From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Fri Sep 10 19:38:31 1999 Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 20:50:05 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG9908B" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 14:19:57 -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 Wild Seed Here's another vote for this book's being a very uncomfortable read. I thought Butler did a wonderful job of describing slavery from another perspective. She didn't go into the physical abuse side that we are accustomed to. I thought the way she described the boat trip, people being stolen or sold from their home land, the inability to communicate due to differing languages opened the experience to those of us who have never consciously been slaves. She suggested the other horrors of the slave ship while not letting them be visited on these chosen slaves. That was all very skillfully done. I also liked the initial encounters between Doro and Anyanwu, the interplay of their various talents. I was fascinated at the way she made Anyanwu become a healer, living long enough and having the drive and strength to test various diseases and cures on herself. This could easily have been an enlightening book just about Anyanwu and her various adventurers. When she first became a dolphin I could feel her swimming, feel the interplay between her and the other dolphins. It was sensual, pure enjoyment of the moment, for this women who is eternal (memories of the Summer Queen). Then the got to America and it all changed. As Suzy Charnas said, Butler did a very good job describing the compromises that one must commit to in order to stay alive as a slave. I could accept all of that. I had a little difficulty understanding how Doro's people loved him so, but Butler made the business of adjustment to slavery understandable. What I couldn't understand and couldn't accept was that Anyanwu wanted Doro by the end of the book, wanted him to stay with her because he wouldn't die. He seemed to make such minor adjustments in order to win her loyalty. He stopped killing people emotionally committed to him. Not the largest sacrifice I could imagine. Again, is this just commentary on survival as a slave? The slave mistress is committed to her owner and overlooks the fact that he remains morally defective to the core? What Doro offered Isaac, Anyanwu, and a few select others was a transcendent experience in their joining with him. I could see that that would make his people judge him by different standards than they would use for a mortal man. (It kind of gave the phrase "go into the light" seem a little less uplifting, didn't it?) Maybe Butler is saying that trying to judge life by our accustomed values and ethics doesn't allow for growth. Maybe she's saying that even those of us who feel most in control of our lives must yield to larger forces. Maybe ultimately there's no way to make those forces palatable or even understandable, but we must yield nevertheless, or die despairing of our inability to control them. But did she have to make the forces male? Even taken metaphorically, not as a strong woman yielding to a stronger man but as a human yielding to the forces of nature I can't to the deepest part of myself see those forces as masculine. This book, while giving me much to think of, doesn't entice me to read more of the series. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 20:28:24 EDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Kathleen Friello Subject: Cherryh autographed books MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit C.J. Cherryh is selling autographed copies of past books from storage at her site: C.J. Cherryh--Autograph ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 20:58:08 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Nataline Viray-Fung Subject: BDG Wild Seed Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello everyone, Newbie here, so please forgive me if I step on any toes or miss some aspect of established protocol. I liked WS very much, even though it was difficult to read at times. Most everyone has already touched on her being raped and Ines brought up the "pervasive and inescapable" quality of Doro's/patriarchy's power. What was troublesome to me was the lever which gave Doro so much of that power over Anyanwu. He offers her immortal children and threatens to kill her present children if she doesn't co-operate. Doesn't it seem that the dream of immortal children is also the dream of eternal motherhood? All Anyanwu seems to want is to be a mom and protect her children in every way possible. She says as much to Margaret. The argument here seems to be that it's an innate desire and she can't do much about it. It's the same old line we've been hearing for centuries: It's part of womens' nature to want babies and to fight desperately to protect them. Everything about Anyanwu reinforces this and it drove me crazy! Don't get me wrong, I'm _not_ trying to strip motherhood of it's value, nor am I saying that there isn't power to be found here, but every now and then I just wanted to see Anyanwu show a little more ambition! Anyanwu seems mired in some very old-fashioned ideals for having lived so long. The argument that Isaac wins her over with at the end of Covenant is the one whereby only she can save Doro's human side and stop him from senseless killing. She could be his saviour (his Angel in the House) if only she waits long enough. And at the end, that is what happens. Doro collapses at her bedside and she stays alive to comfort, bathe and put him to bed. She is in so many ways the ultimate mother figure. Maybe it was a function of the story being set from mid 17th to the 19th century. Maybe in the later books her character shifts away from trying to be supermom. Does it, Carol? Jenny? Nataline ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 19:04:08 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: AMY THOMSON MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Had a delightful visit with Amy yesterday afternoon during her event for THROUGH ALIEN EYES. Very fun to chat with her and get glimpses of the workings of her mind. Any author who quotes both Le Guin and Butler within about 5 minutes is a hit with me. Pax, Maryelizabeth -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 858.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 858.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 11:24:31 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: BDG Wild Seed Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >All Anyanwu >seems to want is to be a mom and protect her children in every way possible. >She says as much to Margaret. The argument here seems to be that it's an >innate desire and she can't do much about it. This has troubled me, too; it seems awfully limited to make the whole story revolve only around children, but I suppose for many women with no strong inner bent toward the exercise of some other talent or strength, that's likely to be true. Personally I prefer Joanna Russ' take on the matter in WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO, in which the women on a shipwrecked space expedition choose not to become the men's brood mares even though this means they will "die out" where they are. I mean, so what? Species die out all the time (we're killing them off at a wildfire rate right now, despite our "raised" ecological con- sciousness. But of course that kind of absolute position is always easier to take in the abstract than right there in the situation. Still, I would have liked to have seen more resistance on Anyanwu's -- or somebody's -- part to even *having* chilren under the abusive circumstances laid down by her brute of a lord and master. Suzy Charnas ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 21:58:55 +0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Carol Ann Kerry-Green Subject: Re: BDG Wild Seed In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19990809015808.006c765c@lulu.acns.nwu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Nataline wrote She is in so many ways the ultimate mother figure. Maybe it was a > function of the story being set from mid 17th to the 19th century. Maybe > in the later books her character shifts away from trying to be supermom. > Does it, Carol? Jenny? Unforntunately no, Anyanwu under her European name Emma, is a very minor character in Mind of My Mind, and appears mostly content with Doro, for instance he asks her to move one of her grandchildren from the aparment next door to her which she owns so he can move one of his in (who is also a relative of hers) and she complys. I would highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet, to see what you think to the way Butler deals with the outcome of Doro's breeding plan. Carol Ann ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 00:14:56 -0400 Reply-To: asaro@sff.net Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Catherine Asaro Subject: Chat with Hugo Nominees Comments: To: FEMINISTSF@listserv.uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I received this from Analog, about the chat we're doing tomorrow night. Hope to see you there! :-) Chat with Analog's Hugo-Nominated Authors: Tuesday, August 10th at 9:00 PM EST Join the latest in our series of chats co-sponsored with Asimov's, and SCIFI.COM, at: http://www.scifi.com/chat/ Three Analog stories are up for Hugo Awards this year: "Aurora in Four Voices" by Catherine Asaro, "Cosmic Corkscrew" by Michael A. Burstein, and "Zwarte Piet's Tale" by Allen Steele. Join these authors as they talk about being finalists for one of science fiction's most prestigious awards. The chat will be moderated by Asimov's editor, Gardner Dozois. -- Best regards Catherine Asaro http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 10:02:22 -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 Wild Seed In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19990809015808.006c765c@lulu.acns.nwu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 08:58 PM 8/8/99 -0500, Nataline Viray-Fung wrote: >What was >troublesome to me was the lever which gave Doro so much of that power over >Anyanwu. He offers her immortal children and threatens to kill her present >children if she doesn't co-operate. Doesn't it seem that the dream of >immortal children is also the dream of eternal motherhood? All Anyanwu >seems to want is to be a mom and protect her children in every way possible. >She says as much to Margaret. The argument here seems to be that it's an >innate desire and she can't do much about it. and Suzy Charnas wrote: >I would have >liked to have seen more resistance on Anyanwu's -- or somebody's -- part to >even *having* chilren under the abusive circumstances laid down by her >brute of a lord and master. I had a slightly different read on this: that Anyanwu, like Doro, had become tired of seeing all her friends and family die out before her. I've seen other SF that explores the downsides of living forever, and I saw this book as another variant. Doro was breeding for his own gustatory pleasure, but he also wanted company. Anyanwu gathered her family and her villages around her and often returned to them in many different lives and guises. Three hundred years must have covered quite a few generations of lost friends and lovers. I do agree that it would have been nice to see a little more exploration of the morality of bearing children into such a warped future. Still, if Anyanwu had sacrificed herself rather than do so, would we now be saying that this reinforced the idea that women can die for their children but not live for themselves? It seems to me that motherhood is one of those areas which is *so* loaded with connotations that it's almost impossible to portray it neutrally. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 00:18:45 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Michael Marc Levy Subject: Re: AMY THOMSON Comments: To: Maryelizabeth Hart In-Reply-To: <37ADD4A8.C90@ax.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 8 Aug 1999, Maryelizabeth Hart wrote: > Had a delightful visit with Amy yesterday afternoon during her event for > THROUGH ALIEN EYES. Very fun to chat with her and get glimpses of the > workings of her mind. Any author who quotes both Le Guin and Butler > within about 5 minutes is a hit with me. > Amy Thomson is a neat person and a good writer. Through Alien Eyes is a well done novel with some excellent aliens, but you really need to read her previous novel, The Color of Distance, first to appreciate it, IMO. Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 02:19:20 -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 Are we still here? I haven't had a digest for a few days. Two or three days ago I posted something about Wild Seed and it never came through on the digest. Is it possible the discussion isn't as scanty as it seems and the list is having problems. Wild Seed is a very upsetting book, but surely one worth talking about. I've been reading some of the online information about Butler, thank you Petra, and it's still very difficult to reconcile the ending of the book with the beginning. Kindred made sense to me. The main character kept forgiving and forgiving her "owner" ancestor, but eventually enough was enough. With the ending of Wild Seed having Anyanwu accept Doro as her true partner it just left a bad feeling in all our hearts, I think. I'd like to know how the Paternmaster books resolve this acquiescence to slavery, but how disappointed I would be if they didn't. As has been mentioned, a slave must do what she must do to stay alive, but Anyanwu goes beyond this acceptance to a kind of love. This was a very hard read. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 09:52:47 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lindy Subject: Re: AMY THOMSON & Eleanor Arnason. . . MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Michael Marc Levy wrote: > Amy Thomson is a neat person and a good writer. Through Alien Eyes is a > well done novel with some excellent aliens, but you really need to read > her previous novel, The Color of Distance, first to appreciate it, IMO. I am looking forward to this new one, because I enjoyed _The Color of Distance_ so much I hated to take it back to the library. I was impressed with the world (environment, flora, fauna, etc.) and social order of the sentient life upon it that she created. The culture was believable. The characters were intriguing. I appreciated the POV Thomson chose to use in _The Color of Distance_. The explorer literally got under the skin of the "aliens" and provided excellent comparative insight between her own culture and the one in which she lived with the indigenous beings. I couldn't stop reading. I'll get a copy for my private collection as soon as I have money for books. (See. . . I should have chosen a master's in science fiction lit. . . that way the stuff I have to buy for class would also be the material I most love to read.) Has anyone read Janet Kagan's _Hellspark_ lately? It was reprinted recently. I wish she'd continue on and expand on the universe she built in another novel. Also, I don't suppose Eleanor Arnason has found a publisher for her latest yet. . .? I'm patiently waiting with fingers crossed for Tor or someone else to get smart. BTW--I was reading Amazon.com reviews for _A Ring of Swords_ and came across one by a reader which stated that s/he didn't appreciate how, at the end, the story seemed to boil down to "men are bad and women are good" or something like this. I didn't get that perspective, and was wondering if anyone else did. Might this opinion originate in the way the women were shown to have social power in their culture? I'm just curious. Take care, Lindy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 18:24:42 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: Janet Kagan/Hellspark (was AMY THOMSON) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Lindy asked: >Has anyone read Janet Kagan's _Hellspark_ lately? It was reprinted >recently. I wish she'd continue on and expand on the universe she built in >another novel. I just re-read it for the umpty-umph time--it is one of my favorite books in the whole wide world. (I managed to sneak it into my dissertation, hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha), and was devasted when it went out of print, so when I found a used copy, I snapped it up. Ditto to this request--I WISH SHE'S WRITE MORE. Heaven knows, there are plot lines/ideas left open.... SPOILER ALERT * * * * * * * * * * * * After all, Tocohl has promised to meet up with (oh drat, what's his name, the Bluesippian) yes, him, at Veschke's festival on (forgot the world's name,too, I'm so bad with names). And now that Maggie's sentient, there are possible storylines there. The "galaxy" Kagan created surely has room for lots more story ideas. I wonder if the problem is the book didn't sell well enough. It seemed to go out of print quickly. Maybe now that it's out again, she says hopefully. Have you read _Mirabile_ (equally as appealing and fun with genetics), or her STAR TREK novel (_Uhura's Song_)?? Those are the only ones by Kagan I know, but I reread them over and over again. Robin ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 17:31:23 -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: Eleanor Arnason... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lindy wrote: > Also, I don't suppose Eleanor Arnason has found a publisher for her > latest yet. . .? I'm patiently waiting with fingers crossed for > Tor or someone else to get smart. I had the unexpected delight of conversing with Eleanor at Readercon last month. I asked her for the lowdown on her second hwarhath novel and she confirmed that it has so far been rejected. However, a number of people (including Ursula Le Guin) have read it and offered their suggestions, and she says that she plans on revising it, then (probably) having it published by a small press. So, it's not looking like any time soon, but we can still cross our fingers that it will be available sometime within the next few orbits of the sun... In the mean time, she has published several stories of the hwarhath: "The Lovers" (reprinted in *Flying Cups and Saucers*) "Feeding the Mother: A Hwarhath Religious Anecdote" (from *Paradoxa*, vol. 4, issue 10). "The Hound of Merin", Xanadu I (Tor Books, 1993). "The Semen Thief," Amazing, 68 (9) Winter 1994. "The Gauze Banner" (from *More Amazing Stories*) Many of these are in the form of hwarhath folk tales. What I have read I have really enjoyed. > BTW--I was reading Amazon.com reviews for _A Ring of Swords_ and > came across one by a reader which stated that s/he didn't appreciate > how, at the end, the story seemed to boil down to "men are bad and > women are good" or something like this. > > I didn't get that perspective, and was wondering if anyone else did. > Might this opinion originate in the way the women were shown to have > social power in their culture? I'm just curious. I checked out the Amazon.Com page you mentioned. And frankly, I haven't a clue what that person was on about. I would think that the highly sympathetic portraits Arnason paints of Nicholas, Gwarha and Matsehar would make it obvious to any reader that she does not believe "Men = Bad". BTW, *Ring of Swords* is our BDG selection for October, so you can look forward to more discussion of it then. -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: *Velvet Goldmine* Soundtrack "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:33:31 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lindy Subject: Re: Janet Kagan/Hellspark MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------66543DCBF6BC377CDA95546C" --------------66543DCBF6BC377CDA95546C Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Robin Reid wrote: snip. > Heaven knows, there are plot lines/ideas left open.... > > SPOILER ALERT > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > > After all, Tocohl has promised to meet up with (oh drat, what's his name, > the Bluesippian) yes, him, at Veschke's festival on (forgot the world's > name,too, I'm so bad with names). For a change, I actually have a copy on hand of something I'm discussing. The Bluesippian's name is Om im Chadeayne. That is an interesting friendship. The planet, (or province perhaps?) is Sheveschke. I think it's a planet, not a state or province. . . > And now that Maggie's sentient, there are possible storylines there. Yes. I liked Maggie's character. I liked that Tocohl treated Maggie courteously before Maggie was considered sentient. What a team they make. . . there are dozens of possible adventures for two such beings who learn both verbal and body languages easily. > The "galaxy" Kagan created surely has room for lots more story ideas. snip. Absolutely. I want more. > Have you read _Mirabile_ (equally as appealing and fun with genetics), I have not yet found a copy. I'm looking. > or her STAR TREK novel (_Uhura's Song_)?? It was _Uhura's Song_ which made me look for other Kagan works over the years. Until last year, I had found none. Then I discovered the county library system had ordered _Hellspark_ and I got put my name on the list of people waiting for it. I loved the cultures described in _Uhura's Song_. I guess that's what I enjoy in a lot of my science fiction--beings learning about each other. And as for working in anything to do with one's favorite science fiction, I wish I could do the same. Maybe if I studied it in context of a special collection? Reader's advisory, maybe? I'll probably just have to keep reading it for fun, I suppose. Lindy --------------66543DCBF6BC377CDA95546C Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Robin Reid wrote:

snip. 

Heaven knows, there are plot lines/ideas left open....
SPOILER ALERT
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

After all, Tocohl has promised to meet up with (oh drat, what's his name,
the Bluesippian) yes, him, at Veschke's festival on (forgot the world's
name,too, I'm so bad with names).

For a change, I actually have a copy on hand of something I'm discussing.   The Bluesippian's name is Om im Chadeayne.  That is an interesting friendship.  The planet, (or province perhaps?) is Sheveschke.  I think it's a planet, not a state or province. . .
And now that Maggie's sentient, there are possible storylines there.
Yes.  I liked Maggie's character.  I liked that Tocohl treated Maggie courteously before Maggie was considered sentient.  What a team they make. . . there are dozens of possible adventures for two such beings who learn both verbal and body languages easily.
The "galaxy" Kagan created surely has room for lots more story ideas.
snip.
Absolutely.  I want more.
Have you read _Mirabile_ (equally as appealing and fun with genetics),
I have not yet found a copy.  I'm looking.
or her STAR TREK novel (_Uhura's Song_)??
It was _Uhura's Song_ which made me look for other Kagan works over the years.  Until last year, I had found none.  Then I discovered the county library system had ordered _Hellspark_ and I got put my name on the list of people waiting for it.

I loved the cultures described in _Uhura's Song_.  I guess that's what I enjoy in a lot of my science fiction--beings learning about each other.

And as for working in anything to do with one's favorite science fiction, I wish I could do the same.  Maybe if I studied it in context of a special collection?  Reader's advisory, maybe?

I'll probably just have to keep reading it for fun, I suppose.

Lindy --------------66543DCBF6BC377CDA95546C-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 13:18:15 +1200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Ianthe Subject: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I was wondering if anyone has even picked up Sheri Tepper's new book, *Singer From the Sea*, I think that it came out in April. It sounds like once again she's building up to an apocalytic catastrophy of sorts, like she seems to have done in quite a few of her books. Just thought I'd ask... I'd be interested to know what anyone thought on reading it. Jenn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 18:44:39 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lindy Subject: Re: Tepper's new book MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ianthe wrote: > I was wondering if anyone has even picked up Sheri Tepper's new book, > *Singer From the Sea*, I think that it came out in April. It sounds like > once again she's building up to an apocalytic catastrophy of sorts, like she > seems to have done in quite a few of her books. I read it a few months ago, and liked it as well as any other Tepper I've read. She revisits an ecofeminist theme, and pulls it off rather well. I found it most similar to _Shadow's End_. I enjoyed "Six Moons Dance" even more than her lastest, though. The ending suprised me. Lindy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 19:23:17 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lindy Subject: Re: Eleanor Arnason... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Janice E. Dawley" wrote: snip. > So, it's not looking like any time > soon, but we can still cross our fingers that it will be available > sometime within the next few orbits of the sun... Yea! > In the mean time, she has published several stories of the hwarhath: > > "The Lovers" (reprinted in *Flying Cups and Saucers*) > "Feeding the Mother: A Hwarhath Religious Anecdote" (from *Paradoxa*, > vol. 4, issue 10). > "The Hound of Merin", Xanadu I (Tor Books, 1993). > "The Semen Thief," Amazing, 68 (9) Winter 1994. > "The Gauze Banner" (from *More Amazing Stories*) Thanks for the list. I am looking forward to reading these stories. > > > BTW--I was reading Amazon.com reviews for _A Ring of Swords_ and > > came across one by a reader which stated that s/he didn't appreciate > > how, at the end, the story seemed to boil down to "men are bad and > > women are good" or something like this. > > I checked out the Amazon.Com page you mentioned. And frankly, I haven't > a clue what that person was on about. I would think that the highly > sympathetic portraits Arnason paints of Nicholas, Gwarha and Matsehar > would make it obvious to any reader that she does not believe "Men = > Bad". Nicely said. Arnason has such a keen sense of issues related to gender and seems to paint variety without sacrificing. . . sense? sensitivity? value? of any particular gender or character. It's too bad that someone who writes as well and creatively as Arnason has to have a day job. Selfishly, I want the authors I love best to spend all their time writing. And taking nice vacations. Thanks, Lindy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 22:43:56 -0500 Reply-To: quiltedpoetry@att.net Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Liz Bennefeld Subject: Re: Janet Kagan/Hellspark (was AMY THOMSON) In-Reply-To: <199908111824.SAA24193@etsuodt.tamu-commerce.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT _Hellspark_ is one of my most favorite books of all times. I got the trade reprint that came out within the last year or so, and would welcome the chance to read another that included these characters. Liz B. QuiltedPoetry@att.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 14:49:33 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: Re: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, I was lucky enough to be on vacation in the Seattle Washingon area and got to the Elliot Bay Book Store downtown (a MUST if you are in Seattle) and found it, oh joy and happness and thrills galore. I read it twice in the same week--it has some strong resonances with SIX MOON DANCE, but a very different ending. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I didn't see it as describing an apocalypse, although by the end, there's definitely a plan in place to change human beings on the planet genetically. I guess in a way that might be described as an apocalypse, but it sounded like an improvement to me. ANy change is also destruction in one sense. SPOILER ALERT * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The novel is set on a planet which was settled by human colonists (with "Noah" ships), but not quite as they planned. There was an earlier "mistaken" or crash landing--but then a later planned settlement by a group who wanted to set up an hierarchical, aristocratic system which (of course) completely oppresses women. The world is primarily water--just two land masses. A splinter/fundamentalist group splits off and moves to the second 'island' (these aren't even large land masses) and sets up an even more oppressive sexist society. Unbknownest to them all, the earlier group of settlers are still there. A substance is found growing in the desert which expands life span--but the only way to make it grow is to "fertilize" it with the blood of a woman who is breastfeeding her child. This system gets institutionalized on the second land mass as 'religion', but the artistocrats are complicit. The protagonist is a young daughter of one of the few nobles who isn't clued in to all this (his male relatives died too early--the drug makes men impotent and sterile so they don't take it much before age sixty). Like Marianne (Mavin's daughter), the protagonist has been given a secret mission or training by her mother. But she doesn't know everything because her mother died in childbirth, and part of the plot is her discovering more about her heritage and what she's supposed to do. This novel focuses on ethnicity to a greater extent than some of her earlier ones: the original "Noah's Ark" colonists include Maori people--their spiritual beliefs form a major part of the underground (or maybe I should say underwater) resistance movement. I found it riveting. The novel starts in medias res (the protagonist, married and a mother) escaping from an uprising goes into the desert--lots of references to things that are only explained later in the novel--then the narrative shifts back to her earlier days in school when she didn't know anything about what was going on. IN that way she's also like the protagonist of GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY... In fact, after reading the most recent novel and coming home, I went back to two of her novels I hadn't liked as much (GIBBON'S DECLINE and FAMILY TREE) and reread them--found them must better this time around. Tepper's feminism is completely linked with environmental and population issues. Robin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 09:59:30 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: BDG Wild Seed Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I do agree that it would have been nice to see a little more exploration of >the morality of bearing children into such a warped future. Still, if >Anyanwu had sacrificed herself rather than do so, would we now be saying >that this reinforced the idea that women can die for their children but not >live for themselves? > >It seems to me that motherhood is one of those areas which is *so* loaded >with connotations that it's almost impossible to portray it neutrally. > >jessie Too true -- not sure I'd recognize a "neutral" portrayal of motherhood if I saw one. What would it look like? First thing that comes to mind is the Skinner box . . . Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 09:59:36 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: BDG Are we still here? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >With the ending of Wild Seed having Anyanwu accept Doro as her true >partner it just left a bad feeling in all our hearts, I think. I'd like to >know how the Paternmaster books resolve this acquiescence to slavery, but >how disappointed I would be if they didn't. As has been mentioned, a slave >must do what she must do to stay alive, but Anyanwu goes beyond this >acceptance to a kind of love. This was a very hard read. > >Joyce I agree, as I think we all do, and I think -- I hope it's not inflammatory to say this -- I think that part of our problem in discussing this book re- lates to various levels of "political correctness." The idea of abused women (not just raped and enslaved outright, but bound into impossible marriages full of various degrees of emotional and physical abuse) coming to forgive and even to love their abusers has come (at long last!) to be seen not just as "too bad, but the way things are" but as unaccept- able. Let's remember that only a couple of decades ago, this was the stan- dard plot of the historical Romance novel (except that the actual marriage part came at the end, *after* the rape had turned to romance). It's to our credit as a culture that this "plot" is now seen by so many as demeaning of women and their rights to self-actualization; but that convic- tion, outraged by this book, drives us off and shuts us up (in fact I hear that this plot has even vanished from the Romance genre in the last decade or so). Butler reminds us starkly and relentlessly that in most of the world people still live in cultures where a woman still hasn't the right to safely object to routine abuse by her husband (and sometimes her father and uncles and brothers). Vast numbers of women are still stuck in the position of having little choice but to find ways to accept their virtual enslavement or else just curl up and die (or be killed by some damned male relative "defeninding the honor" of his miserable family). This is really tough to swallow in any dose, and it's *very* uncomfortable to have your nose ground into it for a whole book's length instead of for the time it takes to read an upsetting article in a magazine, say. I'm a leetle sensitive to the risk feminist writers run when they write about How Bad It Can Get and Trying To Cope When You Have No "Good" Alternatives, as I've just finished writing a bunch of characters *past* that situation (which took me thirty years). Some readers have had trouble reading WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD (though I promise you, things get *way* better with MOTHERLINES), and some of the same feelings seem to be at work here with WILD SEED. I think a number of women authors deliberately took this risk in the seventies -- we were trying to talk to each other and to readers about recognizing the depths of women's problems so that enough of us could get out of denial (and Valium) and start insisting on serious, real-world changes. WILD SEED is an even tougher case than most because of the shadow over its Black author of the heritage of the outirght slavery of African-American women in this country. How do White readers get critical about dealing with slavery and abuse issues without inviting charges that they don't know, as Whites, what they're talking about (or Black critics, without risking accusation, if they articulate a controversial attitude, of betrayal)? This makes talking about this aspect of WILD SEED -- which is so central and overwhelming -- very stick and uncomfortable to talk about beyond saying, well, how *uncomfortable* we are with it. All that said, there are other elements of this book that we could prod- uctively focus on, such the shape and pacing of a book that can be seen as (compared to the standard of the genre) "plotless", and what takes the place of what we ordinarily see as SF "plot," in the context of feminist revision of what started out as (and still are for some folks) the standard SF tropes and goals (eg, STAR WARS); the writing style itself (Butler is one of the handful of SF authors who is, I believe, of working-class origins, and maybe there are ways in which that affects both style and substance of her work); comp- arison with other books about and enslaved gender (THE HANDMAID'S TALE comes at once to my mind); and other, better ways of looking at this novel as a told SF tale rather than a very tough slog emotionally. I think a couple of earlier posts began to do this, but then we got side-tracked by this big, central block of discomfort, and I think we owe it to the book and the author to move past that. Suzy Charnas ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 10:16:32 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >In fact, after reading the most recent novel and coming home, I went back to >two of her novels I hadn't liked as much (GIBBON'S DECLINE and FAMILY TREE) >and reread them--found them must better this time around. Tepper's feminism >is completely linked with environmental and population issues. > >Robin Did you happen to hear her GOH speech at Wiscon? It was fiercely anti- pop-growth, and I believe she was an exec. with Planned Parenthood for years in Colorado before she moved down to Santa Fe. She is passionate on the subject of human overbreeding and environmental degradation both on and off the page. Now, this book sounds like another "tough slog" in terms of presenting a situation of deep oppression of women, as you describe it, but you don't speak of it that way -- what makes it easier to read and talk about than WILD SEED, if indeed I'm right that it is (I haven't read it yet)? Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 11:42:24 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: BDG Are we still here?: Charnas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Over the last decade, perhaps (I've heard/read this as well), but a decade ago the Bodice-busters were still offering "romantic" rape scenes that might make Robert Howard blush, as I can attest as an occasionally-bored bookseller at that time looking to see just how disturbing the cookie-cutter historicals could be. But then, most of the GOR novels, I was told by my colleagues who worked mostly second-hand stores, were purchased by women. -----Original Message----- From: SMCharnas [mailto:suzych@SOCRATES.NMIA.COM] Let's remember that only a couple of decades ago, this was the stan- dard plot of the historical Romance novel (except that the actual marriage part came at the end, *after* the rape had turned to romance). It's to our credit as a culture that this "plot" is now seen by so many as demeaning of women and their rights to self-actualization; but that convic- tion, outraged by this book, drives us off and shuts us up (in fact I hear that this plot has even vanished from the Romance genre in the last decade or so). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 18:03:16 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: Re: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Did you happen to hear her GOH speech at Wiscon? It was fiercely anti- >pop-growth, and I believe she was an exec. with Planned Parenthood for years >in Colorado before she moved down to Santa Fe. She is passionate on the >subject of human overbreeding and environmental degradation both on and off >the page. > >Now, this book sounds like another "tough slog" in terms of presenting a >situation of deep oppression of women, as you describe it, but you don't >speak of it that way -- what makes it easier to read and talk about than >WILD SEED, if indeed I'm right that it is (I haven't read it yet)? > >Suzy I've never been to Wiscon, but have heard about the speech, and I know she worked for Planned Parenthood before. This theme is not at all new to Tepper either (earlier works such as the Marianne trilogy had a 'sentient' planet in which all creatures were connected before humans colonized it and started trying to wreck the environment). I've read most of Butler's published work (not her latest one or two), and all of Tepper's -- interesting to compare them in light of recent discussion (BTW, I really thought your long post on Butler's work made EXCELLENT POINTS). The difference between the SINGER and WILD SEED is that by the end of Teppeer's novel there's a way out, a solution presented (granted it involves changing the genetic nature of all the humans), but it's a solution. WILD SEED doesn't ever give us even that hope. I've been swamped with work, so have only been reading the WILD SEED discussion. I remember reading it years ago and being absolute dumbstruck at how BRILLIANTLY DIFFERENT than most other stuff marketed as SF that novel was. I became hooked on Butler because of WILD SEED. I admire her CRAFT incredibly--she comletely pulls me into worlds that I would never experience if it were not for her writing. I'll be teaching KINDRED in a 202 class this term (Multiethnic American Literature class which I'm focusing on popular culture--will have a unit on music, film, tv (specifically ST: DS(), and we'll read KINDRED and Tony Hillerman's LISTENING WOMAN. In terms of how Butler deconstructs sf/f conventions: I can think of a number of books in which telepathy is presented as a good thing--including a number of works by female sf writers. Butler takes a different view of it--I'm thinking particularly of what happens in the other novel (MIND OF MY MIND? PATTERNMASTER) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * when Mary takes on Doro, destroys him, and brings all her kin into the Pattern--it's a multiracial/multicultural network. But what happens is that the non-telepaths are made into mindslaves. Emma (the name Annwyu? sp?) has taken speaks bitterly against the oppression created by the telepaths--comparing the way the "mutes" are treated to "niggers," but (I think I recall) she says it's even worse. The whole grouping of novels is such a powerful statement against oppression. And Butler is pretty unflinching, as far as i'm concerned, by showing that oppression is not as simple as whites oppressing blacks. Now that I think more about Tepper and Butler together--in a sense, both of them share the same depressing thought: that is, human beings have to change genetically or in some other fundamental way to grow out of opprression. Some of THE SINGER is pretty hard to read through because Tepper make the violence against women so immediate: the protagonist sees the ritual where a number of women are killed (their throats slit) and their bodies are left to bleed into the sand. The girl babies are taken back to raise for more (future) victims,and the boy babies are often left if the noble family has an heir already. (Most of victims but not all come from the same noble families whose men get the drug). But there is a decisive move made to end the whole system by the end of the novel. This whole discussion raises a question of the different approaches feminists take in their work: the need to show how BAD it is, to raise the need for action and change, is one major component in many of the books I most admire. I'm trying to think of any that show successful changes on a society-wide scale, or world wide scale, as opposed to just individual strong female protagonists.........hmmm. Robin > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:22:37 +0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: sc Subject: Re: Janet Kagan/Hellspark (was AMY THOMSON) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A wonderful book! I love the way she plays with language, and the non-verbal communication of "proxemics" and "kinetics" is very appealing. If anyone knows of anything else by her other than those mentioned below, I'd love to know. Cheers SC -----Original Message----- From: Robin Reid To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Date: 11 August 1999 19:41 Subject: [*FSFFU-LIT*] Janet Kagan/Hellspark (was AMY THOMSON) >Lindy asked: >>Has anyone read Janet Kagan's _Hellspark_ lately? It was reprinted >>recently. I wish she'd continue on and expand on the universe she built in >>another novel. > >I just re-read it for the umpty-umph time--it is one of my favorite books in >the whole wide world. (I managed to sneak it into my dissertation, >hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha), and was devasted when it went out of print, >so when I found a used copy, I snapped it up. Ditto to this request--I WISH >SHE'S WRITE MORE. Heaven knows, there are plot lines/ideas left open.... > >SPOILER ALERT >* >* >* >* >* >* >* >* >* >* >* >* > >After all, Tocohl has promised to meet up with (oh drat, what's his name, >the Bluesippian) yes, him, at Veschke's festival on (forgot the world's >name,too, I'm so bad with names). > >And now that Maggie's sentient, there are possible storylines there. The >"galaxy" Kagan created surely has room for lots more story ideas. > >I wonder if the problem is the book didn't sell well enough. It seemed to >go out of print quickly. Maybe now that it's out again, she says hopefully. > >Have you read _Mirabile_ (equally as appealing and fun with genetics), or >her STAR TREK novel (_Uhura's Song_)?? Those are the only ones by Kagan I >know, but I reread them over and over again. > >Robin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 12:24:26 PDT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Daniel Krashin Subject: Re: Eleanor Arnason Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed >Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 17:31:23 -0400 >From: "Janice E. Dawley" >[E.A.} has published several stories of the hwarhath: > >"The Lovers" (reprinted in *Flying Cups and Saucers*) >"Feeding the Mother: A Hwarhath Religious Anecdote" (from *Paradoxa*, > vol. 4, issue 10). >"The Hound of Merin", Xanadu I (Tor Books, 1993). >"The Semen Thief," Amazing, 68 (9) Winter 1994. >"The Gauze Banner" (from *More Amazing Stories*) You may add to this "Dapple", from the latest issue of Asimov's. Lindy said: > > BTW--I was reading Amazon.com reviews for _A Ring of Swords_ and > > came across one by a reader which stated that s/he didn't > appreciate >how, at the end, the story seemed to boil down to "men > are bad and women >are good" or something like this. > > > > I didn't get that perspective, and was wondering if anyone else > > did. Well, I think *someone* is bound to say this about almost any SF work with significant feminist content... but I felt it a bit, too, after reading _RoS_. I think it was because the (male-domninated) human governments were portrayed as dumb and warlike, and the (male) hwarhath military as less dumb, but still warlike, and the hwarhath females are the only ones with some sense and perspective. I saw this as more of an anti-military bias than an anti-male bias, though. What I would really like to see from Arnason is the *pre*quel to _RoS_, telling how Nicholas got into his unusual situation and relationship... (trying hard to avoid spoilers here). That story seems more interesting than the story told in _RoS_, actually. Danny _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:39:33 +0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: sc Subject: Re: BDG Wild Seed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit -Original Message----- From: SMCharnas To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Date: 09 August 1999 18:25 Subject: Re: [*FSFFU-LIT*] BDG Wild Seed > Personally I prefer Joanna Russ' take on the matter in WE WHO ARE >ABOUT TO, in which the women on a shipwrecked space expedition choose not >to become the men's brood mares even though this means they will "die out" >where they are> >Suzy Charnas As I recall, only one woman refused to be "brood mare", but then she also refused to join in with all the other futile plans to survive when there was no chance of it. She chose to embrace her death, rather than struggle against the inevitable. Cheers SC ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:18:00 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: We Who Are About To... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In regard to Russ' novel (her take on the SF plot in which a small group of humans who crashland on an alien planet manage to survive and create a new colony): >> Personally I prefer Joanna Russ' take on the matter in WE WHO ARE >>ABOUT TO, in which the women on a shipwrecked space expedition choose not >>to become the men's brood mares even though this means they will "die out" >>where they are> >>Suzy Charnas > > >As I recall, only one woman refused to be "brood mare", but then she also >refused to join in with all the other futile plans to survive when there was >no chance of it. She chose to embrace her death, rather than struggle >against the inevitable. >Cheers >SC I seem to recall that yes, it's the first person narrator who is telling the story or retelling it while holed up after killing the other survivors who were going to force her to participate against her will. Lots of bitter comments on what it would do to women (not in great physical shape) from an advanced technological society to go back to giving birth--and inbreeding--and everything. I'd have tocheck again, but I think she (acting in self defense) did kill the others. Now THAT'S a TOTALLY grim read! Robin > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 17:36:40 -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: BDG: Wild Seed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Thu, 12 Aug 1999 at 09:59:36 -0700, Suzy Charnas wrote: > [there are] other, better ways of looking at this novel as a told > SF tale rather than a very tough slog emotionally. I think a couple > of earlier posts began to do this, but then we got side-tracked by > this big, central block of discomfort, and I think we owe it to the > book and the author to move past that. Okay, you've inspired me. *Wild Seed* made me uncomfortable, but not entirely for the same reasons as most other people have mentioned. I'm not sure if I will be able to explain myself very well, but I will give it a try... I have read other books by Octavia Butler -- *Adulthood Rites*, *Imago*, *Kindred* -- and have reacted in much the same way to each. Her style is clear, her plotting well-done, her consciousness of power dynamics a welcome constant... yet I cannot fully engage with her work. It makes me feel itchy and constrained. The one theme I can clearly target as a cause of this feeling is, as Robin said, Butler's belief that humanity is imprisoned by its genome, that certain behaviors are linked to our biology and that there is no way around it except to breed ourselves into a new species. This belief (and Butler really does believe it to some extent, as I learned from Larry McCaffery's interview with her in *Across the Wounded Galaxies*) is one with which I am extremely uncomfortable. I disagree with it on a scientific basis, but, more fundamentally, I reject it because it robs us of any motivation toward long-term social change -- after all, you can't change Human Nature! In the Xenogenesis trilogy, the Oankali maintain that "pure-bred" humans can never be free of their destructive tendency towards hierarchy. Ironically (or not?), I felt that *Wild Seed* was about the founding of just such a hierarchy. Doro's and Anyanwu's communities of telepaths, telekinetics, shapechangers, et al are the "next step" in human evolution; one-on-one, any of them can best a normal human easily, though in their greater numbers, normal humans are a threat. And above the rank and file, there are the special children, like Isaac and Joseph. Above them -- and this is where most of the book expends its energy -- are Anyanwu and Doro, the Immortals. It is their contest for dominance that is the real center of the book. I did not see *Wild Seed* as a love story, though by the end of the book I was half-convinced that that *is* how Butler saw it; I saw it as a battle of wills. And I think it is safe to say that Anyanwu won. Intellectually I can see that the book makes a statement about the ghastly dilemmas the enslaved must face, but the book did not go into enough psychological detail for me to really feel it. Unlike, for example, *Arslan*, which I found devastating. I kept wishing that Butler had spent more time concentrating on some of her throwaway plot elements, such as Anyanwu's time with the dolphins. When I read that she had given birth to dolphin babies, I inwardly exclaimed, "She what?! I'd like to know what *that* was like!" But no dice. I find it hard to believe that Anyanwu could function for months (years?) as a dolphin and come away with her values seemingly unaffected. The way Butler describes it, it sounds more like a vacation! But clearly her emphasis lies elsewhere, and I can't fault her for that. I'm just a little disappointed. Does anyone have any insight into the Biblical overtones of the novel? It must be important that the three sections of the book are entitled "Covenant", "Lot's Children" and "Canaan", but I'm so ignorant of the Bible that I'm not seeing the connections. I *can* see that Doro is in many ways a God figure, even to the "bright light" people see when they merge with him. What does this say about Butler's opinion of Christianity? Hm. -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: The *Velvet Goldmine* Soundtrack "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 16:20:39 -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: DUBIOUS HILLS In-Reply-To: <199907280517.RAA31151@stolly.southnet.co.nz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Returning late to the subject: Ianthe wrote: >The thing about [Pamela Dean's] books that strikes me the most in a >grating way, is that >they are ambiguous, she leaves you not quite understanding alot of the time, >and guessing, and with loose ends all over the place... the second half of >Dubious Hills seemed to happen very quickly, too quickly. Like you said, she >likes to develop characters, as she did with Arry and Oonan, and then get on >to the action, and where the wolves came from in *The Dubious Hills* still >goes right over my head Yes, yes, yes. I read first _The Secret Country_ and its sequels (which are, for the person who asked: _The Hidden Land_ and _The Whim of the Dragon_) and it was fascinating, but just left things dangling all OVER the place. I had hoped that _The Dubious Hills_ would give us some backstory, and so I was a little disappointed by it, my own fault. But I enjoyed the way she built up that world: I think one of the greatest freedoms of SF/F is that sort of mindgame, the ability to take some bizarre basic premise and then run with it. _JG&R_ and _Tam Lin_ have, in many ways, the same sort of structure: they're almost entirely mainstream fiction for the majority of the book, with odd and complex hints dancing around the edges, until it all comes together at the end. Suddenly. I had a great deal of trouble with _JG&R_ because of that; maybe _Tam Lin_ was easier because I knew the story already. Or maybe because what's-his-name the bad guy next door (in JG&R) made me so angry, grated on me all the time. If you read _Tam Lin_ without knowing the story: did it bother you? Did it seem too sudden, did it disappoint you? I know from the author's note that _JG&R_ began as a short story, and I wonder if that disrupted the pacing. _Tam Lin_ made me want to be an English major SO BADLY; even the second time I read it, as a junior at an engineering school. Now that's talent. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 10:04:46 +1200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Ianthe Subject: Re: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Robin and Lindy: Great! it sounds really good, I'm looking foward to it coming out here. Reading it twice in a week is promising Robin *grins* I liked SIX MOON DANCE, it reminded me a bit of SHADOWS END, what with the very large alien species with their own culture, I find it hard to remember the endings of Tepper books clearly, because so much happens all at once. In other respects, I think that Six Moon Dance reminded me of SIDESHOW a bit, the treatment of the characters at least, and the beaurocratic side of life with the businessmen. >I didn't see it as describing an apocalypse, although by the end, there's >definitely a plan in place to change human beings on the planet genetically. apocalypse is probably the wrong word *winces* I shouldn't have used it, sorry Robin, but you know how at the end of Tepper's books - something is going to happen, and it's going to be huge! The altering of the human beings souds kind of like the end of SIDESHOW, you know, the 'people zoo' realises that they'd be better off being different, and get taken over by the Hobbs Land Gods, so they're flora sapiens, and then have to ask a new great question 'What is our destiny now that we are no longer man?' >There was an earlier"mistaken" or crash landing--but then a later planned settlement by a group happens in SIX MOON DANCE too! (those guys, how they had changed into something rich and strange) >only way to make it grow is to "fertilize" it with the blood of a woman who is breastfeeding her child. woah! this sounds like in THE AWAKENERS, you know how they use the tears to preserve the flesh of the dead, so that the Thrasis can eat it, and a huge complex political and religious system is based on this need to change the flesh, it's responsible for the reason that they can't go around the river anti-clockwise, because they may see dead friends or relatives among the workers. They keep the people ignorant of what is happening. >and part of the plot is her discovering more >about her heritage and what she's supposed to do. great! I really like Tepper's female characters, even if, as someone said way back in the year, Tepper describes them for us wholly and in detail, so there is no work for the imaginiation to do. > the original "Noah's Ark" colonists include Maori people--their >spiritual beliefs form a major part of the underground (or maybe I should >say underwater) resistance movement. I'm from New Zealand, so this should be really interesting for me and Jenny, I wonder if she wants the read it... Is this culture oppressing their women as well? I got the impression that they were. also, the idea of an underwater resistance is great.. I really want to read this book! >lots of references to things that are only explained later in the novel--then the narrative shifts back *squirms in her seat* this is too good! I loved how ambiguous the narrative of THE FAMILY TREE was, you really had to think about things! >IN that way she's also like the protagonist of GATE TO WOMEN'S COUNTRY... and like Fringe in SIDESHOW who skips between being a child and being an Enforcer, you understand who she is when her childhood is brought foward. In response to what Suzy asked about why Tepper's books are less of a challenge to read than Butlers.. I'm not sure... Robin wrote: >This theme is not at all new to Tepper either (earlier works such as the >Marianne trilogy had a 'sentient' planet in which all creatures were >connected before humans colonized it and started trying to wreck the environment). ...the same with the Arbai on Elsewhere (and the Hobbs Land Gods everywhere else beginning in RAISING THE STONES) in SIDESHOW and life in SIX MOON DANCED prior to colonisation. >by the end of Tepper's novel there's a way out, a solution presented >(granted it involves changing the genetic nature of all the humans), but >it's a solution. WILD SEED doesn't ever give us even that hope. Tepper always has a solution... My personal opinion is that Butler's wok, seems to be very grounded in history and issues that are very close at hand and to our hearts. Teppers work feels distanced, she is -very- concerned with over population, I could quote and quote single instances and references and themes, but I won't *wink* and also Fundamentalism. But for the most part, these issues are set in planets very different to our own, and sometimes almost incomprehensible, she always has an element of the extremely bizzare in her books, and setting her books (for the most part) in the far far far future really sets these issues apart, exept in a wholly theoretical sense, there is not much of a dialogue forced with the here and now unless you chose to do so. She also has a strange sense of humor in her writing that may serve to desensitise us a bit. And also, as a parting thought.. the protagonists in Teppers books don't actually seem to have it that rough at all, compared to all the walk on characters, who often seem t be in a living hell. And it is the protagonists, in their relatively easy lives, whom we are supposed to identify with, so perhaps because of this, is doesn't hit home nearly as much. >I'm trying to think of any that show successful changes on a >society-wide scale, or world wide scale, as opposed to just individual >strong female protagonists.........hmmm. When this happens in feminist fiction, it seems to be that something has to happen before it can occur, which seems to be what Tepper and Butler are working towards, and what also seems rather realistic, looking at today's world. Something must happen in order to make people change. the only one that I can think of at all, and it's hardly a utopia, is the Kesh in Ursula LeGuins ALWAYS COMING HOME. I really like their society, there seems to be no oppression, no difference in sex or class, but there are the nearby Volcano people, who are severely oppressive to women, and the protagonist experiences this totally, so you get to see both sides. It has to be kept in mind though that this is a post-apocalyptic book, so something happened to make them see that things had to change, and this is a very strong message in the book. Jenn ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 16:41:14 -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: Tepper's new book In-Reply-To: <199908121803.SAA10672@etsuodt.tamu-commerce.