better than our contemporary reality. My parents lived through and participated in history in the making, and so I got my perspective from that.

Our world now is very different. The rate of change is so fast that we can make no assumptions about what the present or future generations will think of the past (and indeed, we see daily examples where young people are confused by the differences between then and now). My other half lectures in digital media in one of the UK's 'new' universities, and she reports that many of her students have little appreciation or knowledge of the history of the medium they want to work in (film and tv). The current generation has access to more than we could ever dream of, at their fingertips; we cannot hope to control or curate what they see. This thread has been valuable in flagging up areas which many of us will not have thought of where our favourite literature is now at variance with progressive thinking, and so show up areas where if we see someone with an older work of genre fiction, or are asked about it, we have foreknowledge of how things have changed since the book was written - or, indeed, since we last read it - and to be able to answer questions or stimulate discussion on it intelligently.

I now work with people who are thirty or so years younger than me, and we have interesting discussions about differing perspectives between what I remember, and what I remember of my own parents' experiences, and the modern viewpoint. I find it stimulating, and I am learning as much from them as they are (I hope) from me. And in the past few years, I've walked in on an office discussion only to find someone 28 years of age discussing enthusiastically a novel he'd read, which turned out to be Robert Silverberg's A time of changes.

If I have one problem with this thread, it's that it describes as 'oldies' books that I remember being first published as exciting new novels!

>24 d.r.halliwell:

I'm not convinced about the title of this thread.

And indeed, it sounds as if you read nothing but the title. "Adult themes" and censorship have absolutely nothing to do with it. The essential question is what values we want to propagate/be perceived as wanting to propagate through society in the future. It has nothing to do with presence of, say, sexual or violent content in itself (there are few books I've "passed" that don't have one or the other or both), but everything with attitudes toward them and above all toward discrimination like racism, xenophobia, sexism, ableism etc.

It's about having awareness about what we read and what we wish to convey to other people as valuable (expressed as "giving the book", in this specific context).

Sorry, your comment is so beside the point I don't see why I should waste more time explaining (again...)--there are FOUR previous installments of this thread AND the link to the original discussion for context given in each, including this one (and including discussion of the title, which is clumsy, alas, but also most to the point given the conversation that started all this).

>26 RobertDay:

I don't think you are wrong to talk about perspectives but I feel something needs to be added to that, because there's a danger of understanding all perspectives as somehow... "equal".... if for no other than semantic reasons. If we are talking about the past and present views on race, for example, then it's true enough that those were different in, say, 19th century compared to 1930, 1960, and so on. But, surely the differences depend on (among other things) important GAINS--in knowledge, understanding of morals, striving for justice etc.--and that to me somehow means something more profound has changed than just, as it were, "angle".

>27 LolaWalser: You're quite right, Lola, and perhaps I assumed that acceptance of those gains was implicit in my post and didn't make that clear. I accepted too many things as givens at age 25 (even though I liked even then to think of myself as 'forward-thinking'), but would much rather live in the present - even with all its faults - than in the world of the 1970s precisely because of those gains.

It's those gains you mention, and more changes besides, that show us that not all perspectives are equal any longer.

>24 d.r.halliwell:

There's a lot of context here - did you notice the "v. 5" in the subject before commenting, or not even read that far? - but the most important thing you're ignoring is the active nature of the verb give. It isn't "Is this book appropriate for a child to read"; it's "Would I give this book to a child", with all the implied recommendation and approval that comes with an adult authority figure giving a book to a child.

It's also in the context of whether or not it's a good idea for kids to be exposed to a steady diet of nothing but stuff their parents fondly recommend from their own youth, which will be 20 years old or older. If a child's parent gives them nothing but books in which white men are the heroes and women are only love interests or objects of rescue, and people of color minor characters at best, that's going to influence how that kid sees the world.

Yeah, just piling on here. I like my daughter to explore libraries and read whatever interests her. But I realize that her reading time is finite, and my "credit" for book recommendations is going to hinge on making them sparingly and with high quality! I wouldn't give to her a book that I thought was socially regressive in an unreflective way. (Do I read such books myself? Sure, but that's no reason to deliberately inflict them on anyone else, of any age!)

I can't believe it's been two months. So sorry.

No. 104

 

The final circle of paradise by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Publication date: 1965 ; Story date: unspecified (near?) future

What if the best life were dream-life?

Main character: Ivan Zhilin, space engineer on a perfect vacation

Secondary characters: Men: Rimeyer; Oscar Peblebridge; Peck Xenai; Pete the customs officer; Len Tuur, 12 year old boy. Women: Vaina Tuur, Zhilin's temporary hostess; Vousi Tuur, Vaina's daughter.

Minor characters: Ahmad, driver; Doctor Opir, philosopher; Master Gaway, barber; at least another dozen named and unnamed male characters. Three or four mostly unnamed female characters, plus scattered references to "women", "girls" etc.

Representation of women: Period-standard, or maybe worse, not sure. In Zhilin's serious business at hand as well as in the flashbacks to his past work only men exist as professional counterparts and generally figures who deal, wheel and rule. To men belong all the science, arts, philosophy and politics. Women exist as marginal presences of chiefly sexual interest, and when they have none, as even more marginal silly or nefarious old women.

Representation of race and ethnicity: Ahmad and another unnamed male character are described as "darkish" and/or brown. A few abstract references to "Negroes".

Representation of any kind of minority: Well, there's a curious and decidedly negative reference to lesbianism. I say curious because in a worldview where women matter so little and are matter-of-factly subjugated to men's interests, it seems odd to pick on this little-known and unimportant perversion. ;)

Vousi works in a mysterious establishment where she has "customers", and apparently those are women. (I guessed a shop or hairdresser's, but...)

{Vousi and Zhilin:} "...A lady taught me at the salon today. Slobbered all over me, the fat cow." "How come she did that?" "Who?" "The cow." "Not normal. Or maybe a sad sack... (...) Today I should have a strong drink to forget that slobbering cow."

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): Funnily enough, there is a single Bechdel pass when Zhilin is observing two sixteen year old girls with "vacant and blue eyes, like those of kittens", "twittering some nonsense" as they are looking over clothes. The girls are "twittering" and "squeaking" to each other about spangles vs. sparkles on blouses. Tons of r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: yes.

Up next: In the days of the comet by H. G. Wells

Is this the first Wells here? I do believe it is.

No. 105

 

In the days of the comet by H. G. Wells

Publication date: 1906 ; Story date: contemporary, +50 years or so

Passage through a comet's tail results in a universal spiritual awakening and social improvement.

Main character: Willie Leadford

Secondary characters: Nettie Stuart; Verrall, Nettie's lover

Minor characters: Parload, astronomer, male; Willie's mother; Mr. Gabbitas, curate; other named and unnamed male characters

Representation of women: Superficially Wells seems to champion women's rights to some degree and in some (limited) ways, but here as in his other works he demonstrates his fundamental conviction that women are essentially different and inferior to men. For some strange and never fully explained reason (indubitably to do with the mysteries of babymaking) women are "more" biologically conditioned than men, more fatally the slaves of their weak flesh and victims of their own stupidity.

The Change makes women less hypocritical and more generous but their basic nature and role remain the same--Willie's saintly martyred mother happily expires, servant to her son to the last, the innkeeper decides to feed and shelter the hungry travellers regardless of remuneration--she too remaining a servant--and Nettie, whose terrible crime was falling in love with another man, is made to blather about how she suddenly wants and should have both of them, Verrall AND Willie. I must say I don't object here to wanting multiple lovers, but strictly to the author, whose avatar Willie all too clearly is, "awarding" himself in this way the girl a hundred times better than the horrid little bastard through whom he acts on paper.

There's also the fact that, given the restrictions imposed on women by law and the damning stereotypes under which they suffered, to champion "free love", as Wells' contemporaries called it, via a female character carries a set of problems of its own, different to that of having men do it. Men can easily (and quite possibly mostly correctly) be called hypocritical for doing so, but women, if anything, fare even worse. Nettie has no real education, no calling, no political power, no security of her own, she's the typical woman drowning her own existence into a man's--and then it turns out she aims to do it for two men simultaneously. In contrast, Willie and Verrall both exist beside and apart their sexual beings, they are "someone", they have or will have positions and functions in society that have nothing to do with sex, love and Nettie.

In short, Wells is another of those "reformers" for whom women are realised only in and through a sexual and maternal function (and any woman who doesn't fit or comply isn't a "real" woman).

Representation of race and ethnicity: The Change brings peace on earth, with, presumably, all racial and ethnic divisions ceasing. Unfortunately Wells chose to give most detail to this aspect through a mea culpa by a Jewish character, the Chancellor of the Exchequer:

Ever and again Gurker protruded into the discussion, swaying forward, a deep throaty voice, a big nose, a coarse mouth with a drooping everted lower lip, eyes peering amidst folds and wrinkles. He made his confession for his race. "We Jews," he said, "have gone through the system of this world, creating nothing, consolidating many things, destroying much. Our racial self-conceit has been monstrous. We seem to have used our ample coarse intellectuality for no other purpose than to develop and master and maintain the convention of property, to turn life into a sort of mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly... We have had no sense of service to mankind. Beauty which is godhead--we made it a possession..."

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail; lots of solid r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: no.

Up next: Fee, fei, fo fum by John Aylesworth

>33 LolaWalser: Whenever anyone mentions Wells' views on "free love", I think of his short story The Cone, all about a man whose wife has been unfaithful to him, so he arranges to throw his rival into a blast furnace. (It's actually quite effective horror writing.) Unless, of course, Wells' unstated aim was to suggest that this sort of thing would not happen when we all embraced free love. Though that's not the message the story overtly sends.

>35 RobertDay:

Interesting, that same murderous intention toward a sexual rival is all of Willie's motivation and most of the plot before "the Change". It doesn't matter that he and Nettie were never committed to each other and that he rejoiced in being rid of her--until he realised she was in love with someone else. Then he buys a gun and maniacally pursues the eloped couple across the country, actually shooting at them.

To be fair, Wells is explicit about describing Willie in the worst light in order to show how miserable and ugly were people--the poor such as Willie especially--in the original, deeply unjust society.

The first problem with "free love" of that vintage is that, basically, the men so rarely "check their privilege". Wells flitted from one to another woman without too great, if any, damage to his social standing, ability to work, and prospects of success--but how could the women? In Laclos, even the rich and connected Marquise de Merteuil is beholden to observing strictly societal proprieties and maintaining a respectable appearance, while her male counterpart Valmont at most poses a threat to a few mammas anxious about preserving their daughters' virginities until marriage. A cad he may be, but none of the "gentlemen" care about that, he's one of them as a matter of course.

