From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Sat May 22 19:48:00 1999 Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 21:43:19 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG9904C" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 02:12:20 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Laurel A. Lamme" Subject: Re: Raising androgynous children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Which reminds me of a question I've been asking people lately: what are some >good works of science fiction (or whatever!) that posits and develops a >significantly different economic/corporate model than any existing or known >about? An minor example would be Bruce Sterling's _Holy Fire_, in which people >use cash and "real money", where "real money" cannot be moved quickly, but >only in terms of many years. And maybe you have to be above a certain age to >own it? Another example might be the "corporate city" model, which I've always >imagined as somewhat of a regression to a feudal society; although to my >disappointment most of them end up more like a capitalist society in which >your corporation is the same as your government. Any great examples? Really >radically different takes on the whole thing? > >jessie > One series that springs to mind is _Psion_, _Catspaw_, and _Dreamfall_, by Joan D. Vinge, which would probably fit into your 'corporate city' category. The megacorporations are portrayed so negatively that it surprised me, even though I hold some of the same opinions about many of our current powerful corporations. Perhaps the attitude of the novels stems from the fact that the protagonist is disenfranchised and often powerless. Was anyone else similarly shocked? Laurel lalamme@ufl.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 01:28:51 -0500 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: Raising androgynous children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 14 Apr 99, at 14:24, Jessie Stickgold-Sarah wrote: > Actually, this assumption is a major source of conflict > in my field (engineering): many people don't want to > go into management, but don't have a viable promotion > ladder without it. It's the old case of "the widget maker and diminishing returns". No matter how skillful an *operator* becomes, there comes a time when the value of her product isn't increased significantly by her increasing skill. At that time, any pay increase (above the rate at which the price of her product can be increased) is uneconomic. What the operator has to do to restore growth, is to change what she does (by improving the product/inventing a new one/improving rate of production). Failing this she has to distribute her skill more widely by training or managing others. Unfortunately the whole situation is like a treadmill. Inventing one product just isn't enough. One has to keep inventing or improving, or one becomes little more than a well paid liability. It's not a question of "ingratitude" to object to paying someone who - although she made a major contribution in the past - is now doing work that any youngster straight out of college could do at half the cost. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 01:37:33 -0500 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: Re Raising androgynous children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 14 Apr 99, at 18:04, donna simone wrote: > People who are different in anyway many times > lose jobs because of ignorance, hatred or phobia > on the part of both fellow employees and > supervisors/managers NOT because they are > innately "higher maintenance". People who "[trigger phobias" or "[arouse] hatred on the part of both fellow employees and supervisors/managers" are NECESSARILY innately high maintenance. Any characteristic or personality trait a person possesses which increases the amount of unproductive supervisory time , increases a person's maintenance; it doesn't matter whether the time is spent with the employee or with her co-workers. The example I gave of what makes a person high maintenance was just one side of the story - there are others. It's far to easy to cry prejudice when in fact the employee herself is to blame. I know, for example, a woman who is a strong supporter of abortion and was canned because she persistently upset her female colleagues. A clear case of prejudice? Not really - she's hated because of her habit of looking at pictures of her colleagues' children and saying "well there's another good reason for abortion"! > People not of the ruling class or race many times > will be perceived as "higher maintenance" by the > ruling class or race because of ignorance, > hatred or phobia on the part of the ruling class or race. Untrue! They may be perceived as "different" in a negative way, even prejudiced way, but maintenance is very different because it is neutral - it simply means that an employee requires more unproductive supervisory time. > The story of the footprints on the toilet seat > illustrates both of these points beautifully. Indeed it does but not in the way you think. The anger arose because someone used a toilet and left it in a dirty, unhygenic condition. It's not prejudice to object to common facilities being knowingly befouled by a person who then leaves the mess for somebody else to clean up. Nor is it the custom in Pakistan, or any other place where squat toilets are the norm, to leave dirt on Western-style toilet seats or, indeed, to deliberately pollute any facilities other people have to use. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 08:53:55 +0200 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Peter Jaric Subject: Re: Re Raising androgynous children In-Reply-To: <19990415062457.24094.qmail@www0t.netaddress.usa.