Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 20:40:49 -0800 From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU A WOMAN'S LIBERATION: A CHOICE OF FUTURES BY AND ABOUT WOMEN Edited by Connie Willis and Shelia Williams Contents: introduction by Connie Willis "Inertia" by Nancy Kress (1989) "Even the Queen" by Connie Willis (1992) "Fool's Errand" by Sarah Zettel (1993) "Rachel in Love" by Pat Murphy (1987) "Of Mist, Sand and Grass" by Vonda McIntyre (1974) "The July Ward" by S.N. Dyer (1991) "The Kidnapping of Baroness 5" by Katherine Maclean (1995) "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler (1983) "The Ship Who Mourned" by Anne McCaffrey (1966) "A Women's Liberation" by Ursula LeGuin (1995) A couple of reviews: Sci-Fi reviewed by Nalo http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue234/books.html and another http://www.sfrevu.com/2001/9810%20A%20Womans%20Liberation/Book%20Review.htm And "Publisher's Weekly": This anthology, which reprints 10 award-winning stories by and about women, brings little new to the table, but it does assemble excellent work by sci-fi luminaries, originally published in Analog and Asimov's (for which Williams is executive editor). Its failure to provide historical context, however, renders the stories somewhat flat. The pieces range widely: Vonda N. McIntyre's "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand" and Katherine MacLean's post apocalyptic "The Kidnapping of Baroness 5" present worlds where scientific study uses animals for healing humans or for gathering genetic material. The human condition is deftly described in both Connie Willis's "Even the Queen," a hilarious story about menstruation, and Ursula K. Le Guin's poignant "A Woman's Liberation," a first-person journey through the eyes of a former slave who discovers that freedom comes at a price. Many stories explore the world via metaphors of illness or plague: Nancy Kress's "Inertia" describes a quarantined plague community given hope that the plague might be cured; Anne McCaffrey's dated "The Ship Who Mourned" chronicles a sentient ship's trip to a plague world; and in Octavia Butler's harrowing but hopeful "Speech Sounds," a plague has caused people to forget how to speak or read, leading to chaos. Many SF fans will have read at least some of these stories already. Maybe the familiarity of the stories in this anthology signals women's entrenchment in the genre. First note -- although the anthology title was inspired by the LeGuin story, it was altered from Women's to Woman's on the covers, spine, and half title (at least in my edition), but not on the title page, or the page headers. I found this distracting, to say the least... Also, I found a number of typos as I read through the text, which was distressing, as the stories are all reprints and it seems that should make eliminating typos easier... As this is a reprint anthology, most of my questions have to do with structure of the book rather than the individual stories, although I hope people will discuss the stories. Were there FEMSF members who looked at the listed stories and read them from other sources, rather than obtaining the collection? Did readers feel the stories were all suited to the stated tone / intention of the collection? Were there any stories you would not have included? Are there stories from this area you would have preferred to see included instead? Did you feel the collection was truly a "feminist SF" collection, or rather a "womanist" SF collection? Did you read the stories in the order printed in the book? If not, what method did you use? Favorite authors? Chronology of publication? More or less familiar stories? Which situations and / or characters lingered in your consciousness? Why? Did you read the collection as a whole in a short period of time, or gradually, over a more extended time period? Pax, Maryelizabeth -- ******************************************************************* Mysterious Galaxy Books Local Phone: 858.268.4747 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, Suite 302 Fax: 858.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com General Email: mgbooks@mystgalaxy.com ******************************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 23:22:14 -0600 From: Diane Severson Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU Maryelizabeth wrote: "First note -- although the anthology title was inspired by the LeGuin story, it was altered from Women's to Woman's on the covers, spine, and half title (at least in my edition), but not on the title page, or the page headers." My edition (US Trade paperback from Warner) has "Woman's" throughout. Even in the original publishing info printed in the back. Was it really called "(A) Women's Liberation"?!? That doesn't make sense to me. Given the content of the story it makes perfect sense that LeGuin would call it "A Woman's Lib" because it was a very personal story. I could understand it more if the editors of this anthology had decided to call it Women's Liberation. "As this is a reprint anthology, most of my questions have to do with structure of the book rather than the individual stories, although I hope people will discuss the stories." Me too, but someone else has to start! ;-) "Did you feel the collection was truly a "feminist SF" collection, or rather a "womanist" SF collection?" I'm no expert in the differences, but to my own limited understanding of what "feminist" and "womanist" means, I would say this book is definitely "womanist". I wouldn't know why some stories (like "Fool's Errand" and "The July Ward" could be considered "feminist". "Did you read the stories in the order printed in the book?" Yes. Although, I briefly considered reading the authors I am familiar with first, but then, for whatever reason, I decided not to. Which situations and / or characters lingered in your consciousness? Why? I dwelt somewhat longer on "Inertia", "Speech sounds" and "A Woman's Liberation". As to why, I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps because these were stories about women who were confronted with difficult situations and their ways of dealing with them were enlightening to me. "Did you read the collection as a whole in a short period of time, or gradually, over a more extended time period?" I read all of the stories in about a week. I found the stories engrossing, fun and fascinating. I was sorry there weren't more stories. Diane ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 11:24:55 -0800 From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: [*FSF-L*] A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU answering a few of my own questions... > Did you read the stories in the order printed in the book? If not, what > method did you use? Favorite authors? Chronology of publication? > More or less familiar stories? I read the stories in order. Kind of wished there were introductory remarks by the editors to explain their thinking in the order the were listed. I read everything, which meant a mix of rereads and "new to me" stories. > Which situations and / or characters lingered in your consciousness? > Why? The title story definitely had resonance, as did "Rachel in Love" (even upon rereading) and "Speech Sounds," which touches upon one of my deepest fears, the loss of language. No books, email, letters, chatting with my family, etc.? Horror! > Did you read the collection as a whole in a short period of time, or > gradually, over a more extended time period? I've been reading a story here and there since I got the book, so I read the 10 stories over about a 3 month period. Maryelizabeth -- ******************************************************************* Mysterious Galaxy Books Local Phone: 858.268.4747 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, Suite 302 Fax: 858.