From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Tue Dec 29 16:03:38 1998 Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 17:57:45 -0600 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" To: lquilter@HOOKED.NET Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9811C" ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 22:01:58 -0700 Reply-To: camiller@gte.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Cathie Miller Subject: BDG Snow Queen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit S.M. Stirling responded to this question, >In the case of the cetaceans under question here, we kill them in painful ways.> with this comment: -- have you ever seen what a pod of orcas do to a right whale? They eat it alive, one bite at a time. What has this got to do with it? We are responsible for our actions, not theirs. We are killing them...why? because we NEED to? because they are a THREAT to us? No. Apparently to maintain some sort of tradition among peoples who need to justify their actions by claiming that the products produced are necessary and without substitute. Basically, it's just lack of human imagination in finding something less destructive, and more enriching, to do. Chris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 07:08:30 -0700 Reply-To: camiller@gte.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Cathie Miller Subject: OT-still MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Wow. I hesitate to continue a thread which could be considered off-topic, but I feel I must respond to these comments. > >What has this got to do with it? > > -- That we should avoid hubris. We are animals too. > > >We are killing them...why? > > -- Who is "we"? Last time I looked, there were fairly strict limits on > whaling; the Japanese keep cheating on the margins, of course, and should be > pressured to stop. > > >Apparently to maintain some sort of tradition > > -- if you're referring to small-scale whaling by Innuit and Native American > groups, I would advise a little humility. > > Do you really want to join the tradition of rich, powerful white people from > the city telling the "ignorant barbaric red savages" what's morally acceptable > behavior? > The 'we' in my post refers to human beings. And the periodic moratoriums of Norway, Iceland, and Japan, the hand-slapping at violations, and increasingly high catch ceilings may qualify as limitations, but commercial whaling should no longer happen. The tradition of which I was speaking is the industry around whaling, those who profit from providing cosmetics, dubious curatives, exotic unnecessary foods, aids to superstition, trophies and jobs by continuing whaling. The fact the whales are increasing in numbers is also a ridiculous justification. Real furs are coming back into fashion, and elephants and rhinos are still being killed because there is a market for parts of their bodies. We can dominate these animals because we are 'more intelligent', 'communicate', and have opposable thumbs? We're just a race of barbarians. That's okay, I guess. As long as we avoid anything approaching sentimentality or hubris. That would be embarassing. Chris ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 08:51:54 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Subject: stuff Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Allyson: Thanks for the thoughtful post on SNOW QUEEN. ~~~~~~~ On Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake books. For my $.02, good mind candy. Hamilton is a great storyteller, who moves the action along. Her prose is strong enough to give her main character a distinctive voice, but I think she has a few weaknesses, some of which could be solved by stronger editing (like repeating pet phrases). While the violence bothers me sometimes, for me the best part *SPOLER ALERT* has been the move towards polyamoury *END SPOILER* in the later books. +++++++++ Anyone in So Cal December 1st is invited to our event with OCTAVIA BUTLER, signing and discussing PARABLE OF THE TALENTS at 7 PM at the store! __________ There was a long discussion of Tepper back in April 1997. There is a whole Tepper bibliography somewhere in the archives, but just in case... The Sheri Tepper web page at the fem-sf site (http://www.uic.edu/~lauramd/femsf/tepper.html) Tepper's poetry: as Sheri S. Eberhart "Lullaby, 1990" in Galaxy, 12/63 Tepper's horror: _The Bones_ '86 _Blood Heritage_ '86 and a stunning vampire novella, "The Gardener", published in _Night Visions 6_, aka _The Bone Yard_ '88 as E.E. Horlak : _Still Life_ '88 Her SF novels include (more or less chronologically): _The Revenants_ '84 _King's Blood Four_* '83 _Necromancer Nine_* '83 _Wizard's Eleven_* '84 _The Song of Mavin Manyshaped_* '85 _The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped_* '85 _The Search of Mavin Manyshaped_* '85 _Jinian Footseer_* '85 _Devrish Daughter_* '86 _Jinian Star-Eye_* '86 * a trio of trilogies set in the same fantastic world _The Awakeners_ (_Northshore, Vol. I_; _Southshore, Vol. II_) '87/'87 _Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore_ '85 _Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods_ '88 _Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse_ '89 _After Long Silence_ '87 _The Gate to Women's Country_ '88 _Beauty_ '91 _Grass_ \ '89 _Raising the Stones_ loose trilogy '90 _Sideshow_ / '92 _A Plague of Angels_ '93 _Shadow's End_ '94 _Gibbon's Decline and Fall_ '96 _The Family Tree_ '97 _Six Moon Dance_ '98 She also writes mysteries under two psuedonyms: >The Jason Lynx mysteries by A.J. Orde, featuring a Colorado antiques >dealer and his SO, a (female) police officer: _A Little Neighborhood Murder_ '89 _Death and the Dogwalker_ '90 _Death for Old Time's Sake_ '92 _Dead on Sunday_ (aka _Looking for the Aardvark_) '94 /'93 _A Long Time Dead_ '95 _Death of Innocents_ '97 The Shirley McClintock mysteries by B.J. Oliphant, featuring a Colorado rancher cum New Mexico B&B Ranch owner: _Dead in the Scrub_ '90 _The Unexpected Corpse_ '90 _Deservedly Dead_ '92 _Death and the Delinquent_ '93 _Death Served up Cold_ '94 _A Ceremonial Death_ '96 _Here's to the Newly Deads_ '97 Not that I'm an obsessive completist, or anything. But I thought folks might like to know.:) Note: all dates are taken from my American editions. She was also the subject of the "Locus" interview in September 1998. Pax, Maryelizabeth Mysterious Galaxy 619-268-4747 3904 Convoy St, #107 800-811-4747 San Diego, CA 92111 619-268-4775 FAX http://www.mystgalaxy.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 10:41:32 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit (I am amazed, btw, about the things that come up on this list.) (Returning to my desk and 348 email messages after long illness.) The thing about whales is that if they are in fact "equivalent" in intelligence to humans, that intelligence is bound to be totally different in kind from ours, simply because they don't have opposable thumbs and so on. The things their minds have evolved to do are different. I am not inclined to believe in superintelligent whales, because I have the spoilsport conviction that a lot of human thinking simply comes from the thumbs--we can do a lot more to our world than whales can to theirs. Although it would be an interesting idea if they could think and understand and despair because they just don't have the thumbs or the right vocal chords to communicate. Then there's the whole Descartes thing--if I recall, he wrote something about how animals were apparently machines, since there was no plausible evidence that they were conscious in the way we are and since it was quite possible that they only appeared to feel pain or felt it only as information if they did. I had an environmental studies professor (am not a science person, however, just had a science requirement. But one would assume that's obvious) who said that he could not think of a way to defuse this arguement and so just ignored it, because he had a dog. Of course, I think it's just a form of "what if I'm the only sentient being in the universe and everything else is just a giant hallucination?" Actually, there are a lot of philosophical arguements that you just have to ignore, I find, like determinism. Although, as far as the "oooh look what those killer whales do to cute lil' baby seals" kind of arguement, well, even if you argue that whales are moral patients, they, lacking opposable thumbs and all that follows, can hardly whip up a batch of tofu to substitute for their protein requirements. Were I, vegetarian that I am, marooned on an island (Dr. Island, perhaps...) I would eat raw fish if no other food source presented itself. On the other hand, since I live a mere mile from a very nice co-op, I don't yearn to chomp on whale meat. And since we have all sorts of lubricants and fuels, we don't really need whale oil. And, corsets being reserved for the perverse minority, we don't need whalebone either. Did anyone read a children's book wherein a teenage girl was sort of channeled by a whale? All these various whale kinds of things, under her leadership, arrived at a plan to prevent--some kind of environmental bad thing. The book affected me profoundly at the time. (Speaking of whales, does anyone know a Melville discussion list, or a list where it would be appropriate to discuss Melville? Private email responses would be better. I adore Melville, looking up as I do from a pit of profound ignorance about that period in American literature) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 14:04:00 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/16/98 9:46:10 AM Mountain Standard Time, JFrankln@FAMPRAC.UMN.EDU writes: >The thing about whales is that if they are in fact "equivalent" in intelligence to humans, that intelligence is bound to be totally different in kind from ours -- not necessarily. Humans are far, far more intelligent than they need to be to deal with their non-human environment. We probably evolved our intellects primarily to deal with each other, not with toolmaking or finding food -- those were side-effects, bonuses. So if whales are intelligent, they probably evolved it for social relations. I see no evidence that they're smarter than other large nonhuman mammals, though. >Then there's the whole Descartes thing--if I recall, he wrote something about how animals were apparently machines, since there was no plausible evidence that they were conscious in the way we are and since it was quite possible that they only appeared to feel pain or felt it only as information if they did. -- IMHO Descartes was given to excessive conclusions from questionble _a priori_ assumptions -- very French, in a line going right down to Foucault and de Man. Since we're mammals, and since we acquired our forebrains relatively recently (Descartes didn't know about evolution, of course) I'd say it's a fair bet that when another mammal has a reaction that's recognizably similar to ours (say, wincing from a blow) that their internal states are also quite similar to those of a human showing the same reaction. Ie., when you kick them, it hurts. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 13:04:39 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Gray Subject: Re: Trouble and her friends -- some spoilers In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I just wanted to mention that for those who liked "Trouble and Her Friends", and there seems to be a fair number of you, you may also like "Dreamships" by the same author. The inequalities in this are more class-based than in "Trouble...", although, as in the USA today, this often translates to race, sex, and orientation. The best part of "Dreamships", in my opinion, is the VR-piloting thorough hyper-space. Bonnie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 13:42:54 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Snow Queen Allyson said: "The book seems to argue that fate (hence the central character of the mask-maker) plays a large role in human's lives, and Moon ends up renewing the planet, awakening it, despite the Snow Queen's intentions." I haven't read the two other books in the trilogy, but I thought this book was intimating that "fate" was not the guiding force, rather that the Sybil machine was behind everything. While Moon thought she was searching for Sparks to rescue him, or because of her love for him she realized that maybe her actions were being guided by the Sybil machine so that she could make a change in the culture of Tiamat. The mask maker's being a Sybil would have involved her also in the intended outcome of the queen selection. It might be a stretch to get at this next part, but while we humans are dominating the whales and dolphins, isn't it possible that they're achieving some kind of goal that we are ignorant of? Someday it seems that the dolphins will be able to speak to humans; but as has been said, until that time it it isn't guaranteed that they aren't communicating something significant among themselves. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 17:03:31 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Frances Green Subject: Re: Trouble and her friends -- some spoilers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit And if you like Dreamships, don't miss Dreaming Metal: not VR piloting, but tying in with the question of self-aware AI constructs; and the trio from Dreamships reappear, unusual in Scott's work. except for the Silence Leigh trilogy (whose spaceship piloting is a whole other wonderful concept). On Mon, 16 Nov 1998 13:04:39 -0800 Bonnie Gray writes: >I just wanted to mention that for those who liked "Trouble and Her >Friends", and there seems to be a fair number of you, you may also >like "Dreamships" by the same author. The inequalities in >this are more class-based than in "Trouble...", although, as in >the USA today, this often translates to race, sex, and orientation. >The best part of "Dreamships", in my opinion, is the VR-piloting >thorough hyper-space. > >Bonnie > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 17:17:27 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Caroline Couture Subject: Re: vampire jobs In-Reply-To: <45ab289d.364c59b8@aol.com> from "Phoebe Wray" at Nov 13, 98 11:09:28 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Phoebe sez: > Anyone out there following the Laurell K. Hamilton series? > Yup. :) Actually I've gotten folks here at work to read them too. (I'm a book pusher; the first book is free.) I agree that the body count has soared in the last couple of books but the violence does have emotional consequences for those touched by it. The books aren't deep by any stretch but the world she's created, with magic and the supernatural an everyday part of the landscape, is an interesting one. (_Burnt Offerings_ and _Blue Moon_ are still in the to be read pile.) People who know I like Anita have also mentioned the Huff books to me as well and I'll add them to the pile real soon now. :) What do folks think about the Sonja Blue books by Nancy Collins? They star a female vampire who hunts other vampires. 'Ta, Caroline ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 17:20:03 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: Re: vampire jobs In-Reply-To: <199811162217.RAA06272@viking.cris.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 16 Nov 1998, Caroline Couture wrote: (snip) > What do folks think about the Sonja Blue books by Nancy Collins? They star > a female vampire who hunts other vampires. I really liked the Sonja Blue trilogy. Long after I finished the last book I was still thinking about the series. I liked that NC had gone back to a more traditional vampire that is evil and not just a beautiful anti-hero/villan. The books are very dark and gruesome. Sonja is a fascinating character. I'm not sure that I liked how the trilogy ended but it was interesting getting there. > 'Ta, > Caroline > Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 18:14:07 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: Trouble and her friends -- some spoilers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Scott's work is seriously cool. Has a nice edgy, smart-and-quick feel to it. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 18:12:28 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/16/98 9:59:20 PM, Joyce wrote: << until that time it it isn't guaranteed that they aren't communicating something significant among themselves.>> There are a number of scientific papers on objects that are communicated -- a kind of echolocation rebus (imagine a holograph in the water) which probably translates in the wild to images of sharks, food, etc. transmitted dolphin-to- dolphin. Dolphin and toothed-whale brains show significant folding. phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 18:56:18 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen - immortality Comments: To: suzanne feldman In-Reply-To: <364AC53F.CD@erols.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 12 Nov 1998, suzanne feldman wrote: > It's like those vampire stories...what do those guys do for > money besides bite folks and turn into bats? I prefer reincarnation: the > great thing about the next life is that you can't start a savings > account for it, even if you wanted to. > > Suze/Severna > Jean-Claude runs several nightclubs in St. Louis. Henry Fitzroy writes romance novels. Andre lives with Diana Tregarde. 3 possible ansers. Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 05:31:37 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "J.M. Jamieson" Subject: Wilhelm Reissue In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" FYI, L.D. Meagher has a review of the reissue of _Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang_ by Kate Wilhelm, Orb/Tom Doherty, $13.95, at the CNN book site: http://www.cnn.com/books/reviews/9811/16/sweet.bird/ It's nice to see what certainly is a classic novel that still has much to say in terms of both the style of the writing and the content of the message back again. I prefer the orginal Ed Soyka cover however. Mac http://www.odyssey.on.ca/~jjamieson/ ICQ#17834084 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 04:24:45 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: Pi Remember a while ago we were talking about the movie Pi? I just found a site for it www.pithemovie.com It's full of information about everything from migraines to the kaballah to chaos theory. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 10:17:56 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: teaching _Dhalgren_ with Detroit Techno Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>> Erik Tsao 11/13 7:27 AM >>> I have a question for all you listserv participants. I'm going to be teaching Samuel Delany's _Dhalgren_ in conjunction with an Intermediate Writing course focused on popular music and the city. The unit in which _Dhalgren_ will be important concerns Detroit Techno. What sort of class is this? Who is it for? Are you expecting majors or not? How much writing do you expect them to do? I must admit that the thought of teaching Dhalgren makes my heart sink into my shoes, what ever it might be in conjunction with. If I may ask, how does Detroit techno differ from regular ol' techno? And why are you teaching about Detroit techno in particular? The only thing I can recommend is that, unless you're expecting students you know really well, I'd make sure to do a lot of checking in with them on how they're doing with Dhalgren. Are they reading the whole thing, or just passages? And I hope you have a firm interpretation of Dhalgren yourself, which I lack. Are you expecting students who are familiar with the literary theory Delaney is working with ? Are you teaching this from a theory angle? That is, will it be a problem if they read it predominantly for the story? I wish you every luck, and a class full of seniors who have all read Foucault. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 19:51:35 -0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Yvonne Rowse Subject: Re: teaching _Dhalgren_ with Detroit Techno MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I constructed a list of SF books for a friend to read a few months ago and asked for comments from SF reading friends. I'd included Babel 17 by Delany. One friend replied with comments: > Avoiding Dhalgren like the plague of course ( A joke at the time was >"If the answer is The Andromeda Galaxy, The Heart of the Sun and page 50 >of Dhalgren what is the Question. > > Name three places Mankind is unlikely to reach) I read the lot in those far away days when it was a matter of pride to finish any book I started. I no longer think it's a matter of pride. My life is too short to read the huge texts that seem to come from masters of the genre once their masterhood is acknowledged. Babel 17, on the other hand, is still a wonderful book. yvonne ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 19:56:44 -0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Yvonne Rowse Subject: LeGuin story MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi people. Someone suggested reading LeGuin's Mountain Ways as I liked the marriages on O in The Fisherman of the Inland Sea. Whoever it was said I would probably find it in a Nebula Winners book edited by Pamela Sargent. Well, now I finally have Nebula Awards 30 and 31. There are two LeGuin stories, 'The Matter of Seggri' and 'Solitude'. Any other idea where 'Mountain Ways' might be found. If it's a Nebula Awards book which number? Or did I get it completely wrong here? I'm happy to have the books I've got, by the way. Yvonne (chasing the elusive story) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 12:07:37 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Bonnie Bouman Subject: Re: LeGuin story In-Reply-To: <000f01be1264$83ce0860$be055cc3@softnet> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Could it be in Four Ways to Forgiveness? (a great book with four related novellas). On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Yvonne Rowse wrote: > Hi people. > > Someone suggested reading LeGuin's Mountain Ways as I liked the marriages on > O in The Fisherman of the Inland Sea. Whoever it was said I would probably > find it in a Nebula Winners book edited by Pamela Sargent. Well, now I > finally have Nebula Awards 30 and 31. There are two LeGuin stories, 'The > Matter of Seggri' and 'Solitude'. Any other idea where 'Mountain Ways' might > be found. If it's a Nebula Awards book which number? > > Or did I get it completely wrong here? > > I'm happy to have the books I've got, by the way. > > Yvonne (chasing the elusive story) > ----------------------------------------- Bonnie Bouman Browse Lead Science Fiction & Fantasy Reviewer |bonnie@amazon.com |206-694-2324 |206-694-2100 Amazon.com - Books, Music & More! http://www.amazon.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:06:36 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joe Sutliff Sanders Subject: Re: LeGuin story Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:56 PM 11/17/98 -0000, you wrote: >Hi people. > >Someone suggested reading LeGuin's Mountain Ways as I liked the marriages on >O in The Fisherman of the Inland Sea. Whoever it was said I would probably >find it in a Nebula Winners book edited by Pamela Sargent. Well, now I >finally have Nebula Awards 30 and 31. There are two LeGuin stories, 'The >Matter of Seggri' and 'Solitude'. Any other idea where 'Mountain Ways' might >be found. If it's a Nebula Awards book which number? > >Or did I get it completely wrong here? > >I'm happy to have the books I've got, by the way. Yvonne, You didn't get it wrong, I did. I'm the one who said it was probably in the last Sargent Nebula compilation. I went home and checked my copy a day or two later and saw that I was wrong. I'm sorry I sent you down the wrong track! I seem to recall that the story first appeared in Asimov's, but obviously I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 15:04:04 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Michael Marc Levy Subject: Re: LeGuin story In-Reply-To: <000f01be1264$83ce0860$be055cc3@softnet> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mountain Ways originally appeared in Asimov's a year or so ago. If possible, check out a library that has a subscirption to the magazine. Mike Michael M. Levy levym@uwstout.edu Department of English levymm@uwec.edu University of Wisconsin-Stout off. ph: 715-834-6533 Menomonie, WI 54751 hm. ph: 715-834-6533 On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Yvonne Rowse wrote: > Hi people. > > Someone suggested reading LeGuin's Mountain Ways as I liked the marriages on > O in The Fisherman of the Inland Sea. Whoever it was said I would probably > find it in a Nebula Winners book edited by Pamela Sargent. Well, now I > finally have Nebula Awards 30 and 31. There are two LeGuin stories, 'The > Matter of Seggri' and 'Solitude'. Any other idea where 'Mountain Ways' might > be found. If it's a Nebula Awards book which number? > > Or did I get it completely wrong here? > > I'm happy to have the books I've got, by the way. > > Yvonne (chasing the elusive story) > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:20:44 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Big Yellow Woman Subject: Re: LeGuin story MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm not sure where Yvonne can find Mountain Ways by Leguin, but it's not in Four Ways to Forgiveness. The Novellas in Four Ways are "Betrayals", "Forgiveness Day", " A Man of the People" and "A Woman's Liberation" -- all worth reading, by the way. Susan Bonnie Bouman wrote: > > Could it be in Four Ways to Forgiveness? (a great book with four related > novellas). > > On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Yvonne Rowse wrote: > > > Hi people. > > > > Someone suggested reading LeGuin's Mountain Ways as I liked the marriages on > > O in The Fisherman of the Inland Sea. Whoever it was said I would probably > > find it in a Nebula Winners book edited by Pamela Sargent. Well, now I > > finally have Nebula Awards 30 and 31. There are two LeGuin stories, 'The > > Matter of Seggri' and 'Solitude'. Any other idea where 'Mountain Ways' might > > be found. If it's a Nebula Awards book which number? > > > > Or did I get it completely wrong here? > > > > I'm happy to have the books I've got, by the way. > > > > Yvonne (chasing the elusive story) > > > > ----------------------------------------- > Bonnie Bouman > Browse Lead > Science Fiction & Fantasy Reviewer > > |bonnie@amazon.com > |206-694-2324 > |206-694-2100 > > Amazon.com - Books, Music & More! > http://www.amazon.