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit [delurking] Anthea Hartley Stanton writes: > On 14 Apr 99, at 18:04, donna simone wrote: > > People who "[trigger phobias" or "[arouse] hatred on the part of > both fellow employees and supervisors/managers" are NECESSARILY > innately high maintenance. Any characteristic or personality trait a > person possesses which increases the amount of unproductive > supervisory time , increases a person's maintenance; . . . > Untrue! They may be perceived as "different" in a negative way, even > prejudiced way, but maintenance is very different because it is neutral - it > simply means that an employee requires more unproductive supervisory time. These two statements seems to say that if the problem lies in the phobias of the majority against one employee, *that* employee is high maintenance and should/could be fired. Or am I deliberately misunderstanding you? Would that justify firing a feminist for being high-maintenance, just because her male co-workers think she is a man-hating bitch for claiming equal treatment? I don't think that sounds very neutral. I think is sounds as 'high maintenance employee' is defined as an employee who, regardless how right she is, is different from the majority. [relurking, hopefully having upset nobody] -- Peter Jaric, ERA/T/KA mailto:Peter.Jaric@era-t.ericsson.se Ericsson Radio Systems http://www.csd.uu.se/~parsec/ phoneto:+46(0)84047214 Visit the HemPC page: http://hempc.tsx.org/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 07:19:12 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: How grandmothers created civilization In-Reply-To: <002001be86aa$e3b980a0$f5c9fcd0@default> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Marvelous!!! Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 09:25:17 -0400 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: Sociobiology Again MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > Gould is a populariser - nothing wrong in that. On some subjects, > he's sound; on others which have political connotations (like the > male/female differences etc) he was once considered sound, but with > shifts of the political wind, he's now unsound. What do "shifts in the political wind" have to do with whether someone's science is sound? Regardless of someone's political stance the only way to invalidate their scientific results is through the scientific method itself. Being someone's political opponent may mean that you are more likely to *try* to debunk their work, but you will only be successful if their science was indeed unsound. Of course Gould approaches sociobiology as a debunker, not as an independent researcher -- I certainly don't think of him as an expert on gender research. But his criticisms (aside from his unfortunately frequent ad hominem attacks) of the underlying assumptions of sociobiology and the methods used by its proponents are quite valid and can only be countered by *better science*, not politics. As far as Gould's political views, I believe he views himself as a generic liberal. I have never heard him called a Marxist before and doubt that he could be meaningfully classified as one any more than most liberal Democrats could. -- Janice E. Dawley ............. Burlington, VT http://homepages.together.net/~jdawley/ Listening to: Hooverphonic -- Blue Wonder Power Milk "Reality is nothing but a collective hunch." - Lily Tomlin ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 09:58:10 -0400 Reply-To: asaro@sff.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Catherine Asaro Subject: Romance blended with hard SF MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Danhy write: > I also had this thought about male vs. female responses to fiction: > I think a lot of women like to escape from their own lives for a > little while by being drawn in to the well-written personal life of > someone else, such as Ekaterin or Miles; I think a lot of > men would prefer to escape the realm of the personal and domestic > almost entirely -- hence the cartoonish nature of a lot of hard > sf characters. Danny, I actually haven't found this to be true. My fanmail breaks down about half from women and half from men. Also, about half comes from fans of hard SF and half from fans of the softer, more romantic style. However, there is almost no correlation between the first and second group. Many hard SF fans write to me about how much they enjoy the characters and relationships, whereas many romance fans write about how much they enjoy the science, tech, and world building. Similarly, the "less science/tech, please" comments come as often from men as from women. I've had reviews in romance publications that praised the hard SF in my books and reviews in science fiction publications suggesting that I could have done with less of the science exposition. Ultimately, though, most readers say it is the characters that keep them reading the books. Although I may get a lot of praise for the science/tech, in general that isn't what keeps people coming back. -- Best regards Catherine Asaro http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 10:15:15 -0400 Reply-To: asaro@sff.