Without an all-encompassing political and social emancipation of women, sexual license and such gas-induced "candour" as Wells gives Nettie when she argues that she wants both men, only confirms the traditional suspicion that women are ever a blink of an eye away from being crazed nymphos (when they are not frigid man-hating hags...;))

>33 LolaWalser: I read several of Wells works in my long vanished youth, but they quickly palled. I was astonished at how good the film version of the backstory of H.G. Wells with an actual time machine was, but suspect that was as much due to the director as anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_After_Time_(1979_film) (This link won't take you directly there because I'm not clever enough to remember how to get LT to use the item in parentheses as part of the link. Dammit.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Meyer

It caused me to revisit The Time Machine, and after reading the first few chapters, I pitched the book at the wall, spouted enough bad language to turn the air above my head into fire, and swore not to waste my time in such a way again.

John Aylesworth seems an interesting fellow, but an odd choice in your list of authors.

On the other hand, this ongoing thread of yours is one of my favorite things about LT.

>36 LolaWalser: I'd forgotten that about 'In the days of the comet', though it's something I read a bit more recently than most of my Wells - probably about ten years ago. I am due a Wells re-read in the near-ish future, so it'll be interesting to see how it stacks up; then, I thought it to be merely a proto-Socialist polemic, and a bit heavy-handed at that. Truly, we never read the same book twice.

>37 Lyndatrue:

I saw an older version of "The time machine" but not that one, I'll look for it.

These books aren't really "chosen", most come from largeish batches of old sf I bought in bulk on several occasions and I pick up whichever is next from "the pile". I've no idea who's this guy--but that's true for most of them except the really famous.

>38 RobertDay:

Willie's tirades are informed by some extremely muddled references to socialism but I think there's no doubt the reason for the book is the final argument for--in want of a better term--polyamory.

The more I think about the book the more of a failure it seems. Changing society through the miraculous working of alien gas--that somehow renders everyone of one mind--is hardly a rationalist agenda, and even allowing for that miracle (of dubious moral value, if I may add), it remains completely unclear how the actual, practical transformation of society was effected--and what it looks like. Wells doesn't describe these things at all, he just tells us it's what happened and how blissful everyone is fifty years later.

And as for the central issue of sexual relations, I think he missed a trick by choosing Willie and not Nettie as the narrator, since he makes HER the champion of the one true revolutionary change proposed in the book. Here again it's left murky, with Willie merely saying he had come to accept her views, but not why or what convinced him.

No. 106



Fee, fei, fo, fum by John Aylesworth

Publication date: 1963 ; Story date: 1970

Little men deal with giant troubles.

Main character: Dr. Leon Grist, AKA Fritz von Groote, psychiatrist/chemist

Secondary characters: Judd Morrow, ad-man and temporary giant; Mayor Groat, male; Stanley Goode, thug; Gurstun Wren, Stanley's IQ-challenged muscle; Mrs. Goode, Stanley's mother

Minor characters: Men: the Governor, Police and Fire Chiefs, policemen, the General, Heatter the FBI man, the Clergyman, Director of Parks, cabbies, Traffic Controller, army personnel, Soviet premier, Soviet spies, MacInnes the British spy, Grist's inner circle of Nazi scientists: Mueller, von Gruber, Sculler, von Eckmann, Harry Cartwright the lab manager, Chet Huntley speaker to the giant; many other characters. Women: Lottie Breen, the giant's innamorata.

Representation of women: Beset by the problems of his sudden gianthood Judd discovers that he really loved Lottie, a girl he lost due to his lack of commitment, and decides that having her join him in his predicament would make everything all right. For her part, Lottie blames herself for the failure of their relationship:

Lottie was never really angry at Judd for dating other girls. She just felt she had failed as a woman; that she wasn't strong enough to keep him from straying.

Once Judd's minders get in touch with her, Lottie is instantly ready to become a giantess for Judd' sake.

Mrs. Goode and her passion for Dr. Grist are the object of merciless caricature but it's somehow more funny than grating, perhaps because Grist himself is such a disarmingly funny cartoon of a completely amoral egoistic operator.

Representation of race and ethnicity: There are a few fleeting dabs at quick stereotypes in lieu of character--the Brit, the Russian, the Chinese launderer, and all the Germans are indeed Nazis (this does serve the plot).

Representation of any kind of minority: There's one reference to homosexuality.

It's great being a bachelor if you're queer or under thirty, or both, but if you happen to be a healthy, red-blooded American man all alone in a nation of couples it's pure unmitigated Hell!

Awkward as usual--a plus for acknowledging something other than heterosexuality exists, but less great in the implication that it's not healthy or "red-blooded"...

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, lots of r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: yes.

Up next: The Eskimo invasion by Hayden Howard

I'm going to have to ditch this one--sorry it took me this long to decide. Our brilliant anthropology PhD famous professor manly man adventure hero can't tell that the woman he's fucking is only four years old--yes, with psychological development that age entails--and when he finds out, that, in itself, doesn't bother him. She may be chronologically and psychologically four years old, but she looks legal (barely--wouldn't want a 40-something man coupled with anyone looking much past 20, now would we) and she literally exists to fuck and procreate. What more can a guy--brilliance, integrity, professorships etc. or not-- ask for? No, what weirds him out is that she gives birth within a month, to a child physically (but again, not psychologically) maturing monstrously fast--still, it doesn't weird him out enough to stop him from impregnating her with the next five or six children. It's hard to say "no" to a four year old who REALLY wants it, you know?

And that's not going into the snakes' nest tangle of problems with how the Inuit (or as the book has it, the Eskimos) generally are represented, why THEY, of all people, are the aspect of the alien invading force breeding like, well, vermin, that white scientists will be scrambling to find an antidote for.

I'm sure the author meant well--at least, I'd be willing to believe he did--and yet again it turns out good intentions alone don't necessarily amount to much. Abandoned on page 190 of 380.

Up next: The primal urge by Brian Aldiss.

First, glad to see you back Lola IMOHO you have a publishable/easy to refer someone to , series going here.

>33 LolaWalser: In the days of the comet by HG Wells. Might be off topic but I would like to relate:

My grandmother was born in 1899 and I used to love to hear her tell about the coming of Haley’s comet in 1910. She was in a rural area and people really freaked out. The comet was spectacular then and stretched “all the way across the sky” my gram would say while sweeping her hand overhead.

She said people were on their knees praying and wearing cloths over their faces. Many thought it might be the end of the world if the comets tail touched the earth {which it did https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%27s_Comet#1910 }

In a time of no outside lights I can only imagine what the experience was like. My gram was very religious, would not lie or exaggerate anything purposely. No one else would listen to her story about the comet I wish I could have recorded it.

>44 DugsBooks:

Apparently the great panic of 1910 is well documented. My favourite is in The shooting star by Hergé--the star approaches, temperatures rise, asphalt melts...! Also people's minnnnnds.

No. 107

 

The Primal Urge by Brian Aldiss

Publication date: 1961 ; Story date: contemporary

From the front cover: "What happens when the British cast off their traditional reserve"

Main character: Jimmy Solent

Secondary characters: Aubrey Solent, Jimmy's brother; Alyson Youngfield, Aubrey's girlfriend; Rose English, Jimmy's unrequited crush; Guy Leighton, one of Rose's ex-lovers; Donald Hortense, gay, Jimmy's best friend

Minor characters: Conrad Scryban and Veronica Wolf, Jimmy's colleagues; Mrs. Pidney, Jimmy's neighbour; many other male and female characters.

Representation of women: The theme here is sex, and that preoccupation often results in terrible characterisations of women, so kudos to Aldiss for avoiding that. The premise is as silly as can be--Brits get outfitted with discs in their foreheads that light up when they feel sexually attracted--but men and women can be said to fare equally. I'd note that as progressive within the context. Aldiss very much has a sex-positive agenda here, and it's heartening to see it's extended to everyone, not just men, and not just straight men either.

Representation of race and ethnicity: Only a few indirect references in brief mentions of Haiti, but no characters in story except for a sighting of an Indian woman.

Representation of any kind of minority: Positive representation of male homosexuality in one important character, Jimmy's friend Donald, and two minor appearances--a man called Bertie, a cyberneticist Jimmy encounters at a party, tells Jimmy if he got a disc it would "wink in some funny places" (and at Jimmy); also, an unnamed man gets into an argument with Jimmy's religious and homophobic brother and defends homosexuality.

Jimmy also runs into a couple of lesbians.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: to an older one, yes. Pity it's not a better book. It's probably most interesting if you're English and of a certain age; many of Aldiss' spoofs went over my head, especially where he didn't use real names. (Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Koestler, many other real people are mentioned.)

Up next: Gather, darkness! by Fritz Leiber

No. 108

 

Gather, darkness! by Fritz Leiber

Publication date: 1943 ; Story date: unspecified future

The sham of religion meets the game of witchcraft.

Main character: Brother Jarles

Secondary characters: Brother Goniface; Sharlson Naurya, female, witch; The Black Man; Mother Jujy, witch.

Minor characters: Cousin Deth, male; Brother Chulian, Brother Sercival, Brother Fejeris, many other named and unnamed characters, predominantly male.

Representation of women: Women are vastly outnumbered by male characters but the two female characters have important roles to play and independent, strong natures. (Even if Naurya, being young and pretty, can't avoid romantic focus on her, or sex as part of her motivation.)

Representation of race and ethnicity: None.

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: yes.

I have to note that the goings-on of Mango Mussolini and his excremental hordes are making it difficult to concentrate on things like this but I decided the answer is to care more, not less, about everything.

The thread goes on. If the apocalypse catches me holding some middleaged shit-for-brains libertarian sleazebag's wank fantasy about slipping it to teenage girls, that'll be my bum luck. But nevertheless & notwithstanding... ;)

Up next: The Return by Isidore Haiblum

No. 109

 

The return by Isidore Haiblum

Publication date: 1970 ; Story date: unspecified future, or maybe alternative contemporary

Ex-soldier discovers he picked up more than PTSD in the war.

Main character: Cramer, male, a "Starky" (veteran afflicted by a specific form of PTSD).

Other characters: Carl Ortez and Harry Gains, "Starkies" and inmates at the same hospital with Cramer; Dr. Brannon, male; Robert Earl, member of the anti-government group; Brockton, Cramer's ex-officer; Carol, love interest; other named and unnamed mostly male characters.

Representation of women: The veterans, the doctors, the guards at the hospital are all men, although the narrative opens with a brief scene of Cramer fighting a grotesque female nurse--bald, monstrously obese and sadistic.

On his escape, Cramer runs into several women--an ex-girlfriend who lets him down, two members of an anti-establishment group one of whom becomes a lover, that girl's seemingly insane mother, and a few girlfriends or wives of ex-comrades he visits in his search for more men like him.

