Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 10:14:25 -0800 From: Bridgett Subject: [*FSF-L*] BDG: Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU The March selection for the Book Discussion Group is Sally Miller Gearhart's Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women. This was my first reading of Wanderground and I am filled with thoughts and ideas. It is difficult to know where to begin but, to kick off the discussion, I'd like to start with a few general questions. *Is this your first reading of Wanderground? *Science Fiction and Fantasy authors often create vocabulary for their worlds with varying degrees of success. What is your opinion of the Wanderground vocabulary? *Wanderground is written as a series of interconnected stories. Did you enjoy this format? Why or why not? *Was there one story (chapter) which you found especially meaningful or well crafted? If so, which one and why? *Throughout the book, there are portrayals of imperfect relationships among some of the Hill Women. What do you think Gearhart was getting at here? *In the chapter Opening, a saying is quoted: There are no words more obscene than 'I can't live without you.' Count them the deepest affront to the person. And yet the Hill Women seem extremely interdependent. In fact, it could be said the cost of the Hill Women's power is independence. Any thoughts on this? *Any thoughts on the Hill Women's reproductive implantment? *The hill women often end their psychic communications with the words Deep and Soon. How did you interpret this? *Female separatist societies are often portrayed as more cooperative than mixed societies. Is this a fair assessment? The chapter The Gatherstretch illustrates a female group decision making process. How does Gearhart's portrayal of women's cooperative decision making compare with your own real life experiences? Can comparisons even be made between fictional utopian societies and interactions between women in today's society? Would it be fair to compare and contrast the Hill Women's society with that of, say, the all female tribe on the reality television show Survivor? I look forward to your thoughts. ~Bridgett More information about Sally Miller Gearhart can be found many places on the web, including our own site: http://www.feministsf.org/femsf/reviews/gearhart.s.html and Sally Miller Gearhart's homepage: http://www.sallymillergearhart.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 10:16:49 -0800 From: Bridgett Subject: [*FSF-L*] BDG: Wanderground: Meeting the Gentles To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU When nominating Sally Miller Gearhart's Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women, I included an excerpt from an essay by Susan Stone-Blackburn titled "Single-Sexed Utopias and Our Two-Sexed Reality". In the excerpt, she discusses the chapter Meeting the Gentles and brings up some very interesting points. Would you care to discuss Stone-Blackburn's ideas? Any other thoughts specific to the chapter, Meeting the Gentles? (Below is the excerpt and a link to the complete essay.) From "Single-Sexed Utopias and Our Two-Sexed Reality" by Susan Stone-Blackburn: <> The full text of this essay can be found at: http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~dmswitze/slonczewski/stone-blackburn.html ~Bridgett ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 21:39:55 -0800 From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU At 10:14 AM 3/3/2003, Bridgett wrote: >*Is this your first reading of Wanderground? No, I read it some years ago, though probably not when it was first published. I remember liking it then, and worried that I wouldn't like it so much on this round, but I did enjoy the stories. >*Science Fiction and Fantasy authors often create vocabulary for their >worlds with varying degrees of success. What is your opinion of the >Wanderground vocabulary? This more or less worked for me, but it felt a little stilted. There were some things I just couldn't figure out how they worked, or if they were strictly mental or partly mechanical. >*Wanderground is written as a series of interconnected stories. Did you >enjoy this format? Why or why not? > >*Was there one story (chapter) which you found especially meaningful or >well crafted? If so, which one and why? The interconnected stories really worked for me, which isn't usually the case. I thought of it as a sketchbook, where there's just enough to hang your imagination on. The parts I liked best were the historical vignettes, I'm not sure why. Maybe the special powers mumbo jumbo got in the way for me. I did like the part at the beginning Alaka swam under the mountain. And the communication with animals. >*Throughout the book, there are portrayals of imperfect relationships >among some of the Hill Women. What do you think Gearhart was getting at here? I didn't think she was getting at anything, just showing relationships between people. I thought they were fairly realistic, and I appreciated the cranky or old characters. Actually, now that I think about it, I thought there could have been more conflict - it seemed as though all the women of that society took responsibility for their actions and emotions (eventually) and misunderstandings were always worked out, and that part seemed unrealistic. Perhaps it's hard to be telepathic and emotionally irresponsible? At any rate, I enjoyed this book the same way I enjoy the West Wing (a popular TV show in the US) - as a fantasy. And in my fantasy it's great to have women with special powers who are reasonable and strong and emotionally responsible. >*In the chapter Opening, a saying is quoted: > >There are no words more obscene than 'I can't live without you.' Count >them the deepest affront to the person. > >And yet the Hill Women seem extremely interdependent. In fact, it could be >said the cost of the Hill Women's power is independence. Any thoughts on this? I thought they were interdependent in the same way that all of nature is. Isn't there a difference between an unhealthy relationship and a communal society? To reframe this in Perdido parlance, maybe another way to look on it is that if you tell someone you can't live without them, you steal their choices. They can't stay with you freely. >*Any thoughts on the Hill Women's reproductive