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 15:25:56 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Robin Reid Subject: OT: pain and idiots Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" There used to be a medical theory that BABIES didn't feel pain either, so no anathesia (sp?) was used on them. I had a dentist in my childhood who did not believe in using novacaine on young children--probably one reason a lot of people fear going to the dentist! I don't know what idiot decided consciousness had to be linked to perceptions of pain--animals and babies have nerves after all, and their responses to stimuli would, I'd have thought, tipped people off to their perceptions of certain stimuli as painful. Giant grumpy hrmph. Robin ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:39:22 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Heather MacLean Subject: Re: teaching _Dhalgren_ with Detroit Techno Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" And Dhalgren is the reason I wrote my dissertation on French science fiction and surrealism. =) My -favorite-. Heather =) PS: If we restricted ourselves to exploring only the known and the easily comprehensible, where would we be? I think teaching Dhalgren and techno is great--who knows what the kids might find in there... Spend a week or so on the first 3 paragraphs, though. =) At 07:51 PM 11/17/98 -0000, you wrote: >> Avoiding Dhalgren like the plague of course ( A joke at the time was >>"If the answer is The Andromeda Galaxy, The Heart of the Sun and page 50 >>of Dhalgren what is the Question. >> >> Name three places Mankind is unlikely to reach) > http://www.zipcon.net/~hlm ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 15:40:48 PST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Blue Soon Subject: Re: OT: pain and idiots MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain >There used to be a medical theory that BABIES didn't feel pain either, so no >anathesia (sp?) was used on them. The theory did exist, and has been subsequently disproven. Unfortunately, it has opened a whole new dilemma. Anesthesia carries with it inherent risks, from the all too common lapses in memory to death in very rare instances. Whereas the use of anesthesia in children for life-threatening operations is without question, its use in minor surgeries are more problematic. If you do not use anesthesia, the baby/child feels pain. Does this result in a trauma that will color his perceptions for the rest of his adult life, a scar in its psyche? Knowing that the trauma occured, can we just forego anesthesia and support the child psychiatrically as it develops? On the other hand, if you do use anesthesia, you have no idea what the introduction of these chemicals does to the young, developing brain. Do you go ahead and use anesthesia, and just hope for the best, since so far, no studies clearly show a correlation between anesthesia and neaural problems in children? Which way would you go? I had a dentist in my childhood who did >not believe in using novacaine on young children--probably one reason a lot >of people fear going to the dentist! I don't know what idiot decided >consciousness had to be linked to perceptions of pain--animals and babies >have nerves after all, and their responses to stimuli would, I'd have >thought, tipped people off to their perceptions of certain stimuli as painful. Why does the worth of an organism's perceptions rely on intelligence? or even sentience? Does the fact that something is apparently inanimate make its casual destruction or manipulation for personal use any better? Are dolphins and whales worth preserving more than yeast and crude oil because they show more characteristics which we perceive as intelligent? Why should conservation have any more justification than the idea that everything should be conserved? Many cultures hold ancient beliefs that everything had a spirit or consciousness which had to be addressed before an object/plant/animal could be used. This sign of respect is severely lacking in modern society, i wonder if there is any way to revive this feeling in people. -Blue ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 19:11:33 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anny Middon Subject: Re: "science" vs. "feminism" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/12/98 10:58:49 AM Central Standard Time, Robin_Reid@TAMU-COMMERCE.EDU writes: > Look at some of the feminists trained in science who are critiquing it: > Donna Harraway (primatologist, plus one of the few feminist theorists who > actually talks about feminist sf) on how the observations of primates > changed when women began doing it, Sandra Harding, and so forth. > I wish I'd saved the article when I read it, but as I recall there's some findings now that gender has influenced how science has looked at conception. The typical scientist who first described conception was male and apparently identified with the sperm. The accepted idea was that the egg was totally passive, and was invaded and fertilized by the active sperm. In actuality it seems that the egg actively attracts the sperm, and may even "choose" the sperm which fertilizes it. The (female) egg may actually be more active than the (male) sperm. Anny AnnyMiddon@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 19:11:36 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anny Middon Subject: Off to See the Wizard Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit As surely everyone in the US knows, the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz has been spruced up and is playing again in theaters. The movie was so much a part of my childhood that it's hard to look at it objectively, and I'd better admit I haven't seen the movie in some time. (I don't count last summer when we tried that Dark-Side-of-the-Moon-as-soundtrack business.) I'm going from memory here, and will probably get some things wrong. But the commercials for the theatrical release did get me thinking about the movie. And I find that there's much there for a feminist to admire. First and foremost is Dorothy herself. At the beginning, in Kansas, Dorothy is seen pretty much as a dreamer who yearns for some outside force to take her away to that land beyond the rainbows. Once an outside force whisks her away, Dorothy's true character emerges. No shrinking violet, she is revealed as a young woman who very much knows what she wants and is not afraid to go out there and get it. Despite her obvious enchantment with Oz and the warm greeting she receives from the Munchkins, it takes her about two minutes to decide that she wants to go home. She immediately tries to find out how she might get home, and as soon as she discovers the Wizard is her best chance, she's making her way down the Yellow Brick Road. During her sojourn in Oz she meets up with some important people. The most obvious is the trio of Traveling Companions. These are all adult males, and yet compared to Dorothy they are pretty weak and ineffectual. Each has a desire as strong as Dorothy's wish to return to Kansas, but none of the three has done anything much to achieve that wish. They've accepted living without their hearts' desires to be their lot in life. It's Dorothy who tells them the Wizard may be able to grant their wishes, and it's Dorothy who convinces them to come with her and ask for what they want. And it's Dorothy who saves them, time after time. The Scarecrow loses his stuffing, and it's Dorothy who scrambles around putting him back together. The Tin Man freezes with rust, and it's Dorothy who applies the oil. The Lion turns away and it's Dorothy who holds his hand and urges him on. The others stand around and worry and wring their hands. When pitfalls occur, the Traveling Companions are all too willing to turn away and console themselves that at least they tried. It's Dorothy who shores them up and convinces them to go on. In a quartet that includes three grown men, it's the Kansas schoolgirl who is the strong one. This notion of being stronger than the adults must be one of the most common in childhood fantasies, and perhaps explains part of why the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion are so beloved by children. (Indeed, the popularity of the Munchkins must be due at least in part to their part in the fulfillment of the childhood dream that allows the child to be for once The Big One.) More interesting though is the other trio Dorothy has dealings with -- the People of Power. Two of these are women. When I was a little girl, the Wizard of Oz character I wanted to be was Glinda the Good Witch. And why not? She had magic powers and she did good and she was beautiful and everyone loved her. But for all that, at the end of the movie when she tells Dorothy that she had had the power to get home by herself all along, I was angry with Glinda. I got the same flash of annoyance I got whenever an adult told me. "I hope this was a real learning experience for you, Anny." (I always wanted to answer, "I hope you learned something, too.") The truth is that although Glinda may have wonderful powers, she doesn't use them very often. She floats around in that cool bubble (but with those skirts, she can't really walk very well), she makes it snow when Dorothy and the Traveling Companions fall asleep in the poppy field, and that's about it. She then hides her failure to use her power behind the excuse used by countless charlatans -- that of course she could have used her powers if she wanted to, but she didn't and it was For Your Own Good. On some level it seems to me that Glinda enjoys her powers not for their own sake but because others don't have them, almost as if she'd be content to walk from place to place only if everyone else had to crawl. She lets Dorothy go on her fruitless and dangerous trip to see the Wizard, she fails to stand up to the wicked witches when they terrorize the Munchkins, and she proclaims that she has done so because somehow it was best for them. It's not the actual power she has that she likes so much as it is the power her magic bestows, placing her in the position of declaring what is right and not right for others. (As an aside, kudos to MGM for casting a mature woman as Glinda. I rather imagine the motive was to assure that Dorothy has no young beautiful woman sharing screen time, but it's still refreshing to see a fantasy which has an adult female who is not overtly evil.) By contrast, the second of the People of Power, the Wicked Witch of the West, has magical powers and uses them. In fact, she's the only one of the three who ever demonstrates much real power. She flies on her broomstick, makes fireballs appear out of nowhere, sees distant events in her crystal ball, commands that creepy air force of flying monkeys, and has an army of chanting men at her command. The Wicked Witch enjoys her powers. She revels in them. For all I wanted to be Glinda, the person I really respected in the Wizard of Oz was the Wicked Witch, and when my friends and I put on plays in our backyards, I always played the part of the bad witch. (Not only did I get to pretend I had marvelous powers, I got to die in a most dramatic way, which any backyard thespian will tell you is the best scene of them all. Indeed, the Wicked Witch gets what to my mind is the best line in the movie in her dying scene, when she laments, "Oh, what a world! What a world!") And yet for all her powers, she's the only one of the three Power People who recognizes and respects Dorothy's powers. The Wicked Witch sees Dorothy as an equal. Perhaps she foresees that it's Dorothy who will kill her. Or perhaps she's the only one of the three who is honest enough to admit that there are powers worth having beyond the magical ones. The only male of the People of Power is, interestingly, the only one with no special powers at all. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is not only not wonderful, he's not a wizard at all. He's a con man, and his power is all smoke and mirrors. It takes the movie almost no time at all to effect the transition of this character from powerful wizard to lovable coot. When with Toto's help, Dorothy exposes the wizard, she proclaims that he's "a very bad man." No, he replies, "I'm actually a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard." And from then on the movie holds this version of the truth, and for years I went along with it. He's so affable he must be a good guy. But really, Dorothy had it right all along -- he was a very bad man. In order to protect himself from exposure, he had to come up with a way of avoiding granting Dorothy and her friends their wishes. He could have come up with any nearly impossible task, such as counting every brick in the Yellow Brick Road. Instead he commands that they bring him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West, figuring that either they'd lack the courage to try or die in the attempt. Which happened didn't matter in the least to him. At the end, it's Dorothy who in all Oz has the only real power. The Traveling Companions never pretended to power, the Wizard has been uncloaked by Dorothy, the Wicked Witch killed by Dorothy, and Glinda shown up by Dorothy. (After all, killing the Wicked Witch and uncloaking the Wizard weren't very difficult, yet Glinda never managed either.) And when she lands back in Kansas, where those who love her pat her hands and say, "Now, now" and disclaim her experiences, I get the feeling she's not the same Dorothy who dreamt of being taken to faraway lands. It's not that dreams have left her so much as that she knows that she has the power to make them come true. So I say three cheers for Dorothy. Let's all hold hands and sing-- We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz Because, because, because, because, because Because of the wonderful things he does! Anny Who still thinks those flying monkeys are creepy AnnyMiddon@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 19:11:10 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: No Name Available Subject: Re: LeGuin story Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-11-17 15:02:51 EST, you write: << Any other idea where 'Mountain Ways' might be found. If it's a Nebula Awards book which number? >> Mountain Ways", (Asimov's Aug 1996); won a 1997 Tiptree Award; haven't found it in a collection yet. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 19:13:57 -0800 Reply-To: lynnx@mc.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Heather Law Organization: Interstellar Trading Company Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Most of the human protaganists in the Oz books, as well as most of the fairies, are female. It's believed that Baum wrote books about little girls because all his children were boys, which is a step ahead of Lewis Carroll who wrote about heroines because he disliked little boys. The sequels which immediately follow L.Frank Baum's books are written by a woman, and she writes more about heroes. Even when Dorothy is along she is frequently not the center of the action. In the original book there is no dream frame. If Dorothy had died, she'd have stayed dead. One of the things I liked about Star Wars was the heroine. My daughter was the right age to need to hear about a female who starts an escape attempt immediately, and when the hero shows up, is asked "what took you so long?' Carol Mitchell ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 17:10:03 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Cera Kruger Subject: Re: Clowder request for plot wrenching In-Reply-To: <199811121634.KAA01426@etsuodt.tamu-commerce.edu> from Robin Reid at "Nov 12, 98 10:34:06 am" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Robin Reid writes: > N Clowder requested books which have the "plot line (caleld) "the great > wrench" - in which the main character is ripped, all unsuspecting, out of > her everyday, placid environment and spends the rest of the book struggling > in an unfamiliar and threatening world." _The Gate of Ivory_ by Doris Egan -- unfortunately out of print, but one of my all-time favourite books. The heroine is stranded on the planet Ivory, and has to deal with the cultural difference between it and the planet she's going to school on (Athena) as well as the planet she was born on (Pyrene). -- Cera -- Cera Kruger -++- diony@idiom.com -+- http://www.requiem.com -++- SFLAaE/BS "And it's alright if you hate that way / hate me cause I'm different / hate me cause I'm gay / Truth of the matter come around one day / so it's alright." -- Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls' _Shaming of the Sun_) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 17:20:47 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Springer Subject: Re: LeGuin story MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Nope, not in FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS. Also not in THE COMPASS ROSE, FISHERMAN OF THE INLAND SEA, ORSINIAN TALES, SEAROAD, THE WIND'S TWELVE QUARTERS, BUFFALO GALS WON'T YOU COME OUT TONIGHT, or UNLOCKING THE AIR. It's just as well, since most of the collections are not currently available. (Yeah, they'll be reissued in trade paper...eventually). She's got something in just about every sf anthology I've ever seen, so chances are it's collected somewhere. Good luck. Rebecca Springer (Glad to be back on the list after a bit of a hiatus) rebecca.springer@harpercollins.com ---Bonnie Bouman wrote: > > Could it be in Four Ways to Forgiveness? (a great book with four related > novellas). > > On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Yvonne Rowse wrote: > > > Hi people. > > > > Someone suggested reading LeGuin's Mountain Ways as I liked the marriages on > > O in The Fisherman of the Inland Sea. Whoever it was said I would probably > > find it in a Nebula Winners book edited by Pamela Sargent. Well, now I > > finally have Nebula Awards 30 and 31. There are two LeGuin stories, 'The > > Matter of Seggri' and 'Solitude'. Any other idea where 'Mountain Ways' might > > be found. If it's a Nebula Awards book which number? > > > > Or did I get it completely wrong here? > > > > I'm happy to have the books I've got, by the way. > > > > Yvonne (chasing the elusive story) > > > > ----------------------------------------- > Bonnie Bouman > Browse Lead > Science Fiction & Fantasy Reviewer > > |bonnie@amazon.com > |206-694-2324 > |206-694-2100 > > Amazon.com - Books, Music & More! > http://www.amazon.com > _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 22:26:30 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: Clowder request for plot wrenching Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit What about Anne McAffrey's _Freedom's Landing_? barbara ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 22:29:10 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Re: Clowder request for plot wrenching Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit What about the opening of Roger Zelazney's _Nine Princes of Amber_? barbara ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 23:44:17 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "J.M. Jamieson" Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard In-Reply-To: <3d3f2503.365210b8@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:11 PM 11/17/98 EST, Anny wrote many things about Oz including the following: > >But for all that, at the end of the movie when she tells Dorothy that she had >had the power to get home by herself all along, I was angry with Glinda. I >got the same flash of annoyance I got whenever an adult told me. "I hope this >was a real learning experience for you, Anny." (I always wanted to answer, "I >hope you learned something, too.") --------------------------------------------------- To which I say: I'll admit Anny I'm tempted to get the restored version when it hits the DVD racks. I was madly in love with Dorothy (but I fear never her name). Once every year for way too long I re-watched _The Wizard of Oz_: until recently. I stopped for reasons that had always been there however darkly. I too never liked the good witch Glinda - I thought that keeping back the knowledge of the slippers was a pretty mean and very adult thing to do to a kid. I never bought into the view that the dull dread black and white Kansas was better than a place that had horses of a different colour. Two old folks as family who could care less about Dorothy, and those farm hands Hunk, Zeke and Hickory whom I'm sure would have other interests in Dorothy and Miss Gulch who would still be around waiting to do awful things to Toto. Dorothy at the beginning of the movie is a very unhappy girl and quite lonely. No place like home indeed! I found the ending got more chilling year after year; although I'll admit that I might have sent Glinda back to Kansas and I'll confess I was never all that sure about the dog. I much preferred the dog in _A Boy and His Dog_ (but that of course is a "guy" sort of thing I'm sure. And then Anny wrote: >And when she lands back in Kansas, where those who love her pat her hands and >say, "Now, now" and disclaim her experiences, I get the feeling she's not the >same Dorothy who dreamt of being taken to faraway lands. It's not that >dreams have left her so much as that she knows that she has the power to make >them come true. ---- Anny, the scene where she is getting all "dolled" up in Oz has a chilling effect as others have also remarked. It is Hollyweird isn't it. And many a person, including Judy Garland, have gone there to find their rainbow. And when I see Judy/Dorothy going off to Hollyweird to make her dreams come true I often think "Don't go, Dorothy, please don't go. Mac http://www.odyssey.on.ca/~jjamieson/ ICQ#17834084 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 23:43:47 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: OT: pain and idiots Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/17/98 1:26:31 PM Pacific Standard Time, Robin_Reid@TAMU- COMMERCE.EDU writes: << I had a dentist in my childhood who did not believe in using novacaine on young children >> Jeez. I had the same dentist (?). Don't EVEN start up a drill in my presence. I think they were still doing surgery without anesthesia on babies in the 1980's. The other half of the argument was, even if they do feel it they won't remember it. I use that as an example in my class of point of view taking precedence over common sense. Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 23:05:07 CST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Barbara Benesch Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Anny Middon wrote: > >As surely everyone in the US knows, the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz >has been spruced up and is playing again in theaters. <> I heartily recommend reading "Wicked: The True Story of the Wicked Witch of the West". I read it several months ago, and am trying to re-find it so I can read it before I go see the re-release of The Wizard of Oz. I found it fascinating, and am eager to see how having read it changes my perceptions of the movie itself. I wish I could describe it in more detail, but as I said, it was several months ago, and I don't want to blow any of the surprises. Barbara Benesch-Granberg BJBenesch@hotmail.com ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 23:31:22 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard In-Reply-To: <2123193@flc.flink.