From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Fri Sep 10 19:37:43 1999 Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 20:49:51 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG9906B" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 02:02:57 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG: Slow River I was quite angry when the abuser was found to be Lore's mother. Like Susan, I too think statistics show that in reality the majority of children are abused by men: fathers, stepfathers, uncles, brothers, friends of the family. Yet it seems in stories woman are as likely as men to be the abuser. In fact I stopped watching both Law and Order and Homicide last year when their two parter about the abuse and murder of a teenage model found her mother to be the abuser (a mother sexually abusing a teen age daughter, please!) I know there are probably mothers out there sexually abusing their daughters just as there are wives physically abusing their husbands, but why one would want to emphasize this minority is beyond me. It seems to me like camouflage for the real problem of abuse. Were it anyone but a feminist author writing this I would give a completely critical review and advise everyone I knew not to read it. Since Nicola Griffith is the author, however, I just remain baffled. As to what I liked about the book, there was much. I loved the water treatment plant. I saw such a system, on a very much smaller scale, in which bacteria, fish and plants were used to clean the water, and it was beautiful. The idea that beauty can grow on waste and make it clean is inspirational both in the physical and emotional sense. Lore was able to survive her kidnapping and the perceived disregard of her family; the sexual exploitation by her lover; the realities of the shave-a-buck, work-the-employee-to-death capitalist system in which she was the employee and not the owner, and she grew into a person who understood the machinations and inhumanity of that system. It's hard to give up privilege. She was used to designing plants, she knew what was necessary to run them, but to actually have to muck around in the wastewater herself was an eye opening experience for her, and one she lived up to almost heroically. Phoebe said: "Lore's passivity bothered me. Was she unable to act in her own defense, when she was naked and scared, because she had not had to do that before? " I found Lore absolutely not passive. I thought it amazing that she found a way to escape the kidnappers even though she was naked, drugged and terrorized. How many of us would be prepared for such a situation and how many would have the wits and courage to escape? I was somewhat concerned about the amount of thought she gave to the man she killed. He was her kidnapper, even though he had been the kinder one, but she knew they were going to kill her if she didn't act. Why did it bother her so? I guess in her previously privileged life it had never occurred to her that she would have to kill someone to survive, this act was as important to her as the abuse she received as evidence that her life would never be the same. I liked how the book showed so clearly the way a woman could be lead into prostitution and loyalty to her pimp. This has always been a difficult thing for me to understand. But Lore felt gratitude toward Spanner, sexual attraction, a very much more accepting attitude toward sex than most women I know, a sense of obligation, and an urge to protect the vulnerable parts that Spanner showed. I wonder if this is what motivates most prostitutes. It was very believable. One more criticism. Every time the workers took their lunch breaks I cringed. How in the world did they walk around in muck for hours then blithely sit down to eat in their very contaminated clothing? It almost made me sick. Their entire breakroom must have been about as clean as the inside of my toilet. I could not believe those scenes. Changing out of the suits or covering them with protective gear before you even entered the breakroom would have had to be required in any such business; yet Lore didn't even mention it except to say that to eat in the main lunchroom the workers would have to shower and what a waste of time that would be. She was so concerned about other life saving regulations in the plant, surely not eating in a sewer contaminated room wearing sewer contaminated clothing would have been just as life saving. Aside from a few strongly negative aspects, I liked this book. I liked the style, the language, the scientific interplay, the very novel use of a wastewater treatment plant setting, the growth of Lore, the little attacks on ageism, the symbolism with the plants and the tough little stray cat, Lore waking up to reality when she found the dead kitten. There were many really riveting and unique aspects which make me want to read Griffith's next book, just someone please reassure me it doesn't have a mother sexually abusing her daughter. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 10:06:53 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: BDG: Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 6/8/99 3:36:45 AM Pacific Daylight Time, hoop5@EMAIL.MSN.COM writes: << How in the world did they walk around in muck for hours then blithely sit down to eat in their very contaminated clothing? >> I worked in environmental health for almost seven years, and can tell you that people get used to being around the stuff. This made me think that the author really knew about waste treatment plants, or knew people who worked there, or else talked to treatment plant/septic system workers. Not everyone gets careless, of course. And some people, strange to say, never seem to think of it as a problem. We had a story about a septic tank pumper who dropped his upper plate in a tank, rinsed it off, and went about eating his sandwich. Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 8 Jun 1999 15:41:02 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: BDG: Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit One of the things I really liked about the waste reclamation business was the way it embodies the cyclical nature of life--as others have already said, the way life is renewed out of waste. This became very powerful in the indictment of Lore's family business through the old lawsuit and the impending crisis at the plant where Lore works. I really appreciated the beauty of the system that the bacterial technology permitted and so it was even more sickening to see how greed dictated how this technology could be accessed--that is, they made the bacteria dependent on "food" and then patented that food and sold it expensively in order to make more money off the technology. In the both the past disaster and the coming one the failure of the system is due to the use of less expensive bacteria food. So of course the company can claim no fault since if the "proper food" had been used it would not have happened. Isn't Lore kidnapped on the eve of the company's lawsuit victory? Anyway, this is all the more horrifying because the exact same thing is happening in the real world with those terminator seeds. It also reminds me of that movie (I'm blanking on the name--the dreaded Keanu Reeves starred) where they create the technology for free power and when its creator wants the technology to be free to all "they" murder him. It's a sick sick world that would destroy such a technology rather than see it available for free. Altering the technology to make sure there'll be a profit from it is mighty sick too. (Come to think of it, that horrible movie version of Johnny Mnemonic also dealt with a drug(?) company that wouldn't make a disease cure available for free--and doesn't that sound all too familiar?) The gradual way that Lore finds out her talented coworker was a victim of her family's business is chilling, especially when you realize that the stiffness of his limbs is because they are prosthetics "generously" provided by the company even though they won the lawsuit against them. Its' been a few months since I read it--isn't there a moment where it seems like he meant to sabotage the plant by putting the prosthesis into the system and Lore reflects that it wouldn't really have caused any damage? the business just goes on regardless of the lives (even Lore's) that is destroys. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 18:53:35 0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG Slow River - Online references MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Let me start with how much I enjoyed _Slow River_. For some reason it rested for 2 years on my TBR pile and I am so glad that because of the BDG I finally read it. Being a relatively recent book and a Nebula Award winner there are several online reviews of _Slow River_ available. *Valerie has already pointed out Nicola Griffith's website which also lists comments by L. Timmel Duchamp on _Slow River_ which are by far the best from those listed here IMO http://www.sff.net/people/nicola/ltd.htp Do not miss that! *A not so positive review on PostViews http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/past_f-g.html#slowriver Quote: 'However, Griffith's story is a bit of a loose cannon. The books jumps between first and third person, a device which is distracting at first and ultimately fails to add anything to the story. As written, Lore is stuck in a tragic orbit, falling under the power of Spanner (or her parents), breaking free, falling ... This cycle is extended some, to the point where the reader begins to lose sympathy, especially when it becomes obvious that Lore will always be a member of rich and favoured, regardless of where she runs. The climax, although logical in retrospect, shows up out of nowhere. Essentially, "Slow River" could lose about a third of the book and be much improved in the telling.' I simply do not agree. At least for me the jumps between first and third person instead of confusing provided guidance in which layer the story was at the moment. And it is significant that the 'present' perspective is told from the I perspective. *Steven Silver's reviews http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/griffith.html Steven Silver did not like _Slow River_. However, as he describes the story I wondered a bit if we read the same book. He calls _Slow River_ the 'archetypical Cinderella story' (?), finds it 'inexplicable' that Lore remains with Spanner instead of going back to her parents, finds that Spanner helps Lore for 'esoteric at best' reasons (did he not finish the book?) and says that Spanner is helping Lore in whatever ways she can. *Award Winner's Reviews http://www.jade-mtn.com/AWR/Books%20in%20HTML/slowRiver.html A more positive reviews with a link to a comment by a reader on the review *A review by jb on Laura Quilter's website (takes a bit long to load) http://www.wenet.net/~lquilter/femsf/authors.html#griffith * A review by Wendy Morris http://www.mnsinc.com/solomon/reviews/sloriver.html Wendy Morris makes IMO an interesting comment on the three plotlines of the book: 'Of the three, the narrative voice of Lore's childhood seems weakest, (although this might be relative to the skillful understatement of the intermediate voice and the obvious strength of Lore's final voice). The present tense delivery and disjointed quality of each scene risk trivializing these episodes as flashbacks whose purpose is to flesh out Lore's personal history. During the course of the book, this plot line gains importance in its own right, leaving Griffith's choice of present tense questionable.' Then there is an interesting interview with Nicola Griffith from 1994 http://sf.www.lysator.liu.se/sf_archive/sf-texts/authors/G/Griffith,Ni cola.mbox There are a few comments on _Slow River_ near the end. An older interview from 1992 from Realistic Break - A Talk Show of Fantastic Literature http://realitybreak.sff.net/archive/griffith1.htp Then there is an article (Check out future worlds of sci-fi writer Griffith) by Elisabeth Sherwin, originially published in Printed Matter September 1996 http://test.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/gizmo/nicola.html And SCIFI.COM has a transcript of a chat with Nicola Griffith which was part of the live coverage from the Nebula Awards in 1997 http://www.scifi.com/transcripts/nebula-97.5.html (very live) After I've seen now the American cover I know why everybody was raving about it on the list some time back. I have the British edition with a much more lame cover: The upturned face of a women surrounded by water bubbles. My only association is washing-powder. The American cover is great. Petra *** Petra Mayerhofer **** mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de *** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 14:13:55 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: BDG: Slow River I too was upset by the fact that the mother was the abuser. On the other hand, the emotional impact of it on me was, I think, exactly what the author intended; we'd been leading up to it for a long time, and so often the Sudden Revelation is a wash for me. (For instance, The Sparrow, which I will *not* say anything more about...) so perhaps in a literary sense it was a success. But it still kind of got under my skin for quite a while. For a very interesting take on this, though, there's an article on the author's website [http://www.sff.net/people/Nicola/ltd.htp, the last paragraph, though the whole article is interesting] which points out that there are *no* heterosexual relationships or actions, positive or negative, portrayed in this book. Sure, a lot of the relationships made me cringe, made me angry, made me snarl at the characters: "Just get out of there!" But wow, this portrayal (in a mixed-sex world, as opposed to _Ammonite_) is something I've never seen before. I found this book totally fascinating, I enjoyed reading it, I was pleased at how far the writing and the story structure had come from _Ammonite_. On the other hand, it made me feel sort of slimy, like I'd gone unpleasantly far into the mind of someone detestable. Ah, the perils of good writing. I really liked the comment someone made about the waste reclamation plant (which I *LOVED*!) being a metaphor for Lore's life, washing away the slime and the filth and turning out, if not something pure, at least something basically clean. Gave me another way to look at it, a little less grimy than what I'd been thinking. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 16:21:26 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: donna simone Subject: Re: BDG: Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >I was somewhat concerned about the amount of thought she gave to the man she >killed. He was her kidnapper, even though he had been the kinder one, but >she knew they were going to kill her if she didn't act. Why did it bother >her so? I guess in her previously privileged life it had never occurred to >her that she would have to kill someone to survive, this act was as >important to her as the abuse she received as evidence that her life would >never be the same.> A small point of clarity. It is told to us in the text that the surviving kidnapper was so upset with Lore killing the other man because they were going to someplace to let her go when she killed him. I believe this is explained in the first pages. Thus, he told her, he _had_ to drug her to death. I took that to be one of the reasons she reflected longer on, or more regrettably on, killing him. donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 17:07:21 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: BDG: Slow River: Setting In-Reply-To: <375D7FDE.15F8@people-link.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I liked *Slow River* and I loved the setting. I have read countless SF books that take place at some exotic planet, on a space ship or other extraterrestrial location. This is one of the few SF books that takes place in as mundane a setting as a factory (industrial might be a better word) location. And yet, this setting was made unique and interesting by being well researched and fascinatingly written. Usually, industrial settings in books are so generic that anything could be happening in them. I like the way the water treatment plant was almost another character in the book. This wasn't just any old factory that served as a bland backdrop. I found the science behind the water treatment very interesting. BTW I think I should mention that one of the best field trips my daughter's home school group went on was to a local landfill-- I had no idea that garbage dumps had become so high tech. Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 18:53:45 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Slow River Madrone wrote: "I worked in environmental health for almost seven years, and can tell you that people get used to being around the stuff. This made me think that the author really knew about waste treatment plants, or knew people who worked there, or else talked to treatment plant/septic system workers. Not everyone gets careless, of course. And some people, strange to say, never seem to think of it as a problem. We had a story about a septic tank pumper who dropped his upper plate in a tank, rinsed it off, and went about eating his sandwich." Well do I know that there are some people who don't believe in the germ "theory" of disease. We have a nurse who will don gloves to clean up after a delivery (covering her hands with blood, amniotic fluid, feces and urine) then take out her pen to write something on the chart, put the pen in her mouth while she does something else, take the pen out, put it back in her pocket, take her gloves off then maybe wash her hands. I have to say she's the exception and few of us are eager to eat the potato salad she brings to pot luck dinners. Lore, however, must know the power of microorganisms, her family fortune is based on them. I would expect that she of all people would show them great respect and either get the laxity of the breakroom changed, not eat there or not eat at all while she's at work. It seems any of those actions would be in character. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 13:36:24 0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: The Conquerer's Child MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT I cannot remember if it was already mentioned on the list. The fourth book in the Holdfast series by Suzy McKee Charnas called _The Conquerer's Child_ is out. Last week there was a positive review by Tamara I. Hladik in Science Fiction Weekly ( http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue111/books.html#cc ). This week there are 2 letters commenting on the book/review ( http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue112/letters.html ) One of them rather stupid (and inadvertently funny): 'I haven't read Charnas' book and won't. Let me make a few guesses and tell me if I'm wrong. The women in McKee's gender-racist universe are all rational and work together in near perfect harmony. None are ugly or have fat butts. They have found perfect sexual satisfaction in lesbian relationships. All the men are brutal, underhanded and incapable of even the slightest form of nobility. "Queen Beeism" is non-existent. Vanity and jealousy don't exist either.' To which Charnas just responded with 'Okay, I'll tell you: you're wrong, on every single count including my name, which is not "McKee." ' >From what I gather from Hladik's review some of the content of _CC_ is better to understand if one has read the first 3 books. Otherwise it would be a nice choice for the BDG. As soon as it's out in paperback of course. Petra *** Petra Mayerhofer **** mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de *** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 12:53:38 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: The Conquerer's Child MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Petra Mayerhofer wrote: > From what I gather from Hladik's review some of the content of _CC_ > is better to understand if one has read the first 3 books. Otherwise > it would be a nice choice for the BDG. As soon as it's out in > paperback of course. In addition to *The Conqueror's Child*, Tor has reissued *Walk to the End of the World* and *Motherlines* as a combined trade paperback called *The Slave and the Free*. I think it would make a marvelous choice for the BDG. For those who don't know, Charnas received one of the Retroactive Tiptree awards for these two books. Some comments about them can be found at http://www.tiptree.org/retro/index.html I was so excited about *The Conqueror's Child* that I was checking Amazon.Com almost daily during the month of May to see if it was available yet. Last week I finally got my copy and this past weekend I finished it. I'm still trying to marshal my thoughts about it. I liked it and was troubled by it -- there are some very sad moments. However, I was delighted by a smattering of humor here and there. At the beginning of the book Eykar Bek is in his beloved library puzzling over how to shelve an ancient book that, judging from a brief quotation, appears to be a trashy Western. Of course it would make sense that the books left over from before the Wasting would be a motley collection, but the image of this latter-day scholar grappling in all seriousness to understand genre literature that most people today would find trivial really made me chuckle. Much later on, Alldera asks him what he has learned recently from his reading and he replies that he has learned about fatness and how obsessed the Ancients were with their weight. Both find this a very strange thought. Since reading *The Conqueror's Child* I've been inspired to revisit the older books. I highly recommend them. They are all currently in print, so get your copies now! -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: XTC -- Apple Venus Volume 1 "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 11:36:25 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Freddie Baer Subject: Of Interest to BDG:Sun and Moon Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII >From SFWire http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?1999-06/09/21.40.film 9:40pm 9-June-99 Henson Options McIntyre's Moon Jim Henson Pictures has picked up the film rights to Vonda N. McIntyre's Nebula Award-winning novel The Moon and the Sun. The book takes place in 17th century France, where King Louis XIV orders the capture of a rare sea monster that he believes may hold the secret to immortality. Christopher Renshaw will make his feature film directorial debut on the project, which is being scripted by Laura Harrington. McIntyre said she'll be available to assist Harrington with "whatever research and insight I can offer." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 19:06:46 -0800 Reply-To: shander@cdsnet.net Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Sharon Anderson Subject: Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit About Lore's "obsession" with her kidnapper, two thoughts: 1) She thought she had murdered someone. No matter who it was, I doubt if she could have been blase about it. She believed she had murdered him. And yet, as I think we all would, she hoped she was mistaken, that she had not truly committed that particular heinous crime. 2) From everything I've heard in the media about those who debrief high-profile kidnap victims, it seems to be "understood" and accepted that after a time, anyone --ANYone -- would naturally identify with and form some sort of (however twisted) bond with their kidnapper(s). I just assumed that this was what had happened to Lore. Sharon ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 10 Jun 1999 23:27:34 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Slow River Reading L. Timmel Duchamp's eloquent review http://www.sff.net/people/Nicola/ltd.htp, could make me ashamed to write anything about the book, but what the hey, I'll plod right along anyway. The sexual economy idea was so well said. I was thinking along the same lines: that all the sexual activity was between women so having the mother as the abuser made perfect sense. Even the fact that it fit into the literary formula of the book still doesn't make it work for me. The fact that Spanner was the pimp though was the only way I could have understood the loyalty Lore felt for her. It's easy for me to say men lie about love, it's such a common place occurrence that I don't know how women, even desperate women, could believe them enough to prostitute themselves for them and still think love is involved in the relationship. But since Spanner was a woman I could believe that she was very damaged by something, that she couldn't love in a healthy way, but that she did love Lore after a fashion. Spanner was painted so well I could accept that she had emotions. Then came the character of Paolo. To me he was not a believable character at all but one written in only to advance ideas. He showed a fluid grace in his body but not in his limbs? That was good foreshadowing, but isn't grace expressed by the limbs? Other than undulating like a swimming dolphin, I don't believe grace can be expressed with only