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Catherine Asaro Subject: Re: Ronance blended with hard SF MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Danny wrote: > Hi, I just happened to be reading Bujold's latest Miles Vorkosigan > book, _Komarr_ and I thought it fit really well into our recent > discussion of romantic sf vs hard sf. ... > > Bujold does a great job of balancing the two elements to create > a well-rounded book that I think has appeal for both types > of readers. I agree. I particularly liked Shards of Honor. But I wouldn't describe it as hard SF vs romance! That suggests an either/or dichotomy. I would call it hard SF blended well with romance. :-) -- Best regards Catherine Asaro http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 10:27:36 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: gingembre Subject: Re: The Bem File (Re: Raising androgynous children.) In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Thomas Gramstad wrote: > That's what the term meant when it was invented, a long time ago. > The last 30 years or so, at least since the publication of Carolyn > Heilbrun's famous defense of psychological androgyny, it has meant > something else. Since psychologist Sandra Bem's research from the > 70s, the (human, psychological) meaning of androgyny has become > quite clear. So here is "The Bem File", a compilation and overview > of her work. There is also a very funny story about child raising, > so don't miss it... Thank you, Thomas! I studied psychology as an undergrad, so I've encountered the Bem stuff before, but this was a good collection of information. For anyone who didn't manage to read the whole thing, though , the quick summary of Sandy Bem's work with sex roles in psychology is that she pretty much redefined the way social psychology approached gender identity. From what I remember, the most important thing about the Bem Sex Role Inventory is that it didn't see masculine and feminine traits as being mutually exclusive--there was a masculine-trait index, and a feminine-trait index, and a "healthy" gender identity was one that was well-balanced, not one that was well-matched to physical sex. -- Susan susan@apocalypse.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining." -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 07:45:52 PDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Daniel Krashin Subject: Re: Sociobiology again (Was Androgynous Children) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain >From: Anthea Hartley Stanton [snip] >"Socialization" is also a "window of opportunity ability". This has >led Hart (in _Alienated youth_) to the controversial suggestion that >"missed window" is an explanation for behavioural disturbances in >German youth (and, by extension, in the troubled inner cities of >Europe and the Americas). If you phrase this differently -- that neglect during the crucial period of early life predisposes young people to behavior disturbances in later life -- it isn't controversial at all. The "windows" for behavioral development seem a good deal more flexible than the "windows" for the vision system. This is where the science gets politicized -- is a neurological deficit a reason to "give up" on a neglected child, or an indication for massive state-supported intervention to make the problem good? [snip] >The development of a social context in which food becomes important >in negotiating social relationships *between the sexes* was in fact >the start of human culture. Indeed Mithen indicates that "females in >particular needed to exploit this...in developing their relationships >with males". Going on to the development of cultural "sex >differentiation", Chris Knight etc (in _Blood relations: menstruation >and the origins of culture_) showed that *women* "negotiat[ed] the >supply of high quality food" from males by using sexual differences >(and the first sexual strikes ;-) ). Let's spell this out: human >culture started because *women* emphasised the physiological >functions which differentiated them from men. I think it's important to understand that *all* of this stuff about how human culture started is nearly pure speculation. Nobody knows how human culture started (in fact, it almost certainly predates humanity as some of the later protohumans have left fossils suggestive of "culture"). For that matter, most of our primate cousins have fairly intricate cultures with lots of details about sex roles, food-sharing, etc. etc. You can argue all kinds of things from the fossil record and from human biology and from analogies with other primates, but one thing you *cannot* do is say, "This is how human culture started, this is how sex roles got started, women did this and men did that." Sexual strategies don't leave fossils. I have shared my enthusiasm for evolutionary psychology with the list before (to a resounding lack of response). I think any intellectually honest ev-psych theorist has to acknowledge the limits of the theory. Otherwise, the critics of ev-psych are right, and we really are just making up "Just So Stories" about human evolution to suit our preconceptions. [snip] >But of course there's a caveat. Not every woman wishes to become a >mother. >Indeed Simone Wynn (_The mother in early human cultures_), based on >research amongst African mothers in war-torn countries, suggests that >effective (including non-abusive) motherhood is a "window of >opportunity ability". She also suggests (on rather flimsy grounds) >that in all societies, a fairly constant 10-12% of women have, for >one reason or another, no desire to become mothers and that this is >tied to a diminished innate "ability". Does she explain how this anti-reproductive behavior could have been selected for? This reeks of group selectionism. I also note that, at least in Western society, there seems to be no shortage of women who lack any ability or inclination to mother but have babies all the same. Anyway, just to address the scientific credentials of Steven Jay Gould, my impression from reading him and reading reviews of his work in scientific publications is that he is: 1) a great writer 2)a not-so-hotso evolutionary biologist. The intermittent sniping between Gould et al, and Richard Dawkins et al has provided me with a great deal of intellectual amusement over the last few years. Danny P.S. I apologize for posting twice yesterday to the list. HOTMAIL has s/c/r/e/w/e/d/ upgraded recently and I'm still learning the new interface. _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 22:16:35 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: editing editions (was BEAUTY) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear johanna and all: Changes in editions come when an author's editors at her different publishing houses (in this case US and UK) hold strongly different views. I can't cite how often this occurs, but it's not that often, as far as I can tell. Pax, Maryelizabeth -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 619.