Overall it's the usual picture of a man's world, where everyone with a "real" job and political function is male, with women in the background as support.

Representation of race and ethnicity: None that I noticed, unless you want to judge off a name like "Ortez". When Cramer is offered a change to his appearance, he goes for the handsome blond option. I'm guessing Robert Redford.

Representation of any kind of minority: Not sure whether the bunch of "circus freaks" Cramer has a run-in with counts for much--a few individuals are singled out for brief mention/description and "Man Mountain Schulz" chases him--but if not for that, it's "none".

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: in the terms of this thread and the debate that started it, yes, but in real life there'd be better (e.g. not boring!) books clamouring for attention all the time.

Up next: The pride of Chanur by C. J. Cherryh

>51 LolaWalser: I'm looking forward to your analysis of that! My review of this took six words: "Wish fulfilment cat fantasy - with politics."

>51 LolaWalser: A favorite of mine--I may need to reread it again to be ready for your analysis!

>51 LolaWalser: Don't see how that's going to pass the Bechdel as there's only one human in it and he's male :-) (OTOH, the hani characters are 90% female, but they're alien.)

>54 iansales:

Heh, that's okay--female characters don't have to be human or BT would be inapplicable in tons of science fiction. If memory serves, there was a pass with Asimov's alien not-even-embodied-but-gendered psychic entities or something... I think BT would apply anywhere sex and/or gender are a thing?

>53 ronincats:

Join the fun!

>52 RobertDay:

Wish fulfilment cat fantasy

Unlimited mice pudding?!?! Sorry, the zany fumes of the meme-obsessed Doctor Who Twitch chat got me... :) (Anything to forget reality...)

>55 LolaWalser: Done! And it never gets old.

No. 110

 

The Pride of Chanur by C. J. Cherryh

Publication date: 1981 ; Story date: Earth-relative, unspecified future

Cats in spaaaaaace: the opera.

Main character: Pyanfar Chanur, species hani, female, spaceship captain

Secondary characters: Female hani: Hilfy, Pyanfar's niece; Haran, Tirun, Chur, Geran, crew members. Tully, human from Earth, male. Species mahendo'sat, male: "Goldtooth", spaceship captain, hani ally.

Minor characters: Akukkakk, species kif, male; Dur Tahar, hani, female; Kifas Llun, hani, female; The Llun, hani, male; Kohan Chanur, Pyanfar's brother; Khym Mahn, male, Pyanfar's mate; Kara Mahn, Pyanfar's son; unnamed stshto official, other-gendered; other named and unnamed characters belonging to various species.

Representation of women: The hani social system seems to be a kind of lion-ish hierarchy--dominant males with multiple female mates stay planet-bound and protect their domains from younger male challengers, while women drop their litters and then go "hunt" in space. As most of the action takes place in space, female hani are foregrounded, with Pyanfar in particular being a very appealing character. The gender-dependent "specialisation" of the hani is treated as a natural given, without sexist justification. Indeed no non-human species is shown to be sexist.

The kif and the mahendo'sat are represented only by male characters (i.e. characters addressed with male pronouns), the stsho are a species with three genders and there's no mention of how they may map on human biology (if at all), and two methane-dependent species, the tc'a and the knnn, almost entirely enigmatic.

Representation of race and ethnicity: The group of humans appearing at the end are described as of various colours between white and brown. Not clear how much diversity there is or what that would mean within the individual alien species.

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): The much-less-frequent situation--BT passes, r-BT fails (male characters do converse between themselves but the conversations aren't given).

I see now what Ian was talking about, it's an interesting question of how BT would work in case of multi-gender or a-gender characters. I'm sure somebody somewhere on teh interwebs mulled that over already and I'll see what I can find when I get a bit more time.

Would I give this book to a kid: yes.

Up next: Star Well by Alexei Panshin

>57 LolaWalser: The hani are the most immediately appealing race, but the more of the quintet I read the more I liked the kif.

>57 LolaWalser: "Representation of any kind of minority: None."

Unless, for the purposes of this novel, "human" counts as a minority. There's certainly plenty of "boot-on-other-footism" in this one, and (as I remember it, it's a while since I read it), the human character is pretty much treated as a commodity, a valuable trade good, for much of the book.

>60 RobertDay:

Hmmm, I think "human minority representation" would fall under the "race, ethnicity" rubric where other species appear... it's a bit vague because the frame of reference changes a lot--hani ship, other species' stations/worlds, hani world... almost everyone is a minority in this sense relative to everyone else at some point.

As for how the hani treat Tully, I'd say it's remarkably fair and friendly. They are not sure in the beginning if he belongs to a sentient intelligent species and after they establish that (ETA: actually this happens quite early during contact when they start him on learning the language) the "commodity" is really the prospect of future contact and trade with this new species. From the moment he's discovered on their ship Pyanfar defends him at every turn precisely from the sort of discriminatory, cruel treatment meted out to someone objectified and oppressed (which is how kif have behaved toward him). And at great cost to the hani, which she obviously cares about. Her motives aren't completely disinterested, she suspects something good might come out of this contact, but she is also totally opposed to ceding the creature (this even before they know he's intelligent) back to kif torture. Much is made of his wounds etc. from the start.

Ah yes, more clarification on "minority"--I think I used this category more or less consistently (tried to anyway) only for what may be called an "absolute" minority in real world and/or fiction--minority sexual orientation, dis/ability, age... The whole problem of "representation" harks to our real-life inequalities.

>61 LolaWalser: All the more reason for me to schedule a re-read. Thanks.

Lola?

Guilty--guilty, guilty guilteeeee!

Every time I reach for this... kids in cages. Now in some godforsaken "tent city" on the moon. Perspective lost.

But thanks for the poke. I'll post today.

No. 111

 

Star Well by Alexei Panshin

Publication date: 1969 ; Story date: 3418

Dashing dandy vs. shady space shenanigans.

Main character: Anthony Villiers

Secondary characters: Hisan Bashir Shirabi, space casino owner; Derek Godwin, Shirabi's henchman; Norman Adams, Empire's agent; Torve, a toad-person; Augustus Srb, Empire's agent; Louisa Parini, 15 yo would-be con artist; Alice Tutuila, Louisa's friend; Maybelle Lafferty, con artist; Mrs. Bogue, the girls' chaperone; other mostly male characters.

Representation of women: Louisa, Alice and Maybelle are attractive notably young things--the first two are fifteen, the third about eighteen--but they are more than merely decorative. Louisa has a plan to escape and become a thief, Maybelle is already enjoying a life of crime (perhaps mainly because her husband wants it so) and Alice is the dependable friend. In fact it's notable that in a narrative this short Louisa's and Alice's friendship is given space and relief. Mrs. Bogue is more or less a caricature of the terrible spinster teacher but even she has a moment of kindness.

Representation of race and ethnicity: Shirabi reads like a certain Oriental cliché. There's his name, his dark complexion and "hooked nose", and, well, combine that with his criminal financial activity and repeated observation that "he is not a gentleman"--you get the picture. Also unfortunate that the brutish idiot who acts as the casino guard and Shirabi's all-purpose "heavy" is named Levi.

Torve the upright "mammalian frog" is treated sympathetically. Hey, it's much easier to love giant toads than semites.

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT pass when Louisa and Alice discuss Louisa's plans for the future. Other longish conversations between girls and/or Mrs. Bogue partially qualify but each time Villiers is eventually mentioned. r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: Ah but WOULD I CAGE TODDLERS IN THE AMERICAN DESERT WHILE THEIR PARENTS HAVE NO CLUE WHAT IS GOING ON AND WHAT THEY ARE GOING THROUGH WOULD I WOULD I????

Up next: Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad

Yes, I think I'll have to drop the "question". It's just... with all that is going on--and you'd be perfectly correct to observe that such things are always going on but still--it feels like some atrocious satire. And all this is really nothing else than a weak attempt to champion empathy and entreaty to change the little things so the big ones might eventually change too.

>66 LolaWalser: "Torve the upright "mammalian frog" is treated sympathetically."

ALL HAIL HYPNO-TOAD!

...

Sorry. I'll get my coat.

...

OTOH, that may explain some of the other idiocies you are rightly angered by.

Oh dear, it happened again--I just can't get on with this book. The mortal blow, after a sea of slings and arrows, was delivered on page 121 (of 287) and my agony ended on p. 123. (Quotations further down.) WARNING: the language in the quoted text might be upsetting to some, as basically every page bristles with racial slurs.

There's a slim chance that if you were young and lefty in the 1960s USA, this book might interest you. Therefore, I'll describe it as far as I got.

Bug Jack Barron was published in 1969. The main character, Jack Barron, is a TV star, hosting a political show watched by 100 million Americans. The show is actually called "Bug Jack Barron" and the idea is that anyone with a problem can call in and "bug" him, upon which the all-mighty Jack bugs the relevant powers to solve the problem.

Jack is 38, impossibly handsome, clever, charismatic, irresistible to women, an idol to good men and a feared adversary to the bad ones. He's also cynical and heartbroken since his ex-wife, Sara, left him six years earlier. The reason she left, we learn by and by, is because Jack betrayed their mutual youthful political ideals, summed up as "Berkeley Bolshevism".

So every Wednesday Jack picks up (quote) "instant pussy" lookalike of Sara and bangs her pretending it's his ex, while on other days/nights he makes do with hordes of not-lookalike women.

Cynical Jack has few friends, and the best one is the black governor of Mississippi, Lukas Greene, a remnant from Jack's Berkeley days. They have long talks on the vidphone in a dreadful slang that made even my non-American ears curl with cringing. But then the whole book is like that, and you'll see whereof I speak.

I want to make clear that I get it that Spinrad, in his authorial intent as well as in the position of his main (and white) character, is claiming an anti-racist stance. It's just that the execution, especially from the 2018 vantage point, leaves a lot to be desired and even more to deplore. For example, the impossibly cool Jack for reasons unknown thinks of himself--and his black friend apparently concurs--as a "honorary black", a "white nigger" and a "dark shade" ("shade" being a term for white people). This is not based on any trouble Jack may have experienced in his impossibly blessed, gifted, comfy, successful white-male-heterosexual life, but is simply yet another mark of Jack's right-on-ness and impossible coolness. Even if this kind of identification with the black people came from the most generous impulses and with best intentions, it's still a spectacularly wrong mess of wrongness and arrogance and presumption and, frankly, blindness to racism.

Piling on the wrong, the way Lukas and another black character (Malcolm Shabazz, presumably a stand-in for Malcolm X) think/speak of themselves is unbelievable and totally racist. If Spinrad wanted the effect of robust authenticity and honesty, he missed the mark for startling self-hatred and cravenness.