one's trunk. I believe someone quoted the essential message of his suicide attempt incorrectly. Paolo's throwing his human body into the water treatment plant would have caused only a minor inconvenience; but if he had thrown in his prostheses, that could have fouled the machinery. The individual human has little effect on economics, it is things, products which are important. So, much as I felt cheated by the character of Paolo and unable to relate to him as an emotional being, after thinking about him, I realized he fulfilled his purpose. That made me think that maybe Griffith just doesn't write men well, except Tom seems just as perfect in his small way as Spanner. He was a whole believable person as well as a way to move the story along, and I loved the message he gave about ageism. Lore tried to show that older people just couldn't adapt to new systems like no longer being able to use money and having to rely on the PIDA instead. But Tom says, "It was 12 years ago. I was a bit uncertain at first: What if something went wrong in a computer and my account got tied up? How would I pay the rent then? But after a month or two I liked it. No more rushing to the bank. No more filling out bills. Everything's so easy." Tom shows Lore that of course many older people can adapt to change, that's how they got to be old. But she realized that stereotypes will work in her favor. People think you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and she knew fashionable donators would give her a bundle to support that stereotype. I loved that whole charity scheme. I have to think that Nicola got a bit of a kick out of writing it. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 01:24:48 -0600 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Valerie Eakes-Kann Subject: Re: BDG Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sharon Anderson wrote: > > About Lore's "obsession" with her kidnapper, two thoughts: > > 1) She thought she had murdered someone. No matter who it was, I doubt if she > could have been blase about it. She believed she had murdered him. And yet, > as I think we all would, she hoped she was mistaken, that she had not truly > committed that particular heinous crime. > > 2) From everything I've heard in the media about those who debrief > high-profile kidnap victims, it seems to be "understood" and accepted that > after a time, anyone --ANYone -- would naturally identify with and form some > sort of (however twisted) bond with their kidnapper(s). I just assumed that > this was what had happened to Lore. > > Sharon Yes I agree, I'm studying karate and learning a few ways to harm people that are above and beyond pain, at least I think so. (Eye gouges, eardrum popping, knee popping...) and there are some things that I know I would not be able to do to an attacker unless there were absolutely no other options. (i.e. I'm completely pinned I have only one finger free near the person's face, I gouge...) I think about the attacker, about the damage I would be willing to do. Killing someone is killing someone, especially so directly with your own hands... ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 01:20:16 +1000 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Sharon Conners-Holliday Subject: Re: BDG: Slow River: Setting MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit greetings, Stacey wrote: >I liked *Slow River* and I loved the setting. I have read countless SF >books that take place at some exotic planet, on a space ship or other extraterrestrial location. I also found the setting for _Slow River_ interesting. I was wondering if those of you that have read a lot of fem.sci.fi, ( i have not as yet) find that the novels are set less in outerspace, or on exotic planet etc. or not? The use of location is interesting, lots of enclosed spaces like Spanners house after her kidnapping, and the most oppressive of all the tent she was kept held captive in. It seems to be quite a recurring theme (at least to me...) and it is such an acheivement in the reshaping of her identity when she gets her own apartment and asks Ruth(?) and her partner into that space to help her decorate. As if Lore is ready to allow people into her life again and she is going to actively choose who is part of this development of her new self. >I like the way the water treatment plant was almost >another character in the book. This wasn't just any old factory that >served as a bland backdrop. Great observation. I hadn't thought of it like that. Need to look at some of the passages again. With all the complex processes that go on to transform the water and waste, as mentioned earlier, like what Lore goes through herself ( i think it was Joyce) newbie, although longtime lurker braving the matrix. shaz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 21:55:29 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Syela Shratdeshm Organization: Indiana University of Pennsylvania Subject: Re: BDG: Slow River MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Jennifer Krauel writes: >I've been re-reading Slow River and like it even better the second time. I only finished my first reading today (which is why I'm responding to bits and pieces here), but I get the feeling the book is meant to be re-read. So many details about the van de Oests come out piece by piece that Lore seems more innocent upon re-reading than she did the first time through. >I'm struck by how effectively the switch between first person voice in >the present and third-person voice in the past evokes the sense of two >different Lores. The past life of privilege and innocence is represented >as if it's happening in a dream, to someone else. The even-numbered chapters did give me the impression that Lore-the-girl was distinct from Lore-the-woman, the protagonist. They seemed too much like exposition for my taste, though, like old home movies interspersed in an interview, old newsreels spliced into a documentary. Valarie Eakes-Kann writes: >I struggled at first with the changes in focus and voice. [...] >I only saw two Lores, the previous and the present, but there >were all of these references to three. I'm assuming the other Lore was >the kidnapped, naked and desperate Lore. The changes I struggled with were the three-wavy-lines changes, from Lore-with-Spanner to Lore-on-her-own. Every time, I had to put the book down and do something--get a drink, check my mail, whatever--so I could handle Lore as I after having a different Lore in my head as she. The three Lores correspond to the three forms--first/past, third/past, third/present--used in the book. From: Big Yellow Woman >The gradual way that Lore finds out her talented coworker was a victim >of her family's business is chilling, I figured it out before she did, which bothered me. Lore's reasonably bright, even if her memory may work best when dramatically appropriate. Where she is trying to pinpoint his accent, Venezuelan came to mind because it had recently been mentioned. She should know this; it takes a short time to go over a map in your head, and Caracas should stand out with as much as she remembers about it. The book uses a lot of foreshadowing (what is that oily liquid, anyway, I asked at first) but this is one place where (for me) it failed. Joyce Jones writes: >Then came the character of Paolo. To me he was not a believable >character at all but one written in only to advance ideas. Yes, I'd agree. I thought he was a plot device, a coincidence far too improbable for the tangible, realistic tone of the novel's present. What interested me most in Paolo's plotline is where Lore thinks of giving him the money she's scammed. Throwing money at the problem to alleviate her guilt, make her feel better, even though she knows it won't change anything, just like an Almsgiver. Stacey Holbrook writes: >I liked *Slow River* and I loved the setting. Well, I didn't buy the setting. When I read the word 'nanomechs', everything fell apart. The book focuses on biotech, and nanotech doesn't fit with it--or with the timeline, or with many of the 20th century tidbits it contains. When I read the word 'nanomechs', I put the book down. When I read the word 'nanomechs', I realized that it was a SF writer's way of saying "This is a genre novel and I make the rules here. To enjoy it, you must agree not to look at the setting from outside." After much thought, I accepted the camera's eye, agreed to treat the carboard