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:05 PM 11/17/98 CST, you wrote: >Most of the human protaganists in the Oz books, as well as most of the >fairies, are female. It's believed that Baum wrote books about little >girls because all his children were boys, Dorothy was a real little girl who died when she was five months old--just when L.Frank Baum was putting the finishing touches on Wizard. She was the niece of Frank's wife Maud (Gage) Baum. Frank and Maud had wanted a little girl, and Maud was so devastated by the baby's death, that Frank gave his heroine Dorothy's name. The grave is in Bloomington, Illinois. You can read all about it at: http://www.beyondtherainbow2oz.com/dorothygage.html >In the original book there is no dream frame. If Dorothy had died, she'd >have stayed dead. In the original book Dorothy's "favorite" is the Cowardly Lion. It's been a long while since I read the original, but I did play Auntie Em when I was about thirteen. Dorothy and the Lion are captured and Dorothy is forced to clean the castle and the Lion has to draw the Witch's chariot. I vaguely recall that the Witch had managed to get one slipper--I think they were silver--and Dorothy was kinda limping around with the other one on. I can't remember why Dorothy let her have it with the bucket of water, but she wasn't putting out the Scarecrow. The movie changed the object of Dorothy's affections, and she doted on the man with the intellectual aspirations and not the beast. I started out with a crush on Scarecrow myself, but when I got older I felt cheated. Give me a girl and her beast! If Chewie had been Leia's partner instead of Han's it could have been a different revolution. As for the movie version: rush out and see it. It's wonderful on the big screen. Every time I see it, I am blissed out until the very last scene. When they ask Dorothy what she learned, she gives them that blather about "If I ever again go looking for my heart's desire, I won't look any farther than my own back yard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it." HELLO!!!! THEY WERE GOING TO KILL HER DOG!!!!! WHAT'S THIS HEART'S DESIRE CRAP????? Oh, well, it's just--what?--10 seconds in a wonderful movie? Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 23:44:57 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Subject: Sleeping Beauty (was Off to See the Wizard In-Reply-To: <2123113@flc.flink.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Speaking of childhood movies, I watched Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty on ABC Sunday night. And Glorioski, Zero, it was one of the first Disney movies I've seen in recent years where fat people were not ugly, stupid, evil, or worthy of ridicule. In fact those three fat little fairies were the heroines of the darn movie! And two of the three were fat little GRAY-HAIRED fairies. Fat old women: Save the princess from certain death by mitagating Malificent's curse. Successfully hide her for sixteen years Invade Malificent's castle to rescue the Prince. Fight Malificent's minions. Provide the Prince with weapons. He loses the shield. The fairies' enchantment drives the sword into the dragon's heart. Whoopie! As for Aurora/Briar Rose (with the 8 inch waist), all she does is toss her hair, sing, and cry. Sixteen never looked so unattractive. Spank her! Spank her hard! Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 07:36:22 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Woolger Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:44 PM 11/17/98 -0500, Mac wrote: >Once every year for way too long I re-watched _The Wizard of Oz_: until >recently. I stopped for reasons that had always been there however darkly. >I too never liked the good witch Glinda - I thought that keeping back the >knowledge of the slippers was a pretty mean and very adult thing to do to a >kid. I never bought into the view that the dull dread black and white >Kansas was better than a place that had horses of a different colour. Two >old folks as family who could care less about Dorothy, and those farm hands >Hunk, Zeke and Hickory whom I'm sure would have other interests in Dorothy >and Miss Gulch who would still be around waiting to do awful things to >Toto. Dorothy at the beginning of the movie is a very unhappy girl and >quite lonely. No place like home indeed! I found the ending got more >chilling year after year; although I'll admit that I might have sent Glinda >back to Kansas and I'll confess I was never all that sure about the dog. I >much preferred the dog in _A Boy and His Dog_ (but that of course is a >"guy" sort of thing I'm sure. Jackie DeShannon had a song from back in the eighties about Dorothy. The one line that has always stuck with me was : "Why'd you go back to Kansas when you could've had Oz?" As for _A Boy and His Dog_, decidedly not a "guy" thing. Someday, Harlan may actually finish _Blood's A Rover_ and then we can get the other two parts of that story. Hopefully, it will be before he dies. He's got in his will that all unfinished work has to be burned. There was a big debate about whether an author should be "allowed" to destroy unfinished work when they die, after Harlan said something about the will at a con somewhere. But I have to agree with Harlan, I've read some crap that someone else finished after the original author died without completing. Even when it's from a good writer, not a hack, it lacks something. An original voice is stilled and what comes after, by necessity is less than that original. Laura ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 08:11:31 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/18/98 5:08:27 AM, Barbara wrote: <> Second! I recommend this novel as well. It's by Gregory Maguire. best phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 05:25:31 PST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Daniel Krashin Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF Digest - 16 Nov 1998 to 17 Nov 1998 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain >From: Jane Franklin >Subject: Re: teaching _Dhalgren_ with Detroit Techno > >>>> Erik Tsao 11/13 7:27 AM >>> >I have a question for all you listserv participants. I'm going to be >teaching Samuel Delany's _Dhalgren_ in conjunction with an Intermediate >Writing course focused on popular music and the city. The unit in which >_Dhalgren_ will be important concerns Detroit Techno. I guess I have some questions, too. Dhalgren was written 20 years ago, yeah? And Detroit Techno came and went in the last 10 years, yeah? (Correct me if I'm misremembering this). So what's the connection. I suppose there's a thematic connection -- young people partying in a messed-up city. But that's all I can come up with. I liked Dhalgren, personally, but I also thought it was needlessly long and meandering and kinda self-indulgent. If I read it again, I would skim for the good bits, the set-pieces that Delaney really did well (the beginning, the gang-rape, the first appearance of the second moon, the conversation with the astronaut...), the same I way I read a lot of WS Burroughs' work. Maybe you should consider assigning sections of this great big book that illustrate various themes -- at least that way some folks may get hooked and read the whole thing, and those who don't will at least read some of the good parts. Just my 2 bits. >Are you expecting students who are familiar with the literary theory Delaney is working with ? What literary theory are you referring to? I've never read any Dhalgren criticism, I'm very curious about this. >I wish you every luck, and a class full of seniors who have all read Foucault. [stifled retching] Danny ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 08:29:43 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: No Name Available Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Can't say the movie was ever a favorite, except for the music, the witch, and Bert Lahr; never read the books, although my sister has the whole collection (she never liked the movie much either). It was nice to see it on holidays, though. But a terrific book tied to Oz is Geoff Ryman's _Was_ that came out in 1992. As I recall, it interwove plotlines about the "real" Dorothy Gael & Baum, Judy Garland, and a gay actor and his therapist. Makes me want to read it again, just thinking about it; hope it's still in print. Kathleen ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 08:59:25 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Erik Tsao Subject: Dhalgren & Detroit Techno Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The course, as I envision it, is going to be a multimedia class involving designing a collaborative web page, several electronic essays, music, film, and, obviously, a science fiction novel. I am aware of the challenge that _Dhalgren_ might pose to myself and my students, but of all the sci-fi I've read, or attempted to read, it seems like the one most suitable for the class. I think we'll definitely make an effort in reading the whole book. And since I'm advertising the class beforehand, I'm hoping that we get a few people who've made stabs at _Dhalgren_. Also, I'll be setting up a class listserv, and opening discussion of what we're reading, doing, and talking about, to the public, so hopefully when we get to reading _Dhalgren_ some of the people who are from outside of the course can put their two cents into the discussion. In addition, I'm hoping that as a class, we can maybe struggle together over extricating meaning out of the text. I'll probably bring a lot of secondary material (interviews with Delany, lit. crit. pieces on his work in general, and _Dhalgren_ specifically). Hopefully this will help to alleviate the difficulty of the novel. Erik P. S. If anyone would like to see the course description, let me know. I'll be happy to email it to you for the greater glory of intellectual and pedagogical discussion! ;-) Erik Tsao Graduate Student/T.A. Dept. of English 51 W. Warren Wayne State University Detroit, MI 48202 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 08:23:19 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF Digest - 16 Nov 1998 to 17 Nov 1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit >>> Daniel Krashin 11/18 7:25 AM What literary theory are you referring to? I've never read any Dhalgren criticism, I'm very curious about this. There are actually several books o'Delaney criticism, some of it to my mind rather rudimentary and unhelpful, but available in most academic libraries. As to what Delaney's dealing with, I'm not really expert on it, but if you read his Neveryon books, he quotes extensively from the Lacan-Derrida-Foucault mafia about the nature of perceptions and how people order what they know. Anybody out there read the Neveryon book with Prynn as the heroine? He's interested in semiotics and hard stuff I don't understand. (yeah, THAT stuff) I don't think that most of the criticism is up to his intellectual standards, myself. I've never read anything that really nails down some of his intellectual preoccupations. >[stifled retching] Okay, buster, what's wrong with Foucault? Huh? Huh? It's becoming fashionable to repudiate him, but I still think that he's pretty sound. It's the legion of graduate students he spawned that are the very devil. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 08:28:53 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: vampire jobs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit To shift the focus away from vampire employment a little, I've always wondered who does the dishes for Tolkien's elves? They're always having feasts and so on, but can you actually envision them washing up? Or dusting the house of Elrond? I can almost envision, say, Galadriel doing some practical chores, but not quite. This, actually, is where my class concerns with Tolkien start to unfurl. In some fantasy novels, the existence of a scullery is implicit, but not in Tolkien. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 09:33:36 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Gemini Walker Organization: Geminiwalker, Inc. Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard Comments: To: lynnx@mc.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------79054F5F6CDA6EE3FA2E930C" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------79054F5F6CDA6EE3FA2E930C Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Heather Law wrote: > Most of the human protaganists in the Oz books, as well as most of the > fairies, are female. It's believed that Baum wrote books about little > girls because all his children were boys, which is a step ahead of Lewis > Carroll who wrote about heroines because he disliked little boys. It is also believed the Lewis Carroll was a pedophile, as was James Barrie, author of Peter Pan. I don't know about L. Frank Baum, though. Lots of authors of children's books are, though. It was a rather disconcerting thing for me to learn, but it is an area I tend to research quite thoroughly. ...geminiwalker chuard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard > -- Outsiders: for those who walk alone. http://Outsiders.listbot.com/ --------------79054F5F6CDA6EE3FA2E930C Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Walker, Gemini Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: Gemini Walker n: Walker;Gemini org: Geminiwalker Ink adr: PO Box 16843;;Main Street Station;Worcester;MA;01601-6843;USA email;internet: chuard@earthlink.net title: Executive Director tel;work: (508) 798-4084 tel;home: (508) 798-4084 note: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------79054F5F6CDA6EE3FA2E930C-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 09:38:19 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Gemini Walker Organization: Geminiwalker, Inc. Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------DE4F0AB542E062D8D828BE1A" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------DE4F0AB542E062D8D828BE1A Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A search on amazon.com brought up for me Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West ...is that the true title? Because of it is, I will order it. If it's not the same book, then I will continue to look for the one you mention. ...geminiwalker chuard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard Barbara Benesch wrote: > Anny Middon wrote: > > > >As surely everyone in the US knows, the 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz > >has been spruced up and is playing again in theaters. > > <> > > I heartily recommend reading "Wicked: The True Story of the Wicked Witch > of the West". I read it several months ago, and am trying to re-find it > so I can read it before I go see the re-release of The Wizard of Oz. > > I found it fascinating, and am eager to see how having read it changes > my perceptions of the movie itself. > > I wish I could describe it in more detail, but as I said, it was several > months ago, and I don't want to blow any of the surprises. > > Barbara Benesch-Granberg > BJBenesch@hotmail.com > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com -- Outsiders: for those who walk alone. http://Outsiders.listbot.com/ --------------DE4F0AB542E062D8D828BE1A Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Walker, Gemini Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: Gemini Walker n: Walker;Gemini org: Geminiwalker Ink adr: PO Box 16843;;Main Street Station;Worcester;MA;01601-6843;USA email;internet: chuard@earthlink.net title: Executive Director tel;work: (508) 798-4084 tel;home: (508) 798-4084 note: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------DE4F0AB542E062D8D828BE1A-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 09:39:52 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Gemini Walker Organization: Geminiwalker, Inc. Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------8B33A523E6156A18A9B13AE9" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------8B33A523E6156A18A9B13AE9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Huh. Same author, different title. ??? ...geminiwalker chuard@earthlink.net http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard Phoebe Wray wrote: > In a message dated 11/18/98 5:08:27 AM, Barbara wrote: > > < of the West". I read it several months ago, and am trying to re-find it > so I can read it before I go see the re-release of The Wizard of Oz. > >> > > Second! I recommend this novel as well. It's by Gregory Maguire. > > best > phoebe -- Outsiders: for those who walk alone. http://Outsiders.listbot.com/ --------------8B33A523E6156A18A9B13AE9 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Walker, Gemini Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: Gemini Walker n: Walker;Gemini org: Geminiwalker Ink adr: PO Box 16843;;Main Street Station;Worcester;MA;01601-6843;USA email;internet: chuard@earthlink.net title: Executive Director tel;work: (508) 798-4084 tel;home: (508) 798-4084 note: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------8B33A523E6156A18A9B13AE9-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 09:17:14 -0800 Reply-To: lynnx@mc.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Heather Law Organization: Interstellar Trading Company Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There have been no rumors of that sort about Baum, who unlike the other two mentioned was happily married and a devoted father. It should also be pointed out that although both Lewis Carroll and James Barrie seem to have had an unhealthy interest in children, neither is believed to have actually harmed them. Active pedophiles normally are in denial about the damage they do, wheras Carroll preferred to have a parent nearby when he took his photographs and was always concerned about the girls' feelings. Furthermore, as I understand it, the Liddell's break with him is believed to have stemmed not from a concern about his molesting their daughter but from his wishing to marry her. Carol Mitchell ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 10:15:31 -0800 Reply-To: lynnx@mc.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Heather Law Organization: Interstellar Trading Company Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit What was the name of the Jackie deShannon song? Carol Mitchell ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 11:51:12 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/18/98 2:42:53 PM, you wrote: << Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West ...is that the true title? >> That's it. Enjoy! phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 11:34:23 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Claudia Mastroianni Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard Responding to two messages at once (that's the way of things with the digest): Anny Middon wrote: : When I was a little girl, the Wizard of Oz character I wanted to be was Glinda : the Good Witch. And why not? She had magic powers and she did good and she : was beautiful and everyone loved her. : But for all that, at the end of the movie when she tells Dorothy that she had : had the power to get home by herself all along, I was angry with Glinda. I : got the same flash of annoyance I got whenever an adult told me. "I hope this : was a real learning experience for you, Anny." (I always wanted to answer, "I : hope you learned something, too.") I don't blame you. For what it's worth, this is an artifact of the movie that isn't present in the book. The movie conflated the (unnamed) good witch of the north and the good witch of the south (Glinda) into one character. It's the witch of the north that Dorothy meets early on, and she's weaker than the other witches and may well not know the secret of the shoes (as it is said explicitly that the Munchkins do not). When, in the book, Glinda tells Dorothy the secret, it's on their first meeting, after Dorothy tells her about her adventures. These books are old enough to be out of copyright. Let me point anyone interested to sunsite.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext93/wizoz10.txt for the Wonderful Wizard of Oz and www.gutenberg.net/_authors/redirect.cgi?site=mu&dir=93&file=wizoz10&ext=txt for the L. Frank Baum index at Project Gutenberg. For that matter, in the book Glinda doesn't do Dorothy a favor, but instead trades the answer for the magic Golden Cap that controls the winged monkeys, which Dorothy had gotten, instead of a broomstick, from the wicked witch's castle. (After Glinda uses it to set things aright, she gives it to the king of the winged monkeys so no-one can use it to control them again.) : The Wicked Witch enjoys her powers. She revels in them. For all I wanted to : be Glinda, the person I really respected in the Wizard of Oz was the Wicked : Witch, and when my friends and I put on plays in our backyards, I always : played the part of the bad witch. (Not only did I get to pretend I had : marvelous powers, I got to die in a most dramatic way, which any backyard : thespian will tell you is the best scene of them all. Indeed, the Wicked : Witch gets what to my mind is the best line in the movie in her dying scene, : when she laments, "Oh, what a world! What a world!") *grin* I'm afraid I don't remember that line. Alas. Let me echo the recommendation of Wicked for another look at the wicked witch of the west. Rebecca wrote: : >In the original book there is no dream frame. If Dorothy had died, she'd : >have stayed dead. : In the original book Dorothy's "favorite" is the Cowardly Lion. It's been : a long while since I read the original, but I did play Auntie Em when I was : about thirteen. Dorothy and the Lion are captured and Dorothy is forced to : clean the castle and the Lion has to draw the Witch's chariot. I vaguely : recall that the Witch had managed to get one slipper--I think they were : silver--and Dorothy was kinda limping around with the other one on. I : can't remember why Dorothy let her have it with the bucket of water, but : she wasn't putting out the Scarecrow. She was angry at her slipper having been stolen, in the book. I don't know about the play, but in the book the witch stealing one slipper and the bucket of water happen in the same scene. The Scarecrow had been taken to bits, the Lion caged, and the Tin Woodman battered and bent so that he couldn't move. Claudia ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 11:16:03 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard Comments: To: lynnx@mc.net MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Has anyone read *Was* by Geoff Ryman? I read it years ago, but it's about the writing of the Oz books and the "real" Dorothy who is an incest survivor and really "acts out." This story is threaded in with the story of a gay man going back to the midwest to find his past (I think it's linked with Dorothy in some way). I remember liking it, despite my bad memory of the plot, etc. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 13:36:25 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anny Middon Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/17/98 10:44:17 PM Central Standard Time, jjamieson@ODYSSEY.ON.CA writes: > I never bought into the view that the dull dread black and white > Kansas was better than a place that had horses of a different colour. Two > old folks as family who could care less about Dorothy, and those farm hands > Hunk, Zeke and Hickory whom I'm sure would have other interests in Dorothy > and Miss Gulch who would still be around waiting to do awful things to > Toto. Dorothy at the beginning of the movie is a very unhappy girl and > quite lonely. No place like home indeed! And then later said: > Anny, the scene where she is getting all "dolled" up in Oz has a chilling > effect as others have also remarked. It is Hollyweird isn't it. And many a > person, including Judy Garland, have gone there to find their rainbow. And > when I see Judy/Dorothy going off to Hollyweird to make her dreams come > true I often think "Don't go, Dorothy, please don't go. Not sure I'm following you, Mac. Did you think she should have or shouldn't have gone to Oz? And oddly enough, the scene where she gets dolled up never bothered me because the whole group gets dolled up. The Scarecrow gets fresh stuffing, the Tin Man gets buffed, even Toto has a bath. I guess I saw it as a trip to a spa, an indulgence in getting clean and cossetted after a harrowing trip. And then in a message dated 11/17/98 11:25:40 PM Central Standard Time, hathor@FLINK.COM writes: > As for the movie version: rush out and see it. It's wonderful on the big > screen. Every time I see it, I am blissed out until the very last scene. > When they ask Dorothy what she learned, she gives them that blather about > "If I ever again go looking for my heart's desire, I won't look any farther > than my own back yard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it." > > HELLO!!!! THEY WERE GOING TO KILL HER DOG!!!!! WHAT'S THIS HEART'S DESIRE > CRAP????? > > Oh, well, it's just--what?