The latter goes for his depiction of women as well. And now, quotations.

Chapter One, first paragraph and on:

'Split boys, will you?' drawled Lukas Greene, waving his black hand (and for that nasty little moment, for some reason, thinking of it as black) at the two men (perversely seeing them for the tired moment as niggers) in the Mississippi State Police (coon to the right) and Mississippi National Guard (schvug to the left) uniforms.
'Yessur, Governor Greene,' the two men said in unison. (And Greene's ear, caught in what he could outside viewpoint see as the dumb mindless masochistic moment, heard it as 'Yassah Massah'.) (...)

Malcolm Shabazz... (...) was everything the shades saw when they heard the word nigger: Peking-loving ignorant dick-dragging black-oozing ape-like savage. And that cunning son of a bitch Malcolm knew it and played on it, making himself the focus of mad white hate, the purposeful prime target of garbage-throwing screaming Wallacite loonies, feeding on the hate, growing on it, absorbing it, saying to the shades, 'I'm a big black mother, and I hate your fucking guts, and China is the future, and my twenty million bucks like me in this country, a billion in People's China and four billion in the world who hate you like I hate you, die you shade mother!'

A taste of dialogue between Jack and his producer (I can't bring myself to sample those between Jack and Lukas):

'Right in the old groove tonight, baby', Gelardi said. 'They loved it in Peoria and other traditional show biz flak.'
'In the old groove?' Barron snapped with put-on up-tightness, knowing it had gone over like gangbusters while avoiding the kamikaze plunge off the cliff. 'In the old groove? You crazy guinea, you almost got me knocked off the air, is all! If I weren't brilliant twinkletoes boy wonder Jack Barron, you and me and this whole silly monkey block would be out pounding the pavement tomorrow.'

Evil corporation gets Sara to go back to Jack for some dim reason, and they take up again. Sara and her postcoital revelations:

Sara felt on the edge of a new-style awareness of man-woman contrast that cut far deeper than what was revealed when pants came down.
Power's a man's bag, she realized. Any chick that digs power, really feels where it's at, almost always turns out to be some kind of dyke in the end. Power's somehow cock-connected; woman's hung-up on power, she's hung-up on not having a cock, understands power only if she's thinking like someone who does. Power's even got its own man-style time-sense: man can wait, scheme, plan years-ahead-guile-waiting-games, accumulate power on the sly, then use it for good--if the man's good deep inside like Jack--like a good fuck good cat can bring a frigid chick along, cooling himself, holding back when he has to, until he's finally got her ready to come. Man kind of love, man kind of delayed-timing thinking, calculated quanta of emotion and only when the time's right, and not like woman needs to feel everything totally the moment it happens--good, evil, love, hate, prick inside her. Like a man digs fucking a woman, woman digs being fucked. Is that all that came between us, Jack? Me thinking like an always-now woman, you thinking future time man-thoughts?

And then he was standing before her, wet curls framing eyes glistening with afterglow-fatigue of a hundred remembered battles in Berkeley, Los Angeles and now at last New York, the lines in his face like time-lines from past dreams to present-planned reality, mosaic of love in four-dimensional space-time man-flesh, she saw the boy still living behind the face of the man, saw in memory's eye the man that had grown behind the soft-flesh shining armor of the boy she had tasted in action-swirling streets and bedrooms, loved the boy and his dream, and the man and his past, and the JACK BARRON (in flaming capital letters) of past-present-future mortal lovers-against-the-night-combats--oh, this is a man!

Believe it or not, I was still creepy-crawly-reading after all this twaddle (we're on page 122), when this sentence on page 123 mercifully put me out of misery:

The thrill of being owned by her fated man went through Sara as he goosed her off-camera.

Send no flowers, donate to favourite charity, and remember me, if you will, vanishing in a cosmic guffaw.

Up next: The computer connection by Alfred Bester

>70 LolaWalser: Oh dear. I am so glad to have missed out in this one back in the day, Lola. Absolutely spine-curdling.

>70 LolaWalser: Have had it on my TBR for years but never got around to reading it. Mainly because I've always thought Spinrad was a bit of an arse. Suspect I won't be bothering with it after all.

>70 LolaWalser: >72 ronincats: Whoa, I had no idea how garbage NS could get. I've carried vague distaste from some prior encounter as a vaccine against reading any more, but it should have been all out loathing!

Heh, "future time man-thoughts" is definitely entering my repertoire of snark.

The blurb on my edition has it as a "controversial SF classic" but looking around the "controversy" seems to concern the sex scenes--today, if you ask me, the least of its problems. I'd be very interested to hear what reception it got from black readers. I can't imagine someone like Samuel Delany being terribly impressed, for instance.

If you can hack the awful, awful style, there may be some interest in seeing what was "groovy" cca 1969, but, yep, better count on 21st century sensibilites getting rudely tested.

>75 LolaWalser: I'd say that the biggest revelation to me has been that, although I thought I'd read Bug Jack Barron, clearly I had not. I own very few of his works, and after looking, realized that the few I've kept were kept for reasons having nothing to do with his skill (or lack thereof).

It'll be interesting to see what you think of Bester.

>75 LolaWalser: Another book to avoid is the "critically-acclaimed" The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner.

The following contains spoilers.

No. 112

 

The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester

Publication date: 1974 ; Story date: future, with time-travel to various points in Earth's past

A gang of immortals faces off murderous conspiracy and betrayal from own ranks.

Main character: Edward "Ned" Curzon, AKA Grand Guignol AKA Guig, white man

Secondary characters: Sequoia Guess, male, Cherokee; Poulos Poulos AKA The Greek Syndicate AKA The Greek, male; Fee-5 Grauman's Chinese, 13 year old Maori-Aztec girl, Guig's servant; Natoma Guess Curzon, Sequoia's sister and Guig's wife; M'Bantu, male, Zulu; (Lucrezia) "Lucy" Borgia; Hillel, male, Jewish.

Minor characters: Herb Wells; Captain Nemo; Edison; Scented Song, female, Chinese?; Wandering Jew AKA Jesus Christ AKA Jacy; The Rajah, Hindu; Queenie, gay man. Other mostly male characters.

Representation of women: Well, this is Bester, he of the rape fetish and the Church of Freud, so, brilliant it ain't. And yet there are some faint traces of a willingness to admit women too might be people. Borgia, for example, is a doctor and gives a sizeable performance all the while treated similar to the male immortals, i.e. without fuss or jokes about her gender. But then the uber-sexualised focus picks up slack with Natoma and, the cringiest of all, 13 year old Fee (short for "Fee-mally", actually "female", because her "dumb mother" couldn't think of a name after giving her birth in the fifth row of a movie theatre).

Guig met Fee when she was an urchin of ten and made her his servant. Fee has a gift for detecting sound waves at enormous distances, and she's a fast learner. Also her breasts just "popped out" and she's offering them to every man she likes. When Jesus acts scandalised at her behaviour, Guig reassures him that he isn't sleeping with her: "No, no. She's ripe but she's only thirteen. Too young for me. (...)"

A little later, as Sequoia and Guig are discussing picking up some co-eds and dinner, Fee interrupts:

"Me! Me! Me!" Fee cried. "I want to be one of the girls."
"Virgins are so pushy," I said.
"I was raped when I was five."
"The wish is father to the thought, Fee."

Sequoia promises Fee a sex date in a "centrifuge", by and by. Convinced that Fee's feelings for Sequoia are real, Guig solemnly tells her she's become a woman.

During dinner and sex with the co-eds (who they also swap) Sequoia and Guig male-bond so well they go to Sequoia's reservation together, where Guig accidentally marries Sequoia's sister by making an too intimate a gesture. Who hasn't lived through a similar social mishap! Despite having literally met seconds before and not knowing each other's language or even names, it's a beautiful passionate romance on the spot, and consummated practically on the spot (Bester's pacing makes Tom & Jerry cartoons look ponderously contemplative in comparison). Natoma turns out to be a sex fiend and very strong-minded, but fully in service to the man who made her a "liberated squaw".

Representation of race and ethnicity: I'm afraid that the most positive that can be said, is that the cast IS diverse, and with a non-white character, Sequoia, playing a very important role. Beyond that, Bester treats those characters stereotypically, sometimes ferociously so. The education of the future is degraded and the language seen as devolved, so it's not great that it mimics Hispanic and Black American slang. A sample:

"Senoras, gemmum, soul hermanos, ah gone esplain brief, you know, what this esperiment mean, dig? You got like any preguntas, right, ax da man."

Moreover, this is another instance where racist slurs are treated as endearing jokes. Hillel is repeatedly called "Hebe" and "Jew". Guig, in one of the least funny running jokes ever, refers to Sequoia, to his face and indirectly, every time by various Indian names--Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Cochise, Montezuma etc. The primitive life and customs of Sequoia's clan on the reservation are bizarre given his sophistication--he is a physicist at the JPL, but he's okay with his sister being illiterate and post-marriage sequestered in her husband's teepee for life? Seriously?

M'Bantu is a gentle-spoken strongman--whereas most other immortals are notable for some intellectual achievement, he has muscles.

But the most problematic bit, in my eyes at least, is the overall frame of the plot, which has the main character or at least the main POV character be someone named Curzon, whereas the villain who hates him is a Hindu (a villain who will get soundly defeated, never you worry.)

What the fuck was Bester thinking? I'm gonna bet this was in no way a coincidence and that he WAS taking the piss.

Representation of any kind of minority: Only at the very end we encounter a gay immortal, dubbed "Queenie", whom other immortals tried in vain to persuade to undergo a sex change, but he "prefers remaining a faggot". "Faggot" is also used as a straight insult in a couple previous instances. Bester didn't really understand homosexuality, did he.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fails, r-BT passes.

This was disappointing, all the more so because I had enjoyed Bester's even later novel, Golem100. He did still have something to say after the fifties. Here we have his trademark jaunty, propulsive dialogue, hectic pacing and mad happenings, but maybe it's not mad enough. Needs more LSD, less Red Injun carnival etc.

Up next: eh, sorry, published 1994...

So, instead, Servants of the Wankh by Jack Vance

>78 LolaWalser: Needs more LSD, less Red Injun carnival etc.

Bester and the US both.

lol

>79 LolaWalser: That's the second book in the series. Have you read the first, City of the Chasch?

Yup, it was #55:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/195058#5416872

The following contains spoilers.

No. 113

 

Servants of the Wankh by Jack Vance

Publication date: 1969 ; Story date: unspecified future

Earthman crashed on alien planet still seeks means of departure.

Main character: Adam Reith

Secondary characters: Anacho, human, Dirdirman; Traz Onmale, male, human, nomad; Dordolio, male, Yao human; Helsse of Izan; male, human, Wankhman; Zarfo Detwiler; male, human, Lokhar.

Minor characters: Ylin Ylan, Yao princess; Lord Cizante, Ylin's father; Heizari and Edwe Dal Barba, sisters, human; other male characters human and other.

Representation of women: Vance really had a problem with female characters... Although I'm beginning to think that he simply hated women. This installment features less misogyny by dint of featuring fewer women and scenes with women, but it still accompanies every frikkin mention of them. And then there's the fate of the beautiful Ylin Ylan, the subject of multiple rescues in the first book and the main motive of Reith's trip to Cath. Vance apparently totally ran out of ideas for her (if it's not too generous to assume he had any in the first place), so he has her commit suicide after a period of brooding over we know not what. Maybe the utter lack of any lines of dialogue?

Two girls have a minuscule appearance as some of the co-travellers on the boat taking Reith's gang to Cath, just enough for Reith to flirt with one of them. A couple of women, members of the public, are mentioned in passing at different points of the narrative. And we get to learn of the courtship customs of another of Tschai's folk, the Kabs, who beat women they like "black and blue". The beaten woman who likes her suitor back shows up the next day at the same time for more "pummeling".

Representation of race and ethnicity: Lots of new "races" show up but this time there seem to be fewer obvious parallels drawn to Earth. I think it's notable, though, that all the major characters are white-presenting (and male). The widespread hostility between all the different groups on Tschai certainly seems to be based on and expresses racialist prejudice.

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, r-BT passes.

I don't get Vance's popularity, he's like a Burroughs knockoff, without the springy action. He sure seems to know more words than the average genre hack. It's nice to see "punctilio" used properly.

Up next: I am legend by Richard Matheson

>84 LolaWalser: Vance wrote a shitload of books and some of them are much better than others. I don't think the Planet of Adventure series is rated especially highly. The Demon Princes series is generally thought well of, but I reread the first book in it, The Star King, fairly recently and wasn't impressed. And even more recently I reread one of his Alastor Cluster books, Marune: Alastor 993, and thought it pretty good.

I liked what I read of his Dying Earth stuff.

Lyonesse is a personal favorite, but seemed completely unlike anything else he did. The protagonist is female, very sympathetically treated -- or so I recall from a distance of many decades. The sequels were back to standard Vance.

Well, I sure hope the trend with his books changes as there's still a dozen+ of them in the pile...

The following contains spoilers.

No. 114

 

I am legend by Richard Matheson

Publication date: 1954 ; Story date: 1976-1979

A plague survivor defends his way of life.

Main character: Robert Neville, white

Secondary character: Ruth, white woman

Minor characters: Virginia Neville, Robert's wife, in flashbacks; Ben Cortman, Robert's erstwhile neighbour and co-worker; anonymous male and female vampires

Representation of women: Given the paucity of characters, the larger part of female "representation" boils down to Robert's feelings and memories about them, primarily concerning his dead wife and daughter, but also, quite significantly, the frustrated sexual desire he suffers in his companion-less state. This element caught me by surprise (I'd seen the Price and Heston movies as a kid, but not read the story before), both that it was there, and then that it was brought up repeatedly. Moreover, there's an explicit linking of this sexual frustration to Robert's sadistic experiments on the vampires--always, he notes to himself, experiments on women--and which, in the episode where he is exploring the effects of the cross, may have culminated in rape.

The threat from vampires too isn't just mortal, but sexual, against women among them but also against Robert, who continuously suffers from necrophiliac temptation.

Ruth, the only other major character in the story, is fine. To Robert she represents evil but she feels compassion for him and wishes to save or at least help him. She also gets to be the one to discuss the new society with him (nothing is more typical than the last-minute strolling onto the scene of some dude who pushes the woman away to explain stuff to the hero himself.)

Representation of race and ethnicity: None.

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, r-BT pass.

Prrittty-prrittty-prrittty good. /Larry David

Up next: Orbitsville by Bob Shaw

>91 LolaWalser: Cool, I have happy memories of Orbitsville. I recall it being like Rendezvous with Rama, on a much larger scale.

No. 115

 

Orbitsville by Bob Shaw

Publication date: 1975 ; Story date: unspecified future

Space fugitives discover an unimaginably huge habitable world.

Main character: Vance Garamond, starship captain

Other characters: more than two dozen named men; Elizabeth Lindstrom, president of Starflight Inc.; Aileen Garamond, Vance's wife; Denise Serra, chief physicist; Delia Liggett, catering supervisor.

Representation of women: The thinking on women here is pretty much like that in the original Star Trek series. Nominally they (can) have jobs next to the men--Vance informs his wife there are 150 women on his ship--but we see very few of them (two, precisely--vs. dozens of men) and as a rule in secondary and supporting roles as well as situations. There's the unpleasant conceptualisation of women as a biological resource for men to "use" without a parallel in women having the same right to regard men in that utilitarian light.

The villain of the story is a fabulously rich and powerful woman, but her unusual characterisation nevertheless affirms the implicit positioning of women as mere appendages to that universal subject, the male. Elizabeth only inherited her wealth from her father, not made it, and to make things worse, she's neurotic and capricious to the point of lunacy, and dangerously despotic.

To top it all, even her intelligence is described as her "having a man's mind", and goes hand in hand with her ugliness:

Was it, he had often wondered, because she had the mind of a man that she chose to be an unattractive woman in an age when cosmetic surgery could correct all but the grossest physical defects? Were her splayed imperfect teeth and pallid skin the insignia of her total authority?

Vance's wife is stupid and a cipher, but at least looks good. Denise Serra, the physicist, is allowed both intelligence and beauty, but hers is a minor role of a passing temptation.

Representation of race and ethnicity: Where some physical description is given, it's always of white people. Various "ethnic" names--Carlos, Yamoto (sic) etc.--may indicate greater diversity. Aileen is in one place described as having a brown skin but in another it's "suntanned".

Representation of any kind of minority: None.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, r-BT passes.

Overlooking the jarring notes in characterisation, to say nothing of scientific flights of fancy and amazing coincidences, this was a good story, properly adventurous.

Up next: Communipath worlds by Suzette Haden Elgin

Well, this is curious, Elgin came up in an article I read just the other day... and, wow, the cover... :)

>94 LolaWalser: Oh, now there you have a very interesting one (or three), Lola. Been way too long since I read them--80s, I think. I followed her on LiveJournal until her death, and still consider Native Language a classic.

Good to know. Can someone tell me whether the three parts make up an organic whole or should I only read the first?

This is early science fiction--1969, 1970-- where they were still putting shorter adventures together to make a book-length publication. So they are episodic, held together only by the presence of Coyote Jones (and the themes). The first "book" is only 92 pages long. If you only read one, I would recommend the second, Furthest at 120 pages, as the best of the lot. But I would think you would find all of them fascinating and very relevant to the criteria you espouse.

>93 LolaWalser: Harry Harrison used the same "psychology" for his villain Angelina in The Stainless Steel Rat. I hadn't noticed when I originally read the books as a young teenager back in the early 1980s. It was horribly obvious to me when I reread the book a few years ago. I binned all the Harrison books I had on my bookshelves.

>93 LolaWalser: But would you give 'Orbitsville' to a child?

>99 RobertDay:

What a good question! ;)

Well, recalling that the question actually means "would you care to see present attitudes toward women etc. propagated in the future" then obviously no. Regardless of how relatively "progressive" these may have seemed or been conceived as at the time of writing.

But as I mentioned many times before, it's not about this or that book being a problem individually, destroying tender minds all on their own. So in practice, I'd be bound to tolerate 99% of this stuff.

But give enthusiastically, with implicit full approval of the worldview on display, to an 8 year old (the age of the kid reader at the time of the original discussion)? Not sure 1% would pass muster...

>98 iansales:

Oh yeah, powerful women are typically mad villains. Which, frankly, compared to the other usual option, a bland bimbo, can be preferable...

>100 LolaWalser: It's not so much the mad woman or wicked witch, but that they're often apparently driven mad by their ugliness. That's what happens in The Stainless Steel Rat. Despite later having cosmetic surgery to make her beautiful, Angeline grew up ugly and that "made" her psychopathic. Fortunately, after catching her they "fix" her psychopathy and she becomes Jim diGriz's loving beautiful wife. I kid you not.

>101 iansales: Please tell me this was satire?

>102 Dilara86: The whole "Stainless Steel Rat" series is not to be taken seriously. Angeline is as much a cardboard character as Jim diGriz and the rest of the crew. But quite funny in small doses, IMHO. The SF version of James Bond. Like LolaWalser I prefer mad female villains to bland bimbos.

>98 iansales: I can fully understand the need to free up shelf space. I hope it was that, rather than some Nazi-inspired purge. (Not that it's any of my business.)

>101 iansales:

Oh lol and hot damn!

>103 bnielsen:

Well, I'd say cardboard characterisation is practically a rule of the genre, so the problem is less lack of depth of character (which may be taken for granted) but the kind of stereotypes that get applied to women vs. men.

And these recur a lot--I would say they reflect a habit of thinking/writing about female characters in a certain way that becomes "the norm" for both authors and readers.

I'm about to get myself in trouble here, but I have to defend old Harry. I own many of the Stainless Steel Rat series, and read them when they were new (and I was oh, so much younger). It was a different world, and I don't think I took the books as seriously (certainly not the thin caricature of women, in general and in particular), but loved the skirting of authority and the idea that someone could hide out and continue to flout the rules of modern society.

I read the first book again, recently (a few years ago), and was reminded that sometimes it's best to leave things to memory, rather than attempt to revisit. As a human being, he was pretty decent. It was a different era, in those days, and his books were fun (not high art, and better left to memory).

He was a good parent, and husband. I dunno. I never thought he was a brilliant author, in the league of (for example) Harlan Ellison or Le Guin, but he was full of fun, and life, and I loved him. Here's a piece from his daughter, upon his death:

https://harryharrison.wordpress.com/harry-harrison-tribute-by-moira-harrison/

Ah, well. So it goes.

>102 Dilara86: "To be a man and ugly is bad enough. What must it feel like to be a woman? How do you live when mirrors are your enemies and people turn away rather than look at you?" (p 138)

The whole characterisation of Angeline is pretty offensive to modern sensibilities (ie, post-1990).

>104 SFF1928-1973: Well, I wouldn't have actual Nazi writers on my bookshelves in the first place - or do you mean purging all books that even so much as mention them? Because I'm a big fan of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels :-)

>106 Lyndatrue: Having fond memories of books you read as a callow youth is one thing. But it does make me wonder why people hang onto those books if they're pretty sure they're going to hate them if they reread them now. But what really annoys me is when people recommend such books based entirely on their fond memories...

>106 Lyndatrue:

But we're talking about characters in books, not the character of the authors. If the latter doesn't excuse the former, surely neither does the former necessarily entail some grave character defect in the author.

>107 iansales:

I can say from my own example that childhood memories in particular easily turn such things into talismans. Fortunately I stopped (well, mostly!) recommending my own nostalgic faves early on...

>106 Lyndatrue: I don't think anyone here is slagging Harry himself, who I agree always made an excellent impression on me the few times we met.

>106 Lyndatrue: Harry and his wife were great supporters of the Irish fanbase. They attended every convention in Ireland and are fondly remembered by the SF fan community in Ireland where they made their home.

I read the first Stainless Steel Rat many moons ago but was never inclined to read any more in the series.

Lyndatrue (#106):

I read the first book again, recently (a few years ago), and was reminded that sometimes it's best to leave things to memory, rather than attempt to revisit. As a human being, he was pretty decent. It was a different era, in those days.

A large part of the point of this thread is that "Good for its time" does not mean "Suitable for a child in 2019 without additional discussion of the historical context".

Better that we suffer "the suck fairy" ourselves than inflict his ill-deeds upon our children!

>112 paradoxosalpha:, with the caveat that if our children are the age we were when we enjoyed it ourselves ...? But then >111 lorax: make the point that cancels that, so I guess you're right.

As a youth I hadn't yet developed my critiquing cap (which I've never been able to remove since, crazy glue or something). That was great for sheer escapism, something that's very hard to come by now, but I suppose there's no telling how much harm I subconsciously absorbed.

I don't believe in forbidding books to my kids if they have a powerful interest, but I agree about not being oblivious to what they're selecting and discussing the subject matter with them. Same as watching the news together.

Ha, I DO feel like a giant personification of the Suck Fairy at times... bearing down on people's cherished memories, making giant sucking noises, breaking butterflies on the wheel...

Anyway, I hope it's fairly clear the criticisms aren't against the authors' persons (despite the occasional wonderings about such and such). I think we all know much of this literature was written for commercial gain (usually tiny), hastily, relying greatly on clichés and received wisdom--in a word, written to formula. Add to that that the readership for most of this literature's existence was assumed, for good reasons, to be mostly one narrow demographic, and it's no surprise at all it looks the way it looks.

>113 Cecrow:

I'm not saying to forbid the books to kids. I think Lola's made it clear long ago in this conversation that the question is more one of blithe recommendation. Should I say, "Read this because I enjoyed it when I was your age?" I think it would be more prudent to consider that times and expectations have changed even for younger readers, and many times books have not aged well.

My daughter's middle school language arts teacher remarked that for the statistical majority of US Americans, the peak of elective reading is at about 8th grade. After that, reading tends to be dominated by school-assigned texts, and then after matriculation, to drop off altogether. I don't think we should encourage kids to waste their finite reading time on literature that we can now see as not only shallow, but socially reactionary.

>107 iansales: I certainly didn't mean to imply that Harrison was a Nazi. Politically I'm guessing he was a Libertarian. And I'm sure if he were still alive today he would be writing Feminist SF with the best of 'em.

>107 iansales: ... and speaking Esperanto like a native :-)

>116 SFF1928-1973: Ha. No, I never thought Harrison was a Nazi. Although I'm continually puzzled by sf writers love of Libertarian politics, which is pretty right-wing. And equally puzzled by people who insist sf is a predominantly left-wing genre.

>117 bnielsen: There were people growing up with Esperanto as a first language, but as far as I know the number of speakers of the languages has declined.

>118 iansales: people who insist sf is a predominantly left-wing genre

Really? I wish such unobservant people were right correct.

No. 116

 

Communipath worlds by Suzette H. Elgin

Publication date: 1969* ; Story date: 31st century

A telepath agent meets three rebellious women on three very different worlds.

Main character: Coyote Jones, male

Secondary characters: Tzana Kai, Jones' casual girlfriend, telepath; "Fish", male, Jones' sender-on-missions; Anne-Charlotte, a powerful telepath on planet Iris; "Bess", woman of colour, a "mindwife" from planet Furthest; Jacinth, female, Poet of the Seventh Level from planet Abba.

Minor characters: Ratha, Jones' daughter with Bess; many other mostly male characters.

*Just a reminder that I use "publication date" ambiguously--sometimes it's just that, but only if it coincides with the earliest copyright date (if not, it's actually the copyright date.) When a title is composed of elements that were written/published at different times, I indicate only the earliest date available. The point of this is to map, as far as it can be done relying on published data, when the idea for the story first appeared. It helps with period context.

Representation of women: I suppose it ought to be mentioned--and sorry for any disappointment!--that the scene on the cover picture here absolutely does not appear anywhere in the book. Well, all three female characters the stories are "about" are indeed babes, so there's that. But no Roman legionaries were harmed or even present in these pages.

Agent Jones' own planet is apparently gender-egalitarian, with several women shown as managers and ranking-type of people. His occasional sex partner/friend Tzana is very much her own woman and they have an open relationship.

It's a different story on each of the worlds he visits on his missions. Each time there is a problem with a woman in conflict with the rules of her society, and these get progressively worse. Anne-Charlotte refuses to give up her baby girl to the government and Jones has to kidnap the child. Mayhem ensues (both Anne-Charlotte and the baby are super-powerful telepaths able to communicate through space and physically affect their environment); Anne-Charlotte dies.

I thought this story would continue with the baby growing up and shelling out some sacred revenge on the whole universe but to my surprise, it didn't, the three parts are only connected via the figure of Jones. So I kind of stumbled, as I hate short stories. It's funny cause I also hate thick novels. Hundred-fifty pages hits the sweet spot, people!

The second story had some pretty elements (mating with dolphins, mmm) but bored me; however, "Bess" (it's a nickname, Jones couldn't pronounce her name) was a fine firebrand. She dies too but not before having a child with Jones.

The third story I just loved, although it features arguably the worst society of them all--a technologically advanced and preternaturally "refined" place where women used to be treated no different to cattle (literally, with pens and troughs and collars around their necks and stables for when it rained), then the Federation enforced SOME "improvement" before the planet could be admitted to membership, and now women are treated as in a mix of ancient China/Japan and Saudia. Women are kept in harems, barred from education and any kind of work that is not, of course, sex work and services, punished when need arises by a 'Women's Discipline Unit", medicated to various stages of incapacity, and so on.

The one exception to women's lowly status is the possibility of competing to become a Poet (a religious office on Abba, and it's charitably admitted that "the Light" may, once in a million years, visit even a woman), BUT, so as not to encourage masses of "bored young ladies" to compete, the penalty for failing the infernally difficult examinations is solitary confinement for life and madness. If a woman fails, of course. Men can fail all they like.

In these conditions there have only been two or three women Poets in hundreds of years, so it's a huge shock when an official's 12 year old daughter announces her intention to compete. What makes it even worse is that the official's sister had once competed and failed and now exists in a state worse than The Real Lady Rochester, crawling on all fours and eating bugs and whatnot. So there's a DOUBLE heaping of scandal on the poor official, who couldn't even pick his daughter out, female children being as mud to fathers.

And then the kid wins the competition, at the highest, Seventh Level. The life of a female Poet is a dire one though--men of course can have entertainment of various kinds besides duty, but a woman of high station just messes up the protocol, nobody, certainly not men, can deal with having to be respectful to a mere woman. So she languishes in isolation, only working, and when somebody seems to be poisoning her, the ridiculous jerks have to call in external help.

Elgin is very funny in this story, the mode being all the time: "the simple modesty of her femaleness ought to be enough to keep her mute", and I hope quoting won't ruin too much the effect:

The Khadilha's wit, sometimes put to uncomfortable uses, had been the reason he had kept her all these years. At this moment, however, he wished her stupider and timider and a thousand light-years away. "Must you be right, at a time like this?" he demanded. "It is unbecoming in a woman."

Representation of race and ethnicity: This is not particularly emphasised but most descriptions seem to indicate white people. Bess and Ratha however are described as having dark complexions, and Jacinth and her people sound "Asian" of sorts.

Representation of any kind of minority: None via character. There are two mentions of homosexuality, one negative, one neutral. In the first case Jones makes a '70s version (I suppose) of the gay=lame remark, saying "to call people "Mr" or "Miss" is very pansy", going on to explain that "pansy" is an ancient expression for homosexual; in the second instance, on Abba, when Jones refuses offered sexual services of a woman the procurer next suggests a man (also declined).

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, r-BT passes.

This was interesting. I think it's only the second book I've read (I mean generally, not just for the thread) that can be defined as proper "feminist SF"--if The left hand of darkness qualifies for the first. (It's been a long time, I don't remember much of its philosophy.)

Up next: Timescoop by John Brunner

>121 LolaWalser: So would you give this to a child?

>123 RobertDay:

An old-ish-er child, possibly.

121> Joanna Russ wrote The Two of Them in response to the last story in that book. See https://sfmistressworks.wordpress.com/2018/03/21/the-two-of-them-joanna-russ-2/

>125 iansales:

Oh thanks, that's terrific to know--but before I click on the link, is "The two of them" a short story or a novel? Because I'm 95% sure I have it somewhere and would save your link for later, in the latter case.

>126 LolaWalser: I can answer that question, easily. It's a work, of 181 pages in length, and I'd be fascinated to read a review of it. Joanna Russ is very worthwhile.

Heck, if you don't have it somewhere handy, you should buy a copy. ;-}

>127 Lyndatrue:

Thanks, I see it's in my catalogue (most books in the Pile are not, unless they were read, but this was acquired way before this thread started), so I definitely have it around. Must be in the Pile already! I hope it turns up sooner rather than later...

>125 iansales: >126 LolaWalser: >127 Lyndatrue: Adding my two cents: The Two of Them is a fine, fine book.

>126 LolaWalser: Definitely a novel. That link is one of my few reviews that got linked to by File 770. I had a few problems with the novel, although as you'd expect from Russ it's very clever.

>130 iansales: Nice stuff on the review of "Two of Them" Ian.

*dying of curiosity*

I'mma gonna read it, and if when the time comes I'm merely copying Ian, well whose fault will that be eh!

Oh wait, this could be fun--running commentary to Ian's review, because this occured to me in the first para--two agents/lovers of a "trans-temporal agency" sent on missions to various planets--isn't that very much like Valérian and Laureline, the French comic? (I read it until about mid-eighties.) Of course, could be some very common sf trope for all I know...