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 619.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 09:32:52 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: Raising androgynous children Comments: To: Phoebe Wray In-Reply-To: <32582b57.2446753b@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 14 Apr 1999, Phoebe Wray wrote: > because it struck me as a valid question: what DO our heroines DO? > (Snip) > How important is work in sff? It seems to be slightly different from what we > know. Slightly? Maybe a lot different. We have the honorable Honor > Harrington in charge of her various ships and then as an administrator on > Grayson. In Tepper's The family Tree, our heroine is a cop but we don't see > her doing much by the way of cop-work. Don't think Ti-Jeanne had a job in > Brown Girl. > There's where a lot of fantasy falls down - nobody's quite sure *where* the characters' living comes from. SF is a lot better at that. Ti-Jeanne lived in an abandoned area where people didn't have jobs per se - she was apprentice/assistant to her grandmother, who was the local witch woman/healer/curandera.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 22:29:35 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: women's jobs in SF MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Phoebe: Hmmmm. Now you've got me thinking. All of Cherryh's women I can think of off the top of my head have jobs. In FAMILY TREE I thought Tepper was downplaying the cop stuff because she's said she has been unsuccessful in writing SF mysteries, and she was trying to keep her genres separate, but that could just be me. Must mull and return for more comments. Looking forward to more on this thread. Maryelizabeth -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 619.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 619.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 22:33:41 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: "Time" cover photo 4/12 issue MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit show of hands: anyone else immediately think of FEM-SF when they saw the breastfeeding Albanian mom on the cover? Maryelizabeth -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 619.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 619.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 22:38:52 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: Octavia Butler and Karen Joy Fowler MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Don't recall if this has already been mentioned, but they are among the authors slated to appear at next week's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. http://www.latimes.com/festival We will be there in booths #131 and #132 if any of y'all are going to be strolling the grounds with the other 100,000 book lovers. Pax, Maryelizabeth whose supply of signed PARABLE OF THE TALENTS is dwindling... -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 619.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 619.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 12:43:22 -0500 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: Re Raising androgynous children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 15 Apr 99, at 8:53, Peter Jaric wrote: > These two statements seems to say that if the problem lies in the > phobias of the majority against one employee, *that* employee is high > maintenance and should/could be fired. Or am I deliberately > misunderstanding you? No it doesn't and yes you are. "Maintenance" as I've said is neutral. The *reason* why the employee is "high maintenance" is the reason why she should or should not be fired; the validity of such reasons as cause for dismissal must be determined from business practice, common law and the relevant statutes. If the employee is of such "high maintenance" that the business is adversely affected that may, in itself in Europe, constitute grounds for dismissal (without or without additional compensation) on the "greatest good" argument. One man, who was the only smoker in a firm of brokers, was dismissed for repeatedly smoking outside the only designated smoking zone in the building. An employee with another company was dismissed for persistently releasing loud, evil-smelling farts in a small open plan office. Both employees were hated by co-workers; both were let go after other employees threatened to resign. Labour tribunals upheld both dismissals. The case of the canned abortion supporter is another in point. No one objected to her views (in Europe the right to abortion is absolute and a non-issue in most places). What women objected to was her deliberate offensiveness, designed to strike mothers in a highly sensitive place. Sometimes she'd even go one better and vary things by saying "I wonder why you kept the afterbirth instead of the baby?" A labour tribunal found she had been fairly dismissed. > Would that justify firing a feminist for being high-maintenance, > just because her male co-workers think she is a man-hating bitch > for claiming equal treatment? No, unless her way of demanding it in some way impacted on the workplace. Three