fronts as real, and started reading again but taking only a few notes. I have a debugger's mentality and a concentration in world-design (from a gaming angle, which may be stricter than SF writers need), so anachronisms always bother me, especially in 21st century settings. I won't nitpick here, but it takes away from my enjoyment (and understanding) not to be able to analyze elements of the setting because they conflict too much with one another. When not peeking behind the scenes, I found several things to like about the book. I really liked Spanner; I felt like I knew her, and could picture her clearly. This is the thief who took care of you, I thought, who taught you just enough so you wouldn't get hurt like he'd been, who both liked and envied you because you were bright and innocent, still had in front of you the choices he'd left behind. I could understand Lore's attachment to and frustration with Spanner, and her sense that she couldn't get out of the hole they were in alone. I could also understand Spanner never wanting to get out of that hole into a layer she didn't know where her skills would be useless. I found the description of the places well done. I could see the tent and the gray metal chair, see the flat on Springbank (lovely misnomer), Lore's garden, Ratnapida's fountains. I didn't need so much description of smells--was her sense of smell genetically augmented, and if so, how could she abide the untreated wastewater? Another thing I liked was the attention given to the Hedon Road plant. The focus on the rather unglamorous work emphasized that these were real people doing real-people things. This brings up something that could be called feminist about the novel; not only does it show women as independent (of men), it shows women as people, basic people. Being third-generation, I found that quite refreshing. Syela ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 02:36:41 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Slow River Hmm, I've been rethinking my impatience with Lore's obsession over the man she killed. I understand what you all are referring to that she realizes she has killed another human being and should normally have a strong reaction to the finality of that action. I also had not thought about her identifying with the kidnapper, what's the name of that syndrome? I don't know, however, how she could ever be sure they were going to let her go. I still have to dwell on the idea that she was held naked, drugged and completely helpless by them, or at least that was their intention. She thought they could do whatever they wanted to her. Here is an intelligent, upper class, talented, powerful (because of her education and family connection), sexually attractive young woman completely at the mercy of vulgar strangers. Also, she had a history of sexual threat from her beloved mother even if she didn't remember the threat consciously. Possibly I'm not as forgiving as some, but I could imagine the rage she felt would overshadow any feelings of regret. In the back of my mind I remember that the one she killed was the one she felt was nicer. Still to go through such a humiliating and frightening experience, I just can't see how she could let go of her rage so easily. On the other hand, Lore didn't have full access to her feelings of rage, so I guess that would allow for the more acceptable feminine feelings of forgiveness and self doubt to take over. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 10:20:13 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Allen Briggs Subject: Re: BDG Slow River Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Possibly I'm not as forgiving as some, but I could imagine the rage she > felt would overshadow any feelings of regret. At the time. For me, anyway, "rage" of the intensity that would allow me (to even want) to seriously injure or kill another human is a fierce and (thankfully) temporary emotion. No matter the situation that I was in at the time, I know that I would feel regret for a long time. That regret would fade with time, just like the rage (albeit more slowly). Just like the rage, it would never go away. > to her feelings of rage, so I guess that would allow for the more acceptable > feminine feelings of forgiveness and self doubt to take over. Feminine? Or human? -allen ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 11:57:40 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: BDG Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 6/12/99 2:38:43 AM Pacific Daylight Time, hoop5@EMAIL.MSN.COM writes: << On the other hand, Lore didn't have full access to her feelings of rage, so I guess that would allow for the more acceptable feminine feelings of forgiveness and self doubt to take over. >> I don't think it has to be this complicated. Nor do I think that forgiveness and self doubt are prerequisites to regret and complex feelings about killing. Have you ever killed anything? Its a lot different than in the movies. Our ancestors recognized all the ambiguous feelings associated with killing, and even had ceremonies asking forgiveness, or of thankfulness, about killing animals for food. I think the author is courageously drawing a person with a full range of emotions and reactions. Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 12 Jun 1999 14:25:19 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Nicola Griffith Subject: BDG -- Slow River, some responses MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm intrigued by the differences, sometimes major, sometimes minor, between my intent as an author, and various readers' interpretations, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to respond to some of the questions raised in the Slow River discussion so far. This is not meant to be The Final Word on any of these topics, rather (I hope) the basis for more discussion. Nanomechs: When I was writing the book, I thought of nanomechs and the bioremediation of pollution, i.e. the Van de Oest family business, as two seperate technologies. Bioremediation is, as Syela rightly points out, the focus of the novel; it is serious technology. I saw nanotech, on the other hand, as a rich person's toy, and thought of it in context of fun, trivial things like hair colouring. It's been a long time since I wrote (or read) Slow River, so I can't remember how and when I actually use the term "nanotech," but if I did so in the context of the Hedon Road plant or other bioremediation, then it was a mistake on my part. Sigh. I'd be grateful if someone who has been through the book recently enough to remember could let me know where and how the term was used, so that I can try get it corrected in a future edition. Hygiene: Several people have pointed out that Lore would have been smart enough to know that germs and food do not mix healthily. You're right. I decided that everyone would just wash their hands and eat, rather than go through the strict decontamination procedures set up for the official cafeteria. Again, if I forgot to make this clear, then it was a mistake on my part; I just assumed that readers would slot it in for themselves. The perils of making assumptions.... Feminist: What makes a piece of fiction "feminist"? A great deal depends upon one's definition of feminist, of course, but to me a feminist novel is one that does feminism as opposed to being about feminism. I like to think my novels (all three of them) fall into the former category. I don't talk explicity about the roles of women or men, this is not where my focus lies, but the plots and characters would be impossible without a feminist sensibility. I'll look forward to hearing more about what others think on this subject. Abuse: A few people have been disturbed at the notion of mother/daughter sex abuse; I know I am. Any kind of sexual abuse is a terrible thing, whether the perpetrator is male of female. It seems to me that a lot of writers and readers embark on such fiction lightly (you could even argue that writing about it trivializes it--I don't believe so, but one could so argue). I tried to take it seriously. Mothers do sexually abuse their children. There is no way we'll ever know to what extent this happens, but it does happen. Does it happen as often as fathers abusing their children? I don't know, but I don't think it matters. Fiction has never reflected the true state of the world; it mirrors what the writer finds important or upsetting or