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 06:03 PM 8/12/99 +0000, Robin Reid wrote: >Now that I think more about Tepper and Butler together--in a sense, both of >them share the same depressing thought: that is, human beings have to >change genetically or in some other fundamental way to grow out of >opprression. I think this is really key--and it's why I haven't found some of Tepper's later work as enjoyable as her first. (Not because it necessarily addresses the issues different; simply because I find it depressing and a little repetitive.) Maybe also why I can't read very much of Butler's work at once. However, the two authors use it very differently. Butler shows us a grim form of compromise, a vision of what you do to survive when people are horrible and you can't change it. Tepper usually redeems a group or society by some fundamental, *physical* change which breaks them out of the cycle. And yet, in a certain way both of these ideas are equally depressing to me. They both mean that we can't get out of that trap without a miracle. I used to find Tepper's work more uplifting because it was, after all, a vision of escape that really worked. Now in some ways I feel like she's given up on the real world. I don't mean her personally--I don't know much about her but I've gathered that she's still active, very engaged with the issues. But although both of these authors show us some of the really horrible underside of life, they don't give me a lot of hope anymore. I find them interesting; I want to read more. But it's not, shall we say, pleasant. YMMV, of course. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 17:30:16 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Candioglos, Sandy" Subject: Re: Tepper's new book MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Comparing Tepper and Butler: >From what I've read of both of them, to me, Butler's books seem "harder" because they always makes me _think_, and hard. In comparison, Tepper's books are a walk in the park; they do make me think, but not nearly as hard as Butler's do. Butler's situations and characters are MUCH more ambiguous than Tepper's, and the resolutions are much less complete/satisfying/"all-good". In Tepper's books, the good guys triumph, and the bad guys get what's coming to them. It's not as clear in Butler's works that the "good guys" really triumph. They survive, generally, but triumph? -Sandy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:32:52 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Keith Subject: Re: We Who Are About To... In-Reply-To: <199908122018.UAA26405@etsuodt.tamu-commerce.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 12 Aug 1999, Robin Reid wrote: > > I seem to recall that yes, it's the first person narrator who is telling the > story or retelling it while holed up after killing the other survivors who > were going to force her to participate against her will. Lots of bitter > comments on what it would do to women (not in great physical shape) from an > advanced technological society to go back to giving birth--and > inbreeding--and everything. I'd have tocheck again, but I think she (acting > in self defense) did kill the others. > She did, indeed. My favorite quote from that book: "Civilization's doing fine. It just doesn't happen to be where we are." Kathleen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 16:12:37 +1200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Ianthe Subject: Re: DUBIOUS HILLS Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jessie - Oh! don't get me wrong! I love the book, *Tam Lin* has been my favorite since I was about 15, but I think that the *Dubious Hills* has surpassed it in greatness recently. We've got a copy of *The Secret Country*, which I'm very proud of *grins* because it's out of print.. but we've found it really hard to try and find *The Hidden Land* (which I want to read, as background to *The Dubious Hills*, the direct opposite to you! *grins*) I think that Dean is an amazingly subtle writer, that she can only mention the Hidden Land once, geographically, but pique my interest enough to scour the earth looking for just a little tiny bit more information about this world. >but just left things dangling all OVER the place. I think it becomes clearer everytime you read it, I think that the notion is that, you have knowledge, or you have doubt, you cannot have both, except in the Dubious Hills, where you have knowlegde of one thing, but doubt over everything else... ...which is why they curse by it, like, Arry will exclaim 'Doubt!' or refer to the cats as 'doubtful' because she is annoyed with them. It's also why the area is called the Dubious Hills, because it is the only place where people have both doubt and knowlege. I find it an interesting notion that this delegation of knowledge stops war, it is a very interesting idea, and also the philosophical element of the book, in as much as asking, what is knowledge confined to? Arry finds it hard to find the boundaries of pain... it is very very interesting, and when you read the book with these ideas in mind, it becomes clearer - *The Secret Country* etc are for young adults, but *The Dubious Hills* is an adult novel.. even so though, I would love to read it to my kids... > But I enjoyed the way she built up that world: It sounds really silly, but this world that she has created feels like home to me, the hills, the salvaging from what you have... the life of relative solitude... I enjoy the details in Deans books, what they eat, the flowers anad plants, the state of the sky, the language, snippets of poetry (don't you love it how they are the people's spells?) it makes the world and the characters so tangible! I also love the catch phrase of the book 'who says so?' kids use it as a jeering retort when they can't think of an answer.. 'sooo? who says soo?" ...but Dean has used it as a cornerstone of the society, someone must have said it, because otherwise they wouldn't have the memory (but not the knowlege, mind) of it.. they always have to report on their sources! *laughs* it's a good acedemic joke... >I think one of the greatest freedoms of SF/F is that sort of mindgame, the ability to >take some bizarre basic premise and then run with it. I really value that as well! and the basic premise in *The Dubious Hills* is probably as bizarre as you would look to find! and that you can run with it and make it believable is really eviable if you ask me. (especially as I'm not much of a fan of modern fantasy, but can tolerate all of the elements within it in Deans books with a passion!) >_JG&R_ and _Tam Lin_ have, in many ways, the same sort of structure: >they're almost entirely mainstream fiction for the majority of the book] yes, to the extent that I can get friends who are adamant that they don't read science fiction or fantasy to read them! >with odd and complex hints dancing around the edges one of my favourite things about Dean, I like to be made to think, it's why I like Connie Willis as well, but they never get it quite right, and so people are always critical of the loopholes. *grins* a few of which I have about Tam Lin - some of it wrapped together, but there were so many loose ends! like Peg Powell.. who was she? was she with Nick, Robin? was she going to relive the fate of the Fourth Ercison Ghost? I don't know.. she did seem to have a bit of animosity towards the Classics majors, keeping right away fromt heir retreats and stuff.... and the bunk beds? they weren't in Peg and Sharon's room, even though Peg said she needed a hockey stick for them.. and we never found out why! it frustrated me to no end! but I guess Dean did only take 3 months to write the book, it being based on the college she went to and all.. so there might have not been all that much time for ironing out all the wrinkles! I didn't know the ballad, Jessie.. but I knew similar stories (found a picture book of Tam Lin the other day, but it's dreadful!) everything at the end of Tam lin came as a pleasant surprise to me... I've re read it alot, and each time the intricacies and details shine thorugh and I'm so proud! tee hee *laughs at Jessie* too right! I'm an English major, but it doesn't feel anything like it seems in Tam Lin.. I think that Blackstock will remain hidden from me forever by a veil of nostalgia for a decade before my time! (or as Jennet Jourdemayn says in The Lady's Not For Burning) Hidden from me by a cloud of crimson catherine wheels! that was the other absolutely brilliant thing about Tam Lin... it was a reading list longer than I will ever ever have the time or the patience to finish.. but I've read so many books and plays mentioned In Tam Lin since reading it... Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary felt like a younger version of Tam Lin, Gentian felt very similar to Janet.. I quite liked the way it was all revealed to us - BUT - I never understood why it happened! who was Dominic???? and I think that the spells of protection at the end were a little bit of a gyp! I liked that the girls felt such consternation when they realised that they had been manipulated.. they certainly didn't take it lying down! Thanks Jessie, here in isolated ol' New Zealand, I was under the impression that no-one else had heard of this author. - Jenn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 00:48:21 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Michael Marc Levy Subject: Re: Eleanor Arnason. . . In-Reply-To: <37B1AA5F.15100EEA@meer.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 11 Aug 1999, Lindy wrote: > > Also, I don't suppose Eleanor Arnason has found a publisher for her latest > yet. . .? I'm patiently waiting with fingers crossed for Tor or someone else > to get smart. I spent some time with Eleanor last weekend at Diversicon in St. Paul, MN. She is currently negotiating with a small press to bring out the sequel to Ring of Swords but it may depend on Tor's willingness to revert rights to the first novel in the series. Meanwhile she's been publishing a whole cartload of shorter fiction in Asimov's and elsewhere, some of them set in the same universe as Ring of Swords. The June issue of Realms of Fantasy, despite a generic half-naked warrior woman on the cover, has an absolutely wonderful Arnason fantasy called "The Grammarian's Five Daughters." > BTW--I was reading Amazon.com reviews for _A Ring of Swords_ and came across > one by a reader which stated that s/he didn't appreciate how, at the end, > the story seemed to boil down to "men are bad and women are good" or > something like this. It's been a while since I read Ring of Swords, but, as I remember it, most of the bad male characters are human military men, aren't they? Two of the three main characters, all "good guys" (more or less) are male. Arnason was working, as has Sheri Tepper, with the idea of having two societies separated by gender, with the men holding military power, but the women holding the "real" power. I suppose someone could find this offensive. > I didn't get that perspective, and was wondering if anyone else did. Might > this opinion originate in the way the women were shown to have social power > in their culture? I'm just curious. Could well be. > Take care, > > Lindy > Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 06:15:56 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: Eleanor Arnason. . . MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 8/13/99 5:48:33 AM, you wrote: <> This one is a marvelous, funny tale! Recommended. best phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:07:40 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: We Who Are About To...: Kathleen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I'd always thought the book was primarily aimed at Heinlein's nasties such as FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD...I've recently read of Randall Garrett, who could knock out imitation/watered down Heinlein with the best of 'em, having committed to paper one "Queen Bee," in which a woman who protests against enforced breeding is lobotomized For The Good of All and the rest of the community, women apparently as well as men, live happily and/or gravidly ever after. I should like to see this story just to be sure...but it certainly sounds like something that could've sold (to ANALOG?) in the early '60s.... -----Original Message----- From: Kathleen [mailto:kmhouse@HALCYON.COM] Sent: Thursday, August 12, 1999 11:33 PM On Thu, 12 Aug 1999, Robin Reid wrote: > > I seem to recall that yes, it's the first person narrator who is telling the > story or retelling it while holed up after killing the other survivors who > were going to force her to participate against her will. Lots of bitter > comments on what it would do to women (not in great physical shape) from an > advanced technological society to go back to giving birth--and > inbreeding--and everything. I'd have tocheck again, but I think she (acting > in self defense) did kill the others. > She did, indeed. My favorite quote from that book: "Civilization's doing fine. It just doesn't happen to be where we are." Kathleen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:22:14 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: Eleanor Arnason. . .: Wray MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I'll third that. REALMS OF FANTASY Always has generic images, some blessedly obscured by too much type, of largely unclothed (or, as in the August issue, manacled) women. The price they pay to attempt to sell to FANGORIA and FEMME FATALES (sic) readers. But the Arnason story was quite good, as are many of the stories Shawna McCarthy selects for the magazine. -----Original Message----- From: Phoebe Wray [mailto:Zozie@AOL.COM] In a message dated 8/13/99 5:48:33 AM, you wrote: <> This one is a marvelous, funny tale! Recommended. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 16:40:31 GMT Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Robin Reid Subject: Re: Tepper's new book SPOILERS Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" SPOILERS ON A VARIETY OF TEPPER BOOKS FOLLOW * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * >JENN wrote: I liked SIX MOON DANCE, it reminded me a bit of SHADOWS END, what with the >very large alien species with their own culture, I find it hard to remember >the endings of Tepper books clearly, because so much happens all at once. >In other respects, I think that Six Moon Dance reminded me of SIDESHOW a >bit, the treatment of the characters at least, and the beaurocratic side of >life with the businessmen. SIDESHOW (along with GRASS and RAISING THE STONES) is just about my favorite Tepper group--what intrigued me about SIX MOON DANCE was how everyone's assumptions (The Questioner--eek, is that her name???--ASSUMED that the wounded/grounded alien was female; she ASSUMED that the girl children were killed, and both those assumptions were wrong). I see what you mean about the presence of the bureaurcacy in both novels--the Hags in SMD and the bureaucracy (mixed male and female)that control things on Sideshow are quite similar. (I don't think Tepper likes bureaucracies either) >The altering of the human beings souds kind of like the end of SIDESHOW, you >know, the 'people zoo' realises that they'd be better off being different, >and get taken over by the Hobbs Land Gods, so they're flora sapiens, and >then have to ask a new great question 'What is our destiny now that we are >no longer man?' Yes, this theme is very similar in both books. >>only way to make it grow is to "fertilize" it with the blood of a woman who >is breastfeeding her child. > >woah! this sounds like in THE AWAKENERS, you know how they use the tears to >preserve the flesh of the dead, so that the Thrasis can eat it, and a huge >complex political and religious system is based on this need to change the >flesh, it's responsible for the reason that they can't go around the river >anti-clockwise, because they may see dead friends or relatives among the >workers. They keep the people ignorant of what is happening. > I hadn't remembered this novel as well (THE AWAKENERS is my least favorite Tepper book, along with BEAUTY) >great! I really like Tepper's female characters, even if, as someone said >way back in the year, Tepper describes them for us wholly and in detail, so >there is no work for the imaginiation to do. I like the sense of entering into a protagonist's world view so completely that Tepper creates--and I find her characterizations are often complex, so that there are "gaps" so to speak > >> the original "Noah's Ark" colonists include Maori people--their >>spiritual beliefs form a major part of the underground (or maybe I should >>say underwater) resistance movement. > >Is this culture oppressing their women as well? I got the impression that >they were. No--the "resistance" culture (who "pass" as the Untouchables so to speak in the fundamentalist culture) is both multiethnic and egalitarian as well as being committed to the preservation of all species (not just humans). This culture has descended from an original Ark ship which included both Maori crew and 'technicians' from Asian and European cultures--along with whales and dolphins and other cetaceans (and possibly other animals). This culture has also been rescuing the children left in the desert as often as they can, and those children, grown up, have infiltrated the oppressor cultures as well. >*squirms in her seat* this is too good! I loved how ambiguous the narrative >of THE FAMILY TREE was, you really had to think about things! I know, I just reread this and was fascinated by the way Tepper managed to "keep" the fact that the whole group of people on the Quest were "actually" sentient pigs, racoons, monkeys, birds, etc. But looking back there are some intriguing little hints. And the twist of the "ummmynhhy" (spe?) and who they were at the end is just too great! > >My personal opinion is that Butler's wok, seems to be very grounded in >history and issues that are very close at hand and to our hearts. Teppers >work feels distanced, she is -very- concerned with over population, I could >quote and quote single instances and references and themes, but I won't >*wink* and also Fundamentalism. But for the most part, these issues are set >in planets very different to our own, and sometimes almost incomprehensible, >she always has an element of the extremely bizzare in her books, and setting >her books (for the most part) in the far far far future really sets these >issues apart, exept in a wholly theoretical sense, there is not much of a >dialogue forced with the here and now unless you chose to do so. Hmmm. Interesting. I see what you mean in that Butler's books are set in that "fifteen minute future" (i.e. very close to our own culture) and that makes them resonate. But for me Tepper's novels, although set on other planets and in cultures that "sound" very different (naming, etc), often show human cultures that are very close to cultures of today--that for me is part of her focus on the genetic basis for human oppression of women, children, other species. Different technology, but the same patterns of oppression. Her family structures are not that different from what is found on Eearth, although granted, she does not always use the nuclear family. The matrilineal clan system in RAISING THE STONES is close to similar systems in some Native American cultures (Navajo). SIDESHOW of course has thousands of cultures squeezed in very tight--but the religions in a number of them are similar to beliefs and practices in Mayan, Islamic, and voudoun. Fringe's culture is techno/Western -- and the class system there is perhaps more institutionalized but seems awfully familiar to some elements of both England and America. GRASS--not only Catholicism (in the Old Catholics), but the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) play a big role. Plus, the idea of shipping undesireables off the planet to camps elsewhere was done by Britain (Australia and America were both used as dumping grounds for criminals). FAMILY TREE and GIBBON'S FALL of course are set in that nearer future, on Earth, which is maybe why I didn't like them as much at first. I think the cultural oppression, beliefs, and practices she describes are very familiar, very close, but given new names and often modified slightly. She often describes female circumcision (clitoredectomies) used to control women, as well as lack of education, food, and legal rights. These are not all problems faced by middle class women in America, but they are problems faced by many women in the world. She also >has a strange sense of humor in her writing that may serve to desensitise us >a bit. I'm interested in some examples of this.... And also, as a parting thought.. the protagonists in Teppers books >don't actually seem to have it that rough at all, compared to all the walk >on characters, who often seem t be in a living hell. And it is the >protagonists, in their relatively easy lives, whom we are supposed to >identify with, so perhaps because of this, is doesn't hit home nearly as much. Yes, I think you're right here--but of course one could argue that women (or men) who are completely oppressed would have a very hard time doing anything like the more middle class, better fed, and educated protagonists. Didn't an earlier Book Discussion Group focus on a book about a protagonist who really did come from a living hell....and how complicated her actions woudl be. If your main concern is simply getting enough to eat, it's very hard to set out on Quests. And a lot of Tepper's book have a Quest motif. Look at what happens to the male characters in A PLAGUE OF ANGELS who sets off the the city with great plans, but ends up a ganger--what else could he do in that environment? Some might say Tepper has an elitist attitude (and I wouldn't argue against it). But it's also true in feminism that many of the more well known reformers and activists did come from RELATIVELY privileged backgrounds. And that's the reason for some of the problems in feminist activism. Robin ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:42:09 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Comparing Tepper and Butler: >complete/satisfying/"all-good". In Tepper's books, the good guys triumph, >and the bad guys get what's coming to them. It's not as clear in Butler's >works that the "good guys" really triumph. They survive, generally, but >triumph? > > -Sandy Well, maybe that's part of what makes Butler difficult -- that in her stories, survival *is* triumph, the only triumph there is; and here we are living in the (materially) richest culture ever ("Western" culture, that is), and we've been brought up to take "mere" survival as a given, as a birthright, so we're left kind of gasping, hanging over the edge, asking ourselves, "Wait a minute, is that all there *is*?" I find Tepper upsetting in her own way, and that relates to what others here have said: that to do better we have to make some enormous change that will render us essentially into a different species, which means that while the decisions of a few "advanced" individuals may be wise and good, most of us must simply be forced to become something trans-human because the choices of the majority are doomed to continue to be self-serving, twisted by lies and distortions, and ultimately impossibly destructive. It's as if only the elite can ever *learn* anything. Now, far be it from me, as a member of a whole bunch of privileged elites by any standard of measurement, to deny that this is indeed the way much of the world looks today (anybody else hear the horrible reports on NPR of Albanian villagers coming home to their burned villages in Kosovo and counting up the dead bodies?). But I was raised by Red-ish parents and came out a (mostly) Liberal, and if I didn't believe that all kinds of people *can* learn and change, why would I bother writing books? Sending bits of money to "good" causes? Getting up in the morning? Sometimes I think Butler and Tepper are both writing out of despair. Tepper cries, "Oh, fie upon it!" and goes charging off into new, made-up territory where sudden, sharp actions can alter humanity so as to make our desperate problems melt away. Butler hangs in there following every twist and turn of the knife and insists that just not giving in and hanging your- self is a victory. I think the position of the Liberal is to insisst that we just have to keep on tweaking the situation wherever we can in hopes of making it better than what Butler's characters have no choice but to settle for, but not as good as the ideal that Tepper's strike out for because that ideal is only an option if we leave our humanity behind. And as someone who, ultimately, has to live out her life in *this* world with *these* people, I guess I prefer to stick with that. Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:42:16 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: Eleanor Arnason. . . Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:48 AM 8/13/99, Michael Marc Levy wrote: >On Wed, 11 Aug 1999, Lindy wrote: >> BTW--I was reading Amazon.com reviews for _A Ring of Swords_ and came across >> one by a reader which stated that s/he didn't appreciate how, at the end, >> the story seemed to boil down to "men are bad and women are good" or >> something like this. > >the idea of >having two societies separated by gender, with the men holding military >power, but the women holding the "real" power. I suppose someone could >find this offensive. > >> I didn't get that perspective, and was wondering if anyone else did. Might >> this opinion originate in the way the women were shown to have social power >> in their culture? I'm just curious. > >Could well be. Well, there was a sense, I think, of the women holding society together and the men, "because of" something that might be construed as an innate tend- ency toward hierarchy and violence, being socially exiled to the outer fringes of society as the military "ring." There is a whiff of essential- ism about this plan that bothers me a bit, but on the other hand I haven't seen convincing evidence that men in general do *not* have an innate tend- ency toward hierarchy and violence, so I don't think the argument about essentialism is by any means settled. I'm inclined to take Arnason's structure and its underpinnings (women at the center, men taking their more disruptive energies to the periphery) as a practical effort to solve the presenting problem and not worry too much about whether it's a matter of "innate" qualities or not. Though come to think of it, if the males are aggressive and hierarchical *out of sight* of the females, that weakens the argument that masculine aggress- ion is socially "created" in men by the presence of women whom they have to impress to win a mate. This principle can still operate at a remove, of course -- bringing home a chestful of medals can obviate the need for your lady-love to actually attend the battle at which you won them -- but still, the idea of the males perpetuating a militaristic social structure among themselves at such a strict and extended distance from the females *suggests* an essentialist position that some readers certainly could find offensive. You could think of Arnason's males as centrifugal and the females as centripetal (have I got that right -- pulling outward vs. pulling inward?), taking off from the metaphor of the "ring" of social function, and then you get a nice sense of balanced tension between the outer ring of swords and an inner ring of family interweaving. But you are also looking at the "old" model of sex-segregated society, women as home-keepers, men as war-makers, so troublesome questions are certainly raised. On the other hand, Arnason isn't necessarily suggesting this as a "good," one-size-fits-all solution, is she? Her short fiction about the Hwarhath that I've read is mostly about individuals struggling with their friction with this system, so it's not being presented as The Solution. Suzy Charnas ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:42:31 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: BDG Are we still here? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Todd Mason wrote: >a decade >ago the Bodice-busters were still offering "romantic" rape scenes that might >make Robert Howard blush, as I can attest as an occasionally-bored >bookseller at that time looking to see just how disturbing the cookie-cutter >historicals could be. But then, most of the GOR novels, I was told by my >colleagues who worked mostly second-hand stores, were purchased by women. Wow, really? That's a kind of sick-making surprise, but I guess it shouldn't be; many women read THE STORY OF O, too, and god knows the enigma of the secret and guilty persistence of pleasurable rape-fantasies among women just won't go away no matter how much "explanation" it receives. I doubt, though, that someone suffering the *reality* of rape would have the slightest inter- est in these masochistic dream-scenarios (can you imagine Anyanwu wasting a moment on one of these novels?). Suzy Charnas ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:42:35 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:03 AM 8/12/99, Robin Reid wrote: >popular culture--will have a unit on music, film, tv (specifically ST: DS(), >and we'll read KINDRED and Tony Hillerman's LISTENING WOMAN. Oh, neat! They have a treat and a lot of mind-stimulation in store, then. >The whole grouping of novels is >such a powerful statement against oppression. And Butler is pretty >unflinching, as far as i'm concerned, by showing that oppression is not as >simple as whites oppressing blacks. And in fact she's presenting a situation in which oppression of one group by another is based on something more than one "color" having the edge in terms of fire-power over the other. The idea of a difference in innate abilities as the basis for one group's oppression of another is *really* scary, because then how can the gap ever be bridged, the field leveled again? Speaking of which, did anybody else see the recent article about rich people shopping for genetics-to-order in children using the internet, in the latest NEW YORKER? It presents itself as the story of a young woman who is selling her eggs for tuition money while in college, but goes on to show that there's an "egg-market" already developed on which bright, friendly, pretty -- White, need I add -- girls are able to sell their eggs at premium prices. Musical ability is also often a plus, though there's no evidence that it's necessarily transmissable genetically. This is possibly the beginning of the creation of that genetically-engineered permanent aristocracy that SF has played around with for so long. Butler's version of it, minus the Whiteness, gives us a glimpse of some of the ways it might play out in our own real future (and the futures of our own kids, gods help them!). Sometimes I'm tempted to join Tepper in the belief that the only way out of the more despicable levels of human behavior is to get rid of -- hopefully via transformation rather than obliteration -- the human species altogether! Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:42:40 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: BDG Wild Seed Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >-Original Message----- >From: SMCharnas >To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >Date: 09 August 1999 18:25 >Subject: Re: [*FSFFU-LIT*] BDG Wild Seed > > >>WE WHO ARE >>ABOUT TO, in which the women on a shipwrecked space expedition choose not >>to become the men's brood mares even though this means they will "die out" >>Suzy Charnas > > >As I recall, only one woman refused to be "brood mare", but then she also >refused to join in with all the other futile plans to survive when there was >no chance of it. She chose to embrace her death, rather than struggle >against the inevitable. >Cheers >SC Thanks, you're right -- I haven't reread the book in some time. Suzy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 11:42:43 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: BDG: Wild Seed Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Butler's belief that humanity >is imprisoned by its genome, that certain behaviors are linked to our >biology and that there is no way around it except to breed ourselves >into a new species. This belief (and Butler really does believe it to >some extent, as I learned from Larry McCaffery's interview with her in >*Across the Wounded Galaxies*) is one with which I am extremely >uncomfortable. I disagree with it on a scientific basis, but, more >fundamentally, I reject it because it robs us of any motivation toward >long-term social change -- after all, you can't change Human Nature! Until you change the human genetic map. The *really* scary question, to me, is, once you *can* change human nature via interfering with the genome technologically, what are the chances that "we" will choose to do this with the intention of making our descendants less crazy and aggressive and selfish and narrow-minded? Meantime, though, I think you're right -- the idea of genetic determinism certainly does work as an excuse to condone or at least look the other way when faced with some of our nastiest human excesses. Incidentally, why do you disagree on a scientific basis? What I've seen on the subject from a scientific point of view still vacillates wildly between total behaviorism and total genetic determinism (kind of like my own opinions . . . ). One minute they've "found the gene for homsexuality," the next it's all baloney, on and on, almost as bad as scientific studies of diet and heart disease. >Intellectually I can see that the book makes a statement about the >ghastly dilemmas the enslaved must face, but the book did not go into >enough psychological detail for me to really feel it. Unlike, for >example, *Arslan*, which I found devastating. I truly hated ARSLAN, mainly because Engh chose to concentrate on the fate of a favored boy while tossing away in the margins some truly horrific treatment of girls and women as if *that* wasn't really worth bothering with -- the one whose abuse *mattered* was this lone male. It just made me *grind my teeth!* Very effective book, though, in other ways. suzy charnas ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 13:18:12 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" -----Original Message----- From: SMCharnas [mailto:suzych@SOCRATES.NMIA.COM] Subject: Re: [*FSFFU-LIT*] BDG: Wild Seed the book did not go into >enough psychological detail for me to really feel it. Unlike, for >example, *Arslan*, which I found devastating. I truly hated ARSLAN, mainly because Engh chose to concentrate on the fate of a favored boy while tossing away in the margins some truly horrific treatment of girls and women as if *that* wasn't really worth bothering with -- the one whose abuse *mattered* was this lone male. It just made me *grind my teeth!* Very effective book, though, in other ways. ---While I wondered a bit whatever became of, most acutely, the pubescent girl attacked the same way as the pubescent boy who becomes one of the two protagonists of ARSLAN, I thought that Ms. Engh was taking an interesting tack in presenting his narration from the point of view of a mostly unwilling catamite who harbors very mixed feelings for his, as well as his community's, "conqueror." That the other protagonist is a male schoolteacher from the same community, with somewhat less directly personal pressure on his less mixed feelings toward the dictator, does indeed have strengths and weaknesses--but I think the grudging admiration by both males for this monster was part of Engh's point, and the backgrounding of the various kinds of suffering by women and girls a sharpening of that point. An exceedingly unpleasant, very good novel...about the only sf as despairing in its view of powerlust I can recall was the opening section of Damon Knight's A FOR ANYTHING, which then goes on to be a Heinlein doing Dumas adventure, with the monstrosity mostly backgrounded (my neologism of the day, obviously). ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 14:24:18 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: Eleanor Arnason. . . MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 8/13/99 5:44:27 PM, Suzy C wrote: <> I agree with this. The female human scientist (a scientist, remember) is of interest to the Hwarhath. I saw her representing a kind of bridge, a possibility. best phoebe Phoebe Wray zozie@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 19:44:41 +0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Tepper's new book MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Teppers >work feels distanced, she is -very- concerned with over population, I could >quote and quote single instances and references and themes, but I won't >*wink* and also Fundamentalism. But for the most part, these issues are set >in planets very different to our own, and sometimes almost incomprehensible, >she always has an element of the extremely bizzare in her books, I find with Tepper - ironically, given what I think is a subtext actually arguing against him (and also taking on Swift in _Gulliver's Travels_) in _The Family Tree_, a certain similarity to CS Lewis in the Narnia books (and to some extent the adult SF trilogy) - a sense of tension between the riotous, vivid, bizarre imagination and the didactic intentions. Of course their didactic intentions are very different! Lesley Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 19:47:07 +0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: DUBIOUS HILLS MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >_JG&R_ and _Tam Lin_ have, in many ways, the same sort of structure: >they're almost entirely mainstream fiction for the majority of the book, >with odd and complex hints dancing around the edges, until it all comes >together at the end. This is perhaps why they are so satisfactory to re-read (at least, I find them so!) - one can appreciate much more the way in which Dean builds up a sense of things subtly out of order, of something going on beneath the surface normality, the second time around. Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 20:04:35 +0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Arslan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >I truly hated ARSLAN, mainly because Engh chose to concentrate on >the fate of a favored boy while tossing away in the margins some truly >horrific treatment of girls and women as if *that* wasn't really worth >bothering with Yes, I found that really creepy as well: I also found it rather unsatisfactory that (as far as I can recall) the Resistance, such as it was, was all male. I'd been reading Claudia Koontz's _Mothers in the Fatherland_, about women in Nazi Germany, around the same time, and that had a good chapter on women resisting the regime - often in subtle ways and with the advantage that women were not seen as potentially dangerous in the way men might be. So to omit women altogether from a depiction of an underground resistance to a tyrannical regime seemed an opportunity lost. Lesley Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk -- the one whose abuse *mattered* was this lone male. It >just made me *grind my teeth!* Very effective book, though, in other >ways. > >suzy charnas > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 21:53:24 +0200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Diane Severson Subject: Re: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jenn wrote: >the only one that I can think of at all, and it's hardly a utopia, is the Kesh in Ursula LeGuins ALWAYS COMING HOME. I really like their society, there seems to be no oppression, no difference in sex or class, but there are the nearby Volcano people, who are severely oppressive to women, and the protagonist experiences this totally, so you get to see both sides. It has to be kept in mind though that this is a post-apocalyptic book, so something happened to make them see that things had to change, and this is a very strong message in the book.< Our viewpoint in ACH is such that we see that the Kesh changed their society to one that could live in peace with Nature and with each other. They led VERY sheltered lives however. Or maybe they made the choice more or less *actively* each day. They certainly weren't unaware of other cultures nearby which did things completely differently than they did. But if LeGuin were trying to tell us that an apocalypse is all that is needed to change the world for the better (ie: a sustainable way of life) then she wouldn't have created the Condor people. They reverted (from our perspective) back to a society totally oppressive to woman but didn't learn what the Kesh learned about living in sync with the land. They were obsessed with war machines. Granted they failed miserably over and over again but where is the difference to western culture today? I think an apocalypse is a wake up call to only those who are willing to see it as such. And the Kesh seemed to me to be a pretty matriarchal society. The women weren't oppressive towards men but women could throw a man out of her household at will and there was no mention that that held true for the men as well. Sorry to be so contrary on my first venture into discussion! Diane -- Diane Severson Moerfelder Landstr. 108 60598 Frankfurt am Main (49)(0)69/624595 (+Fax) (49)(0)69/613371 Sent through Global Message Exchange - http://www.gmx.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 23:12:32 +0200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Diane Severson Subject: Re: Tepper's new book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jenn wrote: >the only one that I can think of at all, and it's hardly a utopia, is the Kesh in Ursula LeGuins ALWAYS COMING HOME. I really like their society, there seems to be no oppression, no difference in sex or class, but there are the nearby Volcano people, who are severely oppressive to women, and the protagonist experiences this totally, so you get to see both sides. It has to be kept in mind though that this is a post-apocalyptic book, so something happened to make them see that things had to change, and this is a very strong message in the book.< Our viewpoint in ACH is such that we see that the Kesh changed their society to one that could live in peace with Nature and with each other. They led VERY sheltered lives however. Or maybe they made the choice more or less *actively* each day. They certainly weren't unaware of other cultures nearby which did things completely differently than they did. But if LeGuin were trying to tell us that an apocalypse is all that is needed to change the world for the better (ie: a sustainable way of life) then she wouldn't have created the Condor people. They reverted (from our perspective) back to a society totally oppressive to woman but didn't learn what the Kesh learned about living in sync with the land. They were obsessed with war machines. Granted they failed miserably over and over again but where is the difference to western culture today? I think an apocalypse is a wake up call to only those who are willing to see it as such. And the Kesh seemed to me to be a pretty matriarchal society. The women weren't oppressive towards men but women could throw a man out of her household at will and there was no mention that that held true for the men as well. Sorry to be so contrary on my first venture into discussion! Diane -- Diane Severson Moerfelder Landstr. 108 60598 Frankfurt am Main (49)(0)69/624595 (+Fax) (49)(0)69/613371 Sent through Global Message Exchange - http://www.gmx.net -- Diane Severson Moerfelder Landstr. 108 60598 Frankfurt am Main (49)(0)69/624595 (+Fax) (49)(0)69/613371 Sent through Global Message Exchange - http://www.gmx.