Muslim caricatures--fair enough probably, if some generality of Muslims is meant, but back in the 70s I've known Muslim women whose lives were pretty much that awful (at least to non-Muslim eyes). As for chattel, guardianship laws and/or legal discrimination against women is still present in more Muslim-majority countries than not (Pakistan has a particularly dehumanising statute vis-à-vis women.) "Being treated like a man" because your behaviour is too out there in the local context reminds me of Freya Stark, how she got away with stuff because she was too much of a novelty for people to know how to treat her... happened to other Intrepid British Lady Travellers in the East, the Balkans and similar places...

Wow, the poetry plot is basically Elgin's story plot, ok. Aww, she saves Elgin's characters to outer space...

OK, Russ's story sounds more Arabicised, whereas Elgin's setting is basically ancient China/Japan. And the aunt--like all the women who dare to compete and fail--is driven to madness on purpose, using pharmaceuticals. Along with solitary imprisonment it's part of the penalty. The women are kept at home in special cells so that other women can observe them and learn their lesson.

In general, I'm agreed that using Muslims or Muslim-like people (or any non-white societies, by whites) to criticise misogyny etc. is extremely problematic, and in today's conditions practically impossible.

As a woman, though, I can't be a cultural relativist--that is, I can't be that as easily as a man might. No one would expect a black person or a gay person to "be philosophical" about racism and homophobia; I think even white women might be excused for hating on societies that see them as things not people.

The following contains spoilers.

No. 117

 

Timescoop by John Brunner

Publication date: 1969 ; Story date: 2065

Rich man decides to throw a family reunion party... with relatives gathered from previous centuries.

Main character: Harold Freitas III, head of Freitas Interplanetary

Secondary characters: Sarah Freitas, Harold's wife; Dr. Chester Waley, physicist, black man with Cherokee heritage; Solomon Schatzenheim; Freitas' business rival, Jewish; Miriam Schatzenheim, Solomon's wife; SPARCI AKA "Sparky", AI

Minor characters: Cyrus Detrick, employee of Freitas but spying for Schatzenheim; James Quentin, Freitas' VP of research; Louisa Fold, Freitas VP of Public relations; Helen Whymore, Freitas' VP in charge of personnel welfare; Flannagan, genealogist, male, Irish; Edgar Freitas, poet, "scooped" out of 17th century; Joshua Freitas, slave trader, "scooped" out of 18th century; other named and unnamed mostly male characters.

Representation of women: Sarah Freitas is shown as intelligent and educated but seems to lead a perfectly idle life; Miriam Schatzenheim wants to divorce her bully of a husband but since he refuses, she tries to get him to attack her physically so she could report him. The implication is that the police/the law are 100% on the side of women even when they are lying. Solomon and Miriam, who is not Jewish, have some quarrels which pretty much border on the antisemitic.

Out of nine historical Freitases who get chosen to be scooped out of time and brought to 21st century, only one is a woman. As almost all of them turn out to be rogues of some kind and not the glorious ancestors Harold was hoping for, it's predictable, I suppose, that far from being the heroine of the American civil war such as the family lore had her, Tabitha Freitas turns out to be a "nympho" who slept with both sides and played them against each other.

Freitas' female employees are treated like the male ones. On the whole a stereotypical but average picture, not brilliant but not the worst.

Representation of race and ethnicity: Whatever his shortcomings, Brunner always seems to remember there are people other than white, and this time there's an important character who is a black man (with a Cherokee grandmother). Moreover, race turns out to be important as a theme and crucial driver of plot as Joshua Freitas, the slavetrader, insults Waley and the latter kills him. The n-word gets tossed around some (and a few times, the then-polite "Negro"). However slapdash the execution, I'd say that critiquing North American slavery and hypocrisy that glorified the shameful past deserves some kudos.

Not sure whether Flannagan's the lying genealogist's being Irish signals something extra special or what.

Representation of any kind of minority: One of Freitas' ancestors is not only a plagiarist who was claiming a poor monk's musical compositions as his own, but a dissolute rake with a taste for "little boys", a "one hundred percent pedophile and proud of it". Awkwardly, this seems to be conflated with homosexuality, as, for example, later on it's remarked that his "pederasty" would only "create a major furore among the most conservative and reactionary groups..." Or, you know, maybe Brunner IS saying that paedophilia isn't such a big deal.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, r-BT passes.

This is a very silly story. There's a potential to amuse, but then it all falls apart in the end with the weakest last-minute excuses for the plot and the behaviour of certain characters. Brunner always has worthwhile ideas but it's been rare that you could say he took the trouble (or maybe had the time?) to do them justice. And to save Robert the trouble of asking ;) I'll reinstate the question:

Would I give this book to a kid: naah.

Up next: The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

>134 LolaWalser: More good stuff. As I suggested before all this should be stuffed in a searchable data base - maybe with others able to contribute using the same parameters?

>136 DugsBooks: Or possibly a blog? Cross-posting isn't hard - I do it with my LT reviews.

Are lists on LT searchable? If not, I suppose I (or anyone, if they wanted) could make a collection with these titles.

OK, see if this answers, I made a collection, SFF-LT-Read, should be searchable?:

https://www.librarything.com/catalog/LolaWalser/sffltread

Note that I still need to (re)add 57 titles.

Obviously this is tied to my catalogue/profile but anyone can make the same or similar collection, and, I don't know whether Lists may not be suitable for something more--but that depends on what you want to do with this.

Remember this can be sorted by Author or Title, among other. (I'm not sure but maybe a collection could be exportable into a table or spreadsheet, if you need other columns etc.?)

ETA: collection is updated, currently at all 117 completed reads. Sorting by "finished" column ought to list them in the order of posting (or backward...)

I'll add later the few (I think 5-6?) titles which were started but abandoned.

>133 LolaWalser: I must admit the Valerian /Laureline parallel never occurred to me, perhaps because they seem more independent than the duo in Russ's book.

I grew up in Islamic countries, so I'm pretty familiar with the religion and societies based on it, and Russ's depictions read like a society invented by someone who knows very little about Islam. I take your point about my gender allowing me to be more philosophical about it, but I do try to be sensitive to those sort of things - which is where SF Mistressworks came from, in fact - although obviously I can get things wrong.

Have you seen Letters from Baghdad? It's a documentary about Gertrude Bell. It's excellent.

>140 iansales:

Oh, I do admire your caring about these things very much, and I'm with you in the annoyance at Islamophobia--no way is it the case that something like those Trumpoidal excrescences care about women's rights, gays etc. It just delays dealing with the inequalities. Anyway, I'm sure I'll revisit this when I get to Russ and we can compare notes in more detail.

Haven't seen that docu, would love to. I hope it's warts and all--I've always understood that there were warts galore. ;)

>141 LolaWalser: I read Georgina Howell's bio of Gertrude Bell Daughter of the Desert. She was certainly a remarkable figure, but I have to concur about the "warts"!

One still hears people ridicule the concerns about character representation, diversity etc. as a recent (and as if somehow "bogus") invention by the "PC brigade", so it always amuses me when I come across those concerns in the decades past (not to mention if one but paid attention to what the members of the vilified groups through history had to say on the subject...)

Harlan Ellison wrote in October 1968 on the subject of character representation of a white and a black man in a show called The Outcasts:

Don Murray, who is so white he makes Ultra-Brite dull by comparison, and Otis Young, an Afro-American of uncommon surliness, are bounty hunters. One is an ex-Virginia Confederate soldier, the other is an escaped plantation slave. Through one of the great syntactical gymnastics in the history of plot-cramming, they wind up being trail-buddies. {...} There are half a dozen obligatory interchanges each show, in which Young calls Murray "boss" and Murray responds with a churlish "boy". {...}
In the September 30 segment...{...} Murray and Young see this broad by the well, doing a lot of heavy breathing. They exchange a few bon mots about the state of their not-getting-any, and Murray sashays off to give the little lady a fiesta in the tackle and harness shed. Young watches.

Now I'll even grant the producers of The Outcasts the benefit of historical verisimilitude. In them days a black man knew better than to try cozzening up to a white chick. The question does present itself, however, why didn't Young drop a gentle hand on Murray's shoulder and say something like, "Hey, hold up a minute, boss. Y'know, we both been on the trail eight weeks, and I seen the rushes of the next sixteen shows, and uh er, y'know not once in any of them sixteen shows do I get a piece, so why not let me go on out and further the plot a wee bit with that there fine little fox?" Granted, we couldn't let Young do anything like that, I mean, actually get down with a white woman--but how much more like real men they would seem than the posturing prototypes they now play! Murray gets uptight when they won't let Young sleep in the house--it's the barn for the black boy, natcherly--but I wonder how tough he'd get if they refused Young service in the whore house? {...}... will all the boy/girl jive be confined to the "acceptable" (i.e. white) Murray? Until separate but equal sack-time is established, this remains just another example of the shuck: the great American TV Boondoggle that seeing a black man make it sexually is too steamy and sordid for the fine-tuned sensibilities of the Great Unwashed.

And in November 1968 he criticises at length some teenage star of a dance show, all along the lines of what a bad example she sets for other young people.

A young lady of my acquaintance, who sat beside me during one of these shows, found my intention of devoting this column to Kam Nelson akin to killing a gnat with the battleship Missouri. I responded that Kam Nelson obviously got and has held her position as a role-model on this show because she was what the producers felt was most easily-identifiable to other teen-agers, and that in that capacity she was a spokeswoman for illiteracy, vacuity, banality and transient values of life.

What would I have, asked (she), a smart-ass girl who had an answer to everything? After all, it was only a dance program.
Precisely my point. On this sort of show, because it is the one kids relate to, there is an obligation on the part of possibly Miss Nelson, but certainly the producers, to offer something more golden with which kids can identify.

Television is too potent a medium, too exacting an educational force, for anyone to dismiss even a boondock area such as The Groovy Show and its ability to shape and mold manners or morals.
No, I would not have a 17-year-old girl genius on The Groovy Show; but neither would I have Susie Sparkle set up as the end-all and be-all for emerging personalities. What is wrong with Miss Nelson as a Force in our times is what is wrong about the Miss America contests and all the other shallow, phony shucks put over on kids too young to separate wheat from the chaff.

These examples are from the beginning of the collection The Glass Teat, so I expect they are far from only ones.

No. 118

 

The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke

Publication date: 1953 ; Story date: billion+ years into the future

After a billion years of slumber human curiosity appears on the scene again.

Main character: Alvin, male

Secondary characters: Hilvar, male; Khedron, male; Jesserac, Alvin's mentor, male; Seranis, Hilvar's mother; Alystra, Alvin's girlfriend

Minor characters: Callitrax, male, historian, Eriston and Etania, Alvin's designated parental units; other named and unnamed male characters.