incomprehensible. Fiction is often about heroes and monsters, often an attempt (certainly on my part) to make the extraordinary accessible so it can be understood. It seems to me that a lot of feminists, male and female, carry this mistaken belief that women are somehow less monstrous than men; this would mean that they are also less human, because to be human means to be capable of the whole spectrum of human behaviour, good and bad. We shouldn't hide from the fact that women hurt people, too. Few readers seem to have had problems with the idea that Spanner abuses Lore, maybe because I spent a lot of time showing how and why this might come about. Probably if I'd spent more time examining Katerine and her motives, her sexual abuse of Lore would have seemed more acceptable, fictionally speaking. It's always a hard line to draw: what do you explain, and what do you not? How smart is Lore? Lore is very smart, and she's had a great education, both formal and informal. I believe that any competent teenager who has been raised to be confident and knowledgeable has the ability to undertake project management. It's not just that a young person such as Lore would be capable of the job, but that the experienced workers would also know what had to be done--would help her over the humps. Lore is smart, as I've said, but she's not superhuman. She won't always pick up on little clues--clues that we, the reader, have had laid out neatly for us. Take, for example, the topic of Paolo's accent, and how Lore didn't recognize it immediately. Here's my reasoning (which no doubt lots of readers will disagree with ): Lore is a native Flemish speaker (born and bred in Amsterdam). She has heard people from Venezuela speak their native tongue. When she meets Paolo, she is living in an unspecified European country (but most readers will work out pretty easily that it's England). How on earth is she going to know what a Venezuelan-tinged British-English accent sounds like? Point-of-view: This was one of the hardest things about writing Slow River: how do I show Lore's evolution? And how much of the three layers of POV (and I do see them as layers as opposed to threads) is really accessible to the present day Lore as opposed to the reader. I've been thinking about this one a lot and wondering just when and how it came to be an accepted convention that the reader should not know more than the protagonist. I suspect some of it--or at least the idea's prevalence--stems from the ubiquitousness of visual media. The viewer is almost always "in the moment" with the character, especially in TV. Contrast this with a Jane Austen novel, or a sixteenth century play. But I digress. My vision of the three layers is that they are lacquered, one atop the other, and poor old Lore (that is, present day, first person Lore) doesn't have much conscious access--especially to the most distant Lore, the dreamlike, present tense. That's the reason I used present tense, to give it the air of unreality, to make it a little unreliable. It seems not to have worked for some people. It's not a perfect technique, but it was the best I could do at the time. Actually, to tell the truth, I'm pretty proud of the technique . I'm also a little disappointed that no one has mentioned the layered effect and how it relates to theme, especially given Lore's musings on the jungle and niches and so on. Ah, well. The title: I agonised over the title, and only came up with this one at midnight the night before I mailed the ms. to the publisher. I'm happy with it, though. It reflects my belief that life itself is a slow river that flows majestically seaward, unstoppable, no matter what we do to interfere with it. We can pollute our lives, we can try stem the flow and turn to other things, we can hurry through parts of it and get stagnant in others, but in the end, water flows. Life goes on. A bit trite, maybe, but I'm a novelist, not a philosopher . Lore's character: One of the tricky things about being a novelist is that one is limited by one's imagination and experience. I tried to construct Lore based on certain parameters--her upbringing, her family etc.--but, inevitably, my main guide is myself: if *I* had been brought up rich, and was insecure about my family, and abused, and as smart as Lore (and so on and so forth), how would *I* act? That's how I work. Other writers may use different techniques, but this is the only one I know: to go there myself, imaginatively. This can be unpleasant, sometimes, thrilling others, but most often results in ambivalence: how does Lore feel about Spanner, really? Mixed. How does she feel about her family? Mixed. How does she feel about having maybe killed someone? Mixed. What I saw as bothering her most about the killing is the uncertainty: did she or didn't she? She doesn't know. She'll never know. All this relates to a question Phoebe (I think it was Phoebe) asked: did I mean for readers to feel ambivalent about my characters and the way they abuse and are abused? When I set out, no. I wanted the book to be a paean of joy, to life and survival, but as I worked on the novel, this ambivalence crept in and took root and I saw that it had to be this way. People aren't perfect; no villian believes they are evil; they always have a reason--what seems to them like a perfectly good reason--for what they do. No hero is perfect, either; they all have faults--if they're human, anyway, and I find myself less and less interested in the superhuman variety. (Which is where Aud, from The Blue Place, comes from, but that's another story....) Part of the reason I wrote Slow River was to explore certain things, to find out for myself why two people in seemingly similar situations make radically different choices. I found out that no two people are *ever* in the same situation. It might appear that way, but each has different histories, different internal resources, different motivations, and therefore makes different choices. I'll stop here. I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this discussion--it makes me think. Always a blessing. Nicola Nicola Griffith http://www.sff.net/people/Nicola ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 00:46:03 -0600 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Valerie Eakes-Kann Subject: Re: BDG Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joyce Jones wrote: > > I still have to dwell on the idea that she was held naked, drugged and > completely helpless by them, or at least that was their intention. She > thought they could do whatever they wanted to her. ... Possibly I'm not > as forgiving as some, but I could imagine the rage she felt would overshadow > any feelings of regret. In the back of my mind I remember that the one she > killed was the one she felt was nicer. ... > > Joyce Joyce, I see what you are saying about the rage. I've talked myself in and out of the argument below and maybe it could support either thought on her mental energy spent on this person. One thing that comes to mind is the perhaps Catholic guilt thing and wanting to keep one's "record" clean, whether officially or personally. I have this image of crime and "bad things" as being layered with levels, maybe like Dante's Inferno. Each level can be breached and once it is breached it's easier to do something else on that level, it brings one closer to the next, and depending on the person's feelings about what they've done it changes their view of themselves. Lore didn't want to become a "killer". Just after the kidnapping, when her feelings about herself where clean(ish) at least in the directly killing area, she found that desperate action had brought her into that area. It changed her view of herself. So that's the argument *for* obsessing about him. Now on the other hand, once her identity was taken from her and she was trying to deal with being in the killer section of hell, the way was a bit more foggy and she found herself in the prostitute or wierd sex things area of hell and it took her a while to figure out she didn't want to be there. So why would she still be concerned about this guy? Because that act was partly the reason she found herself in the situation with Spanner, it all happened when her identity was down and out. It changed her into someone she didn't really know. Ok, I keep arguing for the same side, I guess I understand why she was worried about the consequences of that act. I agree that logic would dictate her rage and anger should burn within her much longer than it seemed to do. But it would have burned inside of Lore 1. Lore 2 wasn't so sure, she was in a different unsafe place, maybe rage was a luxury she couldn't afford mentally and emotionally. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 02:09:32 -0600 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Valerie Eakes-Kann Subject: Re: BDG -- Slow River, some responses MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I realize I'm responding with my humble opinions on a book, to the person who actually wrote it, so please take my comments with a grain and realize that I did too.... :) Nicola Griffith wrote: > > Feminist: > What makes a piece of fiction "feminist"? A great deal depends upon one's > definition of feminist, of course, but to me a feminist novel is one that > does feminism as opposed to being about feminism.... Practical as opposed to Academic? I like that approach. It makes it a bit more difficult to talk about the feminism, though, because we have to find it when it is everpresent, instead of talking about how it was discussed. I also like that Lore didn't have to come out to her parents or friends she just fell in love (or something) with Spanner and then (really I think) with Magyar. > Abuse: > ...It seems to me that a lot of feminists, male and female, > carry this mistaken belief that women are somehow less monstrous than men; > this would mean that they are also less human, because to be human means to > be capable of the whole spectrum of human behaviour, good and bad. We > shouldn't hide from the fact that women hurt people, too.... I agree, I do not have much patience for sf that has an all female society that is so peaceful because it is all women. But what about the differences in statistics about violence in boys and girls? Of course a girl's bite comes about in a completely different way. And the statement someone made in an earlier post about abuse by men happening more often and women/girls are more often abused? It doesn't support the idea that abusees always become abusers or even at an equal pace. Could each of these two genders be less than human but in different ways? Males for not being allowed to express feelings of "weakness" and Females for not expressing anger and "strength" (going by stereotypical definitions)... That sounded bad, not that abuse is a strength by any stretch of the imagination... you know what I mean, right? I'm coming to the conclusion, slowly and largely against my desire for it to be otherwise (sometimes), that men and women are different and have different strengths and weaknesses that are just not valued equally by Western society. Does this also include levels of violence and what about the statistics of violence? I'm not sure what to make of it. > Few readers seem > to have had problems with the idea that Spanner abuses Lore, maybe because I > spent a lot of time showing how and why this might come about. It also takes Lore a while to figure out or decide to see that she's being abused, and me as the reader because it was sorta consensual. The drug confused the issue for her as well. Also Spanner is closer to being a peer. Peers abuse eachother from elementary school on. (Exhibit A: Middle School/Junior High/College (France)) Mothers are NOT supposed to abuse their children at any time, in any way. They're supposed to know better. > Point-of-view: > I've been thinking about this one a lot and > wondering just when and how it came to be an accepted convention that the > reader should not know more than the protagonist. I suspect some of it--or > at least the idea's prevalence--stems from the ubiquitousness of visual > media. ... And mystery novels... > My vision of the three layers is that they are > lacquered, one atop the other, and poor old Lore (that is, present day, first > person Lore) doesn't have much conscious access--especially to the most > distant Lore, the dreamlike, present tense. That's the reason I used present > tense, to give it the air of unreality, to make it a little unreliable. ... The present tense does have a dreamlike quality. In present tense things seem to be happening as they are being written, there hasn't been a chance for the dreamer (Lore? the reader?) to do any analysis. It just is and in a strange way factual the way details of a dream are factual. I usually tell my dreams in first person... (I'm walking along an alley and the monster jumps out behind me, I run, and then I'm the monster, no really I'm the monster) The past tense has the feel that it's all been written out and is understood but I just happen to be on the first line. Now what about the differences between 1st and 3rd person? The first person doesn't feel unreal at all. If felt clearer, closer to the thoughts of Lore. Are these opposites? We are in the mind of Lore, or at least seeing what she is allowing us to see. Shouldn't that be very subjective based only on what Lore sees and hears? Yet, the first person is like watching a movie about the 18th century made in the 90's, while the 3rd person is a movie about the 18th century made in the '70s. The look and feel is similar but the sideburns are interpreted differently. As someone living in the '90s I relate a little more to the movie made in the '90s. One would think that the 3rd person should be more objective, but the first person is where Lore finds herself, her (I think) true self, her "I". In the 3rd person sections she is working on finding herself. So were the 3 Lores - rich Van de Oest Lore, Kidnapped Lore, new-life Lore or actually rich Van de Oest Lore, Lore with Spanner, Lore as herself? Or are there actually 4 or more Lores and Lore only saw or felt 3? but we had access to more... > I'm also a little disappointed that no > one has mentioned the layered effect and how it relates to theme, especially > given Lore's musings on the jungle and niches and so on. Ah, well. I will need a second reading to do that... I was a little slow on the uptake - I had trouble figuring out there were only 3 POVs. There seemed to be flashbacks within flashbacks... I did wonder about themes for each voice (no really I did) but I didn't figure out what theme went with which. I'll get back to you... Valerie P.S. Thank you for the insight... ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 01:58:15 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Slow River Thanks Nicola for your informative post. I was most interested in your stress of the ambiguity of characters. Being a Gemini, I feel I'm allowed to want conflicting things at the same time; so I find myself both enjoying a character's (or real person's) ambiguity and wishing she would be more clear in her responses to life events. I see that part of Lore's response to her killing the captor was in not knowing for sure that she had done so. That makes sense. Madrone, I have killed a couple of mice. I hated doing that, even though one of them had ruined my washing machine motor. So, theoretical musings aside, it does make sense that Lore would have enduring strong feelings about killing a human. However, I also know how strongly I react to being controlled. I don't think the horror over having been so vulnerable would ever really leave me, not without lots of therapy. That horror would lead to anger which would blot out, or at least overlay, any feelings of guilt I would have about causing another person's death. But I guess that's myself I'm talking about, not Lore. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 02:02:53 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: human vs feminine feelings allen's response to: >> to her feelings of rage, so I guess that would allow for the more acceptable >> feminine feelings of forgiveness and self doubt to take over. was >Feminine? Or human? Of course forgiveness and self doubt are human feelings, but encouraged in women and discouraged in men. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 19:09:54 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: donna simone Subject: Re: BDG -- Slow River, nanomechs MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Nanomechs: >When I was writing the book, I thought of nanomechs and the bioremediation of >pollution, i.e. the Van de Oest family business, as two seperate >technologies. Bioremediation is, as Syela rightly points out, the focus of >the novel; it is serious technology. I saw nanotech, on the other hand, as a >rich person's toy, and thought of it in context of fun, trivial things like >hair colouring.........Sigh. I'd be grateful if someone who has been >through the book recently enough to remember could let me know where and how >the term was used, so that I can try get it corrected in a future edition.