feminists were fired from a Paris factory in 1996 for backing up their perfectly justifiable protests against discrimination by acts of sabotage including one which left a male worker blind after he had had sulphuric acid deliberately thrown in his eyes. Possibly you would support the feminists' action and deplore the sentence of 2 years that the acid thrower got. > I don't think that sounds very neutral. I think is sounds as 'high > maintenance employee' is defined as an employee who, regardless how > right she is, is different from the majority. Clearly that's true. If more than a very small propotion of a business' employees are "high maintenance", the business would go bankrupt, so - by definition - a "high maintenance" employee must be different from the majority. It's the "regardless of how right she is" that makes your comment so silly. The tallest and shortest, and oldest and youngest employees in a company are "different" not only "from the majority" but from everybody else but that says nothing about whether they are low or high maintenance. An employee is "high temperature" if her core body temperature exceeds 100 degrees Fahrenheit. An employee is "high maintenance" if her presence causes more than 4 hours per week of unproductive supervisory work for her supervisor (this is the usual top level for supervisors with a span of control of 5). Why should the first statement be neutral and the second not? To rub it in let's put in an offensively non-neutral statement - "an employee is 'high maintenance' (because) she's so ugly that she's the best argument for abortion that one can imagine". The main part of the sentence is neutral (it can be measured objectively); the second is gross prejudice, expressed in the most grossly offensive way I can imagine off-hand. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 12:47:04 -0500 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: Sociobiology Again Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 15 Apr 99, at 9:25, Janice E. Dawley wrote: > What do "shifts in the political wind" have to do > with whether someone's science is sound? Regardless > of someone's political stance the only way to > invalidate their scientific results is through > the scientific method itself. Being someone's > political opponent may mean that you are more > likely to *try* to debunk their work, but you > will only be successful if their science was > indeed unsound. Soundness or unsoundness in science is a matter of establishment opinion until, say, a theory is proved beyond doubt and becomes a law. Science has its fads as do all other disciplines, fads which are often based on shifts in the political winds (the AIDS controversy is the ideal, tragic example). Someone who agrees with the current establishment fad is regarded as "sound"; when fashions change and he changes with them, he remains "sound"; if he doesn't he becomes "unsound". It's almost never possible to *prove* objectively the soundness or unsoundness of anything but the wildest hooey. Who would be the judges? And then "sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Unfortunate, although some subjects lend themselves to measurements which prove something, there are many - particularly those on the overlap between science and society - which do not. > Of course Gould approaches sociobiology as a > debunker, not as an independent researcher > -- I certainly don't think of him as an expert on > gender research. But his criticisms (aside from > his unfortunately frequent ad hominem attacks) of > the underlying assumptions of sociobiology and the > methods used by its proponents are quite valid and > can only be countered by *better science*, not politics. I'm not suggesting that "sociobiology" has any roots in reality although some of the newer work in "evolutionary psychology" strikes me as getting away from the unfortunate legacy of the egregious E O Wilson. Nor did I ever suggest that Gould is a fool or a knave. His criticisms are perfectly valid. But think a little deeper on this: you yourself indicate that Gould approaches "sociobiology" as a "debunker, not as an independent researcher". If he is motivated by less than pure motives in this one instance, why do you automatically assume that he's perfectly objective in others? How do you know on which other subjects (those outside your own knowledge) he's also biased or unsound? The problem is that it is on subjects outside the bounds of his field - especially those where science overlaps with society - that he's unsound, largely, as you imply, because of his propensity to substitute ad hominem attacks for good science. So one has to pick out what was sound (ie based on good science) and what was unsound (ie based on ad hominem criticism). Unfortunately there's a big grey area in the middle where it's impossible to be sure! AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 12:49:42 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Political and economic systems in sf Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 15 Apr 99, at 2:12, Laurel A. Lamme wrote: > One series that springs to mind is _Psion_, >_Catspaw_, and _Dreamfall_, by Joan D. Vinge, > which would probably fit into your 'corporate city' > category. The megacorporations are portrayed so > negatively that it surprised me, even though I > hold some of the same opinions about many of > our current powerful corporations. _The space merchants_ by Frederick Pohl, some of Jon Williams' (especially _Hardwired_), Harrison's _Soylent Green_ and lots of others especially those written between 1958 and 1980 portrayed worlds of corporate states, most of which were highly oppressive of anyone not in the ruling class. I'd go so far as to say that until the last 15 years, the