Representation of women: One billion years in the future we are told the city of Diaspar enjoys complete gender equality but the only result of this on the page is that "gallantry" no longer exists. And men still suspiciously overwhelm the scene. What the situation may be in Lys, the city which retained a short lifespan and biological reproduction, is not clear. Seranis, a woman in her fifties, is in a leadership role of some kind, or at least a spokesperson. I'm not sure what a cryptic remark about her privileges being "so few" (made by one of her male colleagues on Alvin's first arrival in Lys) was supposed to mean. That she's "first among equals", or humoured as a woman or what? Could be just Clarke's carelessness or disinterest in writing character.

Alystra does some maidenly screaming and bumbling and whatnot. Etania, Alvin's maternal figure, has femininely "esthetic" interests whereas Eriston, the "dad", goes for logic. There's a remark about how women have remained "unchanged since Eve". Basically, women didn't interest Clarke diddly squat.

Representation of race and ethnicity: The people in Lys are "tall and golden-haired". No other types are mentioned.

Representation of any kind of minority: None directly, but I think this qualifies for a fairly brave (considering the times and the medium) friendly nod to homosexuality:

No one was yet certain if all the possibilities of art had been discovered; or if it had any meaning outside the mind of man.
    And the same was true of love.

Even more telling, I think, is the lovely friendship between Alvin and Hilvar.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail; lots of r-BT passes.

Lots of breathtaking ideas and before-their-time concepts, and I absolutely loved the Rule that "no machine will have moving parts". Ha! Yes! If only!

Would I give this book to a kid: sure.

Up next: What mad universe by Fredric Brown

More from that "Tumblr SJW" manqué, Harlan Ellison... ;) (Note that I'm not necessarily endorsing his argument in detail, simply noting his concern with representation.)

15 AUGUST 69 (From The Glass Teat, 1976)

Bearing in the back of the mind the many paradigms of NBC's female-oriented shows, as well as those on other networks {...}--one comes to a realization that Someone Up There is not only thirty years behind the times in terms of the Female Liberation Movement, but is easily thirty years behind in accepting reality. Even as blacks despise stereotypes of themselves in the mass media {...} so do intelligent women, I've found. {...}
   The Female Liberation Movement--and I have this on best authority: a seven foot blonde who manages to combine sensual femininity with a don't-fuck-with-me-self-assurance--is most lumbered by its own fifth column. Subversion from within. So many women have been brainwashed by the image of the happy little homemaker, birthing babies and cooing over the wonders of pre-soak Axion that it is virtually impossible to convince the mass of chicks that they are really truly emancipated, and don't have to stagger about wearing a subservient facade.
   Tossing aside the terminally damning obviousness that what they are dealing in are hoary cliches, the more serious indictment that can be laid on this kind of thinking is that it helps perpetuate an unrealistic view of an entire segment of population. It aids and abets the dangerous gapping between reality and image in our society. When the ideal held up for the modern American woman is no more demanding than Debbie Reynolds (as she plays it on her series), what can we expect but another generation of simpering female Dagwood Bumsteads? The only out the contemporary chick is offered in terms of TV images is Samantha (a witch), Jeannie (a genie), or Sister Bertrille (who can fly). The message is painfully clear; if you can't wiggle your nose and make miracles, or hop into the sky and fly away, or flip your ponytail and change the world, girls, pack it in and settle for being some guy's unpaid slavey. Because all those other women you see cavorting in phosphor-dot reality are inept, hampered with children, prone to execrable involvements or simply accident-prone. {...}

How does this compare with the women I've seen on protest marches and rallies, who have been beaten senseless by cops' riotsticks? How does this compare with the women who went for a walk in 118 degree heat in the Imperial Valley, to support the grape boycott? How does this compare with the genuinely incredible women who ramrodded the Bradley campaign or fight for free speech, or went to Chicago and Washington and Selma?
   This year we're going to get doctors who are heroes, school teachers who are heroes, lawyers who are heroes, and of course cops who are heroes. None of them are female. {...} It's another scintillant TV season of lies and unusually off-center representations of still one more social element. Except this time it's a social element that is composed of half the population. {...}

To recap:

1. Belief that media images are important in shaping real-life attitudes, check

2. Concern with representation of female and black characters, check

3. Because distorted, stereotypical representation is unfair to real people ("half the population...")

4. ...and is an offense against broader reality, i.e. truth. Check.

All the way back in the sixties.

Weren't Samantha and Jeannie still pretty subservient spouses, in spite of their supernatural aptitudes?

>147 paradoxosalpha: Yes, but . . .

Samantha certainly plays the subservient spouse for Darrin's benefit, but the series as a whole plows (albeit very gently and tamely) the same thematic ground as Bell, Book, and Candle, the feature-film adaptation of Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife: Men think they run the world and women -- who have powers that men don't begin to comprehend -- are content to let the poor dears think so, while working behind the scenes on behalf of "their" men.

Jeannie is a bit more complicated because the show is built on the "genie" mythos (the fact that she's subservient--sometimes in comically literal ways--is the point), and because -- until late in the show's run -- she's functionally the equivalent of the invisible spirit in Harvey: A magical companion who nobody but the main character knows exists . . . so the issue of her visibly conforming to contemporary gender norms (except, famously, covering her navel so that the network censors don't get a collective case of the vapors) is moot. Her one-on-one interactions with Tony, though, land in the same basic place as Samantha's with Darrin: She's using her powers for the benefit of "her man," at times in outright (though secret) defiance of his orders to her.

It's an interesting phenomenon, because it twists the "behind every successful man is a woman" adage from its original meaning (" . . . a woman tending to his every domestic need and allowing him to rest and recharge when he comes home") into a version of (" . . . a woman secretly acting as a combination chief-of-staff, fixer, and consigliere") without really losing the underlying implication that women are "naturally" driven to act on behalf of "their" men rather than in pursuit of agendas of their own. (See also: Heinlein, Robert A., later novels of)

Good nuances!

>147 paradoxosalpha:

I don't get your point. Ellison is disparaging them, not saying they are examples of good or non-subservient representation. He's saying "that's all there is--and what a shame that is".

>150 LolaWalser: I have *heard* Harlan, in long ago days, speak more than merely disparagingly of Samantha and Jeannie (and others), and he knew even more four letter words than I (and I know plenty of them). They were indeed cardboard morons (the characters, not necessarily the actors), and his points were spot on.

50-60 years ago, I had hopes. I'm not so sure I do, any more...

>143 LolaWalser: as a role-model on this show because she was what the producers felt was most easily-identifiable to other teen-agers, and that in that capacity she was a spokeswoman for illiteracy, vacuity, banality and transient values of life.

Dear Lola I need more quotes like this. Double grin plus.

>148 ABVR:

Yes, that sounds very familiar.

>152 guido47:

Good, isn't it. :) Let's hope poor Miss Kam wasn't scarred for life.

No. 119

 

What mad universe by Fredric Brown

Publication date: 1949 ; Story date: 1954

A science fiction writer is transported to a dangerous alternative universe.

Main character: Keith Winton

Secondary characters: Betty Hadley, Keith's crush; "Mekky", an AI, referred to as "he"; Dopelle, male; Marion Blake, secretary at Surprising Stories

Minor characters: dozen+ named and unnamed male characters; Della, Betty's "colored maid"; Bessie, bar girl

Representation of women: The story is a gentle send-up of sci-fi fantasies so the beauteous Betty runs around in a bra and hot pants, as befits a figment of fevered boyish imagination. And it's not a little thing to note that, at least, all the female characters are gainfully employed. ;)

Representation of race and ethnicity: Only Della, Betty's maid, is singled out as a non-white human. (Not counting the variously-hued aliens.)

Representation of any kind of minority: I'm not certain about this, but it seems to me that the criminal gangs of "The Nighters", who roam around the darkened New York City at night "armlocked" and "tapping canes", are made up of blind people. Of, um, very nasty and murderous blind people.

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail; lots of r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a kid: yes.

Up next: A maze of death by Philip K. Dick

>151 Lyndatrue:

Lynda, I meant to ask, have you considered writing down your (sf) memories?

>156 LolaWalser: Sadly, most of my memories are slowly fading away. Watching (a very young) Harlan Ellison harangue the passersby from a bookstore window will live with me forever, but when, or where, does not.

So it goes.

No. 120

 

A maze of death by Philip K. Dick

Publication date: 1970 ; Story date: 22nd century

Wacky child of Sartre's No Exit and Christie's And Then There Were None, let's say.

Main character: Seth Morley, marine biologist, Jewish

Secondary characters: Men: Wade Frazer, psychologist; Milton Babble, MD; Ignaz Thugg, thermoplastics expert; Tony Dunkelwelt, photographer; Glen Belsnor, computer tech; Ned Russell, economist; Ben Tallchief, naturalist (sic), partly Native American ("Indian"). Women: Mary Morley, Seth's wife; Betty Jo Berm, linguist; Maggie Walsh, theologian, lesbian; Susie Smart, clerk-typist; Roberta Rockingham, sociologist.

Minor characters: Several named and unnamed mostly male characters.

Representation of women: There's a heavy, almost cartoonish emphasis on sex via the character of Susie Smart, a self-described "settlement whore" who also gets called "Susie Dumb". This may be projection in part (on everybody's side) or even role-play. Reality or performance, it's there so I note it: the insatiable nympho etc.

Mary Morley is the nigh-shrewish, judgemental wife I've seen before in Dick's writing, although it may be noted (I hope without spoiling too much) that in this case everyone involved has ample objective reason to be unhappy. A number of details betray a lingering sexism--the preponderance of men and exclusive male leadership, the automatic expectation that Betty Jo and Maggie are the ones to "fix" coffee and meals, the repeated reference to these mature women as "girls", the overt depiction of Mary's jealousy as a woman's need to possess the male (she even calls upon "witchery" as something specifically female and to be used "to control men").

Representation of race and ethnicity: It's mentioned without elaboration that Seth Morley is Jewish and Ben Tallchief "one-eighth Indian". Betty Jo Berm is twice described as plain and "brownish", whatever that means.

Representation of any kind of minority: It's through Susie Smart, when she's trying to get Seth into bed, that we learn Maggie Walsh is a lesbian. It seems to be an opportunity for her to express that that sort of thing is "depraved", in contrast to her healthy interest in men--all the men. ;)

Bechdel test (BT) and reverse Bechdel test (r-BT): BT fail, lots of r-BT passes.

Would I give this book to a child: Older one, yes. So far I can't think of any PKD it would be worthwhile to give to an eight-year-old.

Up next: The green gene by Peter Dickinson

See you in the new thread.

I just took a look at the reviews for A maze of death here and several spoil everything, so if anyone wishes to read it (I'd recommend it, it's pretty interesting), consider yourselves warned.