> I do not recall from my reading the term nanomech being used about anything except 'rich person toys' like hair coloring as you mention. I do not believe you have anything to correct in the use of the two concepts for future editions. one persons reading...... donna ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 20:14:07 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Nicola Griffith Subject: BDG -- thanks MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks, Syela and Donna, for the nanomech responses. And thanks Valerie for the input about POV. Nicola <----- waiting eagerly for more discussion ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 13 Jun 1999 21:40:48 -0400 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: donna simone Subject: Re: BDG Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <----- waiting eagerly for more discussion> Briefly, I find myself completely unable to critique or rigorously discuss this book. I just like everything about it too damn much. When I read books by Nicola I feel like I have gone home. The characters take you into imaginative mental space that rings so true to me. Even if the activities or circumstances are completely unfamiliar. As much as I love M. McHugh, which everyone had to hear about for days, I love Nicola's books as much. I am just wallowing in reading pleasure these days. Toss in Molly Gloss Dazzle of the Day between Mission Child and Slow River and I could be convinced I have passed on to reading heaven. And they are all such different writers. But in all of them, I feel a sense of being in totally confident, knowing, hands. And in the company of real people. Sigh, I will _try_ to come up with something more intellectually stimulating.........well not before I am done submerging myself in the pure pleasure. donna ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 15:43:32 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Slow River OK at the risk of beating this into the ground: one last post about the breakroom. Imagine that you have a job that leaves you covered in feces and mercury. Time for lunch you wash your hands thoroughly then go into the breakroom and open your lunch onto a nice white table. You reach over the table to look at a message on the bulletin board, scratch your knee, change the channel on the TV, sit down, reach down to pull your chair closer to the table, tap your friend on the shoulder and ask her to pass the salt, and all your friends are doing the same routine sort of actions. Look around, the table, and your tuna sandwich, will be littered with smears of feces and little silver balls of mercury. It won't take too long before you and your co-workers are out with hepatitis and or mercury poisoning. Mere hand washing wouldn't do the trick. Really I'm not an obsessively clean person, but that breakroom just didn't seem like something Lore would be involved in. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 18:49:33 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Nicola Griffith Subject: Re: BDG Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Really I'm not an obsessively clean person, but that breakroom just didn't > seem like something Lore would be involved in. You do, of course, have a good point. What can I say? How about "Ooops...." . Nicola Nicola Griffith http://www.sff.net/people/Nicola ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 19:19:22 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: BDG Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 6/14/99 3:45:33 PM Pacific Daylight Time, hoop5@EMAIL.MSN.COM writes: << that breakroom >> OK, here's the voice from Environmental Health back on line. Joyce, people get used to stuff. And a lot of people aren't worried about it in the first place. i enjoyed the complacency because it so fit what I have seen. I had one fellow come in whose rental's septic system was failing. He told me calmly how he had dug up the lines and found the break. I asked him if he used gloves. He said no. I asked him if he was careful with his boots and clothes afterward. He told me (and this is a quote), "Oh, I don't have to worry. They are clean people." I lectured him about pathogens, but he just blinked politely and left. I more people were as aware as yourself, we wouldn't have near the problems with water pollution as we do. I have worked with people who harvested shell fish off of beaches where their toilets direct-flushed (fortunately, I am no longer in environmental health). Nicola, really, it read like real life. I thought the book was great (It was sent to me by one of my friends: she knew I would get a kick out of the recycling plant). Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 16:48:58 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: BDG Slow River In-Reply-To: <1ff9b2e2.2496e7fa@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed >I lectured him about pathogens, but he just blinked politely and left. I >more people were as aware as yourself, we wouldn't have near the problems >with water pollution as we do. I have worked with people who harvested shell >fish off of beaches where their toilets direct-flushed (fortunately, I am no >longer in environmental health). When my mother was going to school to learn acupuncture part of the work involved a clinic, the usual "you get free care, our students get to practice". Lo and behold when the day came for orientation, they didn't use rubber gloves. For those not familiar with it, acupuncture is a form of Chinese medicine in which extremely fine needles are inserted in the patient in patterns/locations according to this Chinese system. In short, you are puncturing the skin of, and coming into contact with the bodily fluids of, total strangers. My mother pointed this out and suggested that students be required to wear rubber gloves. There was tremendous resistance to this, with administrators all the way up the line refusing outright (they didn't even want to *let* her wear gloves). They said, basically, that if you had a balanced qi and a good attitude you wouldn't be infected. ("So what you're saying," I finally said, "is that these people don't believe in the germ theory.") Eventually she told them that if they didn't shape up she'd go to the Board of Health and their licensing authority and they shaped up. This was seven or eight years ago. I was in high school and *I* was getting lectures in biology and health class about HIV and hepatitis. People believe what they want to believe. Sure, it makes me pull my hair out, and I couldn't bear to think about what that lunchroom was like in nearly as much detail as some of you have; but unfortunately that doesn't change much. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 20:47:47 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: BDG Slow River MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 6/14/99 10:51:08 PM, you wrote: <<> Really I'm not an obsessively clean person, but that breakroom just didn't > seem like something Lore would be involved in. You do, of course, have a good point. What can I say? How about "Ooops...." .>> You know what, that rang true to me. Growing up in Northern California, where school opening in the fall was somewhat dependent on the harvest.. I did I a bunch of grungy things for money... picked prunes, sorted apricots and raisins... even did a stint harvesting hops. You peel these off strings, and eventually if you aren't careful, the strings break through the gloves and then you get poisoned. Pays better than the other things... No Ooops involved. One gets immune to the danger. To the poison. Becomes part of the ordinary. I had problems with this book. I appreciated the skill, but didn't like the message. I bathed carefully, ceremonially, after I hd finished it. Not because of the sewer (I'm a long-time environmental activist) but because I felt Lore was so dumped on. Not liking a message doesn't have anything to do with its content. It's a helluva good book, Nicola, just uncomfortable for me to read. But that's my problem, not yours. best phoebe Phoebe Wray zozie@aol.com