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 23:22:29 +0200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Diane Severson Subject: BDG - Octavia Butler MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I just discovered an "authors statement" by Octavia Butler entitled "Devilgirl from Mars - why I write Science Fiction": http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/science_fiction/transcripts/butler_talk_index.html There is also a transcript of a talk she gave together with another author (sorry I have a memory like a seive) at the same website: http:// media-in-transition.mit.edu/science_fiction Enjoy! Diane -- Diane Severson Moerfelder Landstr. 108 60598 Frankfurt am Main (49)(0)69/624595 (+Fax) (49)(0)69/613371 Sent through Global Message Exchange - http://www.gmx.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 17:20:42 +1200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Ianthe Subject: *FSFFU-LIT* ALWAYS COMING HOME (and Tepper) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Diane, not at all, contrary is good. *wink* I had forgotten that women were the ones to throw the men out of her house. And women don't fight do they? when there are problems... I had the feeling that the Bay Laurel Lodge was a boy only affair. They do lead very sheltered lives. A select few of the Kesh people know deatails about the other cultures, which is perhaps why travellers like those who run the trains and the explorers are considered to have romantic professions. I think that the Pig people, the Condor, and the Cotton people are the only ones that we find out anything about in the narrative. And I remember for a fact, that the boy that travelled on the salt trip, was astounded at the way the Cotton people lived, he had not seen anything different frm life in the Valley before, and found their way of life incomprehensible, and even 'wrong'. Le Guin quite often keeps her cultures small, and relatively fragile though, so that she can keep control of the utopia. It's the same in the DISPOSSESED, but there, scarcity is felt as a burden, and it's an ambiguous Utopia. the Kesh seem to be balanced in some inpossible place, so that there is no drive for more of anything, they seem to have found some strange place of contentment between more real places. But the Kesh are still the ones that feel the most real, like someone said on the back of the book, she seems to have the knack of creating societies that hang together and don't resound with the grinding of axes. >But if LeGuin were >trying to tell us that an apocalypse is all that is needed to change the >world for the better (ie: a sustainable way of life) then she wouldn't have >created the Condor people. The point was that the apocalypse wasn't what altered the Kesh, they chose to change their lives. Yes that there was an apocalypse, but that ultimately, that wasn't what caused a change, because as you say, one group benfitted from a world change, while the other didn't. The Kesh changed their society, it wasn't actually a change in humanity that brought it about, it was the choice of one culture. Which is different, for the most part, to the way Tepper structures her books, where something 'has to happen' that alters humanity, because they by themselves will never change. The thing that I remember about the Kesh, is that, by living half in civilisation, half in wilderness, and also by sharing food, and not placing value on personal wealth or hoarding of food/goods, they were able to avoid having surplus, surplus food leads to cities, which then, I guess, lead to war and famine. By staying small, sheltered and isolated, it seems that they didn't let their society grow out of control, the Condor on the other hand, are a war nation, they have children to take to war, and they fight wars to gain more land to feed the population that they are increasing all the time. Le Guin has, talked about progress as a problem before, and used the image of the demanding Father, which may be why her more utopian society in this archeology of the future is Matriarchal. There are no myths of progress in the Kesh's narratives, they don't feel the need to immortilize anything, even books get thrown out eventually, the City of the Mind saves everything, but that is 'out of nature'. I think that they would say that the City was not in the Four Houses of the Earth. Perhaps, even though they're sheltered from the rest of the world, the rest of the world is worth being relatively sheltered from. And it is promising to us, that there needn't actually be that many differences between the Kesh and ourselves, except population size, and maybe, time. Jenn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 17:20:51 +1200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Ianthe Subject: Re: SPOILERS (TEPPER) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Robin: the Hobbs Land Trilogy is my favourite too, I read SIDESHOW first, then GRASS, then RAISING THE STONES. I know this was a rather backward order, but since the books are caught together by only a few threads, it didn't seem to matter, and since SIDESHOW is my fave out of the three, I got to research that one by reading the first two, which was fascinating. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * >what intrigued me about SIX MOON DANCE was how everyone's >assumptions (The Questioner--eek, is that her name I don't think she ever had a name, until she met the people that she had come from, and even then, they were only part of her *shrugs* I want to say her name is Ellery Quin, but I think that's the dancing girl. >wounded/grounded alien was female; she ASSUMED that the girl children were >killed, and both those assumptions were wrong I thought that the wrong assumtions were quite good, because they showed that even a formidable machine that had been dispatched by HOLICOW could make wrong judgements, scary, because she quite often razed whole planets because of native discretions. And also because it threw us, the readers (or made us feel extra smart if we saw throught he false assumptions or had a different view of our own to begin with) >(I don't think Tepper likes bureaucracies either) but of course *wink* >I hadn't remembered this novel as well (THE AWAKENERS is my least favorite >Tepper book, along with BEAUTY) AWAKENERS is my other favourite besides SIDESHOW, perhaps because it was the first Tepper book I read, and was blown away by this strange world. I thought it was a very intricate society, the complexities fascinated me. >that Tepper creates--and I find her characterizations are often complex, so >that there are "gaps" so to speak do you want to explain further? >(who "pass" as the Untouchables so to speak in I'm pleased to say that after I realised there was a new Tepper boook, and wrote that first message, my darling Mama found it at the library - great eh! ...so I'm only a chapter into it at the moment, but it feels as if the Untouchables are like an Indian Caste... what do you think? >I know, I just reread this and was fascinated by the way Tepper managed to >"keep" the fact that the whole group of people on the Quest were "actually" >sentient pigs, racoons, monkeys, birds, etc. But looking back there are >some intriguing little hints. And the twist of the "ummmynhhy" (spe?) and >who they were at the end is just too great! I know! and the interesting thing is that, when they reached the end of their 'quest' isn't it interesting that we found a small group of humans trying to survive as they always have been, trying to stay the same, and not to change in any way if they can help it! and they were ill, and bent on self preservation at all costs, this seems to be a real divergence from the ecofeminist theme of Tepper's other books, that the animals had changed, beomce sentient, yadda yadda yadda, but the humans hadn't changed at all! except that they had become very ill through such close breeding. I think Janice is really interested in this fact... >planets and in cultures that "sound" very different (naming, etc) This is one of the things that I was talking about in reference to Teppers unusual sense of humor.. I find her names really interesting! think about Sideshow, they are such normal words, alot of them, that have become names! it feels very whimsical, in such a harsh atmostphere, like in SIDESHOW - the planet is called Elsewhere, the capital is Tolerance, and there we find the Great Rotunda, beaurocrats from Tolerance come from Heaven. Near Enarae we have the Seldom Isles etc. The acronym in SIX MOON DANCE is totally irreverent - HOLI-COW - what does it stand for? Holistic something something something Council of Worlds. Tepper plays interesting games with Language, remember Messico in PLAGUE OF ANGELS, it's obvious that it was once America... and the slang that the characters in different cultures use, like in this book, all the 'gangers' say "Whatso" as a greeting.... even the names of characters are often whimsical or have a greater meaning... Fringe means on the edges.. it suits her perfectly (she's my fave character ever) and Zasper is a combination of say zach and jasper.. it sounds great... >show human cultures that are very close to cultures of today you're right! the strange names are merely a surface layer, underneath, the cultures are still alot the same.. do you think this is subversive on Tepper's part? >GRASS--not only Catholicism (in the Old Catholics), but the Church of the >Latter Day Saints (Mormons) play a big role. They also felt to me a bit like colonial Boers, what with the names, and the confined nature of the seperate families on the planet.... or perhaps like the big Pampas families in South America. >what happens to the male characters in A PLAGUE OF ANGELS who sets off the >the city with great plans, but ends up a ganger--what else could he do in >that environment? The thing is though, that Abasio is an atypical ganger, he actually does alot in that environment, he manages to get a high-status position with the Purples - he READS! educates himself, doesn't have sex often, so avoids IDDI's, doesn't take that many drugs, visits the country still. He survives in the city environment with a very high standard of living, and is aware of what is happening to others and avoids the same situations. I loved the archetypal villages in PLAGUE OF ANGELS, I think that this comes into what I meant about Tepper's sense of humor too, she takes motifs that seem slightly outrageous or whimsical to us, and puts them in a serious setting, where they are totally real. Jenn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 17:21:00 +1200 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Ianthe Subject: Re: Tepper and CS Lewis Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Lesley wrote: >I find with Tepper - ironically, given what I think is a subtext actually >arguing against him (and also taking on Swift in _Gulliver's Travels_) in >_The Family Tree_, a certain similarity to CS Lewis in the Narnia books (and >to some extent the adult SF trilogy) - a sense of tension between the >riotous, vivid, bizarre imagination and the didactic intentions. Of course >their didactic intentions are very different! yeah, that combination of preaching and narrative. To what extent do you think the FAMILY TREE could be allegorical? that's what the Narnia books felt like, when I read them again at 14 or whenever it was.. Jenn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 15:08:02 +0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Tepper and CS Lewis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit . To what extent do you >think the FAMILY TREE could be allegorical? that's what the Narnia books >felt like, when I read them again at 14 or whenever it was.. I think there's certainly a strand of that in Tepper but (as with Lewis) there's stuff going on which is not just about the moral agenda of the allegory - and that is where the tension comes in. What's interesting about _The Family Tree_ is that it's using Christian metaphors very close to the kind of thing Lewis was using in the Narnia books - but the Umanyoo (?sp) are the despised and rejected, servant of the servants, image of the redeemer, rather than rulers filling the 4 thrones and ushering in the golden age. Which also interesting given Tepper's hostility towards organised systems of religion. It may simply reflect the prevalence of the Christian mythos in Western culture and literature. (I'm sure the name is meant to echo, slightly, Swift's noble equine houhnhyms [also ?sp] whom he opposes to the humanoid and horrible yahoos). Lesley Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 15:39:09 +0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: sc Subject: Re: We Who Are About To... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >I seem to recall that yes, it's the first person narrator who is telling the >story or retelling it while holed up after killing the other survivors who >were going to force her to participate against her will. Lots of bitter >comments on what it would do to women (not in great physical shape) from an >advanced technological society to go back to giving birth--and >inbreeding--and everything. I'd have tocheck again, but I think she (acting >in self defense) did kill the others. > >Now THAT'S a TOTALLY grim read! > >Robin > > > Funnily enough, I didn't find it grim at all. The early part of the book had many touches of Russ's particularly wry humour and the last part where the narrator is trying to come to terms with her life so she can go forward into death I found quite touching - especially that very last moment of doubt and hope at the end.... ........Spoiler Alert ...... ... where as she is about to die she seems to see rescuers coming. I love this story! Cheers SC ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1999 11:48:47 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: SMCharnas Subject: Re: ARSLAN: Charnas Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Todd wrote, of ARSLAN: >strengths and weaknesses--but I think the grudging admiration by both males >for this monster was part of Engh's point, and the backgrounding of the >various kinds of suffering by women and girls a sharpening of that point. >An exceedingly unpleasant, very good novel.. Well, you know, that may be there for readers to find, but I spoke to Mary about my objections at one point, and she very humbly answered, "Yes; I didn't know any better." So I suspect that neither the dismissiveness about the women nor the cynical observation about the men's tendency to admire the ruthless ravager were consciously worked out by this author even in the course of doing the book. It was, as far as I know, a first novel, so a certain amount of non-self-awareness of this type is entirely to be expected, of course. There was also about this book a whiff (though quite rarified) of the male-homosexual-love-affair-written-by-a-woman strain that used to be common in Slash fanfic which made it feel somewhat "overwrought" and displaced, somehow, from its real concerns, and that also bothered me. But given all that, it's a powerful piece of work focusing in a unique way on the immense damage that Western "civilization" has wrought in running roughshod over just about everybody else in the world, "for their own good" of course. Suzy Charnas