implantment > >*The hill women often end their psychic communications with the words Deep >and Soon. How did you interpret this? Both of these parts seemed like distracting mumbo-jumbo to me. I have no idea what those words mean. Frankly, the "deep" part seemed vaguely phallic to me. Yikes. >*Female separatist societies are often portrayed as more cooperative than >mixed societies. Is this a fair assessment? The chapter The Gatherstretch >illustrates a female group decision making process. How does Gearhart's >portrayal of women's cooperative decision making compare with your own >real life experiences? Can comparisons even be made between fictional >utopian societies and interactions between women in today's society? Would >it be fair to compare and contrast the Hill Women's society with that of, >say, the all female tribe on the reality television show Survivor? I thought the group decision-making process was too much a fantasy. And I speak from experience with lesbian collectives... They were too disciplined and good natured and cooperative. Even when there was dissent it was done by the rules. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure I would want to live in that world. It seemed a bit too sanitized, despite being carefully politically correct. The characters all seemed to be sleepwalking. Perhaps that was just the style, but it kept me at arm's length. This book reminded me of a lot of other books. I wondered while reading it about the relative publishing dates, and how much for example Starhawk was influenced by Wanderground. Here are some that came to mind: 1. Books of Great Alta - I thought the all-woman-with-special-powers society was more realistic in this one. At least Gearhart lets them actually be lovers! 2. Elizabeth Lynn is another San Francisco out lesbian writing SF, which might be why I was reminded of Northern Girl. 3. OK, so I could also name Starhawk in that list as well. I thought it was interesting to compare the special powers and consensus-based organizations with the Fifth Sacred Thing. The styles are quite different. I liked TFST better. Wanderground seems a little dated to me in comparison. 4. Compare the reproductive system with that of the free women in Charnas's Holdfast books (the horse-mating was a real turn-off for me) and going way back in BDG archives to Ammonite. I liked the Ammonite version better. Jennifer ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 13:57:27 -0800 From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: [*FSF-L*] BDG: wanderground To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU What's up with the lack of discussion around this book? Did nobody else read it? Or was it so uninteresting you don't care to discuss it? Are you just not yet finished with it? Or perhaps everyone is too busy to participate -- too many anti-war protests to attend? (note we're not going to discuss the war here, unless you can tie it into feminist SF or fantasy...) Jennifer ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 04:41:36 -0800 From: stefanie jenssen Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: wanderground To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU Hi, I read the book in 1995 and wrote an essay on it in my science fiction course in Liverpool. I was an avid reader of feminist sf at that time, but although the use of innovative language was fascinating, the tale felt somehow outdated from a feminist point of view. Reading it felt like reading a historic review on the feminist movement of the 70s. (Just a feeling, I wasn't there.) It seemed more dependent on a certain period in sf writing than books by Le Guin, Butler or Gwyneth Jones. Was that different in 1980? Anyone who read the book around the time it was first published? I look up my essay and come back if there is anything useful I can contribute with. I think the viewpoints on war and violence in Wanderground have already been discussed on the list in some way. Stefanie --- Jennifer Krauel wrrote: > What's up with the lack of discussion around > this book? Did nobody else > read it? Or was it so uninteresting you don't > care to discuss it? Are you > just not yet finished with it? Or perhaps > everyone is too busy to > participate -- too many anti-war protests to > attend? (note we're not going > to discuss the war here, unless you can tie it > into feminist SF or fantasy...) > > Jennifer ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 00:10:26 +0000 From: "E. S. Carnall" Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: wanderground To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU --- Jennifer Krauel wrrote: > What's up with the lack of discussion around > this book? Did nobody else > read it? Or was it so uninteresting you don't > care to discuss it? Are you > just not yet finished with it? Or perhaps > everyone is too busy to > participate -- too many anti-war protests to > attend? (note we're not going > to discuss the war here, unless you can tie it > into feminist SF or fantasy...) Having scanned a large collection of emails which I hope to read more carefully in yet a few days I can' resist a little participation. And this contribution on The Wanderground struck a chord with me. It struck me as a silly book. There was something quite unreal about the women's situation in the wanderground. I haven't gone back to it. It was on a 'women's sf course' I took in 1994. I had read it already then and I was annoyed that it was included rather Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home. (But I have already written about that book.) As I remember the 'bad' sections when the women were escaping from backlash or contemporary society were vivid. I can remember the feel of them. Perhaps that explains why there has been so little discussion of this book: there was a lot in the emails which I haven't been able to read - about rape, which is still a present horror. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 18:03:31 -0800 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: [*FSF-L*] BDG: The Wanderground To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU The Wanderground, although dated, is still an important book and seems oddly apropos in the current rush to war by a hyper-masculine bully boy with a chip on his shoulder. It was one of the first lesbian feminist utopias to come out of the lesbian renaissance of the 70's and, while sometimes strident, contains quite a bit of sly humor, including the fact that men can't achieve erections in the presence of the Hill Women, nor indeed away from the cities which form the base of their power. It has similar themes in many ways to Katherine V. Forrest's Daughters of a Coral Dawn, although the women of Forrest's book go a little farther away than the hills, and reflects a sense of despair that the status quo will ever change without a radical re-vision (to use a Mary Dalyism) of who we are and where we're going. But Wanderground takes this theme and extends it in a different direction than Daughters of a Coral Dawn. She exposes the interrelationships of women with men and speculates about what good may result from it while also demonstrating the environmental damage resulting from a fascination with mechanical *things*, which she characterizes as a male preoccupation, to the exclusion of the natural world. Quite recently the book was extended by the first part of a trilogy called The Kanshou, which details the life of an enforcer of sorts, who tries to keep the male population under control. Hopefully, the end is more hopeful than the beginning, which has all animal life on Earth terminate their existence and the sole remaining member of the Animal Kingdom on Earth being Homo sapiens. It's a dreary thought. But are we, in fact, heading toward a future where animals don't exist? Or where men don't exist? Do we need special powers to be able to exist in such a world, or are special powers a symbolic dream state, since it's only in dreams that we can fly, that comments on the underlying unreality of the situation in which the Hill Women find themselves? Can we find ourselves only in dreams? Or can we work to create a reality in which dreams come true? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 18:10:14 -0800 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] BDG: wanderground To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU At 01:57 PM 3/18/2003 -0800, Jennifer Krauel wrote: >What's up with the lack of discussion around this book? Did nobody else >read it? Or was it so uninteresting you don't care to discuss it? Are you >just not yet finished with it? Or perhaps everyone is too busy to >participate -- too many anti-war protests to attend? (note we're not going >to discuss the war here, unless you can tie it into feminist SF or fantasy...) Possibly. I know it worries me. But it ought to be fairly easy to tie in a war that promises to kill many civilians with the premise of Wanderground, to wit that men are violent, and the actuality of the hawks who've been drumming up this particular war for many years, almost all of whom are white males, and the possibility of a dramatic decrease in world security by abrogating the rules by which we've tried to live since the world wars. After many years of what looked like progress to me, the situation seems to be getting worse, and looking closer to the Wanderground milieu every day. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 11:06:42 -0500 From: Gwen Veazey Subject: [*FSF-L*] Wanderground To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU Lee Anne, E.S., Stefanie, and all, thanks for the thoughtful commentary. I haven't wanted to participate because I have not re-read the book. My copy is a wonderful trade paperback from 1984 with illustrations by Elizabeth Ross - are these included in later editions? This was probably the first feminist/separatist book I ever read, and I remember being in awe of it and thinking how important it was, maybe because I'd heard others say so. At any rate, I've kept it, and still think it's important as a political and emotional work. The lack of narrative tension hurt it as a story, but since parts of it were published in various magazines prior to coming out as a book, it wasn't really meant to be a novel, I suppose. My only firm memory/image from the book is when one of the characters thought herself into floating. As more of an sf than fantasy fan, this was just over the top, for me. Best, Gwen PS: The cover illustration is also nice - by Jim Hanlon ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 10:45:09 -0800 From: Lee Anne Phillips Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] Wanderground To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU At 11:06 AM 3/20/2003 -0500, you wrote: >My only firm memory/image from the book is when one of the characters >thought herself into floating. As more of an sf than fantasy fan, this >was just over the top, for me. Is it really any more "over the top" than a human being allowing an alien life form to bond symbiotically with his skin, which allows him to run at a rate of speed great enough to raise clouds of dust, physically move at the speed of light in combat, control people's minds with a mere word, and live forever? This is essentially the original Superman recipe. It was only later that he evolved from leaping tall buildings into free flight. Mental powers have been apart of "hard" SF since the days of EE Smith and the Lensmen, so I find it hard to fault Gearhart for using it to show the radically-changed nature of the Hill Woman world. And it would seem to come naturally for her, since one of her other titles is A Feminist Tarot. The interesting contrast between Gearhart and Herbert is that the fantasy indulged in by a man allowed him to perform supernatural feats of strength and speed that made him invincible in battle so he could take over the known Universe. Nyah ha ha! While a basically similar fantasy by a woman simply allowed her to float free of bondage to gravity for a while. The one made it easy to hurt someone while the other simply felt good. Tra la. The number of SF/F books written by men with more or less identical dreams to that of Herbert is legion, from Three Hearts and Three Lions to The Glory Road to Necromancer, prowess in battle is a perennial favorite with the boys, often with the aid of anomalous physical or mental powers that can turn a 98 pound weakling into the big man on campus. One of the endearing things about Wanderground for me was precisely that the powers of the Hill Women weren't used to control or hurt people.