From LISTSERV@listserv.uic.edu Thu Aug 24 18:52:10 2000 Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 20:41:39 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8d)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG9912C" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 10:15:59 -0600 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Todd Mason Subject: FW: Asaro and Park...for Philadelphians, Wilmingtonians, and Medi a fans... Comments: To: "sciencefiction-l@listserv.indiana.edu" , Multiple recipients of list SF-LIT Comments: cc: Multiple recipients of list , Amy Harlib , Frederic Bush MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" -----Original Message----- From: Helen Thompson [mailto:helcat@sff.net] Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 1999 2:08 AM Heya. I know you're local, and I wasn't sure if you'd seen this circulating about, but Severna Park and Catherine Asaro will be doing a booksigning at Waldenbooks Granite Run Mall near Media this coming Sunday. I realize that braving the malls on a Christmas Sunday is frightening, but -- it's for a worthy cause. Really. ;) Helen (who has a vested interest in said event, being the manager and all) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 11:39:37 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Helen Thompson Subject: Re: FW: Asaro and Park...for Philadelphians, Wilmingtonians, and Medi a fans... In-Reply-To: <874BCFAAE5A4D211BA020008C70D100502B34BF5@tvgradpo1.tvguide.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Here, this should make it easier. Catherine Asaro and Severna Park will be appearing on Sunday, Dec. 19th, from 3-5 at Granite Run Mall in Media, PA.That's within a half hour of south Jersey, Philadelphia, and Wilmington. Email me privately if you'd like directions. Helen ----------- 19107715/icq ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 22:43:14 -0500 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: Chemistry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I was intrigued by the premise of this story, but I don't think it followed through on it particularly well. I was hoping for a scientific investigation of what being "in love" is all about, preferably in a way that illuminated or questioned gender roles, but in the final analysis the story seemed quite conventional and unquestioning to me. These are some issues that came to my mind: Steve believes in "love at first sight". Apart from a couple of isolated comments Lily makes, the concept isn't questioned. Maybe the author was making a comment on typical male vs. female approaches to courtship -- after all, Steve knows he is in love right away, whereas Lily needs drugs and persuasion to reach a similar state of mind -- but I didn't get much of a sense of that. It seemed more like they were the lucky winners of the lottery, particularly as we are never given details about what they like about one another. What sort of clientele would a place like the Hothouse really have? Granted, it is not exactly a whorehouse, as *everyone* is a paying customer, but when it boils right down to it, it is selling sex. Maybe people are even more naive in this projected future than they are now, but I find it hard to imagine most women believing, as Lily's roommate apparently does, that it "isn't about sex, it's about feelings". It seems to me that you would have an awful lot of sexual predators showing up at a place like the Hothouse. In an atmosphere of heightened sexual arousal, why would everyone want only one partner? Where are the orgies? I liked all the descriptive details of the Hothouse's architecture -- it seemed like a cross between a mall and an all-night club -- and some of the neurobiology was interesting, but overall I found this story lacking in freshness. Greg Egan has done better with similar themes. And the treatment of the aphrodisiac oil in *Slow River* seemed more realistic. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: The *Velvet Goldmine* Soundtrack "...the public and the private worlds are inseparably connected; the tyrannies and servilities of the one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other." Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas