The Mountain in the Sea - is this the new normal?

I'm trying to find a book to read that isn't so washed in feminist theory or gender identity. I just want a good book with believable characters. Am I asking for too much? It takes me out of a story when the author uses an abnormally forced or unnatural character reaction to give social commentary. An example, in The Mountain in the Sea Ha meets the world's first conscious android and their primary obsessive focus is on categorizing their gender. They use this moment to comment how gender is provincial and outdated.

A reasonable but obvious answer in this situation is that the android is not human, so they are genderless. The focus should have started with questioning if they are actually conscious, and proceed forward to questions of personhood and identity. The decision to focus on gender identity felt forced, and unrealistic when more important questions should be asked first. This took me out of the book for a second. What do you people think?

I think it's a matter of taste, and I am interested in science fiction that explores gender as an aspect of personhood and identity. I don't think questions of gender are uninteresting at all. (That's often a view taken by people who have never, or never needed to, examine their gender and how it intersects with other aspects of their identity and place in the world. This reminds me a bit of "why does the main character have to be a girl? men are always more relatable!")

Sometimes well-meaning authors are clumsy about it, but I find they tend to be clumsy about other things, too, and it's just that they don't have all the writing skills yet.

Do you dislike the Murderbot stories, then? I assume you dislike Ann Leckie.

>2 keristars: It's not that questions on gender identity are uninteresting, it's that it felt out of place... It's like if you saw a biblical god come to earth and your primary concern is, "what gender are they?". Ha's reaction seemed unreasonable to me. It wasn't threaded into the story smoothly. Even the arguments the writer used were poor e.g. English is outdated, categorization is childish, Turkish language is OP. Can a book integrate thoughtful discussion on gender identity? Yes. Did it feel out of place here for me? Absolutely.

>1 JohnMilk: I agree, and I am so tired of it.

I also think there is a deluge of clumsily written science fiction and fantasy that seems to serve as a vehicle for the author to preach their DEI opinions, rather than an effort to tell a good story. And way too much of it gets nominated to serious awards on the strength of their ‘political correctness’, rather than the qualities of the story.
I wouldn’t consider Ray Nayler one of those, but I am tired of even reasonable competent authors shoehorning so-called progressive gender commentary into their stories without regard for whether it is relevant or not.

And yes, Murderbot does something interesting and relevant with gender, and so does the first Imperial Radch (and emphatically not the latest one) - because it is in the service to the story, and because Martha Wells and Ann Leckie are both very good authors.

>4 amberwitch: So far I'm a quarter way through The Mountain in the Sea. I'm juggling Lord of Mysteries so I'm not sure when I'll have time to finish Ray's book.

So far its alright... But it does feel a bit discriminatory at the moment. The author depicts a scene on a fishing boat with prisoners. He describes the male guards as brutes and the women as reserved and "harder than the men". Is this reflected in reality (Army, Police etc...)? Why are the men stereotypical idiots but the women are masculinized warrior chieftains? Why doesn't the stereotype go both ways? Does the author make similar comments about women later on?

So far, both the focus on the gender identity of the android and the incompetent male trope aren't sufficient or large enough reasons to drop the book but I do think they are out of place and blatantly biased due to poor integration. A few pages later, the author circled back and reflected on the androids consciousness, which would naturally produce questions of identity and gender, but the initial focus on gender and the arguments examining the question were poorly placed and presented.

I just got into novels a few days ago. The slow episodic pacing of television shows pushed me to read fiction. Hopefully it isn't full of the pervasive Apple TV male bashing that's common on all modern media now...

>3 JohnMilk: Ah, I see. Yeah, it may be an example of clumsiness in writing, then. Wanting to explore the topic but not having the skills for it.

(btw I needed a nap after posting my reply, and as I drifted off, I was wishing that I'd made clear that I don't think any of what I said is a bad thing! Just that it's a difference in how individuals explore the world, and for some people class or caste or national identity can be used instead of gender, etc.)

I used to see a ton of this around sexuality more than gender, and it was like... okay, nice of you to want to be inclusive/expansive in your setting, but sheesh, no one really talks like that! And it was always worse with people who weren't part of the group they were signaling about.

>4 amberwitch: I'm actually reading Radiant Star right now, and thought the opening passage about Jonr was very interesting in how gender is an element of the themes. But I'm only a quarter of the way along, so I'm not sure yet if it will come up further or just be one of the ways the themes are demonstrated.