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com General Email: mgbooks@mystgalaxy.com ******************************************************************* ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 19:36:54 -0500 From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU At 08:40 PM 1/6/02 -0800, Maryelizabeth wrote: >Were there FEMSF members who looked at the listed stories and read them >from other sources, rather than obtaining the collection? Six of the ten stories are included in anthologies I already own (and two have been expanded into novels that I also own), so it didn't really make sense to buy the book. I admit I spent some time in the bookstore "browsing" the introduction and the other stories this afternoon. >Did readers feel the stories were all suited to the stated tone / >intention of the collection? To tell you the truth, I am not sure *what* the intention of the collection was. There have been other, better, anthologies of SF by women (e.g. the two-volume "Women of Wonder", edited by Pamela Sargent), and there's a lot out there that is more explicitly feminist. Willis' introduction does nothing to explain why the book exists or why the individual stories were chosen (apart from being originally published in Asimov's or Analog). >Were there any stories you would not have >included? Are there stories from this area you would have preferred to >see included instead? The only story I objected to was Willis' own "Even the Queen". I found it insulting to just about everyone and thought it said nothing of interest about menstruation, its ostensible theme. Then again, I find Willis' "humor" annoying and utterly unfunny and couldn't get beyond the first 20 pages of *To Say Nothing of the Dog*, while others find her a laugh riot, so maybe I'm not the best judge. As far as what was missing... there is so much that could have been substituted. Suzy Charnas, Maureen McHugh, Karen Joy Fowler, Kate Wilhelm, and Alice Sheldon (as Raccoona Sheldon) have all published stories in Asimov's or Analog that, in my opinion, are superior to the Kress, Willis, Zettel, MacLean and McCaffrey. But once again, there's the question of why the editors picked what they picked. Given the tone of the introduction, it appears they wanted to avoid the "feminist 'women's issues' ghetto" by including a generous portion of heroic adventure stories -- but then they named the collection *A Woman's Liberation*, after the most explicitly feminist story in it! I am baffled! Where do they stand, anyway? >Did you feel the collection was truly a "feminist SF" collection, or >rather a "womanist" SF collection? They are feminist stories in that many of them take for granted female strength and centrality. Women are (or were, in these often post-catastrophe stories) doctors, lawyers, scientists, or academics, and take responsibility in large or small ways for changing the world around them. Except for the Le Guin story, sexism is either not present at all or is mentioned in passing rather than being dealt with head-on. In many cases, I believe these stories are built on the ground broken by earlier feminist authors, as Willis acknowledges in her note at the beginning of the collection. So I guess I would call the collection "second generation feminist SF", though the Willis story particularly takes a somewhat contrary position to the women's movement. >Did you read the stories in the order printed in the book? If not, what >method did you use? Favorite authors? Chronology of publication? More or >less familiar stories? I read the unfamiliar stories first, then re-read the others pretty much at random. >Did you read the collection as a whole in a short period of time, or >gradually, over a more extended time period? I took a couple of days to read through it. >Which situations and / or characters lingered in your consciousness? >Why? Well, this requires a little digging through the memory banks... I first read "Rachel in Love" in a bookstore in Harvard Square over ten years ago. I had intended to skim it, but was sucked in and gripped till the final page. Murphy's central idea, of a teenage girl's mind fused with a chimpanzee's body, had incredible metaphorical resonance for me (alienation from one's own body, people treating you a certain way because of how you look, rather than who you are), and the concrete detail of the animal research center was depressingly realistic. It pushed my buttons, and still does. S.N. Dyer's "The July Ward" was new to me. I love reading about the lived-in details of unfamiliar jobs or environments -- too often it's clear that an author has slapped a description together from a few imperfectly understood reference works. Though I'd never read anything by Dyer before, it was clear from this story that she knows her stuff, and has a sense of humor about it. I really enjoyed it. "Speech Sounds" made a strong impression on me when I first read it in *The Norton Book of Science Fiction". The bleakness, the death, and lack of sentimentality about it really shook my tree. Unfortunately, I think I have developed an allergy to Butler since then. I've reread this story a couple of times and find myself irritated by its assumption of a primal human (specifically male) violence, of a world where people *wouldn't* sort themselves out into "speakers" or "readers" and where gestural language is necessarily less complex than spoken. Grumble. Le Guin's story, the seed of the collection, was the most emotional experience for me this time around. The early events, particularly, are unpredictable, but described with such clarity that they make perfect sense. The humanity, both bad and good, shines from the page. (The image of Walsu leaping "into her death, into her freedom" brings tears to my eyes as I think of it.) The story falters a bit at the end -- to me it is not clear how Rakam's conflicted feelings about sexuality are resolved. For her to have found the Right Man at last seems like a bit of a cop out, though I like Havzhiva very much. Now I am curious what other people liked. 'Fess up, folks! (And thanks to Diane and Maryelizabeth for your comments.) ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: A Perfect Circle -- Mer de Noms "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 20:21:36 +0800 From: Carol & Phil Ryles Subject: [*FSF-L*] A womans Liberation To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU I like SF anthologies a lot and I liked this one, (I've read 3 in the past few months). Unfortunately I'm very under-read in feminist fiction (but I'm working on fixing that), so all of the stories in AWL were new to me. Sorry I haven't written sooner -- it's school holidays over here in Aust (I have 3 children) -- and I wanted to spend more time writing my thoughts as my biggest worry is that I might say something really stooopid. Anyhow, I'll be brave, and write what I can in the little time I have before it's too late. . . I read the book from beginning to end late at night over about 3 days. The story I found most intriguing was Vonda N McIntyre's, _Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand_. Is this part of a novel because it seems unfinished? Admittedly, Snake's encounter with the strange, introverted desert tribe was a poignant tale in itself: Snake risks and loses a lot in order to help the others. Even so, I was left wondering about how the tribe came to be so mistrustful. Was their refusal to show emotion the result of the trauma of war? or environmental catastrophe? These traits are stereotypically masculine, yet there are hints that this is a matriarchal society: Their leader is a woman, The child's parents consist of one woman and two men. Does this mean that women are the minority? I was left asking "What happened to these people?" I guess in _Even the Queen_ Connie Willis was attempting to depict a future where clever women could control their bodily functions, while the Cyclists, not knowing what they were in for, opted to return to a more _natural_ state. I don't think the story suits this anthology because, the idea that menstruation is a curse is more characteristic of the mindset that feminists are challenging, than of the preferred choice of liberated women. In this future the technology has evolved, but attitudes haven't: Women's bodily functions are still being seen as distasteful, inferior, abnormal. Certainly not liberating for me. And if one is going to pick on the ickiness of bodily functions why confine the ridicule to women's bodies? Why not suggest rectal shunts? Nasal shunts? I read SF to discover alternatives, not just futures. I would prefer to see what it would be like if menstruation was seen as something other than a curse....Sounds like an odd thing to say in this society, but what if . . . . . maybe like in the chapter titled "Sex, Lies, and Stereotypes" in Riane Eisler's book, *Sacred Pleasure*, where she says that maybe during Palaeolithic times "women once accessed their strongest shamanic healing and during menstruation was then seen not as irrationality, but as an altered state of consciousness made possible by women's special biology." ....Much more thought provoking than the usual ridicule, I thought. Anyhow, I must go. Will try to write some more about other stories. Hope I haven't said too many stooopid (or obvious) things. I really enjoy reading everyone's comments on this list, Cheers, Carol. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 20:33:05 +1100 From: Maire Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] A womans Liberation To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU Carol- I would suspect that the McIntyre story is related to her well thought of novel, Dream Snake. I haven't read either the story you are talking of or the novel, though I own the novel- do you think that I am right and that there could be a connection? re Even the Queen- I have much the same thoughts. However, I think that Willis' intention was to poke fun at all parties. Maire Hard SF- Jan BOTM "Starfish" by Peter Watts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hardsf Original Fantasy- Jan BOTM "Anubis Gates" by Tim Powers http://groups.yahoo.com/group/original_fantasy Soft SF- Jan BOTM "Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin http://groups.yahoo.com/group/soft_sf ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 08:08:28 -0800 From: Sandy Cronin Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] A womans Liberation To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU > I read the book from beginning to end late at night over about 3 days. The > story I found most intriguing was Vonda N McIntyre's, _Of Mist, and Grass, > and Sand_. Is this part of a novel because it seems unfinished? Yes, "Of Mist, Grass, and Sand" is now a portion of the novel -Dreamsnake- > Admittedly, Snake's encounter with the strange, introverted desert tribe was > a poignant tale in itself: Snake risks and loses a lot in order to help the > others. Even so, I was left wondering about how the tribe came to be so > mistrustful. Was their refusal to show emotion the result of the trauma of > war? or environmental catastrophe? These traits are stereotypically > masculine, yet there are hints that this is a matriarchal society: Their > leader is a woman, The child's parents consist of one woman and two men. > Does this mean that women are the minority? I was left asking "What > happened to these people?" IIRC, the novel doesn't answer any of these questions, really, though it might give some clues. It's been a while since I read it, though. -Sandy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 08:39:45 -0800 From: Sandy Cronin Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU > First note -- although the anthology title was inspired by the LeGuin > story, it was altered from Women's to Woman's on the covers, spine, and > half title (at least in my edition), but not on the title page, or the > page headers. I found this distracting, to say the least... Also, I > found a number of typos as I read through the text, which was > distressing, as the stories are all reprints and it seems that should > make eliminating typos easier... That's interesting; the edition I have (warner aspect 2001 trade paper, blue front cover with a face, purple spine and back), says "Woman's" throughout. > Were there FEMSF members who looked at the listed stories and read them > from other sources, rather than obtaining the collection? I'd only read a few of them before, and it was easier to just get the anthology. > Did readers feel the stories were all suited to the stated tone / > intention of the collection? Were there any stories you would not have > included? Are there stories from this area you would have preferred to > see included instead? Eh...I thought they were all interesting and thought-provoking...and the intro didn't give me much of a feel for what the "stated purpose" was, besides gathering some favorite stories by women about women. I don't know feminist short SF as well as I do novels, so I don't have any other nominees. > Did you feel the collection was truly a "feminist SF" collection, or > rather a "womanist" SF collection? OK, now you're splitting hairs, and I'm not sure how I'd define those as distinct, let alone how you're intending it, so I'll say...I don't know. :) > Did you read the stories in the order printed in the book? If not, what > method did you use? Favorite authors? Chronology of publication? More or > less familiar stories? I read them in order, which was interesting to me. The only one I'd read as a short story before, that I remembered, was Even the Queen. I'd read Zettel's fool novel, though, and McIntyre's Dreamsnake, and McCaffrey's Ship books. I discovered as I read it that I vaguely recalled Rachel in Love, as well, but I'd read it so long ago, it was almost new. > Which situations and / or characters lingered in your consciousness? > Why? I think July Ward interested me the most. I'd just finished reading "Passage", by Connie Willis, also featuring a maze of a hospital, so it was hard for it not to bring up associations from that, but I also thought the very idea of a July Ward was intriguing. I lived in a house with a couple residents for a year or so, back in college, and I've always thought it was horrible how brutal their schedules are, and every once in a while I ruminate over how best to overhaul the medical system in this country; this story brought another aspect into that, as well. (I do the same kind of thinking about education in this country, too; my parents were both teachers :). Reading Fool's Errand made me want to re-read the novel; I think that was the first book of Zettel's I ever picked up, and I LOVED it when I read it; it completely immersed me in the world, in the situation. > Did you read the collection as a whole in a short period of time, or > gradually, over a more extended time period? Read it straight through in a few days. -Sandy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 11:03:29 -0500 From: Dave Belden Subject: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU I find I have a lot to say about Le Guin, so please be warned I'm posting a long piece here. If this is out of line, I'm sure someone will let me know! It's a very long time since I read Le Guin's science fiction. I read the Earthsea stories to my son a few years back. But none of her sf since the 1970s or early 80s, when I started to write novels myself, inspired by her writing as much as anyone's. The calmness, groundedness of her tone, the beauty of her language and its simplicity moved me this time. I could feel my body calming down, a kind of joy spreading through me to read this prose. I felt I was in the presence of depth and wisdom, as well as of a real story teller. The voice sounded entirely true, everything believable. This in spite of the noticeable fact that there was nothing in the story that was technologically beyond us today, apart from interstellar space travel, and some hints that the 'neareals' (newsreels?) were in some way 'feelies' (Aldous Huxley's term in Brave New World) and not just movies. This technological backwardness is unrealistic, any way you look at it. The whole cell phone, PDA, web, net thing has happened so fast here in only the last few years, the computer thing entirely since Le Guin started writing, that it almost gives one vertigo to imagine a distant future, things will be so different. But in this story there are railways and cars, people pick grains off plants every day, plant rice in wet paddies; hospitals are big buildings with front desks etc. Some kind of technological reversion has happened, unexplained, to a very specific late 20th century tech level: she' s unapologetic about this apparent flaw. Don't get me wrong: I loved the story, but it made me wonder just why she is using a far future science fiction setting to tell her story. Another anachronism: At one point the group of radical teachers who are committed to teaching literacy, mourn that their work is irrelevant because the children who enter the net 'hear and see and feel what the Chief wants them to know,' which is summed up by one who says: "Literacy is irrelevant. The Chiefs have jumped right over our heads into the postliterate information technology." The story is thousands of years in the future, and that is only just happening then? It's what is happening now on earth. To get to different planets and evolve different kinds of eyes, etc. as in this story, humans would have to have been living with high tech (much higher than ours) for millennia. And yet a late 20th century issue, felt by every college teacher today, is presented as something new. It's hard to think of a clearer example of someone using a science fiction setting (and mauling most of the obvious 'rules' or logic of such a setting) to talk about current time issues. I loved Le Guin's response: "Books keep words true...It's cities that have to have books. If they don't, we keep on starting over every generation." This is a great and simple truth. As my current (small) publisher's motto has it, "Books Remember." Reading it in this new sf setting, made it fresh for me. Maybe that's reason enough. One of the nice things in the story, and I thought a bold thing in its way, was the race reversion: the oppressors are black. This is not a gratuitous insult to black people today, as it could appear. Quite the opposite. I read the message as this: the balance of the races in our world today is accidental, any human beings have the capacity to be oppressors as well as oppressed, give history long enough and they will be. I once had a women's bookstore reject a feminist novel of mine set in a far future matriarchal society because the matriarchy was insufficiently utopian - there were power issues, some people were less equal than others. I thought I was doing women the favor of assuming they were human beings, and therefore (almost?) as capable of fucking it up as men are. Le Guin does the same here with blacks vis-à-vis whites. Maybe easier for a black person to do than a white person? Quite apart from that, she could not have done it so easily without the far future setting. So she's in the serious parable business. You could say all sf is, but I don 't think so. Much has that element (after all there are only so many stories) but is really more about making up clever speculative ideas for amusement, especially playing with technology (like Fool's Errand in this anthology, which I thought very clever), or just finding new settings for the old stories (cowboys or knights in space): all of which I enjoy when well done, but it's the searching for real truths that drew me to sf: e.g. Huxley, Orwell, C S Lewis, Le Guin, Mary Doria Russell. Le Guin is dedicated to telling us truths about ourselves, and she loves and respects people. I hated the contempt Connie Willis showed for her ditzy young woman in Even the Queen, who joins the Cyclists without ever taking in that menstruation involves bleeding: this was such a Valley Girl caricature, and obviously meant to be funny, but just came across to me (as Janice Dawley wrote in her comments on it) as insulting. It reminded me of college teachers who have contempt for their students - I hope Willis isn't a teacher. Such a contrast to a book of Willis' I loved - the Domesday Book. Maybe she should just stay clear of attempts at humor. The power of Le Guin's writing is that she is talking about human beings, about our life now, and giving it different angles that can only be afforded by playing with the social setting and history. Mary Doria Russell explained about The Sparrow (for me the best science fiction I have read in twenty years) that she was not a science fiction buff, but chose sf because she wanted to raise the moral issues of one civilization meeting a radically different one, her imagination originally stirred I think she said by Columbus; and clearly the possibilities for that had run out in our world, so she had to invent an alien world. Likewise, I suppose, the Handmaid's Tale packed its punch by purporting to be a realistic future. I'm interested in why writers who could and do make it in mainstream novels, turn to science fiction. I find that often their sf works are some of the best sf around: because they really have something to say of deep importance and this is the only way they can find to say it. Whereas a lot of sf is written be people who love the genre first, and then cast around for what to write about. A last word (thank goodness) on Le Guin's anachronisms: She actually makes her future settings much more readable and accessible to her readers by making them so familiar, technologically: maybe this is one of the secrets of her success, paradoxically, as an sf writer, that there's so little s in the sf. It enables her to concentrate on the different anthropologies, tribal and social customs her people are trapped in. I confess I only managed to read the first five stories and Le Guin's in the anthology so far. Inertia I wasn't much taken with: I guess I have burned out on near future doom scenarios, I have read so many, both science fiction and supposedly real. Most of the latter turned out to be Chicken Little: overpopulation is now billed to turn into a declining world population before my son is old; the oil didn't run out and we will probably leave much that's left in the ground when renewables take over. OK so there's plenty of room for gloom with genetic engineering and global warming etc., and plagues we can't deal with are certainly with us already, and much worse than AIDS can easily be imagined. But I just can't see us dealing with a plague in the Inertia way: can anybody? Maybe it's because there actually are enough real depressing possibilities that I have lost patience with extra, gratuitous sf ones? I was into doom in my 20s, in my 50s I need hope. Just a personal reaction. I liked Rachel in Love as a fantasy story; I rooted for her and was happy there was a happy ending, but it didn't work for me as truth telling in any way. Was the purpose of putting the girl's brain in a chimp's body to reveal the horrific way we treat chimps in a new way? This is like those movies which are about an oppressed group but in order to give us a point of contact that we supposedly need, we see it all through a white American's eyes - like City of Joy, where the best characters were the Calcutta slum dwellers, especially the rickshaw driver, but we had to see endless footage of Patrick Swayze instead. On animals: Why have humans as the measure of all things: can't we yet tell stories straight from the chimp's point of view? Dave Belden Accord, NY davebelden@earthlink.net web page: www.davidbelden.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 13:39:25 EST From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU In a message dated 1/18/02 10:03:42 AM Central Standard Time, davebelden@EARTHLINK.NET writes: << can't we yet tell stories straight from the chimp's point of view? >> I hesitate to comment because I haven't read the anthology (unless I have and have forgotten it. A real possibility. :>)). But just a couple of ideas you mentioned : why not tell something from the chimps point of view? can we really do that? when 'we' are doing the telling? Even if we claim it's the chimps point of view, it's really us imagining that. Not a bad thing to try, but, if we think we're really thinking like the chimp, we are kidding ourselves. So in some ways, putting a human inside a chimp seems a bit more honest. If I was going to be really hardnosed about it, I'd say it's a kind of arrogance to think we can really get beyond the anthropomorphic viewpoint. But,OTOH, I always do find it interesting when people try at least to imagine what some other being feels, even if it is probably an impossible task in terms of the truth of it. The trying is worthwhile. In that respect, I often feel you don't need to go to science fiction to find aliens to study; just imagining what a deer feels living in the woods or what a lizard is thinking - or whatever you would call its brains activities - when lazing on a tree limb, is as big a job as imagining what's going on in the head of some completely fantasized being on some distant planet. Here we do have the same planet in common, but maybe that just makes us more likely to mistakenly think we understand something when we don't. (Of course I could carry this further and talk about whether we can ever really know what's going on in another human beings head...even if they tell us some of it...this question is really about the whole problem of creating any fictional world...the writers task...so ...very interesting. There's the quandary, the challenge, and what's the better way to approach it? Making it real, believable, being truthful. It's at least easier in that respect to try to imagine a human mind inside a chimp, than a chimps mind.) The other thought about LeGuin's anachronisms: not in reference to this particular story, but....far future or near future, technological progress doesn't necessarily continue in a straight line, and, just in our little dinky present human timeframe, can go "backwards" relatively easily. Throw in all the various ways culture, politics, economics can twist and turn, and I think you can pretty well put very many oddities together and still be believable, because that's the way human society is - a hodgepodge of often contradictory beliefs, cultural and technological artifacts, political makeshifts, economics. etc., that may have a veneer of cohesion, but underneath, is a roiling mess. Or at least, from a logical point of view, it's a mess. Maybe not so much a mess from symbolic or other points of view but decoding the meaning is a life's work, and more, for most of us, or maybe, all of us. It's a species wide human project, maybe. We individually construct our little worlds in the midst of all that and hang on for dear life. And much of the drama in fiction starts when characters begin to sense that their particular constructions are hiding something they hadn't seen or don't want to see. LeGuin is of course the daughter of anthropologists, whose job was/is to try to make sense of human culture. Probably she's more aware of the disconcerting flotsam & jetsom (is that the word?) combinations in human culture, and the unexpected ways that culture can develop. Personally, I think fiction when done well does a better job than social science of finding the meaning in things. But...well, the science is but a tiny slice of the whole reality. Now and in any fictional world. Whether the "anachronisms" work or don't in this particular story, ..as I said...I can't comment on that. So consider these musings on a theme, not an argument with your critique of the anachronisms. -Joy Martin ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 08:35:48 +1100 From: Maire Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU Joy and all I agree so much with what you are saying about not needing to go to sf to find aliens- look at the ants, whales, deer, even pet Fido (certainly Garfield What I find particularly ironic- is all the authors who write about aliens- and the aliens are little more than humans dressed in costume. When the other beings that share our own planet are so alien to us- how much more so would beings from other worlds! Yet the majority of authors seem unable to capture this. Maire Hard SF- Jan BOTM "Starfish" by Peter Watts http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hardsf Original Fantasy- Jan BOTM "Anubis Gates" by Tim Powers http://groups.yahoo.com/group/original_fantasy Soft SF- Jan BOTM "Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin http://groups.yahoo.com/group/soft_sf ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 20:35:27 -0600 From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] A womans Liberation To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU At 08:21 PM 1/17/02 +0800, Carol wrote: >I read the book from beginning to end late at night over about 3 days. The >story I found most intriguing was Vonda N McIntyre's, _Of Mist, and Grass, >and Sand_. Is this part of a novel because it seems unfinished? > I was left asking "What happened to these people?" As Sandy Cronin pointed out, this story became the first chapter of *Dreamsnake*. I recommend the full novel. Snake's abilities and training as a healer are developed much more and the variety of people and places she encounters is fascinating. I don't think I'm revealing much by saying that it becomes clear that sometime in the distant past the Earth was irradiated by a nuclear war, suffered environmental collapse, and is now in danger of contamination by extraterrestrial life forms. The surface is a wreck, and is only sparsely populated by people whose knowledge of their own history is fragmentary at best. Still, it comes across as preferable to the insular underground city, Center, which though technologically advanced is inbred and wracked with political struggles. McIntyre wrote another novel, *The Exile Waiting* that is set in the city. It is really strange! (and out of print, though copies can be bought directly from the author through Basement Full of Books: http://www.sff.net/bfob/) >I guess in _Even the Queen_ Connie Willis was attempting to depict a future >where clever women could control their bodily functions, while the >Cyclists, not knowing what they were in for, opted to return to a more >_natural_ state. I don't think the story suits this anthology because, the >idea that menstruation is a curse is more characteristic of the mindset >that feminists are challenging, than of the preferred choice of liberated >women. In this future the technology has evolved, but attitudes haven't: >Women's bodily functions are still being seen as distasteful, inferior, >abnormal. Certainly not liberating for me. And if one is going to pick on >the ickiness of bodily functions why confine the ridicule to women's >bodies? Why not suggest rectal shunts? Nasal shunts? The introduction Willis wrote for this story in her collection *Impossible Things* sheds some light on this question: "I've gotten a bunch of flack recently for not writing about Women's Issues. You hear a lot of this kind of talk these days -- as if we were dogs and cats and parakeets instead of people, and had not only different things on our minds but different mental processes altogether. Shakespeare also gets flack, in his case for being a Dead White Elizabethan Male, which apparently limits him to addressing only Dead White Elizabethan Male Issues. (Are there any? What on earth are they?) I hate this kind of literary demagoguery. Anyone who's ever read Shakespeare knows he had bigger fish to fry than Elizabethan Issues. He wrote about Human Issues -- fear and ambition and guilt and regret and love -- the issues that trouble and delight all of us, women included. And the only ones I want to write about. But, as I say, I've been getting all this flack, and I thought to myself, "Fine. They want me to write about Women's Issues. I'll write about Women's Issues. I'll write about *The* Women's Issue." So I did. I hope they're happy." If the story comes across as insulting, it's no accident. It appears to have been conceived as a "take this and shove it" gesture from the get-go. I wonder who exactly these offensive demagogues were? Judging from the introduction to *A Woman's Liberation*, Willis seems to be harboring a grudge even ten years later! ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: A Perfect Circle -- Mer de Noms "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 21:20:08 -0600 From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU At 11:03 AM 1/18/02 -0500, Dave Belden wrote: >I find I have a lot to say about Le Guin, so please be warned I'm posting a >long piece here. If this is out of line, I'm sure someone will let me know! Not at all -- it's always a pleasure. I have, however, snipped mercilessly. Re: the technology on Werel and Yeowe: >This backwardness is unrealistic, any way you look at it. Some kind >of technological reversion has happened, unexplained, to a very specific >late 20th century tech level: she's unapologetic about this apparent flaw. >Don't get me wrong: I loved the story, but it made me wonder just why >she is using a far future science fiction setting to tell her story. It all makes sense when you know that nearly all of Le Guin's SF is set in the milieu of the Ekumen, a sort of galactic federation of immense age whose base is on the planet Hain. Its mission is to locate, observe and perhaps make contact with planets that in the mists of prehistory were discovered and inhabited by humans then forgotten by the galaxy at large. In their isolation these populations may have developed skills unknown today (telepathy on Rocannon's world), may have radically altered biology (the androgynes of Gethen), or may have suffered total collapse and moved in a different social direction than any known on Earth (as in "The Matter of Seggri" or "Solitude"). Since the Ekumen are continually rediscovering worlds, Le Guin has great freedom to go in whatever direction she wants in a particular story, mixing and matching cultural attributes, technological advances or devolutions, and whatever biological variations she finds interesting. Given her oeuvre, the question at this point might be "why NOT set this story in a far future SF setting?" In this case, as you noted, she couldn't have made her point about the arbitrariness of racial divisions without the particular setting she used, and that's an important part of the story. I think it's also interesting that her mixing-and-matching has resulted in a society (on Werel) that corresponds to our current level of technology but also practices slavery and possesses a fairly rigid caste system. Le Guin doesn't believe in straight-arrow progress technologically or socially. Just because Western Civilization has taken a certain path doesn't mean that another civilization will develop in the same way (unless it is colonized and forced to conform, but even then there is local history). By tweaking one or two elements of a real-world situation, Le Guin can come up with a whole new set of problems and a very different flavor from one story to the next, while connecting them on a macro level and making it clear that all this can coexist -- it is all one enormously various reality. There is a political element to this design. She is saying that there is no One Truth, there are only local truths and the numerous connections between them; there is no One True Economy -- Hain itself is a sparsely populated planet scattered with agrarian villages, not a humming metropolitan center; there are no True Eternal Sex Roles, etc. This sounds like a critique of much SF that assumes the future will be white, male, and capitalist -- and it is -- but more fundamentally I think it is a critique of anthropological models that were discredited in her father's day but have continued to haunt the Western imagination. >I'm interested in why writers who could and do make it in mainstream >novels, turn to science fiction. I find that often their sf works >are some of the best sf around: because they really have something to >say of deep importance and this is the only way they can find to say >it. Whereas a lot of sf is written be people who love the genre first, >and then cast around for what to write about. I'm curious what mainstream authors you mean when you say this. You seem to be (and please correct me if I am wrong) talking about Le Guin, Russell and Atwood -- a diverse bunch whose approaches to the genre are quite different. Le Guin has always written realistic fiction, fantasy and SF and actively resists being pigeonholed. Russell is a newcomer with just two books to her credit, both SF. Can she be called a mainstream writer when she hasn't written any mainstream books? Or are you saying she *could* write mainstream if she wanted to? If so, couldn't the same be said of any number of SF authors? As for Atwood, I've heard that she denies *The Handmaid's Tale* is SF, preferring to call it a "dystopia". Presumably that avoids damaging genre associations and puts her in the company of acknowledged classics like *1984* and *Brave New World*. As time goes on, I feel more and more that genre distinctions are largely about industry politics and marketing, not about the works themselves. Mainstream is assumed to be the genre anyone would write in if they could -- there's more money, more prestige, etc -- and SF is for untalented hacks and "message" fiction. I know that is not what you are saying, but I do wonder why you have placed these two genres (and I do think "mainstream" is a genre) in juxtaposition this way. >I liked Rachel in Love as a fantasy story; I rooted for her and was happy >there was a happy ending, but it didn't work for me as truth telling in any >way. Was the purpose of putting the girl's brain in a chimp's body to >reveal the horrific way we treat chimps in a new way? This is like those >movies which are about an oppressed group but in order to give us a point >of contact that we supposedly need, we see it all through a white >American's eyes ­ like City of Joy, where the best characters were the >Calcutta slum dwellers, especially the rickshaw driver, but we had to see >endless footage of Patrick Swayze instead. On animals: Why have humans as >the measure of all things: can't we yet tell stories straight from the >chimp's point of view? I think I understand your criticism, but I agree with what Joy Martin said: >"can we really [tell something from the chimp's point of view]? when 'we' >are doing the telling? Even if we claim it's the chimps point of view, >it's really us imagining that. Not a bad thing to try, but, if we think >we're really thinking like the chimp, we are kidding ourselves." It might be more immersive and mind-bending to read a story told from the point of view of a character that is alien, but too often I find that such characterizations are cut from whole swathes of stereotypes the author consciously or unconsciously harbors about real-life Others. SF (particularly sci-fi like *Star Trek*) often cuts corners and can be very offensive in its stereotyping. With sufficient research and thought I believe the pitfalls can be navigated, but I don't blame Murphy for, in a way, just calling the whole thing off by making her main character mentally half human-American-adolescent-girl to begin with. I also think the story tried to do several different things, only one of which was to depict the treatment of chimps in American research labs. It trained a spotlight on the bizarre construct of romantic love and the piecemeal way young people learn about it. It metaphorically investigated the mind/body split and the ways it applies to adolescents whose bodies are changing and whose self-image is in constant flux. And it showed the process of discarding cherished ideals as a part of growing up. She really packed a lot in there, now that I think about it! Kudos to Pat Murphy. Well, this message has gone on much too long. I'd best send it, and hope that it all makes some kind of sense... ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: A Perfect Circle -- Mer de Noms "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 20:22:51 +0800 From: Dale Edmonds Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU Rachel in Love has always been one of my favorite stories - I have it in an anthology somewhere around here (possibly Playboy, I'm not sure why. Their anthology is really good.) I wanted to comment on this as a piece I'm working on is trying to use an alien's POV, and I've not yet found a really satisfyingly alien POV in scifi yet - one that felt truly alien. I didn't read it as a POV from a chimp or from a human. Rachel was a strange blend of them, and the story to me was about how Rachel was neither one nor the other, how she tried on roles and had to discover for herself a satisfactory end. I didn't see it as a happy ending either - she lost a lot in her choice for her own safety, not because she wanted that. Part of the story that rang true with me was Rachel's grief at her father's death and that awful loss that can't be fixed, can't be altered, setting off the rest of the events - her choices are limited and she has to find a happiness in what she can. It does pack a lot in to a short story, and I agree with Ms. Dawley - adolescence, the mind-body split, the awkwardness of love and sex and attraction. It packs all these themes in but leaves the reader (well, me at least) with just a few strong images - Rachel in make-up, Rachel leaving the lab - and a sense of grief and hope for her. Dale Edmonds dale@oggham.com Also - if there are Ursula Le Guin fans out there, the-ekumen list at www.yahoogroups.com is in the midst of some really interesting discussion about Dispossessed. >>I liked Rachel in Love as a fantasy story; I rooted for her and was happy >>there was a happy ending, but it didn't work for me as truth telling in any >>way. Was the purpose of putting the girl's brain in a chimp's body to >>reveal the horrific way we treat chimps in a new way? This is like those >>movies which are about an oppressed group but in order to give us a point >>of contact that we supposedly need, we see it all through a white >>American's eyes ­ like City of Joy, where the best characters were the >>Calcutta slum dwellers, especially the rickshaw driver, but we had to see >>endless footage of Patrick Swayze instead. On animals: Why have humans as >>the measure of all things: can't we yet tell stories straight from the >>chimp's point of view? > > I think I understand your criticism, but I agree with what Joy Martin said: > >>"can we really [tell something from the chimp's point of view]? when 'we' >>are doing the telling? Even if we claim it's the chimps point of view, >>it's really us imagining that. Not a bad thing to try, but, if we think >>we're really thinking like the chimp, we are kidding ourselves." > > It might be more immersive and mind-bending to read a story told from the > point of view of a character that is alien, but too often I find that such > characterizations are cut from whole swathes of stereotypes the author > consciously or unconsciously harbors about real-life Others. SF > (particularly sci-fi like *Star Trek*) often cuts corners and can be very > offensive in its stereotyping. With sufficient research and thought I > believe the pitfalls can be navigated, but I don't blame Murphy for, in a > way, just calling the whole thing off by making her main character mentally > half human-American-adolescent-girl to begin with. > > I also think the story tried to do several different things, only one of > which was to depict the treatment of chimps in American research labs. It > trained a spotlight on the bizarre construct of romantic love and the > piecemeal way young people learn about it. It metaphorically investigated > the mind/body split and the ways it applies to adolescents whose bodies are > changing and whose self-image is in constant flux. And it showed the > process of discarding cherished ideals as a part of growing up. She really > packed a lot in there, now that I think about it! Kudos to Pat Murphy. > > Well, this message has gone on much too long. I'd best send it, and hope > that it all makes some kind of sense... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 21:27:43 +0800 From: Carol & Phil Ryles Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] A womans Liberation To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU Janice wrote: > As Sandy Cronin pointed out, this story became the first chapter of > *Dreamsnake*. I recommend the full novel. sometime in the distant > past the Earth was irradiated by a nuclear war, The surface is a > wreck, and is only sparsely populated by people whose knowledge of their own > history is fragmentary at best. Still, it comes across as preferable to the > insular underground city, Center, which though technologically advanced is > inbred and wracked with political struggles. McIntyre wrote another novel, > *The Exile Waiting* that is set in the city. It is really strange! Stranger still, I remember reading *The Exile Waiting* years ago, possibly when it first came out. It was one of my favourites, and for a long time I looked for other books like it. I didn't find many, as at that stage I only had the local library at my disposal. I didn't know about Dreamsnake. Anyhow, I'll be reading both this week as my uni library has them on shelf :) Quoting Connie Willis: >"I'll write about *The* Women's Issue." Oh. Cheers, Carol. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 12:29:36 -0500 From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU Janice, you wrote: > It all makes sense when you know that nearly all of Le Guin's SF is set in > the milieu of the Ekumen, a sort of galactic federation of immense age > whose base is on the planet Hain.... This was very helpful to me in explaining Le Guin's mechanics - how she set up a future history to give her free range for creating any kind of society she wanted. You went on: > This sounds like a critique of much SF that assumes the future will be > white, male, and capitalist -- and > it is -- but more fundamentally I think it is a critique of anthropological > models that were discredited in her father's day but have continued to > haunt the Western imagination. This was very interesting to me too. I haven't read much anthropology. Would like to know more of what you are talking about: models that ascribe a certain kind of social structure too rigidly to a certain technological level? Le Guin has a beautiful mix of understanding sociology, while presenting her different sociological possibilities to us through the prism of character and story. This may be the perfect way to introduce modern Americans, raised in a highly individualistic culture, to the effects of culture and society on the individual. I wrote: > >I'm interested in why writers who could and do make it in mainstream > >novels, turn to science fiction. You replied: > I'm curious what mainstream authors you mean when you say this. > You seem to be (and please correct me if I am wrong) talking about Le Guin, > Russell and Atwood -- a diverse bunch whose approaches to the genre are > quite different. Le Guin has always written realistic fiction, fantasy > and SF and actively resists being pigeonholed. Russell is a newcomer with just two > books to her credit, both SF. Can she be called a mainstream writer when > she hasn't written any mainstream books? Or are you saying she *could* > write mainstream if she wanted to? If so, couldn't the same be said of any > number of SF authors? As for Atwood, I've heard that she denies *The > Handmaid's Tale* is SF, preferring to call it a "dystopia". > Presumably that avoids damaging genre associations and puts her in the company of > acknowledged classics like *1984* and *Brave New World*. As time > goes on, I feel more and more that genre distinctions are largely about > industry politics and marketing, not about the works themselves. > Mainstream is assumed to be the genre anyone would write in if they could -- there's > more money, more prestige, etc -- and SF is for untalented hacks > and "message" fiction. I know that is not what you are saying, but I do > wonder why you have placed these two genres (and I do think > "mainstream" is a genre) in juxtaposition this way. What I meant was, as you say, that 'mainstream' gets better press, money, prestige and so it becomes a question why authors who are successful there turn to sf. I'm sorry to hear that Atwood won't claim the sf genre word for her book. Doris Lessing was somewhat the same - she didn't like 'science fiction' for her series, but came up with 'space fiction' instead: so maybe less based on rejecting sf for its genre reputation, than for the word 'science'; which to me sounded pedantic of her - I don't know what she was really after there. I was thinking also of Huxley, Orwell, C.S. Lewis, Naomi Mitchison (Memoirs of a Spacewoman), George Bernard Shaw (Back to Methuselah), Cecilia Holland. (Shall we add Shakespeare to the list, for the Tempest?). Why include Mary Doria Russell? Mmm. Maybe I'm guilty of what you suspect there - of thinking that "she *could* write mainstream if she wanted to" - but I think it was more because she introduced herself as a non-science fiction writer turning to sf for what it could do for her project, and her next project is a historical thriller about Jews caught in the Nazi occupation of Genoa. So she's just a writer, not an sf writer. (I duck, as missiles come flying in). I too would like to get rid of the genre thing - I am astonished that some people claim that Brave New World is not science fiction, because it's a classic novel