--10 seconds in a wonderful movie? The fact is, I discount the ending where she proclaims that she can find her heart's desire in her own backyard. Dorothy was a smart enough young woman (for 1939 _or_ today) to know that sometimes the smart thing to do is to tell them what they want to hear, and keep your real dreams to yourself. Many, many thanks to those who recommended the book about the Wicked Witch of the West. I'm off to find a copy posthaste. Anny AnnyMiddon@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 12:40:31 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joyce Jones wrote: > I haven't read the two other books in the trilogy, but I thought this book > was intimating that "fate" was not the guiding force, rather that the Sybil > machine was behind everything. That's interesting that you read them as separate. I thought the Sybil machine was kind of a "fate generator." How would you define fate in the book? --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 15:12:18 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF Digest - 16 Nov 1998 to 17 Nov 1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/18/98 7:25:08 AM Mountain Standard Time, JFrankln@FAMPRAC.UMN.EDU writes: << Okay, buster, what's wrong with Foucault? Huh? Huh? >> -- well, the fact that he was a noxious, nihilistic little sadistic ***t himself doesn't help; if you've ever seen his TV interview of 1968 (the one with Noam Chomsky) where he's practically drooling over the prospect of street executions, you'll know what I mean. Or take a look at the fact that he never met a group of terrorists or murderers that he didn't like, from the Baader- Meinhoff gang to the Iranian mullahs. His works are full of a lip-smacking relish over domination and torture, and a determination to find them everywhere -- eg., the replacement of public executions by imprisonment strikes him as a new stage of oppression. When he was advised to alter his behavior because of HIV, he replied that he wasn't going to "submitt to the doctors' discourse of power". He really was a solipsist; he thought that power was everything, that objective reality was just a story, and that he could alter it by acts of will. But in the end, he found that reality is the virus that will kill you whether you believe in it or not. The fact that his confrere de Man was a Nazi doesn't help either. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 12:44:51 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Keith Subject: Re: "science" vs. "feminism" In-Reply-To: <8eeaf975.365210b5@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 17 Nov 1998, Anny Middon wrote: > I wish I'd saved the article when I read it, but as I recall there's some > findings now that gender has influenced how science has looked at conception. > The typical scientist who first described conception was male and apparently > identified with the sperm. > > The accepted idea was that the egg was totally passive, and was invaded and > fertilized by the active sperm. In actuality it seems that the egg actively > attracts the sperm, and may even "choose" the sperm which fertilizes it. The > (female) egg may actually be more active than the (male) sperm. > > Anny > AnnyMiddon@aol.com Is that article available anymore? This sounds fascinating. I worked for a while for a wildlife agency. The all-male group of section leaders in the central office, as well as the almost all-male group of biologists beneath them, usually considered only the male animal's home ranges significant when determining critical population density and habitat needs. It was really funny watching them side-step again and again their own data showing that female animals frequently were as agressive, territorial and wide-ranging as the males. Somehow, this female need for "elbow room" just didn't make it into the analyses. Kathleen > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 15:45:09 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Michael Marc Levy Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard In-Reply-To: <3652AC74.7552@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Menomonie, WI 54751 hm. ph: 715-834-6533 On Wed, 18 Nov 1998, Allyson Shaw wrote: > Has anyone read *Was* by Geoff Ryman? I read it years ago, but it's > about the writing of the Oz books and the "real" Dorothy who is an > incest survivor and really "acts out." This story is threaded in with > the story of a gay man going back to the midwest to find his past (I > think it's linked with Dorothy in some way). I remember liking it, > despite my bad memory of the plot, etc. > Yes! This is one of the finest novels I've read in the last several years. Ryman's The Child Garden is also worth reading. Mike levy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 17:15:58 -0500 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: Re: Wicked (was Off to See the Wizard) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Ooops, I accidentally sent this only to BJ... Oh yay! Someone else who has read this! I *loved* this book, and started a brief discussion of it here last year when I read it. Perhaps we can consider the title in the subject line spoiler warning, and discuss it? J U S T I N C A S E That should be enough. I would be really very very interested in discussing the political differences between Wicked and the *book* Wizard of Oz. Apparently, it was written (Oz) as an allegory for the development of this country, with the various regions of Oz representing different economic boons and bases of the 1880's ish US. Wicked has much more obvious poilitcal overtones, but less easily categorized or recognized as specific groups in the US. Also, how do you think the two books compare in terms of their feminism? As was pointed out, and there's even an article in Entertainment Weekly this week on it, all the strong characters in WoOz are women. There is a much much wider diversity of characterizations in Wicked, but most of them are women as well. And men don't generally come off well at all.... There's so much moreto discuss, but I have to get offline and get out of the house... I *love* this book! On 17 Nov 98, , Barbara Benesch wrote: > I heartily recommend reading "Wicked: The True Story of the Wicked Witch > of the West". I read it several months ago, and am trying to re-find it > so I can read it before I go see the re-release of The Wizard of Oz. > > I found it fascinating, and am eager to see how having read it changes > my perceptions of the movie itself. > > I wish I could describe it in more detail, but as I said, it was several > months ago, and I don't want to blow any of the surprises. > > Barbara Benesch-Granberg > BJBenesch@hotmail.com > > ______________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com > Rudy Leon PhD Candidate Dept. of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 18:39:39 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: "science" vs. "feminism" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/18/98 12:47:13 PM Pacific Standard Time, kmhouse@HALCYON.COM writes: << The all-male group of section leaders in the central office, as well as the almost all-male group of biologists beneath them, usually considered only the male animal's home ranges significant when determining critical population density and habitat needs >> The thing that REALLY drives me nuts about the guts-balls management fellows is that they completely leave out nursery areas, areas where the young (either on their own or at mama's knee) learn how to survive, etc. And have you ever noticed how...well, energized...they get when discussing how many females their management will leave to each male? I have tried pointing out the importance of diversity, and how reducing the number of males will affect this but no listeners... Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 19:00:00 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Geoff Ryman MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Michael Marc Levy wrote: > > Menomonie, WI 54751 hm. ph: 715-834-6533 Ryman's The Child Garden is also worth reading. I will have to check that one out. Has anyone looked at his online fiction project, *253*? It's about passengers on a London subway train and how their lives are all linked together-- it's a hyper text (that is the right term?)-- you can press on the links (usually strange or mundane details) to go from passenger to passenger. It's kind of interesting. The writing is dryer than I like, but it's pretty engaging and ambitious. Here's the address: http://www.ryman-novel.com/info/home.htm --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 21:12:48 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: jenn mottram Subject: Re: LeGuin story In-Reply-To: <19981118012047.7452.rocketmail@send1e.yahoomail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Looking at the Locus list of works by authors, (LeGuin), it shows "Mountain Ways, (nv) Asimov's Aug '96" but no anthology as of yet. http://www.sff.net/locus/s458.html#A9257.193 for what it's worth, the Locus lists are an excellent resource for finding this stuff out. jenn At 05:20 PM 11/17/98 -0800, you wrote: >Nope, not in FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS. Also not in THE COMPASS ROSE, >FISHERMAN OF THE INLAND SEA, ORSINIAN TALES, SEAROAD, THE WIND'S >TWELVE QUARTERS, BUFFALO GALS WON'T YOU COME OUT TONIGHT, or UNLOCKING >THE AIR. It's just as well, since most of the collections are not >currently available. (Yeah, they'll be reissued in trade >paper...eventually). > >She's got something in just about every sf anthology I've ever seen, >so chances are it's collected somewhere. Good luck. > >Rebecca Springer >(Glad to be back on the list after a bit of a hiatus) >rebecca.springer@harpercollins.com > > athena@geocities.com http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2464 ------------------------------------- * You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 22:10:28 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: "science" vs. "feminism" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Interesting stuff, Anny and Kathleen. But it makes sense that the male would be interested in the sperm, doesn't it? And the female in the egg. (And please don't flame me -- this ain't a scientific assumption.) Point is, if it is "science" it should examine both things. I remember in 1976 a young woman biologist having a devil of a time with a very well done study of the behavior of seals and how the females organized the colonies. The paper had a few high-level champions among the men, but many of the male biologists simply dismissed it. Hard row to hoe, this. So, pull up your socks! We're all tendin' the field together. best phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 23:17:23 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: "science" vs. "feminism" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/18/98 7:12:10 PM Pacific Standard Time, Zozie@AOL.COM writes: << biologist having a devil of a time with a very well done study of the behavior of seals and how the females organized the colonies. The paper had a few high-level champions among the men, but many of the male biologists simply dismissed it. >> Oooooh please...any idea how I could FIND this study? Year, college, area...I would really like to see this! Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 22:32:39 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Subject: Re: Off to See the Wizard In-Reply-To: <2124572@flc.flink.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:41 AM 11/18/98 CST, geminiwalker wrote: > >It is also believed the Lewis Carroll was a pedophile, as was James Barrie, >author of Peter Pan. I don't know about L. Frank Baum, though. Lots of >authors of children's books are, though. It was a rather disconcerting >thing for me to learn, but it is an area I tend to research quite >thoroughly. I really need to get my old computer running. I think still have files left from my two fantasy classes. I actually had a paper published on Barrie and the du Maurier family. Barrie was an odd litle man who took a fancy to two little boys he met playing in the park with their nanny, but he also had, I believe, a crush on the mother, whom he met at a dinner party. Traditionally Peter Pan is portrayed by an actress. That was due to child labor laws when Peter Pan was first done on stage. If a boy had been cast as Peter, then the Lost Boys, Michael, and John would have been played by younger children. By casting a grown woman in the role, they could cast older boys and still look right on stage. But the mother of Barrie's boys--and I can't think of her name!--was very much in the Mary Martin/Cathy Rigby mold. There is a place in the book, as I remember, where Barrie describes a "kiss" lurking at the corner of Peter's mouth. This matches very closely a letter (?) where he describes the boys' mother. Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 08:14:20 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF Digest - 16 Nov 1998 to 17 Nov 1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit So, S.M.Stirling, if we continue this, what say we move it off list? It's a bit beyond the fields we know, as far as feminist sf is concerned. Okay, so Foucault was a horrible person. (Which can be said of a heck of a lot of the culture studies mafia) Does this mean he was wrong? I won't even bother to list the many and various philosophers, writers, and savant types who have been less than saints, since that's the type of thing that's been argued to death. I personally find his arguements in Discipline and Punish pretty persuasive, particularly the last section where he talks about the Panopticon. I'm not sure whether I buy some of his lesser works, but they sure flexed my thinking and helped me practice reading and interpreting convoluted prose. In his quite famous essay on Salvador Dali, George Orwell observed that one needed to be able to hold in one's head both the idea that Dali was a disgusting human being and the idea that he was a great artist. I myself am not a great Dali fan, but I'm rather fond of the essay. Admittedly, I did ask "what's wrong with Foucault?" which is a pretty broad question, but I really didn't intend it as "what's wrong with his personal life and the lives of his colleagues?" While I don't think that objective reality is just a story, I realize that it's rather hard to prove this with any more nuance than Dr. Johnson did by kicking a stone. And I always thought that Foucault was operating on that whole idea of signs and things--that is, all we see is the sign, and we can't take it for the thing, which is the objective reality we'll never touch. I also think that Foucault is pretty darn useful. Okay, maybe there's one concrete objective reality we could theoretically all agree upon and understand. But that's not how things usually work--a whole lot of stories about reality (I could say totalizing master narratives, but I won't) are being used by various people for various purposes, and I think Foucault's description of discourses of power really helps you to see and attack harmful narratives. Then too, you've got to put Foucault in historical context. Maybe the culture studies folks claim that they have reached the end of philosophical history and are totally correct, but they like Foucault are a response to the philosophy that went before them. I see Foucault as a corrective to scary all-encompassing ideologies and to the belief that you can establish a single correct perfect history of things, also to the belief in scientific objectivity. My personal philosophical goal is to integrate Foucault and his demon spawn into a more materialist philosophy which gives me a better base for real political action. That is, I want to prove to my own satisfaction that some totalizing master narratives, so to speak, are better than others. Working around to where I understand and can challenge Foucault has been one of the most important intellectual experiences of my life, and it's given me a lot of fondness for Foucault, because I really cut my teeth on his work. >>> "S.M. Stirling" 11/18 2:12 PM >>> In a message dated 11/18/98 7:25:08 AM Mountain Standard Time, JFrankln@FAMPRAC.UMN.EDU writes: << Okay, buster, what's wrong with Foucault? Huh? Huh? >> -- well, the fact that he was a noxious, nihilistic little sadistic ***t himself doesn't help; if you've ever seen his TV interview of 1968 (the one with Noam Chomsky) where he's practically drooling over the prospect of street executions, you'll know what I mean. Or take a look at the fact that he never met a group of terrorists or murderers that he didn't like, from the Baader- Meinhoff gang to the Iranian mullahs. His works are full of a lip-smacking relish over domination and torture, and a determination to find them everywhere -- eg., the replacement of public executions by imprisonment strikes him as a new stage of oppression. When he was advised to alter his behavior because of HIV, he replied that he wasn't going to "submitt to the doctors' discourse of power". He really was a solipsist; he thought that power was everything, that objective reality was just a story, and that he could alter it by acts of will. But in the end, he found that reality is the virus that will kill you whether you believe in it or not. The fact that his confrere de Man was a Nazi doesn't help either. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 10:57:20 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Claudia Mastroianni Subject: Wizard of Oz allegory Nooo! Well, I don't care much one way or the other, but there are extensive debunkings of the idea that Oz was any kind of allegory for the sociopolitics of the USA (yellow brick road=gold standard and all that). If there's interest I'll forward a friend's post on the subject here. Claudia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 11:18:40 -0500 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: Re: Wizard of Oz allegory In-Reply-To: <199811191557.KAA15779@login1.fas.harvard.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I'd be *very* interested in the debunkings,as well as your friends essay. I'm really curious how they would manage that--there's no doubt Baum was politically outspoken and opinionated--the paper he edited (N. Dakota. I'll get the full name as soon as possible, but my prof with the info just left for a conference/Thanksgiving...) and wrote entirely called for the entire wholesale slaughter of the Indians two days before Wounded Knee, and a congratulatory editorial came out a few days after the slaughter. This really supports the allegorical readings that i've been privy to. On 19 Nov 98, , Claudia Mastroianni wrote: > Nooo! > > Well, I don't care much one way or the other, but there are extensive > debunkings of the idea that Oz was any kind of allegory for the > sociopolitics of the USA (yellow brick road=gold standard and all that). > If there's interest I'll forward a friend's post on the subject here. > > Claudia > Rudy Leon PhD Candidate Dept. of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 08:54:28 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Snow Queen Allyson Shaw wrote: >Joyce Jones wrote: >> I haven't read the two other books in the trilogy, but I thought this book >>was intimating that "fate" was not the guiding force, rather that the Sybil >>machine was behind everything. >That's interesting that you read them as separate. I thought the Sybil >machine was kind of a "fate generator." How would you define fate in >the book? Well now, that's an interesting question. I guess "the Fates" are supposed to spin fate in mythology, but in life, I don't think of anyone or anything generating fate. I just see it as itself or due to karma or, to get somewhat anthropomorphic, The Goddess. You're saying that the Sybil machine was like karma or the same as the Goddess? That doesn't sound right. Those beings made the Sybil machine, so you're saying the original intelligent beings who made the Sybil machine and devised the immortality serum in the blood of the mers were the same as gods and goddesses? Kind of like the Q on Star Treck, that's a bit of a reach, I have to say I don't know all that much about Q, I just liked what little I saw of him. Oh shoot, next you'll try to say there's no Santa Clause. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 10:58:59 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: Wizard of Oz allegory >>> Claudia Mastroianni 11/19 9:57 AM >>> but there are extensive debunkings of the idea that Oz was any kind of allegory for the sociopolitics of the USA (yellow brick road=gold standard and all that). If there's interest I'll forward a friend's post on the subject here. I would love to see a debunking of this, because I've had three professors who told us about it, including one of the current bright lights of American studies. I've always had my doubts about it--I mean, it seems plausible enough that the thought might have crossed Baum's mind, although from what I know of Baum maybe even that's not so plausible, but it just doesn't seem like that particular impulse would have driven this particular book. I had one professor who told us that the Cowardly Lion was supposed to be William Jennings Bryant and the book was supposed to urge him to speak up for free silver, which would have helped the farmers who were in debt at the time, since it would have fostered inflation. I suppose I could buy this for one book, but why all the sequels? Even if Baum wanted to write a metaphorical tale about the gold standard, his impulse to actually write a children's story must have been stronger in the long run. I read a slightly more plausible analysis of Baum's books in another book called Land of Desire, which is a history of department stores, bascially. The book talks about ideas contemporary with Baum about "mind cure"--all that "every day in every way I am getting better and better" and how this philosophy is reflected in the Oz books. This seems more reasonable since it talks about Baum as a product of his society rather than Baum the master literary strategist. What interests me here is the conviction that the story has to be "really" about something other than what it seems to be about. It's not enough to argue that an author may have had some thoughts about a philosophy or an idea that worked their way into the book, or that the author's belief in a thing quite naturally shaped the ideas that occurred to the author. Rather there's a secret key to the true meaning of the text, and moreover knowing the secret key somehow cancels out the story aspect of the text. (which is not an attitude I feel anyone on the list has; it's an attitude I've encountered in my flounderings in the pond of academia) (and not that I want everyone with this attitude burned at the stake, it's just interesting) I wonder...I think we need very strongly to believe in intentionality--if a book has a meaning, it must be because the author decided to put it there. I felt like this was part of the recent debate over Tolkien--if racist views were implicit in some of Tolkien, that meant Tolkien was intentionally writing about race with an eye to indoctrination. And I think that Americans in particular (cultural generalization...okay, okay) like what you might call secret knowledge--whether it's esoteric knowledge about punk rock or fashion, or theories about the "true workings" of society. We like to believe that there's an order to things--aliens, government conspiracy--that runs the show. It's a resistance, I assume, to the notion that nothing really runs the show, which idea makes the world a much scarier place. And I suppose it's a sensible reaction to the various conspiracies of power which really have deformed the American landscape. Then, of course, there's the opposite approach, the "no one ever puts ideas in their books except with well-documented intentionality, and if it's not documented, it's not there", that " the text and its most literal, benign interpretation are sacred" approach. Oh well, I'm ranting. Please do document, Claudia. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 12:56:39 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joyce Jones wrote: I don't think of anyone or anything > generating fate. I just see it as itself or due to karma or, to get > somewhat anthropomorphic, The Goddess. You're saying that the Sybil machine > was like karma or the same as the Goddess? That doesn't sound right. Those > beings made the Sybil machine, so you're saying the original intelligent > beings who made the Sybil machine and devised the immortality serum in the > blood of the mers were the same as gods and goddesses? Kind of like the Q > on Star Treck, that's a bit of a reach, I have to say I don't know all that > much about Q, I just liked what little I saw of him. Actually, I don't watch much star trek, but you are right, this is not a pleasant way to look at things-- seeing the inventors as gods-- I wonder if their motivation is explored in the sequel? I like to think that their motivation was not to create a fate machine, but in making what they did they tapped into or heightened some force that was already there? In making the mers intelligent they didn't give them everything that they are. Maybe some of the more mysterious and powerful aspects of the mers were created by the mers themselves. Perhaps the inventors didn't anticipate all that the sybil machine was? Hmmm... I was thinking about Carolyn Bynum's book Fragmentation and Redemption, where she compares medieaval mystics and theology with contemporary science fition in the last chapter. (It's a great book, has anyone read it?) Throughout the book she argues that the body itself may have a completely different history than we imagine. That the body was a spriritual tool for many women. It's fascinating, and I thought her ideas might apply to the mers-- that their intelligence and immortality didn't automatically equal their spiritual connection to the sybil machine. Maybe that connection was fostered by them using their bodies, etc.? Just an idea. > > Oh shoot, next you'll try to say there's no Santa Claus. He He. Actually it's the Easter Bunny who's really the big fake, right? I ate him last year, chocolate-- and he was good! --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:06:30 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF Digest - 16 Nov 1998 to 17 Nov 1998 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/19/98 7:16:27 AM Mountain Standard Time, JFrankln@FAMPRAC.UMN.EDU writes: >So, S.M.Stirling, if we continue this, what say we move it off list? It's a bit beyond the fields we know, as far as feminist sf is concerned. -- sure, move it to e-mail. >Okay, so Foucault was a horrible person. (Which can be said of a heck of a lot of the culture studies mafia) Does this mean he was wrong? -- Yes. It's one thing for a visual artist to be a creep -- Picasso was, for instance, and I could tell you stories about the pre-Raphaelites that would raise eyebrows. It's another thing for a philosopher, someone who pronounces on morals, politics and "how we should live". If they're radically evil personally, it's a good indication that their ideas are too. Sartre would be another example -- to be marginally on-topic, take a look at how he treated de Beauvoir. Or at Lacan's personal life. These people were in revolt against what Orwell called "common decency"; in revolt against a universe which refused to reshape itself to suit their murderous-infantile longings for omnipotence. By way of contrast, take a look at J.S. Mill or Socrates. >In his quite famous essay on Salvador Dali, George Orwell observed that one needed to be able to hold in one's head both the idea that Dali was a disgusting human being and the idea that he was a great artist. -- see above. As Orwell pointed out in several of his works (and in "1984") the root of this century's murderous totalitarianisms and organized exterminations is precisely the idea that reality is subjective and can be re- ordered politically. "2+2=4 is the beginning of freedom". It's "no accident" that de Mann was a Nazi, or that Foucault et. al. supported the most vicious political murderers around, like Pol Pot -- the Khymer Rouge and Sendoro Luminoso are "postmodernism in action", its distilled essence. >While I don't think that objective reality is just a story, I realize that it's rather hard to prove this with any more nuance than Dr. Johnson did by kicking a stone. -- that's all that's necessary. See Sokal's "Fashonable Nonsense" if you dare... >And I always thought that Foucault was operating on that whole idea of signs and things--that is, all we see is the sign, and we can't take it for the thing, which is the objective reality we'll never touch. -- he thought he could de-create the HIV virus by willpower. Need one say more? The universe is both organized and knowable. If you know it, you have power over it. If you don't, it has power over you -- famine, plague, death. Science is the narrative that is testable and actually true. To be an enemy of the Enlightenment is to be one of the enemies-general of human kind; this century has demonstrated that empirically, again and again. >I see Foucault as a corrective ... also to the belief in scientific objectivity. -- objective reason and capital-T Truth are the foundation of Western civilization, of humanism, of democracy and individual rights -- feminism most emphatically included. Feminism is, in fact, the quintessial product of Western enlightenment rationalism and individualism. Step off that boat and you're in a sea of chaos and hatred and power-lust, where anything is permissible. It's a straight path to Auschtwitz and the Gulag. >Foucault, because I really cut my teeth on his work. -- he's played an important role in the virutal destruction of the liberal arts in American academia. But the purge is coming... 8-). ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:18:49 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit One of the ways fiction, even the most mimetic, constantly differs from real life is that people tend to get their just desserts. In real life, the good often as not die young, and real villains die old and rich and universally acclaimed. Even Pol Pot died in bed of natural causes. Fiction written to this template would be just too depressing... but only the clinically depressed have a realistic appraisal of life. (This has actually been tested.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:45:49 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anny Middon Subject: Re: Wizard of Oz allegory Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/19/98 10:20:20 AM Central Standard Time, releon@syr.edu writes: > I'm really curious how they would manage that--there's no > doubt Baum was politically outspoken and opinionated--the paper > he edited (N. Dakota. I'll get the full name as soon as possible, but > my prof with the info just left for a conference/Thanksgiving...) and > wrote entirely called for the entire wholesale slaughter of the > Indians two days before Wounded Knee, and a congratulatory > editorial came out a few days after the slaughter. This really > supports the allegorical readings that i've been privy to. Baum was a newspaper reported at one point, but this may not have been more than a "stopgap" job in his life. A recent article in the Chicago Tribune discussed Baum and the Oz books and films. The article gives a somewhat different take on Baum, and views him primarily as an entertainer. The article says in part: In fact, the MGM Oz holds down 15th place in a series of Oz movies dating back to something called "Fairylogue and Radio Plays," an early multimedia stage and film show written and produced by Oz creator L. Frank Baum in 1908. Baum, as most true Oz fans know, was 44 and living in Chicago in 1900 when he and illustrator William Wallace Denslow collaborated on "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" - the first of 14 Oz books he'd write before passing over the rainbow himself in 1919. A theatrical sort who suffered from a weak heart, Baum managed legitimate theaters and opera companies as a young man between stretches as a newspaper reporter. Peter Schulenburg, author and illustrator of the recent Oz titles "The Tin Castle of Oz" and "The Corn Mansion of Oz" (Tails of the Cowardly Lion Press) knows Oz history well, and he suspects Baum scribbled most of his little yarns with an eye toward the Broadway stage and the fledgling film industry. "I've seen stills from `Fairylogue and Radio Plays' and have read the script," says Schulenburg. "Baum would dress up as the narrator. He looked sort of like Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain, if you remember that show. He'd begin his story and stop for a dance sequence or run a piece of film before continuing. I don't think there's any doubt the man was a born showman." John Fricke, author of "The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History" (Warner Books), agrees. "Oh, yes, Baum started out on stage as a bit of a golden boy in his 20s when he wrote `The Maid of Arran,' a five- act Irish melodrama that had a long run in New York," he says. "After his first success, I understand there were reversals in his family fortunes, and he settled into a 20-year period of vamping, working at traveling-salesman jobs and writing nonsense verse at night for his children, some of which included the Oz characters." The success of Baum's original Oz book -- "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" -- and its early 1900s Broadway stage adaptation left him flush enough to spend winters in California, where he would settle permanently in 1910. Marginally successful attempts by the Selig Polyscope Co. to recycle chunks of `Fairylogue and Radio Plays' into 8- to 10-minute one-reelers were enough to encourage Baum the show-business entrepreneur. Capitalizing on his run of good fortune, he formed the Oz Film Manufacturing Co. in 1914; a multiple film package of his work from this period is available on video through American Home Entertainment with titles including "The Patchwork Girl of Oz," "His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz" and "The Magic Cloak of Oz." To get a take on Oz you haven't seen a million times, check out the 1925 silent version of "The Wizard of Oz," available from Video Images. In this movie, Dorothy is introduced as a long-lost Ozian princess who was left on Uncle Henry and Aunt Em's doorstep as a foundling. The bad guys back home -- Prime Minister Kruel and Lady Vishuss -- send their minions to Kansas to snatch Dorothy before she can read a secret letter spilling the beans on her royal lineage. So you have five swarthy thugs dressed in what look like badly soiled Zorro suits arriving at Uncle Henry's farm aboard a biplane. ("I just flew in from Oz, and boy are my arms tired!") There's a tussle, the tornado kicks up, everyone lands in Oz and it's on with the show. Except it's really the Scarecrow's story this time out, as Larry Semon, an interesting yet forgotten film comic of the 1920s, is writer and director here in addition to playing the old bag of straw. Semon saves the funniest bits for his character, including a crude live-action/animation scene where he's chased by a swarm of bees. A younger, somewhat slimmer Oliver Hardy turns up as Dorothy's clumsy love interest, lumbering about the screen in farmhand and Tin Man outfits. (One warning about this version: It includes a terribly offensive African-American stereotype in the Snowball/Rastus character, who eats watermelon and flops around like a goof.) "L. Frank Baum was first and foremost an entertainer," says Fricke. "He wrote for the printed page, stage and film, and all of his stories were created for the single purpose of making kids and adults laugh out loud. He used to say, `To please a child brings its own reward.' " Yes, but was Baum writing Oz books with a serious eye toward producing screen and stage adaptations? "I don't think there's any doubt," Fricke says. "He seesawed between stage and the printed page. His second play, `The Tik-Tok Man of Oz,' toured the West Coast, playing Los Angeles and San Francisco around 1910, and the plot and characters from this production were later developed as one of Baum's first silent film efforts, `His Majesty, The Scarecrow of Oz.' He also wrote `The Woggle Bug' with the idea of adapting it to the stage. The story includes an army of girls that was quite obviously intended for a production number at some later date." Even though the 1925 film was a major flop, according to Fricke, it would appear Baum was correct in his assessment of his creation's screen and stage potential. Besides the 1939 MGM jewel's firm entrenchment in pop culture, consider Oz's more recent Broadway and film incarnation as "The Wiz" for pure commercial punch. Perhaps the secret lies in the timelessness of Oz? The Emerald City has no rusty Buicks, no references pinning it to a specific period. It's pure fantasy, which all goes back to the author. "Baum himself had such great charisma, such a commanding stage presence. Before she died I talked to Romola Remus Dunlap, the original screen Dorothy from `Fairylogue and Radio Plays.' She described a gentle, kind man who was great with kids, who took time to entertain the children in the cast with his stories. The man was a dreamer, but thank God he was -- and it all started in Chicago." I have the full text of the article, if anyone is interested (but most of it is reproduced above). Anny AnnyMiddon@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 15:45:57 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anny Middon Subject: Re: "science" vs. "feminism" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/18/98 2:47:13 PM Central Standard Time, kmhouse@HALCYON.COM writes: > > Is that article available anymore? This sounds fascinating. > I'm sorry to say my memory really sucks. I have no idea when I read it, and only a vague recollection that it may have been in the Chicago Tribune. Next time I get to my local library (which should be soon) I'll see if I can find it. Anny AnnyMiddon@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 18:15:01 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: Persistence of Memory In-Reply-To: <021401be0e6c$4e0415e0$99409ec3@mycomputer> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Welcome, Jeannette! At 07:41 PM 11/12/98 +0100, Jeannette wrote: >The Perstistence of memory (Karen Ripley) It's part of a trilogy ("The Slow >World") - I've only read the first book as SF is rather difficult to find >where I live. The book I have read is very gripping: it starts with the >protagonist escaping from people on horseback with no idea who she is or >where she is from - later it turns out that she is marooned in a place where >no-one remembers the past, but they all come from what I assume to be "our >world". I suppose outside my own benighted island home the sequels will be >easier to find, as the deeper mystery is only hinted at in the first book. Sad to say, I read the second and third books and found them really disappointing after the great first book. This was mostly because the secret was revealed (or confirmed) and once you know what's going on it becomes much less fascinating. I can't remember where in the series we learn this, it might well be in the first book but I think it's afterward. Still a good adventure read, and your mileage may vary so don't give up just on my account. Jennifer jkrauel@actioneer.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 17:55:51 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen In-Reply-To: <006801be0d6b$1bcf8840$3d4b2599@default> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 04:02 AM 11/11/98 -0800, Joyce wrote: >... But the >mers seemed to have achieved nirvana. The had complete enjoyment of every >moment of their existence, whether it lasted a minute or an eternity. They >lived completely in the present. Maybe the concept of death and slaughter >meant nothing to them. They just were, they expected nothing else. Perhaps this involves part of the Summer book -- I don't think we learned enough about the mers in the first book to say this much about them. However, I'd have to say that there are creatures far from immortal here on earth that have this zen-like approach: dogs. They don't get things like "I'll take you out -- later". A lack of awareness of time doesn't necessarily require immortality! Jennifer jkrauel@actioneer.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 18:17:58 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: vampire jobs In-Reply-To: <9526e8de.364c85af@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 02:17 PM 11/13/98 -0500, SM wrote: >In a message dated 11/13/98 7:41:14 AM Mountain Standard Time, >Robin_Reid@TAMU-COMMERCE.EDU writes: > >>I esp. love the werewolf one)--heartily recommended.> > > >-- heartily recommended here as well; they're a hoot, and very skillfully >done. The werewolves run a sheep farm, and were involved in the Dutch >Resistance during WWII. ("they're very territorial", as one character >remarks.) She does a beautiful job of showing 'humans' who have rather >'doggy' natures, pack organization, scent-clues and all. Can you please cite an exact title reference here for my shopping list? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 21:42:50 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: vampire jobs Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Blood Trail by Tanya Huff Mass Market Paperback Reissue edition (May 1997) Daw Books; ISBN: 0886775027 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 23:36:24 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Michael Marc Levy Subject: Re: Geoff Ryman In-Reply-To: <36531930.7AE6@earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 18 Nov 1998, Allyson Shaw wrote: > Michael Marc Levy wrote: > > > > Menomonie, WI 54751 hm. ph: 715-834-6533 > Ryman's The Child Garden is also worth reading. > > I will have to check that one out. Has anyone looked at his online > fiction project, *253*? It's about passengers on a London subway train > and how their lives are all linked together-- it's a hyper text (that is > the right term?)-- you can press on the links (usually strange or > mundane details) to go from passenger to passenger. It's kind of > interesting. The writing is dryer than I like, but it's pretty engaging > and ambitious. Here's the address: > > http://www.ryman-novel.com/info/home.htm > > --Allyson > 253 is now out in book form as well. It's quite an amazing piece of work. Each of the 253 passengers gets a story that's exactly 253 words long and each has a variety of links to other people on the train. Great fun. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 10:03:09 -0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Yvonne Rowse Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit S.M.Stirling wrote: >Fiction written to this template would be just too depressing... but only the >clinically depressed have a realistic appraisal of life. (This has actually >been tested.) So who decided what a realistic appraisal of life was for the test? Were *they* clinically depressed? This seems like one of those 'tests' that are used as examples of how the 'scientist's' viewpoint necessarily affects the experiment. Yvonne > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 07:08:32 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: vampire jobs In-Reply-To: <19981120023706947.AAC286.241@jennifer.actioneer.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > >-- heartily recommended here as well; they're a hoot, and very skillfully > >done. The werewolves run a sheep farm, and were involved in the Dutch > >Resistance during WWII. ("they're very territorial", as one character > >remarks.) She does a beautiful job of showing 'humans' who have rather > >'doggy' natures, pack organization, scent-clues and all. > > Can you please cite an exact title reference here for my shopping list? BLOOD TRAIL by Tanya Huff, DAW books, 1992 ... mass market paperback. Check the used book stores.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 10:14:26 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Debra Euler Subject: Re: vampire jobs -Reply Comments: To: mathews@UNM.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain >>> Pat - wrote: BLOOD TRAIL by Tanya Huff, DAW books, 1992 ... mass market paperback. Check the used book stores.> Or any bookstore, it's still in print, as are all the Blood titles. In fact, all of Tanya's books from DAW are in print--we're combining two of her early books, Child of the Grove and The Last Wizard, into one volume, Wizard of the Grove, which will be hitting stores any minute. OK, enough sales talk. I'm only pushing it because Tanya's a friend of mine, and she could always use more royalties! Debra, DAW Books. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 10:13:57 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Gemini Walker Organization: Geminiwalker, Inc. Subject: The Gate to Women's Country MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------6B8C9228FBBDE51AFE496DD2" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------6B8C9228FBBDE51AFE496DD2 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit S P O I L E R S P A C E I'm reading this book now, and I really like it, it's drawn me into a very interesting world. I had some questions about whether or not it was supposed to be taking place in the future, because it seems to, but some of the things they were doing made it seem like some things hadn't been invented yet -- like the microwave, as they always seemed to be cooking grains on the stove. Now I discover that there is electricity, but it is limited I guess because of how earth's natural resources had been so exploited and abused. I'm still not sure what kind of stove they are using to cook their grains on, though. The whole carnival thing is pretty interesting, had to find *some* way for men and women to get together and reproduce, I guess. I know I would feel horrible if I had to turn my son over to anyone for any reason not his own, that's for sure, and certainly not so he could emulate the "warrior" culture. Is that really something we will never truly rid ourselves of? If the answer is at the end of the book, don't tell me! ;-) Sadly enough, I can relate completely to Morgot's frustration with Myra's infatuation, as my daughter is consistenly infatuated with boys who treat her with so little respect! I'm just glad that she usually can eventually find some place to put her foot down, but I hope and pray that someday she will develop more vision around finding someone to partner with that truly meets her spirit. That's all for now. ...geminiwalker chuard@earthlink.nt -- Outsiders: for those who walk alone. http://Outsiders.listbot.com/ --------------6B8C9228FBBDE51AFE496DD2 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Walker, Gemini Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: Gemini Walker n: Walker;Gemini org: Geminiwalker Ink adr: PO Box 16843;;Main Street Station;Worcester;MA;01601-6843;USA email;internet: chuard@earthlink.net title: Executive Director tel;work: (508) 798-4084 tel;home: (508) 798-4084 note: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------6B8C9228FBBDE51AFE496DD2-- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 09:59:58 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Has anyone read... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Has anyone read John Calvin Batchelor's The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica? Have you any ideas about what he meant by the way the plot worked out? This is one of my favorite sf books and it also raises the question of sf boundaries--it's pretty literary. Actually, I believe JCB is rather conservative and I haven't enjoyed any of his other books, but this one has it all. Anyone, anyone? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 11:35:32 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: No Name Available Subject: BDG: The Sparrow, Online references Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell) Online related information (Jesuit material at the end) Misc: Mary Russell's home page, with sample from Sparrow, review excerpts, Real Audio NPR review, other info: http://members.stratos.net/druss44121/sparrow.html A Case of Conscience for Mary Doria Russell, by John D. Owen (Sparrow discussed in light of James Blish's A Case of Conscience) http://www.iplus.zetnet.co.uk/nonfiction/sparjdo.htm Tiptree judge comments http://www.tiptree.org/1996/index.html Reviews: reader reviews on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0449912558/davidframbesA/002-9159955- 2151465 Review, SF Weekly, by Susan Dunman http://www.productreviewnet.com/abstracts/5/5986.htm SF Site review by Steven Silver http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/russell.html Lambda SF review by Carl Cipra http://members.aol.com/lambdasf/books/reviews/sparrow2.html Infinity Plus review by Jon Courtenay Grimwood http://www.iplus.zetnet.co.uk/nonfiction/sparjcg.htm Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, short review by Patrick M. Heffernan http://www.mystgalaxy.com/sfarchive.html short review from Cleveland Live by Kelly Bahmer-Brouse http://cleveland.com/ultrafolder/litlife/reviews/sparrow.html personal page reviews: by Matthew Scott Winslow (long review) http://members.theglobe.com/mithlond/sparrow.html by Laurie D. T. Mann http://www.city-net.com/~lmann/essays/sparrow.html by Michael Rawdon http://www.fullfeed.com/~rawdon/books/sf/russell.html#the.sparrow About Jesuits (the Society of Jesus) (I thought, for anyone not hostile from the outset to the topic, that some background info on the Jesuits & history/common myths/conjectures about their involvement with science and exploration might be of interest. After checking out hundreds of sites and multiple searches for an objective secular history, I gave up the search. There are undoubtedly such sources in print or online: anybody who cares to show off can cite them. The below are official and antagonistic Jesuit information sites.) Official sites: General information, history http://www.jesuit.org/ on Jesuits and technology in history http://www.math.luc.edu/~vande/sj/sj_sci.html brief history http://www.fairfield.edu/jesuit/history.htm Malachi Martin: some comments on modernism & the SJ http://www.ascension-research.org/jesuits.html Dirty Laundry: The Secret Instructions of the Jesuits http://www.reformation.org./secret.html History of the Jesuits by Dr. J. A. Wylie LL.D. (who succumbed to Jesuit poison in 1997) http://www.reformation.org./jesuits.html [Ugly, but a real flash from the past: remember Chick books--- those sleazy little palm-size comic-strip religious-nut paperbacks sprinkled around high schools--- The UN and Armageddon? Well, they're still here!] The Secret History of the Jesuits, by Edmund Paris http://www.chick.com/catalog/books/0191.asp And, just for the hell of it: The home page (links to wonderful anthropology sites) of Fr. Ray Bucko, S.J., cited in MDR's acknowlegments http://www.lemoyne.edu/academic_affairs/departments/sociology_anthropology/buc ko.html ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 20:19:26 UT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Pi Thanks for the info. I gather from a trailer at the Curzon Soho last week that it will be coming to London shortly. ---------- From: For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature on behalf of Joyce Jones Sent: 17 November 1998 12:24 To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Subject: [*FSFFU*] Pi Remember a while ago we were talking about the movie Pi? I just found a site for it www.pithemovie.com It's full of information about everything from migraines to the kaballah to chaos theory. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 20:49:12 UT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Foucault (oh dear, OT again) << Okay, buster, what's wrong with Foucault? Huh? Huh? >> and SM Stirling responded with an _ad hominem_ attack on him, a rather dangerous road to go down. I have my own problems, in the field(s) of history I'm in, with Foucault and Foucaultism, but he did have some provocative and stimulating ideas, which, even if (though?) they were wrong have stimulated some great historical works, even if they've also generated some dire Foucaultian-fundamentalist works which treat him as gospel rather than an intellectual springboard/irritant. My own worst complaint about F is his falsely-universalist stance; i.e. he never comes out and positions himself in his arguments - much of his historical stuff (esp on sexuality) is very French-specific but he makes a lot of generalising assertions (e.g. the confessional) which don't apply AT ALL to England or much of the Protestant North of Europe (or even other Catholic cultures eg Ireland). Lesley Lesley_Hall@classic.msn.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 20:57:35 UT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: [FSFFU] re feminism and science Review forwarded for reference from H-Women list Lesley H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-Women (November, 1998) Helene Silverberg, ed. _Gender and American Social Science: The Formative Years_. Princeton, N.J. and Chichester, England: Princeton University Press, 1998. x + 334 pp. Notes and index. $55.00 (hardcover), ISBN 0-691-01749-2; $18.95 (paper), ISBN 0-691-04820-7 Reviewed for H-Women by Mary E. Chalmers , University of Central Arkansas Gendered Social Science _Gender and American Social Science: The Formative Years_, edited by Helene Silverberg, is an ambitious, multi-disciplinary collection of essays that brings the study of the social sciences, social reform, and gender together to significantly reshape our understanding of the development of the social sciences and their place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The collection is extremely well researched, and the endnotes alone (nearly 100 pages) are a gold mine of information on secondary and primary sources. All the essays make use of archival materials (both personal and institutional), journals and other published materials from the time, and a wide range of secondary materials related to individual disciplines, social sciences as a whole, and theoretical works. The introduction by Silverberg lays out the collection's multifaceted approach and its consequences. She begins with a useful historical and historiographical context for understanding how and why the development of the social sciences and social reform efforts have been seen as largely unrelated fields of study. Rather than charting the social sciences only from the perspective of their male practitioners in the universities, the authors, using gender analysis, examine together the social sciences and the reform movements located in universities, settlement houses, government bureaus, and private foundations, such as Russell Sage and Rockefeller. The women discussed in these essays made use of science and its authority, often along with traditional gender ideologies, to claim work for themselves as newly university-educated women. In doing so, they produced vital, innovative work in government social reform and academic research that often influenced the male social scientists. It was only later, with the effects of the failure of Progressivism, the restriction of war work to men, and various post-war agendas that suppressed dissent that severely limited women's access and contribution to the social sciences. The collection is divided into three, somewhat overlapping sections which demonstrate the many ways gender helps to understand the social sciences. The first section, "Gender as Discourse," examines how the breakdown and challenges to the Victorian gender system contributed to the development of economics, political economy, and anthropology. Mary G. Dietz and James Farr in "'Politics Would Undoubtedly Unwoman Her': Gender, Suffrage, and American Political Science" and Nancy Folbre in "The 'Sphere of Women' in Early-Twentieth-Century Economics" both show how these fields were male constructed in an era of increasing women's work and agitation for female suffrage. Both fields claimed objectivity and usefulness (while opposing women's work and suffrage) in part by embracing traditional Victorian doctrines of separate spheres where women's contribution to the home was moral and private and men needed a "family wage." In economics, however, this backfired as the study of women's and children's work was left open to women in government bureaus, social reform movements, private foundations, and university departments outside of political economy. Their findings, based on science and its methods, advocated for reform and provided a critique of and eventually helped to undermine core assumptions of neo-classical economic theory. Dietz and Farr show how the political scientists' efforts to use a gendered language to create a science of state, to claim a role as educators of young (male) citizens, and oppose women's suffrage failed because of the incoherence of the male/female imagery. Dietz and Farr effectively demonstrate the contradictions inherent in the gendered language, but their list of "incredulous questioning" takes the political scientists' arguments out of context. For instance, to claim that it is "merely tautological" to construct the state as "manly" and then say politics would "unwoman" women may demonstrate a lack of logic, but it also dismisses somewhat the gendered world the political scientists were trying to maintain (pp. 74-77). Kamala Visweswaran's "'Wild West' Anthropology and the Disciplining of Gender" examines how women were able to use the notion of the west as "no place for women" and their gendered claim to civilizing (in this case the Native Americans) to popularize their writing (and the field of anthropology more generally) and to establish themselves as professionals. Yet the anthropologists' acceptance of white Americans' race hierarchies, which was fairly typical of European and American women going into the field/empire, [1] kept these women, according to Visweswaran, from seeing gender as a universal category of analysis that encouraged identification across class and race boundaries. Nevertheless, their efforts to understand sexual differences helped to create the notion of cultural relativism, which would in the long run destabilize these same hierarchies. In trying to show the complexities involved, Visweswaran's own argument becomes somewhat convoluted and difficult to follow. Secondly, gender is shown to be "constitutive of social science" by shaping "the production, organization, and uses of social knowledge" (p. 24). Several essays point out the collaboration in the 1860s of men and women in the American Social Science Association (ASSA) to develop social science in the name of social reform. As men in the universities in the late 1880s and early 1890s distanced themselves from reform under the threat of being fired for advocating radical ideas, the work of social reformers became increasingly invisible to the history of the now "objective" social sciences. Kathryn Kish Sklar's reprinted 1991 essay, "Hull House Maps and Papers: Social Science as Women's Work in the 1890s," [2] helps to redress that invisibility by showing how women outside the universities were able to continue to create new work in the social sciences using concern for women's sphere combined with innovative social science methods. Silverberg, in her own essay, "'A Government of Men': Gender, the City, and the New Science of Politics," demonstrates how middle-class, white men, after jettisoning the science of the state of earlier the political scientists, constructed political science so as to curb the power of the party machines, to devalue the political activism of women, and to "catapult their discipline to the center of American political life" (p. 156). By promoting the civil service, the political scientists were not just embracing "better government;" they were also positioning themselves as the appropriate government administrators, while appearing to be gender and class-neutral. They could now dismiss both party bosses with their immigrant and working-class bases and women's activism, without having to attack either head-on. This permitted them to claim objectivity, scientific status, and greater usefulness to American political life. Nancy Berlage's essay, "The Establishment of an Applied Social Science: Home Economists, Science, and Reform at Cornell University, 1870-1930," clearly articulates how gender ideologies about women and the domestic sphere were combined with academic science projects and methods to create a new applied knowledge of home economics in a university setting. Because of changing pressures, the home economists reformulated their discipline several times in order to carve out and claim independence, scientific standing, and the ability to reform society. The collection's final section shows how gender was harnessed in the social sciences as a means of "cultural critique," helping to reshape gender boundaries and discourses. The last of these essays--Guy Alchon's "The 'Self-Applauding Sincerity' of Overreaching Theory, Biography as Ethical Practice, and the Case of Mary van Kleeck"--seems a strange essay to conclude this collection. While Alchon uses extensive archival materials to write an informative biography on van Kleeck, he cautions against using gender analysis (as too theoretical and abstract) and proclaims in opposition to it the value of biography. This claim seems particularly discordant given that two excellent biographies using gender analysis precede his essay: Dorothy Ross, "Gendered Social Knowledge: Domestic Discourse, Jane Addams, and the Possibilities of Social Science," and Desley Deacon, "Bringing Social Science Back Home: Theory and Practice in the Life and Work of Elsie Clews Parsons." Ross, author of _Origins of American Social Sciences_, one of the seminal works in the study of the history of the American social sciences that does not address gender, [3] examines the role of Jane Addams not just as a social reformer but as a sociologist, whose work influenced university sociology, even though it has gone largely unacknowledged. Addams' work, unlike what the universities adopted, was relational, socially situated, grounded in personal experience, and female gendered. Her work embraced multiple vantage points, leading William James to claim Addams "simply _inhabits reality_" (p. 251). Deacon's biography shows how Parsons developed in her life and her studies to become increasingly critical of the Victorian domestic sphere for not training women to get along in the modern world. Not content with criticism, Parsons, in theory and practice, also tried to bring about an "Unconventional Society" and a new family for new times (pp. 283-84). Alchon, by contrast, argues that an analysis of van Kleeck's life driven by gender would lose "much that is ironic, surprising, and otherwise inaccessible to the press of such an abstraction" (p. 297). He rejects gender analysis, in part, because he claims that the life of van Kleeck disproves the gender division of the social sciences between "soft" female reformers and "hardening," "disciplining" male academics (p. 311). Yet the authors of this collection argue that such division was not descriptive of the reality of the day, but was a perception created when the university social scientists claimed objectivity. Alchon seems to be working, at least partially, from the position that continues to posit the validity of the objective social sciences and the necessity of keeping them separate--even immune--from the political and theoretical analysis of gender. While his caution to avoid extreme imbalance and his rejection of teleological history is of course valid, he uses this claim to dismiss gender analysis as "solipsistic and ahistorical" (p. 312). Yet, despite Alchon's claim that gender analysis leads to "self-applauding sincerity," the essays in this collection clearly demonstrate the vitality and insight that gender analysis, combined with careful research in political, economic, family, personal, social, and educational contexts, can bring to topics so frequently understood as unrelated to gender. The essays, while all useful within their own disciplines, together reveal a kaleidoscopic view--shedding light in multifaceted ways on the social sciences in academia and in reform movements. Even though several topics, including the settlement houses, the ASSA, various social scientists and reformers, are discussed in multiple essays, there is little direct repetition. Rather, the notion of multiple vantage points and "inhabiting reality" that Ross uses could easily serve as an explanation for how this collection looks at the formative years of the social sciences. This work should become a crucial text for researchers, scholars, and graduate students studying either the social sciences or gender, for it demonstrates how gender analysis (and social reform) are integral to understanding the development of social knowledge and provides an excellent model for how to do gender analysis. NOTES: [1]. See, for instance, Margaret Strobel, "Gender, Race, and Empire in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Africa and Asia," in _Becoming Visible: Women in European History_, 3rdEdition, eds. Renate Bridenthal, Susan Mosher Stuard, and Merry E. Wiesner (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998). [2]. _The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880-1940_, eds. Martin Bulmer, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Kevin Bales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). [3.]. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). See Silverberg's introduction. Copyright (c)1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit, educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permissions, please contact H-Net at H-Net@h-net.msu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 20:31:21 UT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: "science" vs. "feminism" >I wish I'd saved the article when I read it, but as I recall there's some >findings now that gender has influenced how science has looked at >conception. >The typical scientist who first described conception was male and >apparently >identified with the sperm. >The accepted idea was that the egg was totally passive, and was invaded >and >fertilized by the active sperm. In actuality it seems that the egg actively >attracts the sperm, and may even "choose" the sperm which fertilizes it. >The >(female) egg may actually be more active than the (male) sperm. There is a wonderful book from 1948 by Ruth Hershberger, _Adams Rib_, republished during the 70s, which explodes masculinist views of sex, gender and reproduction. Mary Ellman's _Thinking About Women_ (1970ish) has a witty revision of the above sperm-ovum interpretation, with the ovum as a lone voyager and the sperm 'like commuters pouring off the 5.15' Lesley Lesley_Hall@classic.msn.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 09:01:01 -0200 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Liliam Subject: : Free books MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi everybody! I'm a silent member of the list and I have enjoyed being part of it, reading about books and also following the off topic discussions. I'm a voracious reader, but as I keep getting new books (mostly suggestions from the list), I don't have any more room to keep them all. And as I live in Brazil and finding someone who likes reading SF&F in English is very difficult, I thought that would be better to give the books to someone who would really appreciate them. The list of the books is the following: 'Catch the Lightning' - Catherine Asaro 'The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You' - Dorothy Bryant 'Dreaming Tree' - C.J.Cherryh 'Merchanter's Luck' - C.J.Cherryh 'The Pride of Chanur' - C.J.Cherryh 'Love & Sleep' - John Crowley 'Jaran' - Kate Elliot 'Daughter of the Empire' - Raymond E. Feist 'Slow River' - Nicola Griffith 'Waking the Moon' - Elizabeth Hand 'Turtle Moon' - Alice Hoffman 'The Crystal Singer Trilogy' - Anne McCaffrey 'Powers That Be'- Anne McCaffrey 'Dragonquest' - Anne McCaffrey 'Dragondrums' - Anne McCaffrey 'Dreamsnake' - Vonda N. McIntyre 'The Deed of Paksenarrion' - Elizabeth Moon 'Only Begotten Daughter' - James Morrow 'Temporary Agency' - Rachel Pollack 'The Golden Compass' - Philip Pullman 'The Serpent Garden' - Judith Merkle Riley 'The Pillow Friend' - Lisa Tuttle 'Women of Wonder (The Contemporary Years)' Nebula Awards 26 'Charms For The Easy Life' - Kate Gibbons (not sf&f, but strong female leads) If anyone is interested, contact me privately. Liliam ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 17:22:18 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Hand of Prophecy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Last weekend I read Severna Park's "Hand of Prophecy" and I wanted to say a thing or two about it before I forget. No spoilers. You may remember the author (Suze Feldman) joined the list recently. This is the second of her books that I've read -- perhaps there are only two. The first, "Speaking Dreams" I think is the name, takes place in the same universe and may even share a minor character. It is not necessary to read them in order, though having the first as background was surely helpful. I liked this book more than the first. It seemed tighter, less grim, and I thought it had more appealing characters. It was a real page-turner and adrenaline-rusher, with a complex enough story to keep me from figuring out how it would come out. And the characters were believable, the dialogue reasonable -- in short, nothing got in the way of a very nice read. One basic premise of the story is that slavery is somehow an accepted part of this future civilization, which otherwise is not too different from ours. There's a people that "developed" slavery with some genetic and biological aspects such as a virus that keeps a person from aging and enhances healing for twenty years, then kills the host when the virus runs out of steam. The slavers are now the pariahs, but the general structure of slavery remains, with a lottery feeding the slave population. This was a really scary idea: anyone in their late teens was eligible to be "selected", that is, turned into a slave and stripped of their rights and previous life, treated as property for twenty years, then to die a horrible death. The other basic premise of the story is that there's a "cure" for the slave virus. This story follows various characters as the word gets out about this cure. It's easy to imagine a subsequent novel exploring the social consequences of this cure, and I'd love to see it. This is kind of frustrating because all this says nothing really about the story or characters. There's a runaway slave who learns a lot about herself, her people, and her relationship with the slaver peoples over the course of the story. There's a fascinating description of a troupe of gladiator slaves, including the warrior Hallie who was my favorite. And there's the prophet herself, a very intriguing character. Tons of interesting, strong, complex, believable female characters. I recommend it. Jennifer jkrauel@actioneer.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 18:36:51 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: democracies in sf&f In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 20 Nov 1998 17:22:18 PST." <19981121012729688.AAA286.313@jennifer.actioneer.com> I just reread _Freedom & Necessity_ (Emma Bull & Steven Brust), which set me to thinking about this issue again. Technically speaking F&N doesn't qualify as SF or fantasy, and it suffered from the limitations of its form (letters and journals) but I had a lot of fun reading it. (It makes way more sense the second time too.) It's set in 1849 England and deals rather extensively with the popular uprisings, particularly Chartism, of the 1830s & 1840s, with a small appearance by F. Engels, which made me really happy. (It actually inspired me to go read _The Communist Manifesto_, the other major option for getting background being Hegel, who's way too much for me.) I know a lot of people found the format of this book really annoying, but I had a blast. It reminded me of _Sorcery & Cecilia_, which now seems to be a cult classic and which caused me to write letters in false personae to my friends for the entirety of 9th grade. Did anyone here read it (F&N)? Anyway, not to slip into that most annoying of habits, badgering other people with my own research projects ("Come here and let me tell you about my thesis, little boy!"), it was certainly an involved investigation of revolution that doesn't set a king on the throne at the end. It also reminded me of Brust's _Teckla_, which is a bit of a twist on the peasant revolution (it actually says on the back cover "The peasants are revolting"). I don't remember seeing that brought up here. Further, I think that Emma Bull's _Falcon_ says something about this; I haven't read it in ages, but I think it at least addresses the issue of revolution more complexly than the Return-of-the-King strategy. Another book which touches on working-class revolution is _The Labyrinth Gate_, by Alis Rasmussen (now writing as Kate Elliott). I don't have my copy right now, but it seems to use most of the standard images, principally secret meetings in working-class neighborhoods about demanding the franchise. Her _Highroad Trilogy_ is something of a one-man crusade, but we are given to understand that this is a bad thing. (I'm oversimplifying like crazy here.) Also, in her _Jaran_ series (as K. Elliott) we see the very beginnings of the revolution which will end in a form of democracy (we know, because the _Highroad Trilogy_ is set a couple of generations later in a galaxy far, far away). Excuse me, I'm getting punchy here. Did anyone else recognize part III of _The Golden Key_ as being hers because of the politics? jessie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 23:04:47 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: Hand of Prophecy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/20/98 6:28:34 PM Mountain Standard Time, jkrauel@ACTIONEER.COM writes: >Last weekend I read Severna Park's "Hand of Prophecy" and I wanted to say a thing or two about it before I forget. -- Great book! Everyone should run out and buy a copy -- I enjoyed the heck out of it. It should have gotten more critical attention than it did. >The first, "Speaking Dreams" I think is the name, takes place in the same universe and may even share a minor character. -- tastes differ; I thought "Speaking Dreams" was a _little_ better, tho' both are fine works. Suze has just finished another novel, "The Annunciate" (completely different background) and it's _dynamite_. If there's any justice in this world, she's going to be a major figure in the genre. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 23:17:09 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/20/98 5:56:36 AM Mountain Standard Time, yvonne@HALLSFARM.SOFTNET.CO.UK writes: >So who decided what a realistic appraisal of life was for the test? Were *they* clinically depressed? This seems like one of those 'tests' that are used as examples of how the 'scientist's' viewpoint necessarily affects the experiment. -- no, actually. The testers were ordinary people. You measure the person's self-appraisal against a series of double-blind examinations of their actual life-situation and prospects by third parties who have no direct contact with them. Ordinary people show a consistently over-optimistic evaluation of their own lives -- the best guess is that they (we) are continuously slightly blissed out on endorphins. There's probably a selective advantage in that, since it keeps people going. The (mildly) clinically depressed, on the other hand, tended to have self- appraisals consistently more like those of the third-party appraisers. Incidentally, the whole apparatus of scienctific controls (as opposed to what goes on in pseudo-sciences like psychiatry or sociology) is designed precisely to avoid bias in results; double-blinds, controls, peer-review. Over time, it has an extremely good record of working to correct systemic error. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 23:32:27 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: Foucault (oh dear, OT again) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/20/98 5:41:50 PM Mountain Standard Time, Lesley_Hall@CLASSIC.MSN.COM writes: >SM Stirling responded with an _ad hominem_ attack on him, a rather dangerous road to go down.> -- well, no. I responded with an attack on Foucault's ideology, combined with examples of how it worked in his own life. He was, after all, a philosopher and philosophy is the study of how we should live. I believe, to put it mildly, that he has been an absolutely pernicious influence; rather like Nietzsche, only without the latter's few virtues (eg., a good prose style). ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 00:44:38 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/20/98 8:18:30 PM Pacific Standard Time, JoatSimeon@AOL.COM writes: << ncidentally, the whole apparatus of scienctific controls (as opposed to what goes on in pseudo-sciences like psychiatry or sociology) is designed precisely to avoid bias in results; double-blinds, controls, peer-review. Over time, it has an extremely good record of working to correct systemic error. >> Quantitative analysis is very very good for limited studies. There is a tendency to ignore the effect that limiting variables has on the test. Qualitative analysis, while not so reductionist, has a richer set of information from which to deduce results. If there is sufficient Qualitative analysis, Quantitative can follow for a fully dimensional analysis. Quantitative alone can create its own biases and can end up simiply proving the researchers original point of view. Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 00:46:27 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: Foucault (oh dear, OT again) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/20/98 8:34:12 PM Pacific Standard Time, JoatSimeon@AOL.COM writes: << Nietzsche >> Nietzsche? Pernicious? Is it possible you are more familiar with the philosophy cobbled together by his proto-Nazi sister from his papers after his stroke? Madrone ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 00:53:00 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: Foucault (oh dear, OT again) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/20/98 10:50:41 PM Mountain Standard Time, DMadrone@AOL.COM writes: >Nietzsche? Pernicious? Is it possible you are more familiar with the philosophy cobbled together by his proto-Nazi sister from his papers after his stroke? -- no, I was thinking of Nietzsche's own works, which have been promoting noxious solipsism and subjectivism ever since. Brilliantly written but depraved and, when you come right down to it, evil. His sister engaged in creative editing, but the basically anti-rational and anti-democratic qualities were right there for her to sieze. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 09:49:36 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Comments: cc: m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 20 Nov 98, at 23:17, S.M. Stirling wrote: > Incidentally, the whole apparatus of scienctific > controls (as opposed to what goes on in pseudo-sciences > like psychiatry or sociology) is designed precisely to > avoid bias in results; double-blinds, controls, > peer-review. Over time, it has an extremely good record > of working to correct systemic error. Should one call them pseudo-sciences? I think of pseudo-sciences as "occupations" like numerology, pyramidology or (my favourite) general semantics because if one accepts the ludicrous premises on which they're based, these "pseudo-sciences" are amazingly logical and self-consistent from one practitioner's work to the next. Psychiatry, sociology and the like - in which theory is rooted in the postmodernist paradigm and its offspring, the "ideology of relativism" - are neither logical nor self-consistent because relativism confers a false validity on any reasonable (and many unreasonable) points of view. I'd rather call them "mock sciences" - using "mock" in the sense of "ridicule by imitation". AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 09:00:18 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Mike Stanton Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Comments: cc: ajhs@usa.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On 21 Nov 98, at 0:44, Demetria M. Shew wrote: > Quantitative analysis is very very good for limited studies. There is a > tendency to ignore the effect that limiting variables has on the test. > Qualitative analysis, while not so reductionist, has a richer set of > information from which to deduce results. If there is sufficient > Qualitative analysis, Quantitative can follow for a fully dimensional > analysis. Quantitative alone can create its own biases and can end up > simiply proving the researchers original point of view. >From my own (admittedly limited) involvement in 'qualitative' research, I would have thought it far more likely to end up 'simply proving the researchers original point of view'. After all, in 'qualtitative research', the researcher seeks to 'explain' rather than just 'measure', looks for 'meaning' rather than just 'facts', and 'participates' rather than just 'observes'. It's almost always difficult or even impossible to replicate work so the temptation to 'see what [one] wants to see' must usually be overwhelming. Is it possible to conduct truly ethical 'qualitative research' - in view of the fact that the researcher necessarily influences her subjects? Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) ________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 09:29:52 -0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Yvonne Rowse Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit SMStirling wrote: >Ordinary people show a consistently over-optimistic evaluation of their own >lives -- the best guess is that they (we) are continuously slightly blissed >out on endorphins. There's probably a selective advantage in that, since it >keeps people going. Perhaps those blissed out on endorphins were people with a wide circle of friends and a job outside the home. >The (mildly) clinically depressed, on the other hand, tended to have self- >appraisals consistently more like those of the third-party appraisers. Almost certainly these were housewives at home with small children. So how do I get my endorphin levels up? Yvonne ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 05:31:57 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: ME Hunter Subject: Re: democracies in sf&f In-Reply-To: <199811210236.AA17527@nsl-too.pa.dec.com> (message from Jessie Stickgold-Sarah on Fri, 20 Nov 1998 18:36:51 -0800) Jessie wrote: >I just reread _Freedom & Necessity_ (Emma Bull & Steven Brust), which set >me to thinking about this issue again. Technically speaking F&N doesn't >qualify as SF or fantasy, and it suffered from the limitations of its form >(letters and journals) but I had a lot of fun reading it. Actually, I really enjoyed this book because of its format. I've always enjoyed an extensive correspondence and I think the era of constant written communication resonates with my email-heavy lifestyle today. I did think that it was an odd choice of format, given the extensive action sequences that had to be narrated, but I liked it. The one part of it that didn't fit at all, to me, was the fantasy/spiritualism/occult element. I thought the whole thing would have been better if they had left that out altogether and it seemed almost as if they threw it in just so they could be marketed to their fans, or perhaps as though they planned for that to be a more central element and got caught up with the historical setting and couldn't let go of the original concept. I was very impressed with the complexity of the main character. And it also made me want to go back and re-read Hegel, something I never thought I'd say. E. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 05:38:52 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: ME Hunter Subject: "Mock" science (Was: BDG: Snow Queen) I've heard a fair number of people dismiss psychology/sociology/political science/anthropology (although, interestingly, not usually including economics) as not being worthy of the name "science." I don't mean to be contentious, but I'm curious. Those of you who feel that way, what is your goal? Do you think these issues are not worthy of study? or that they should be subsumed into some other category? that scientific methods of experimentation should not be applied? that more scientific methods should be applied (and how would you handle the ethics restrictions)? Do you see any improvement in these fields over time? If so, how do you think this differs from the progession of the hard sciences? If not, how do you think these questions should be addressed? E. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 09:52:11 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Gemini Walker Organization: Geminiwalker, Inc. Subject: Re: "science" vs. "feminism" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------31AA433D4D87B817F1AAE636" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------31AA433D4D87B817F1AAE636 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lesley Hall wrote: > >I wish I'd saved the article when I read it, but as I recall there's some > >findings now that gender has influenced how science has looked at > >conception. > >The typical scientist who first described conception was male and > >apparently identified with the sperm. > > >The accepted idea was that the egg was totally passive, and was invaded > >and fertilized by the active sperm. In actuality it seems that the egg > >actively attracts the sperm, and may even "choose" the sperm which > >fertilizes it. The (female) egg may actually be more active than the > >(male) sperm. > > There is a wonderful book from 1948 by Ruth Hershberger, _Adams Rib_, > republished during the 70s, which explodes masculinist views of sex, gender > and reproduction. > Mary Ellman's _Thinking About Women_ (1970ish) has a witty > revision of the above sperm-ovum interpretation, with the ovum as a lone > voyager and the sperm 'like commuters pouring off the 5.15' > Lesley > Lesley_Hall@classic.msn.com Oh, this is too rich! This article is just *perfect* for my science fiction list, and especially on this topic! -----begin forwarded article----- Wow, I found this article so interesting I was just sure you all would to! -----begin forwarded article----- Raging Hormones Are industrial pollutants blurring the genetic boundaries between male and female? Forget about doomsday asteroids and the Ebola virus. The real threat to life on earth may be the Florida alligator's vanishing penis. That's only one example of a curious blurring of the sexes that researchers have been finding among wild animals around the world. In terms of reproductive health, the males of certain species aren't measuring up. Though a definite cause has yet to be found, several studies point to "gender-bender" pollutants that may be disrupting animal hormones -- including ours. Hormones are the chemical messengers of the body's endocrine system. As Catherine Dold writes in Discover (Sept. 1996), hormones travel from the various endocrine glands to "tell cells what to do and when to do it." Their role in fetal development is profound. Hormones "tell the fetal cell what it will be when it grows up," a process that determines, among many other things, an individual's sex. The problem, writes Dold, is that "chemical impostors" may be upsetting fetal growth at the crucial moment of sexual differentiation. "Many researchers now believe that a small army of common chemicals can somehow imitate natural hormones," she adds, and "derail an animal's development, permanently distorting its reproductive, immune, and neurological systems." The theory would explain why male alligators in Florida's Lake Apopka, the site of a pesticide spill in 1980, developed stunted reproductive organs. And why male fish near sewage plants emptying into Britain's rivers produce a protein normally found in females' eggs. Similar cases have appeared among eagles, whales, otters, and other animals. Writes Dold: "One serious abnormality after another has been reported in wildlife that have been exposed to a highly contaminated environment." The list of possible "endocrine disrupters" now tops 50, including the usual suspects: pesticides like DDT, atrazine, and chlordane as well as dioxin, PCBs, and heavy metals. Even more disturbing, several seemingly less odious chemicals -- such as certain substances in plastics, paints, cosmetics, adhesives, and inks -- may have a similar effect. In the case of male sexual development, there are at least two possible causes of "demasculinization." Chemicals may be blocking the androgens, or male hormones like testosterone, by binding to fetal cells in their rightful place. They can also mimic estrogen, the female hormone, thus triggering estrogenic effects. The amounts needed are small; in fact, in terms of damage, less is often more. Odder yet, these substances don't resemble estrogen in a molecular sense, which only complicates the puzzle. As Diana Lutz reports in The Sciences (Jan./Feb. 1996), some scientists link endocrine disrupters with declining reproductive health among human males. The rates of testicular cancer and genital deformities have risen, while male fertility has fallen, according to some studies. One in six couples now has trouble conceiving. Researchers once assumed these problems originated with women, but now suspect that men may be the cause as often as half the time. Though there's no ironclad proof that gender-bending chemicals are to blame, "the general feeling is that the evidence gained so far is too plausible to ignore." No one doubts that endocrine disruption can be chemically induced in humans. Between 1945 and 1971, 5 million women took diethylstilbestrol, or DES, a synthetic estrogen thought to prevent miscarriages. Its role as an agent of abnormal fetal development -- in males as well as females -- is now well documented. Even so, some think the danger posed by synthetic endocrine disrupters may be overstated. They note, for instance, that many fruits contain natural substances that mimic estrogen. But proponents of the theory argue that animals exposed to such substances for millions of years have developed ways to neutralize them. That can't be said of a molecule whipped up in a lab only a few decades ago. Synthetic chemicals may also biodegrade more slowly and thus accumulate in the body. If the risk of endocrine disrupters proves to be real, more than sexual development may be affected. Theo Colborn, a senior scientist with the World Wildlife Fund and co-author of Our Stolen Future (Dutton, 1996), thinks such chemicals may be causing other impairments, including subtle forms of nerve and brain damage in children. Colborn's theory bucks the current tendency to seek the cause of many disorders in the genes. Profound changes in an organism can occur without genetic involvement, she notes, which in a way is good news: A "cure" lies simply in changing the beliefs and habits that lead to the overuse of industrial chemicals, beginning with the models now used to determine "safe" levels of chemical exposure. The real issue may not be how much of a toxic substance causes cancer or knocks you dead, but how little can alter a being's destiny at the very earliest stages of life. -- Jeremiah Creedon -- Outsiders: for those who walk alone. http://Outsiders.listbot.com/ --------------31AA433D4D87B817F1AAE636 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Walker, Gemini Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: Gemini Walker n: Walker;Gemini org: Geminiwalker Ink adr: PO Box 16843;;Main Street Station;Worcester;MA;01601-6843;USA email;internet: chuard@earthlink.net title: Executive Director tel;work: (508) 798-4084 tel;home: (508) 798-4084 note: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------31AA433D4D87B817F1AAE636-- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 09:54:34 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Gemini Walker Organization: Geminiwalker, Inc. Subject: Re: : Free books MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------7DE08967702EFE09655D7FD9" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------7DE08967702EFE09655D7FD9 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I would be very interested. What's the deal? ...geminiwalker chuard@earthlink.net Liliam wrote: > Hi everybody! > > I'm a silent member of the list and I have enjoyed being part of it, > reading about books and also following the off topic discussions. > > I'm a voracious reader, but as I keep getting new books (mostly suggestions > from the list), I don't have any more room to keep them all. And as I live > in Brazil and finding someone who likes reading SF&F in English is very > difficult, I thought that would be better to give the books to someone who > would really appreciate them. > > The list of the books is the following: > > 'Catch the Lightning' - Catherine Asaro > 'The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You' - Dorothy Bryant > 'Dreaming Tree' - C.J.Cherryh > 'Merchanter's Luck' - C.J.Cherryh > 'The Pride of Chanur' - C.J.Cherryh > 'Love & Sleep' - John Crowley > 'Jaran' - Kate Elliot > 'Daughter of the Empire' - Raymond E. Feist > 'Slow River' - Nicola Griffith > 'Waking the Moon' - Elizabeth Hand > 'Turtle Moon' - Alice Hoffman > 'The Crystal Singer Trilogy' - Anne McCaffrey > 'Powers That Be'- Anne McCaffrey > 'Dragonquest' - Anne McCaffrey > 'Dragondrums' - Anne McCaffrey > 'Dreamsnake' - Vonda N. McIntyre > 'The Deed of Paksenarrion' - Elizabeth Moon > 'Only Begotten Daughter' - James Morrow > 'Temporary Agency' - Rachel Pollack > 'The Golden Compass' - Philip Pullman > 'The Serpent Garden' - Judith Merkle Riley > 'The Pillow Friend' - Lisa Tuttle > 'Women of Wonder (The Contemporary Years)' > Nebula Awards 26 > > 'Charms For The Easy Life' - Kate Gibbons (not sf&f, but strong female > leads) > > If anyone is interested, contact me privately. > > Liliam -- Outsiders: for those who walk alone. http://Outsiders.listbot.com/ --------------7DE08967702EFE09655D7FD9 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="vcard.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Walker, Gemini Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="vcard.vcf" begin: vcard fn: Gemini Walker n: Walker;Gemini org: Geminiwalker Ink adr: PO Box 16843;;Main Street Station;Worcester;MA;01601-6843;USA email;internet: chuard@earthlink.net title: Executive Director tel;work: (508) 798-4084 tel;home: (508) 798-4084 note: http://home.earthlink.net/~chuard x-mozilla-cpt: ;0 x-mozilla-html: TRUE version: 2.1 end: vcard --------------7DE08967702EFE09655D7FD9-- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 10:52:56 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: OT Off to See the Wizard MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Before this thought gets too deeply embedded in anyones mind: >There have been no rumors of that sort about Baum, who unlike the other >two mentioned was happily married and a devoted father. It should also >be pointed out that although both Lewis Carroll and James Barrie seem to >have had an unhealthy interest in children......> Marital status, economic status, ethnic or religious status, etc name them all, have no direct correlation to accurate identification of who will choose to sexually abuse children. IOW, being a "devoted father and married" does not exempt anyone. In fact in many cases the perpetrator is a "model citizen". Ask the survivors. just clearing my conscience, donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:39:09 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jeannette Camilleri Subject: Re: Persistence of Memory, Sheri Tepper MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks for the reply! I had been wondering whether the sequels were any good - as the only way of getting them would be through the internet /mail order, I don't think I'll bother. I'm doing my MA on SF and I need to order tons of books anyway, so that's all I can afford! I have been reading some of the posts about Sheri Tepper's work. I'd be interested in hearing if you think her books are improving or not. I thought I had read most of her books until I got on this list! I haven't read the Marianne series but I have read a lot of her work up to The Family Tree. I would be interested in knowing what list members think of books like The Gate to Women's Country and Shadow's End in particular - are they just examples of "let's just get rid of all the men and we'll have solved all our problems" genre of writing? Thanks Jeannette Jennifer wrote: >Welcome, Jeannette! > > >Sad to say, I read the second and third books and found them really >disappointing after the great first book. This was mostly because the >secret was revealed (or confirmed) and once you know what's going on it >becomes much less fascinating. I can't remember where in the series we >learn this, it might well be in the first book but I think it's afterward. >Still a good adventure read, and your mileage may vary so don't give up >just on my account. > >Jennifer >jkrauel@actioneer.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 12:01:01 -0800 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: marcie begleiter Subject: Blue Light In-Reply-To: <00fa01be157e$3e017ca0$c3409ec3@mycomputer> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi there. I've been a lurking member for a couple of months. I'd like to introduce myself and start a new thread. I am a writer and teach film studies at a school in the LA area and have been an avid reader of sci-fi since discovering _Wrinkle in Time_ as a youngster. More recently have read a good deal of literature that is mentioned on this list including the work of Octavia Butler, LeGuin, Tepper, Elizabeth Hand, Piercy and Atwood. I had never given the reading an umbrella name of Feminist sci-fi until recently. I went serching on the web with the seemingly nutty idea that other people would have read the same group of texts, and that is how I found you. That said, I was wondering if anyone has read the new Walter Mosley novel _Blue Light_. It is a strong departure from his earlier series of atmospheric/mystery books and he's received a bit of criticism in the press for this new focus. I found the writing to be beautifully poetic, focussing on qualities of the environment and the ideas of the characters as they appear in a group rather than their human differences. There are also strong racial and gender threads running through the narrative. This is my first posting to a listserv group. Forgive me I haven't followed some netiquette, I'm learning. best marcie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 21:02:10 MET Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Re [*FSFFU*] "Mock" science (Was: BDG: Snow Queen) Comments: cc: m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 21 Nov 98, at 5:38, ME Hunter wrote: > I've heard a fair number of people dismiss > psychology / sociology /political science / > anthropology (although, interestingly, not > usually including economics) as not being worthy > of the name "science." I don't mean to be > contentious, but I'm curious... I think that few people would accept that the issues "studied" by mock sciences are unimportant - indeed because they deal with people in society, they're probably among the most important of all issues. _I_ think that the difficulties concerning these "mock sciences" stem from two, related, causes. The first is that the problems involved are nearly intractable because we still haven't developed conceptual strategies for *efficiently* dealing with great complexity. Worse, I'm not sure whether the scientific "tools" you and Steve Stirling mention are inherently capable of *solving* such problems at all - let alone in reasonable time. It's a difficult admission for a mathematician to make but that said, I obviously don't condon the mumbo-jumbo that passes for "scientific method" in the mock sciences today. Sometimes I like to *speculate* that the mock sciences are in the same position that natural sciences were before the discovery of "scientific method" during the Enlightenment and that a new form of scientific enquiry will have to be discovered before real progress in those sciences can be made. I have no idea what shape such a hypothetical "new form" would take - just as Aristotle, Lucretius or Pliny the Elder couldn't have predicted today's "scientific method". The second is the "quality of researchers" problem. The natural sciences have been "blessed" with the appearance at regular intervals with truly great scientists like Galileo, Newton, Faraday and Einstein who are able to synthesise the work of their lesser predecessors. This simply hasn't occurred in the "mock sciences" where there appears to be little or no continuity from one generation of researcher to the next. Add to that the fact that the better brains avoid the mock sciences like the plague... AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 14:12:26 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Heather MacLean Subject: Re [*FSFFU*] "Mock" science Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:02 PM 11/21/98 MET, Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) wrote: > Add to that the fact that the better >brains avoid the mock sciences like the plague... > And of course the "better brains" are defined as being "better" how? Perhaps by the very "fact" that they avoid the "mock sciences"? A mite tautological, no? Heather, a bit nettled (after all, I study literature, so of course I don't even begin to count in the grand scientific scheme of "Truth"...) http://www.zipcon.net/~hlm ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 15:43:34 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: J Bocchino/Sarasota Cty Subject: Re: Hand of Prophecy In-Reply-To: <19981121012729688.AAA286.313@jennifer.actioneer.