It's fantasy in the romance genre, not sf, but The Spellshop is another example of that clumsiness that's well-meaning but so clumsy it's offensive. It doesn't try to explore anything about gender, but also it's not just background setting.

It's a cozy world, a utopic little village, where people are fantasy creatures - centaurs, bird-people, multi-armed, etc. It would be easy for the author to just write about characters with non-binary pronouns, no fuss, the way she does about a character being mostly human, but blue. Instead, she introduces a character that is *created by magical accident* and can only speak one word, as the sole non-binary character, about 2/3 along. And this is made clear by the other magical accident speaking for it "This is Meep. Meep uses they/them pronouns" or something equally clumsy. Like, thanks for wanting to acknowledge us, but it would have been better if you hadn't bothered.

I'm starting to see more disability discussed in sff, and I'm already cringing about when it gets to this stage, because it's awful no matter how well-meaning.

>7 keristars: this is so funny - I actually thought further on this topic, and what bothers me about these stories, and The spellshop came to mind as an example - I think mostly because the worldbuilding is non existent, so the blue and red and many-armed characters have no context and serve no purpose except to be a diverse background for a conventional romance. And the Meep thing was just the cherry on the top - and a good example of what >1 JohnMilk: mentions.
The next book in the series is less bad, I think because there is much less worldbuilding.

Regarding Radiant Star - I actively disliked it because of the narrative voice, which was … a choice…
The idea of all children being male, and then gender is assigned at maturity was interesting - especially contrasted with the Radch only having one gender. But it just didn’t go anywhere interesting.
What was involuntary funny was the (long) list of genders (personal pronouns?) on one of the last pages, which had also been used liberally throughout the book, but without any reason I could discern.
I appreciate that you surrender everything, even your gender, when you enter holy orders and become a ‘hir’, but the male and female stereotypes seemed like they were lifted from the 1950’s and inverted, and the only other gender that was actually addressed (‘sie’) was just lumped with males.
And I really like the other Radch books, so this was a bit of a letdown.

>8 amberwitch: I'm liking it so far. It seems to balance out so it's not bad. Just some passages that don't blend too well for me. Sadly, I'm enjoying Dr. Ha's book passages more than the actual book so far. The books not bad, but the analysis of communication from her book seems like a more interesting topic than what I've read so far. It's still too early in the book so I expect to see her book material implemented in the story later on.

>8 amberwitch: ha ! funny that we both were thinking of that book. You're absolutely right about the set dressing rather than worldbuilding. Did you notice that in the midst of such a diverse cast, the male romantic lead didn't have any physical descriptors except "tall"? 🤣

It's a good example of what I was saying about how the clumsiness around gender usually isn't the only place where writing skill is lacking. I was rather amused that the main character spends a lot of time in wonder at the world around her, like she had been transported from earth.

I really wanted to like the book, too. I was enjoying it, despite its deficiencies, until the Meep thing.

Interesting, your feeling on the narrative voice in the Leckie! Maybe it's because I've been reading so many 19th century novels which have a similar narrative style, so it doesn't feel unusual or awkward to me. I've heard that it has been polarizing, though.

I'd imagine it's both easier to find something and to be more annoyed by it if you're on high alert to watch out for it. I'm not saying these elements don't appear in what you're reading, but you may have lost the ability to objectively see whether it goes by without really intruding on your awareness.

I'd also imagine there are people out there, the obvious ones, who appreciate finding these references in the fiction they read, finding themselves reflected in a story for a change. If it's happening disproportionally often now, that's only to make up for decades and decades prior. It also serves the grander scheme of normalizing these appearances and references. With time they'll be toned down, become inserted less intrusively, but they won't be going away.

I can get pulled out of a story too if I feel the logical ordering of what's occurring isn't how it would actually play out. To take an example having nothing to do with gender, I felt this during the alien encounter while watching "Project Hail Mary", but shunted that reaction aside when I felt that at least it was a writer's choice in service to moving the story along -slash- avoiding the typical clichés, and I was only going to hurt my own enjoyment by poking at it. Succeeded in loving that movie, looking forward to watching it again.

>11 Cecrow: Progressive views are pushed in modern media, gaslighting me by saying it's because I'm on on high alert doesn't negate that fact. You can argue in support of propagandizing people through media, which is weird, but my issue is with the integration of the "propaganda" in the story rather than the actual content in the messaging. I don't care if someone is gay, straight, lesbian etc... I don't care if the MC is a girl, I don't care if there's a diverse cast. I really could care less. Hell, one of my favorite TV series of all time is The 100. That's as progressive as you can get. The show had an ethnically diverse casts, strong female leads, gay characters, disabled people and I have 0 issue with the story. They didn't use it as a platform to shit on others, instead it was just how the natural world was and it wasn't a soap box for the writers to crap on people or push their views.

