From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Tue Feb 12 16:52:46 2002 Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 18:38:45 -0600 From: "L-Soft list server at UIC (1.8d)" To: Laura Q Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG0110B" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 23:39:28 +0000 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Wilhelmina Thomas Subject: A Womans Liberation Comments: To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Hi Guy, I say this on http://www.scifi.com/chat/ and thought some of you might be interested. Wilhelmina UPCOMING CHATS (in channel #auditorium) A Woman^Òs Liberation For More Info: - Analog: Science Fiction and Fact Tuesday, October 9 at 9PM ET Chat with, Nancy Kress, Pat Murphy, Sheila Williams, Connie Willis, and Sara Zettel on the new Warner Aspect Anthology. Connect your IRC software client to events.scifi.com and join channel #auditorium to participate. Chatters with a java-capable browser may use our java _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 22:35:24 +0800 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Carol & Phil Ryles Subject: BDG The Fortunate Fall Comments: To: feministsf-lit@UIC.EDU MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I liked this book a lot. The technology blended seamlessly with the narrative. The characters were intriguing, complicated and wonderfully unpredictable. However, I must confess I had to read the book twice before I could attempt to make any comments -- and the second reading was by far the best -- hindsight was definitely an advantage here. Although I still feel there is still a lot I missed. eg, how effective Voskresenye's and Keishi's viruses are going to be against the weavers? At times the prose was exquisite. eg, "When she had finished, she would slide herself into my mind, like a rat into water." This sentence took on a whole new meaning after the second reading ie, Keishi sliding into Maya's mind -- Keishi the opportunist who Maya could never trust. Petra asked: > Do you think that Maya made the wrong decision in leaving Keishi 'in the > prison camp beneath the ocean, with the ruined mind of the new Iscariot and > the body of the whale'? On a personal level, I think not. I think Keishi was manipulating Maya from beginning to end. eg, when Maya is explaining how she got away with doing the Calinschina shoot, Keishi (who is already fully aware of the story), says: "What did you do?" (with a peculiar tenderness). > Why is Maya unhappy in the end? Guilt, loneliness, because she realised she > loved Keishi after all? I think Maya still loves her, but is also aware that if Keishi became part of her, she would become dependant on her superior strength and therefore under her control: eg: p.283. "Wherever you go, I'll protect you. I'll cut you a path through the Postcops, and keep the Weavers from your door. . . etc" Also, Maya first 'saw' Keishi's mind when they were in greyspace together: p.69 "Beside her acres and arches and spires of mind, mine was a mere clot of neurodes." What chance would she have against that? Keishi promises that she would be merely an observer, but Maya has no reason to trust her after all trickery that went on before. >I had difficulties accepting the emotional importance >of the whale to people in the whole world. >What do you think? The extinction of the whales would be a major tragedy, especially in a wired culture where everyone would know exactly what they had lost, ie, an intelligent animal that many people had spent decades trying to save. If one suddenly turned up, I'm sure the whole (wired) world would sit up and take notice -- maybe even see it as a second chance. I'm still thinking about your other questions Petra, but it's getting late. I'll write some more soon, Bests, Carol. > I cannot find the exact quote right now, but somewhere in the book > Voskresenye makes a statement about why the horrors of the Unanimous Army > made such a small imprint on general consciousness compared to the > Holocaust. Can you help me out on this? What do you think about it? > > Did you understand Greyspace? This hunting technique somehow connected with > looking? I didn't. > > I had difficulties accepting the emotional importance of the whale to people > in the whole world. What do you think? > > What do you think about the conflicts between principles and humaneness > presented in the novel? > > What do you think about the homophobia of the presented society? Did it > convince you? > > There are 2 stories in this book. Maya's personal one and the 'historical' > one of Voskresenye. In your opinion did the two story lines match? > > Did you figure out how the African technological advance came about? What > are these 4 African 'gods'? His Majesty-in-Chains, etc. > > Where were your sympathies? Did you have any for Keishi and Voskresenye? > > > My own answers? Here, it's already late. More in a few days. > > Petra > > -- > Petra Mayerhofer p.mayerhofer@web.de > > Website of Book Discussion Group on feminist sf > www.geocities.com/bdg_volunteers/ > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2001 12:02:44 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "S. McInneshin" Subject: Fortunate Fall Comments: To: feministsf-lit@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Greetings all. I'm new at posting, so let me know if I've failed to follow some established guideline. Thanks! Now about The Fortunate Fall. The phrase that cropped up when I finished this book is "Knowledge is a social construction." I think Carter displays this quite well, using technology (specifically cyber) as a framework for his discussion regarding the power that controlling knowledge can have on society and politics. I liked that Carter held back on how this world functioned, and let us see it as he built it up from chapter to chapter (especially discovering the histories of the Guardians, the Unanimous Armies, Maya, Voskresenye, etc.). With that in mind, I thought that most of what he was saying through his two narrators (Maya and Voskresenye) was important to how the plot would unravel, so I was a little surprised to see that there wasn't another mention of Katya again after a chapter ending that suggested she could still be alive (and believe it or not, I thought for a while that Katya and Keishi were somehow linked or possibly the same person, mainly because they seemed awfully similar in the way they managed people). Perhaps the parallel was drawn between Katya and Keishi to emphasize potential similarities between Maya and Voskresenye? I think this is interesting because Maya could have been Voskresenye and vice versa, yet Maya ends up making different choices, the biggest one of all being to remove herself completely from an association with Keishi at the end (which I think Voskresenye never does, with either Keishi or the memory of Katya). I did think the two story lines matched because I think they are similar with different outcomes, and that Carter uses these similar (yet dissimilar) lives to show what power can do, and how something that seems simple like love can drive people in different ways. Down with homogeneity, isn't that one of his points? I did find the discussion on love a bit dissatisfying, mainly because I think it was crammed in at the end with other things. I think that Maya made the choice best for her by leaving everything behind at the end. I agree with other's comments about it. Although I wonder how much conditioning and fear had to do with Maya's last decision. Perhaps her constant vigilance against everything around her made her unable to be free, or to take a risk with Keishi, but then again, there's Voskresenye as an opposite example. Maya seemed to be an unhappy character all around. I would have been surprised if she chose a happy ending for herself, or if Carter chose one for her. Perhaps the lesson here is self-reflection is a good thing? (And to deny a part of yourself is not so good?) Regarding the importance of the whale: Well, if the weavers made the impact of the whale less important, or made people feel that way, then it's kind of a moot point about its importance to this society. I tend to lean toward thinking that in this book, people would not have attached much emotional importance to the whale. People would notice for the novelity of it all, but that living in a virtual world removes the urgency of the physical, both the corporeal and nature. Carter's comments on the Net and virtual worlds seems not unlike a metaphor for how current society reacts to inundation of information. Most humans are unable to associate much with those physically near them, let alone thousands of miles away. Mental and spiritual disassociation has become one problematic biproduct of modern society. "I cannot find the exact quote right now, but somewhere in the book Voskresenye makes a statement about why the horrors of the Unanimous Army made such a small imprint on general consciousness compared to the Holocaust. Can you help me out on this? What do you think about it?" I don't remember this but I think it maybe partly because so many people were socketed and brainwashed that they don't remember? And Carter suggests that the Weavers didn't seem so bad even though their actions echoed Guardian actions because they weren't the originators of the horror (and they were more subtle), that is, people were able to digest the horrors better (if there is such a thing). This reminds me of how history uses Nazis and Hitler (THE Holocaust) as the ultimately horror, and we're appropriately horrified, and yet Pol Pot and Cambodia hardly get a blip on the screen (especially in Western societies), or the Armenians in Turkey, or Rwanda... and regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina, we are aware but most of us do little.... not unlike a society with Weavers. I'll think more on the Africa and the four gods and greyspace question. I think it's an interesting one. S. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 21:35:18 -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 The Fortunate Fall Comments: To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I finally finished the book and have to say that I didn't like it. Maybe it's just because I'm not that interested in virtual reality or artificial intelligence. I liked the movie Tron, back 400 years ago when it came out, but that was visually appealing; reading about greyspace didn't engage me at all. Everything seemed so disconnected that I had a difficult, no impossible, time making a cohesive whole of it. Carol said she had to read the book twice in order to understand it well enough to comment. I think that's probably what I'd need to do, but I didn't like it well enough to take the time. I liked all your comments, obviously the book has merit that just passed me by. Petra asked "Is it realistic to suppose that people will care about a whale?" The whale was the only one I did care about. I can't believe, even as degenerate as he was, that Voskresenye was not only going to kill her but also to rip apart her DNA so that she could never be cloned. My objection to this book was the same, though to a lesser degree, as that to Ash. Ugliness, violence and inhumanity was depicted for no reason. We have to wade through all that torture (did we need to think about cages of people piled together as they slowly died?) to get to the message that homophobia and censorship are bad, the ends don't justify the means, enforcement of one extremist group's view of an improved society is bad for individual growth, perhaps romantic love between two people is less important than freedom for society as a whole? That said, there were some things I liked about it. I liked the idea of sharing a self with a whale, cameras, the warm car, calling Sgt. Pudding, Africa as the pinnacle of civilization, the square miles (though I never understood what they were), the Uniform Army (ditto), polite Postcops, Voskresenye "waking" during a chess game, suppression chips and desuppressing. I liked lots of individual things just not the way they were put together or the glue of ugliness that bound them. I guess there had to be one voice of dissent. Joyce the Faithless (from Door Into Ocean) Currently reading: From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman Currently listening to: The Fourth Hand by John Irving ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 23:11:29 +0800 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Carol & Phil Ryles Subject: Re: Fortunate Fall Comments: To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, so I was a little surprised to see that there wasn't another > mention of Katya again after a chapter ending that suggested she could > still be alive (and believe it or not, I thought for a while that Katya > and Keishi were somehow linked or possibly the same person, mainly > because they seemed awfully similar in the way they managed people). Yes, I agree. I was extremely disappointed at not learning that Katya and Keishi were the same person. > Regarding the importance of the whale: Well, if the weavers made the > impact of the whale less important, or made people feel that way, then > it's kind of a moot point about its importance to this society. I tend > to lean toward thinking that in this book, people would not have > attached much emotional importance to the whale. People would notice for > the novelty of it all, but that living in a virtual world removes the > urgency of the physical, both the corporeal and nature. Now I have mixed feelings about the whale: At first I thought it would be important to this society because 1) the weavers are only interested in manipulating behaviour that threatens the present (at one stage Keishi tells Maya that the weavers forget things that are no longer important). If there is information about the history of whales on just one person's little electronic encyclopaedia, then maybe it would get out. 2) the extinction of the whales can be looked upon as a kind of genocide -- one of the horrors that weavers are supposed to be preventing. Therefore, having a survivor right there in front of everyone may well cause a stir. And what reason would the weavers have to prevent it? The last surviving whale would be a reminder of the horrors that were perpetrated before deviant behaviour was screened out. Then I moved on to the next question about why the horrors of the Unanimous Army made such a small imprint on general consciousness compared to the Holocaust: I think the answer is in chapter 17 where Voskresenye tells Maya that there are no telepresence accounts of people who experienced the horrors of the Unanimous Army -- there is only Telepresence of people talking about it, which is not the same. The reason there are no telepresence accounts is because Voskresenye claims that the weavers have filtered them out so that people will not hate the Gardians enough to think that the Unanimous Army was justified. I guess whether or not they would want to filter out knowledge about the whales depends on how much they would want people to hate or not hate the past. I liked the idea of the four Gods of Africa: His-Majesty-in-Chains (General sympathy), Only-A-Man (individual sympathy) and calculator-king (law). I once read an article about panocracy, where it was defined as an improvement on democracy -- A logical use of telepresence. But I found the conclusion that the only woman of the four -- the Unknown King -- should be the one who turns away .) I was kind of anticipating that she would be the invisible one, so was disappointed at not having an explanation as to why she should be the one to turn away. Did I miss an important hint somewhere or is this the reason why Maya walked away in the end? Carol.