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Possible spoiler alert Just finished this also...I was intrigued with the cure, but thought I missed some finer details...at one point the cure was alluded to as being a thought process--a belief by the infected slave that they would live through the "failure" and that they might be cured withough the drug/cancer....was this resolved and I missed it? JB On Fri, 20 Nov 1998, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > Last weekend I read Severna Park's "Hand of Prophecy" and I wanted to say a > thing or two about it before I forget. No spoilers. You may remember the > author (Suze Feldman) joined the list recently. > > This is the second of her books that I've read -- perhaps there are only > two. The first, "Speaking Dreams" I think is the name, takes place in the > same universe and may even share a minor character. It is not necessary to > read them in order, though having the first as background was surely helpful. > > I liked this book more than the first. It seemed tighter, less grim, and I > thought it had more appealing characters. It was a real page-turner and > adrenaline-rusher, with a complex enough story to keep me from figuring out > how it would come out. And the characters were believable, the dialogue > reasonable -- in short, nothing got in the way of a very nice read. > > One basic premise of the story is that slavery is somehow an accepted part > of this future civilization, which otherwise is not too different from > ours. There's a people that "developed" slavery with some genetic and > biological aspects such as a virus that keeps a person from aging and > enhances healing for twenty years, then kills the host when the virus runs > out of steam. The slavers are now the pariahs, but the general structure > of slavery remains, with a lottery feeding the slave population. This was > a really scary idea: anyone in their late teens was eligible to be > "selected", that is, turned into a slave and stripped of their rights and > previous life, treated as property for twenty years, then to die a horrible > death. > > The other basic premise of the story is that there's a "cure" for the slave > virus. This story follows various characters as the word gets out about > this cure. It's easy to imagine a subsequent novel exploring the social > consequences of this cure, and I'd love to see it. > > This is kind of frustrating because all this says nothing really about the > story or characters. There's a runaway slave who learns a lot about > herself, her people, and her relationship with the slaver peoples over the > course of the story. There's a fascinating description of a troupe of > gladiator slaves, including the warrior Hallie who was my favorite. And > there's the prophet herself, a very intriguing character. Tons of > interesting, strong, complex, believable female characters. I recommend it. > > Jennifer > jkrauel@actioneer.com > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 16:38:07 -0500 Reply-To: feldsipe@erols.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: suzanne feldman Organization: or lack thereof Subject: Re: Hand of Prophecy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit J Bocchino/Sarasota Cty wrote: > > Possible > > spoiler > > alert > > Just finished this also...I was intrigued with the cure, but thought I > missed some finer details...at one point the cure was alluded to as being > a thought process--a belief by the infected slave that they would live > through the "failure" and that they might be cured withough the > drug/cancer....was this resolved and I missed it? The point of contrasting a physical cure with a 'mental' cure was a way to discuss strength of will. In SPEAKING DREAMS one of the freed slaves has a technique to defeat the effects of Failure using icewater baths and blankets, which has been 'handed down the generations' of slaves. It's not a strictly medical cure, but it works for her, because she believes it will--not in a simple way, but with a really horrible tenacious belief, and she never wavers. In HoP, the idea of surviving Failure is contrasted against the Faraqui belief in survival as a culture/race, and one of the central questions in both books is, 'Do you accept your fate?' So I guess the simplest answer to the question is that the cure has more to do with the metaphor of survival than with a 'proving' of one technique over the other. I never meant for one to be definitive. In the (presently unwritten) third book, there would probably be a big conflict between the people who were freed by different methods. Suze/Severna ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 18:38:58 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: J Bocchino/Sarasota Cty Subject: Re: Hand of Prophecy Comments: To: suzanne feldman In-Reply-To: <365732BE.B51@erols.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Since I read the book for pleasure (in bed just before falling asleep..), I am glad the ambiguity of the cure is intentional and not just the result of my nodding off in exhaustion...thank you on my way to the bookstore for SPEAKING DREAMS and EAGERLY awaiting the third novel....(how human to have the freed slaves in conflict over their method of freedom...) JB On Sat, 21 Nov 1998, suzanne feldman wrote> > The point of contrasting a physical cure with a 'mental' cure was a way > to discuss strength of will. In SPEAKING DREAMS one of the freed slaves > has a technique to defeat the effects of Failure using icewater baths > and blankets, which has been 'handed down the generations' of slaves. > It's not a strictly medical cure, but it works for her, because she > believes it will--not in a simple way, but with a really horrible > tenacious belief, and she never wavers. > > In HoP, the idea of surviving Failure is contrasted against the Faraqui > belief in survival as a culture/race, and one of the central questions > in both books is, 'Do you accept your fate?' > > So I guess the simplest answer to the question is that the cure has more > to do with the metaphor of survival than with a 'proving' of one > technique over the other. I never meant for one to be definitive. In the > (presently unwritten) third book, there would probably be a big conflict > between the people who were freed by different methods. > > Suze/Severna > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 18:55:55 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/21/98 1:56:13 AM Mountain Standard Time, ajhs@USA.NET writes: >Psychiatry, sociology and the like - in which theory is rooted in the postmodernist paradigm and its offspring, the "ideology of relativism" - are neither logical nor self-consistent because relativism confers a false validity on any reasonable (and many unreasonable) points of view.> -- true, good point. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:12:13 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: "Evil" Philosophers and Feminist SF Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It occurs to me that S.M. Stirling's sweeping pronouncements on morality are examples of the very "totalizing master narratives" that Foucault was pointing out. Of course they are in disagreement! :) Not that I am an expert on Foucault. I haven't read a single one of his books. I have read part of one of Nietzsche's books, however ("On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life"). He did not strike me as even remotely evil. BTW, I would like to point out that philosophy in general is *not* "the study of how we should live." There is a branch of philosophy called "ethics" that concerns morality. Much of philosophy is actually an inquiry into the nature of Truth, Knowledge and the ways people think, conceived as distinct from morality. I've never understood the belief that moral relativism leads to evil. (Moral absolutism and fanaticism have a much better record for that.) Moral relativism seems simple pragmatic recognition of the fact that it is impossible to agree or even argue productively, about morality or anything else, if there is no underlying set of assumptions that is shared. Sociology and anthropology, "mock-sciences" or not, are attempts to map out the ways in which culture, technology and thought processes differ from group to group. These are also central preoccupations of science fiction. It has struck me that this contentious thread actually has a lot to do with feminist SF. There has been a long history in feminist SF of identifying with "the other" and recognizing the power of group thinking in shaping ideas of reality. Springing immediately to mind are a number of Le Guin's works ("Vaster than Empires and More Slow", *The Word for World is Forest*, "Dancing to Ganam", "The Shobies' Story"), many of James Tiptree's works, and our recent BDG selection *Alien Influences*. With the growing popular awareness of quantum physics we're also seeing more treatments of the theme of the act of observation *creating* reality (as in Greg Egan's *Quarantine*). Many of these treatments get the physics terribly wrong in my view, but if I read SF for scientific accuracy I wouldn't have much of a reading list! What other feminist SF works am I missing? (I'm sure they are legion.) ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: R.E.M. -- Up "...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 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:16:07 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit My favorite quote on _cultural_ relativism comes from something once said by Sir Charles Napier, a British provincial governor in India in the 1840's (among other things; he had an eventful life). The Brahmins (upper-caste Hindus, often priests) of the province came and complained to him that by supressing the practice of suttee -- burning widows on their husband's funeral pyres -- he was interfering with their religion and customs. He replied: "By no means. It is your custom to burn widows. Very well. But we also have a custom; when men burn a woman alive, it is our custom to tie a rope around their necks and hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your national custom... and then -we- will follow -ours-." ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:19:04 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "S.M. Stirling" Subject: Re: "Evil" Philosophers and Feminist SF Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 11/21/98 5:11:29 PM Mountain Standard Time, jdawley@TOGETHER.NET writes: << It occurs to me that S.M. Stirling's sweeping pronouncements on morality are examples of the very "totalizing master narratives" that Foucault was pointing out. -- in two paragraphs you expect subtlety? 8-). >Moral relativism seems simple pragmatic recognition of the fact that it is impossible to agree or even argue productively, about morality or anything else, if there is no underlying set of assumptions that is shared. -- if morals are arbitrary matters of preference, then there is no alternative to settling all disputes by power -- ie., force and terror. Is female genital mutliation just another local custom, immune from judgement by outsiders, for example? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:18:59 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: BDG Snow Queen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Can the folks that are using this thread to discuss philosophy have the courtesy to mark it OT with a new subject. exhausted with sorting OT threads, donna ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:49:56 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: Re: "Evil" Philosophers and Feminist SF In-Reply-To: <1c7661cd.36575878@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:19 PM 11/21/98 EST, you wrote: >-- if morals are arbitrary matters of preference, then there is no alternative >to settling all disputes by power -- ie., force and terror. I disagree. Even if people's basic assumptions are in conflict they can talk about those assumptions. No culture is homogeneous, either. Recently I read Chinua Achebe's *Things Fall Apart* which does a good job of portraying the profound alteration of the traditional Obi culture in Nigeria when white colonists appeared. The whites build a church in the main character's village and win quite a few converts because there *is* variation in the local population and some, including Okonkwo's son, feel more in tune with the missionaries' message than with their own cultural heritage. Neither culture comes across as being "good guys", BTW. Though there are a few violent episodes in the novel, the most important tactic of the whites seems to be simple verbal persuasion. >Is female genital mutliation just another local custom, immune from judgement >by outsiders, for example? I personally find genital mutilation repugnant. But I have never visited Africa and have no in depth understanding of the cultures in which it is practiced. This is not a simple issue. And I am not interested in discussing it on this list. I was trying to guide this discussion back towards the list topic: feminist science fiction. Can we head that way, please? ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: Tori Amos -- From the Choirgirl Hotel "...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 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 17:59:09 +0000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Allyson Shaw Subject: Re: Quatitative Analysis and Headers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd like to ask that the this disscussion of scientific methods, etc. have it's own OT header, please, as I use the delete key to save time and am tired or reading BDG posts which have nothing to do w/ the Snow Queen. Thanks. --Allyson ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 20:07:09 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Janice E. Dawley" Subject: *Dark Water's Embrace* Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I recently finished Stephen Leigh's novel *Dark Water's Embrace* and was wondering if anyone else has read it and what they thought of it? I recall that Carolyn Ives Gilman nominated it for the BDG -- are you still around, Carolyn? For those who haven't read it, the novel is about a group of colonists who are stranded on another world when their spaceship is disabled catastrophically while in orbit. The nine people on the surface struggle to survive by breeding continuously (except for one important character) and by the present day of the novel there are a total of 100 colonists. There is an alarming frequency of birth defects and child mortality and those who survive into adulthood are often deformed. Women are expected to get pregnant as often as possible. And homosexuality is strictly forbidden. As in reality, this doesn't mean it never happens... And maybe it will mean the survival of the colony. I have a feeling that this novel will be a strong contender for the Tiptree Award this year. I thought its treatment of sexuality and the pain of being an outsider was very moving -- I found myself on the verge of tears several times! I was very puzzled by some of the plot elements, however. It seemed that some verged on mystical hand-waving or fantasy. A great read, though. ----- Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm Listening to: Tori Amos -- From the Choirgirl Hotel "...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 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:12:07 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Candice Bradley and Daniel Byrne Subject: Re: The Gate to Women's Country, Mythology, Greece SPOILER MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I had tried to respond to the message from Gemini Walker yesterday and my computer hung right in the middle so the thing never got sent off. Anyway, here's my note on Gate to Women's Country (GTWC). Caution, Spoiler . . . . SPOILER starts here . . . I just got done using GTWC in my Population and Culture course at Lawrence University (Wisconsin). It was a great success in that context. In addition, a bunch of my students have become absolutely addicted to Tepper, and they keep dropping by my office to read me segments of this or that (pieces of Grass, excerpts from The Family Tree) or just to have somebody to discuss the books with. Nevertheless, my class benefitted from some Greek mythology as we discussed GTWC. I apologise if this has been discussed before, but I thought it might help Gemini Walker with her questions about the time period in which GTWC is supposed to have occurred. My assumption is that GTWC takes place in the future, after a nuclear war (reference to a beach having turned to glass, genetic mutations, and an uninhabitable region). In GTWC there is reference to a great cataclism, the "convulsions," which might be interpreted as a nuclear war. It also has its parallels in the fall of Troy and is relevant to thinking about present-day ecological issues. Although GTWC is in a "future," I don't think one can fully understand GTWC without going back to the Odyssey and the Iliad and Troy and Bronze Age Greece . . . The presence of the play, Iphigenia, in GTWC is metaphorical. It is not merely there as something Stavia "does," but rather provides a key for understanding the entire context of GTWC at a deeper psychological (or perhaps individual developmental) level -- and to understanding GTWC as an ecological and deeply moral novel. As Jean Bolen writes in Goddesses in Everywoman, Iphigenia is a mortal who represents the nurturing, wifely and dependent aspect of Artemis. Artemis is a virgin goddess, a hunter, adventurer (and, ironically, goddess of childbirth) who is given everything she wants by her father, Zeus, and who is never raped, never married, and always ambitious. On another level, we can see the doomsday aspect of the story since it was part of the war of Greece with Troy. In Greek mythology, decisions Artemis made about Iphigenia had direct bearing on the outcome of the war with Troy. Although Artemis is not specifically in GTWC, she is there by implication as the women in Women's Country who opt to give up one thing for another -- women who are faced with difficult (even impossible) choices. The play Iphigenia perhaps significies the choices not made. Other Greek gods, goddesses and mortals named in in GTWC are worth knowing something about: Helen, Telemachus, Persephone (symbolism of the pomegranites and the goddess of the underworld), Hera, AND also look up the names of the characters in GTWC to see if these were names from the Iliad and the Odyssey -- what were the roles of these folks in Greek mythology? I enjoyed finding out about these characters in Bell's Women of Classical Mythology: A Biographical Dictionary. Nothing, it seems, is without symbolism. Clyde Wilcox, in his edited volume Political Science Fiction (with Donald Hassler) writes that the council in GTWC represents a kind of communal democracy . . . My students quickly saw parallels to Plato's conceptions of government in his Republic (which all had read in Freshman Studies). In other words, GTWC is a very rich book. Candice Bradley Appleton WI P.S. I've been looking at maps of Greece trying to figure out parallels with the various towns and locations in GTWC. Has anyone else done this and figured anything out? I wonder whether the walled cities (especially Marthatown) are Troy . . . ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 20:28:39 EST Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Kirsten Corby Subject: Re: The Gate to Women's Country, Mythology, Greece SPOILER Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit In a message dated 98-11-21 20:12:44 EST, you write: << understanding GTWC as an ecological and deeply moral novel. >> What?!! Hello, I'm Kirsten, I almost never post here, but I felt I had to respond to this. I didn't find GATE to be moral at all -in fact it struck me as downright perverse. To say that men are simply natural-born killers, that they're damaged, and the only way to *fix* them is to *kill them all off* except for those few sports that lacked the killer genes -- Lady! And then to have this vast X-files-like conspiracy around the entire truth of the society, and the covert breeding program, with women artifically inseminated without their knowledge, bearing the children of men they never knew, and being lied to about it -- I think it's chilling! Telling the Big Lie like that certainly didn't seem very "womanly" to me. Plus the hidden agenda to eliminate gays because they didn't fit the Plan . . . I mean, all of it, it was quite a nightmare scenario to me. I certainly think of myself as a feminist, but most of my close frinds in my life have been men - I generally prefer their company. And the message of the book, that they were, as a group, freaks and deviants who were a danger to the race, and the only thing to to with them was wipe them out -- well, it put me in tears, I can tell you. I think that sort of genetic reductionism belittles both women and men. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 19:35:18 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Candice Bradley and Daniel Byrne Subject: Re: The Gate to Women's Country, Mythology, Greece SPOILER MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It's "moral" because it brings up these kinds of issues . . . not because the choices are "nice" or necessarily "right." ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 23:08:19 -0600 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Michael Marc Levy Subject: Re: *Dark Water's Embrace* In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19981121200709.0068a0f0@together.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sat, 21 Nov 1998, Janice E. Dawley wrote: > I recently finished Stephen Leigh's novel *Dark Water's Embrace* and was > wondering if anyone else has read it and what they thought of it? I recall > that Carolyn Ives Gilman nominated it for the BDG -- are you still around, > Carolyn? > > I have a feeling that this novel will be a strong contender for the Tiptree > Award this year. I thought its treatment of sexuality and the pain of being > an outsider was very moving -- I found myself on the verge of tears several > times! I was very puzzled by some of the plot elements, however. It seemed > that some verged on mystical hand-waving or fantasy. A great read, though. > > ----- > Janice E. Dawley.....Burlington, VT > http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/jedhome.htm I liked the novel a lot and reviewed it for the New York Review of SF. It may also win the Philip K. Dick Award for best original paperback. Iwas particularly impressed by the way in which it handled two plotlines, one set a millennia earlier than the other, but managed to gradually show the connections between them, slowly revealing the answers to a series of mysteries. The protagonist's struggle with her own unusual sexuality was extremely moving. Mike Levy levymm@uwec.edu