>12 JohnMilk:, harder for me to comment further without having read the exact instance you're raising and seeing for myself in what sense it was being used to "shit on others". Anything becomes harder to read when there's a clear authorial message involved, as opposed to an opinion belonging only to one character or a portrayed group. No matter what the slant is, being hit over the head with it in a didactic manner becomes tiresome, and authors are cautioned against doing that.

I don't see propaganda in incrementing the number of progressive portrayals, beyond the implicit acknowledgement of their existence. The goal of course being to normalize it rather than brush it under the rug or back into the closet. Done just often enough, it starts to work. Done too much, it triggers a backlash. There's nobody acting as arbiter to measure how we're doing and adjust that gauge with each new release like governments adjust their central interest rate, so we have to let the market - readers and viewers - decide and demonstrate whether it's at the right level.

At any stage there's bound to be cases like the one you seem to have found that take an in-your-face approach that can't just be brushed past, if I'm understanding correctly, which is going to alienate more than serve the purpose. I've encountered works where I'm deeply annoyed by the "of course this is the correct side of the ethical fence" tone of something in other contexts when I feel it is certainly not. That approach is never going to persuade me to agree with it. If anything I'll only be further entrenched, give it a one star review and move on, so they've only hurt their intent.

Glad you liked The 100, I didn't much care for it.

>7 keristars:, when it gets as bad as that, I even start questioning the "well-meaning". Or the author is just oblivious: had no intention of being inclusive, hadn't even thought about, just dreamed up what they thought was an unusual and interesting character and gave it that trait. But it's hard to imagine or assume that degree of out-of-touch anymore. Nothing wrong with a binary character just being there as part of the cast, a characteristic merely noted in passing and nothing particularly highlighted about it or even made integral to the plot.

>5 JohnMilk:, There could be a message intended in reversing the stereotypes, along the lines of "see what it would feel like?", but that can be done well and it can be done poorly. If it's just there and never gets addressed, I'd call that poorly. Maybe you'll have to see how it ends.

>8 amberwitch: I finished Radiant Star, and I think I have to disagree with you about gender. Where it says 'she' is the dreamer, open skies planner to the 'he' who is more pragmatic and gets things done - I didn't see that as necessarily a reversal of 1950s gender roles at all. Weren't 1950s women flighty and not suited to practicalities of business?

It certainly referred back to the beginning when we met Zaved and her personality, and the way the Consorority treated gender (the Mother chose for the children! they didn't have a choice!) - I didn't get the impression that all children of Ooioiaa are boys, but that it's a quirk of the Consorority. And my understanding is that this was because they elevated women and didn't want to risk anyone receiving the benefits of womanhood without permission. So they can't be girls who would logically grow up to be women. This parallels the idea of who is Radch, who can become Radch, and who is upper class, who can become upper class (which we see in Shtel and Iono's story).

The list of pronouns was amusing, and also made sense in context to me. It was an attempt to include all readers, using all the pronouns the narrative knew.

(I'm trying to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn't read it yet but plans to - the discussion of the Consorority and Zaved and Jonr is all in the first chapter.)

>14 Cecrow: Based on the rest of the book, I do think it was well-meant by the author! Meep is treated like a person after that introduction, as much as anyone else in the book, except that they have to communicate through the other magical plant.

Most of the time, when I come across this kind of thing, it does seem like it's not intended as offensive. Sometimes it's mostly just weird and awkward. Like Chilling Effect I had to stop pretty quickly. It was just so. cardboard? token. A diverse cast! but the only one that really felt natural in the intro chapters was the Latina MC - and that's the author's identity, too. (Reviews suggest it's a hit-or-miss book, that the intro is representative of the rest.)

I guess it all comes down to there are a lot more mediocre books than there are truly excellent ones, and I'm going to notice more when the awkward "trying to be a good ally" rep crosses my own identity. It's a shame, because sff authors have been exploring non-binary gender for decades, and it shouldn't be so new to *be* awkward tokens.

edit: also, as we can see with my response vs amberwitch's to Radiant Star, whether something comes across as good or bad, clumsy or not, doesn't necessarily have to do with the thing itself and how well it's written...