written by a non-sf-genre writer. Clearly publishers have found genre a good shorthand way to market stories (especially poor quality stories that couldn't make it otherwise?), and clearly lots of readers and fans like it that way - it gives them an identity to gather around. But clearly also some publishers know that they had best put different covers on some sf novels that they think can reach a wider audience: look at Russell's covers, or the Handmaid's Tale: both say 'a novel of general interest.' It's partly the fans' fault that they have created such a ghetto, that publishers and writers have to distance themselves from it to get a wider sale. Is 'mainstream' a genre? Yes of course, in one way. I think I was half using it for something else, though, which is really indefensible of me, but I want a word for it: and really it is a word for what 'mainstream' claims to be but isn't: the novels that genuinely attempt - and succeed! - in illuminating the human condition. Of course we know that lots of sf does that (as does much detective or historical fiction), even that in some ways sf deals with massive moral / philosophical / socio-political and other questions better than most 'mainstream' fiction which has narrowed its focus and scope disastrously since Dostoevsky, Balzac and co. I want best of the last century lists that ignore genre altogether. But look at the debates over The Lord of the Rings, and whether its literature or not? Ah! Literature. I was forgetting that word. How much feminist sf would anyone put under the heading: Literature? Or is that not a feminist question? Dave ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 22:03:54 -0500 From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU At 08:39 AM 1/17/02 -0800, Sandy Cronin wrote: >I think July Ward interested me the most. I'd just finished reading >"Passage", by Connie Willis, also featuring a maze of a hospital, so it >was hard for it not to bring up associations from that, but I also >thought the very idea of a July Ward was intriguing. I lived in a house >with a couple residents for a year or so, back in college, and I've >always thought it was horrible how brutal their schedules are, and every >once in a while I ruminate over how best to overhaul the medical system >in this country; this story brought another aspect into that, as well. If you enjoyed "The July Ward", you might want to check out Sharon Farber's (S.N. Dyer is a pseudonym) "Tales of Adventure and Medical Life", which was a regular feature of the fanzine *Mimosa* for several years. I found their web site at http://www.jophan.org/mimosa/. Very interesting -- and funny. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: Jory Nash -- One Way Down "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 18:32:48 -0500 From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU At 12:29 PM 1/22/02 -0500, Dave Belden wrote: >I haven't read much anthropology. Would like to know more of what >you are talking about: models that ascribe a certain kind of social >structure too rigidly to a certain technological level? Yes, that's part of it. A rigid hierarchy is another part of it. Lewis Henry Morgan's evolutionary stages of mankind (three levels each of Savagery and Barbarism, but only one of Civilization), were all keyed to a group's technology and assumed a natural progression from one to another -- from imperfection toward perfection -- somewhat like the religious concept of the Great Chain of Being. The first section of Le Guin's story "The Matter of Seggri", "Captain Aolao-olao's Report", strikes me as a humorous reference to this sort of early ethnography that blatantly valued a society more highly the closer it came to Western civilization and that made no attempt to understand how a society came to be the way it was. Franz Boas' "historical particularism" was in part a critique of evolutionism. It focused on the unique history of each culture and held that most commonalities between groups were a result of cross-cultural exchange rather than metaphysical influence. Le Guin's father, A.L. Kroeber, was a disciple of Boas. There are other theories out there (ethnoscience, structuralism, etc.) but I don't think I'm stretching when I say that historical particularism was the most influential "paradigm shift" of anthropology's short history, and that most work being done for the past fifty years assumes it as a base. Yet most popular culture is still firmly stuck in the world view of L.H. Morgan, assuming straight-line progression from primitive savagery toward some kind of perfection. Common terms like "pre-industrial" and "pre-literate" make it really obvious. I really appreciate that Le Guin offers an alternative to this sort of thinking. >Is 'mainstream' a genre? Yes of course, in one way. I think I was half using >it for something else, though, which is really indefensible of me, but I >want a word for it: and really it is a word for what 'mainstream' claims to >be but isn't: the novels that genuinely attempt - and succeed! - in >illuminating the human condition. Of course we know that lots of sf does >that (as does much detective or historical fiction) , even that in some ways >sf deals with massive moral / philosophical / socio-political and other >questions better than most 'mainstream' fiction which has narrowed its focus >and scope disastrously since Dostoevsky, Balzac and co. I want best of the >last century lists that ignore genre altogether. But look at the debates >over The Lord of the Rings, and whether its literature or not? Ah! >Literature. I was forgetting that word. How much feminist sf would anyone >put under the heading: Literature? Or is that not a feminist question? I have no objection to it, but I do think it's important to realize that some works of feminist sf may not make the cut as "literature" but are still important if what you care about is feminist sf itself. In fact, one could say that the very fact that a novel is feminist means that it will "illuminate the human condition" in a way that a non-feminist work will not. Depends where you stand. ;-) In any case, there's quite a lot of feminist sf I would call "literature", even given the ambiguous politics of that term. Le Guin, Candas Jane Dorsey, Maureen McHugh, Molly Gloss, Suzy McKee Charnas, Karen Joy Fowler, Marge Piercy, and Joanna Russ have all written challenging, stylistically satisfying books -- and that's just off the top of my head. There's a lot more out there; exploring it is what this listserv is all about! ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: Jory Nash -- One Way Down "I've built my white picket fence around the Now, with a commanding view of the Soon-to-Be." -- The Tick ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 12:00:29 EST From: Joy Martin Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: A WOMAN'S LIBERATION To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU In a message dated 1/28/02 5:28:04 PM Central Standard Time, jdawley@BELLATLANTIC.NET writes: << Literature. I was forgetting that word. How much feminist sf would anyone >put under the heading: Literature? Or is that not a feminist question? [Dave Belden] I have no objection to it, but I do think it's important to realize that some works of feminist sf may not make the cut as "literature" but are still important if what you care about is feminist sf itself. In fact, one could say that the very fact that a novel is feminist means that it will "illuminate the human condition" in a way that a non-feminist work will not. Depends where you stand. ;-) >>[JDawley] illuminating the human condition...well put. There's lots of writing out there discussing the biases presumed in the so-called 'universalism' of 'literature' , in the traditional sense. Not unrelated at all, actually, to the bias of presumed 'progression' towards the Western techno models. Glad you took the time to answer this. Many feminist and other writers, not in science fiction alone (not in literature alone either), have addressed these questions in great detail and thoughtfulness. Just lately I've been reading Adrienne Rich's 'Arts of the Possible', a collection of various essays over the last 20-30 years or so that touch on these questions.-Joy Martin