overwhelming majority of works portraying "corporate worlds" saw them as grossly, often inhumanly oppressive. I'm probably exaggerating (if so Mike Levy will hopefully correct me) but I get the feeling that sf had sort of "political trends" in the way it portrayed ruling systems. The early work (like Asimov's _Foundation_ series etc) portrayed empires or kingdoms, later works corporate states and today's works are possibly more "individualistic" in that all-powerful, monolithic systems have gone in favour of smaller corporations/states with conflict between individual companies/economic units (Cherryh's _Cyteen_ etc), Families (McCaffrey's _body-in-a-bottle series) or smaller states (Cherryh's Chanur series). Some authors saw a natural transition between a vibrant capitalist state which decayed into a corrupt oligarchy, was replaced by a virile Empire which later turned rotten and decayed into... Poul Anderson's work (Van Rhyn's League grading Flandry's Empire decaying into the Long Night) is the outstanding example. The _Star Wars_ series is clearly another. The general sweep of Asimov's work moves in the same direction from the democracy of _The Caves of Steel_, through the beginning of the hereditary system in _The stars like dust_ and the expanding empire in _Pebble in the sky_ and _Currents of space_ to the decline and fall of the _Foundation_ empire as the Long Night approaches. Spengler's pessimistic cyclic theory of history, as I've said before, has had and continues to have a profound impact on sf. A "straw poll" (ie a quick glance through my own book case) indicates that the most popular books in today's sf/f fiction written by women generally have an Imperial or Mercantile political system in which political power is very largely or wholly hereditary (Lois McMaster Bujold's _Miles..._ series, McCaffrey, Fancher, MZB etc, etc). AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 18:28:38 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Mike Stanton Subject: OT US university course structures Comments: cc: ajhs@usa.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I'd like to thank Dave and Sheryl for their very clear accounts of how US courses are structured. I only wish that we had this discussion earlier in the year, before we held our recruitment interviews on the US West and East coasts. Your comments answered a number of niggling questions about candidates' CVs that have been bothering the interviewing panels for weeks. Course structures are far more complex and much more flexible than we had considered, so some of the questions our panels (to whom I've sent copies of your notes) asked candidates must have seemed quite a bit off beam. Dave's comments about the poor university preparation students receive at school is something that's become true in Britain and is gradually moving to Ireland (where I was at school). I suppose though that you're really forced to send your children to what you call private, and we call public, schools. Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 13:51:15 -0500 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: Raising androgynous children In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 12 Apr 1999, Pat wrote: > On Wed, 14 Apr 1999, Phoebe Wray wrote: > > > because it struck me as a valid question: what DO our heroines DO? > > > (Snip) > > > How important is work in sff? It seems to be slightly different from what we > > know. Slightly? Maybe a lot different. We have the honorable Honor > > Harrington in charge of her various ships and then as an administrator on > > Grayson. In Tepper's The family Tree, our heroine is a cop but we don't see > > her doing much by the way of cop-work. Don't think Ti-Jeanne had a job in > > Brown Girl. One of the things that I really like about Melissa Scott is that all of her characters work real jobs, some of them decidedly blue collar. Bruce Sterling's characters also usually have jobs. This might well be connected to the fact that these two writers are both interested in how societies actually work at the street level. Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 13:54:16 -0500 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: editing editions (was BEAUTY) Comments: To: Maryelizabeth Hart In-Reply-To: <371513C3.69C7@ax.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 14 Apr 1999, Maryelizabeth Hart wrote: > Dear johanna and all: > > Changes in editions come when an author's editors at her different > publishing houses (in this case US and UK) hold strongly different > views. I can't cite how often this occurs, but it's not that often, as > far as I can tell. > > Pax, > > Maryelizabeth > Sometimes they occur through sheer incompetence too. John Barnes has a new collection out that's called Apocalypses and Apostrophes in Great Britain and Apostrophes and Apocalypses in the U.S. (or vice versa, I forget which). He mentions in the latest Locus that this occurred because he couldn't decide which title he preferred and accidentally gave different titles to each editor! Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 14:16:13 -0500 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: Political and economic systems in sf In-Reply-To: <19990415172910.16727.qmail@www02.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 15 Apr 99, at 2:12, Laurel A. Lamme wrote: > > > One series that springs to mind is _Psion_, > >_Catspaw_, and _Dreamfall_, by Joan D. Vinge, > > which would probably fit into your 'corporate city' > > category. The megacorporations are portrayed so > > negatively that it surprised me, even though I > > hold some of the same opinions about many of > > our current powerful corporations. > > _The space merchants_ by Frederick Pohl, some of Jon Williams' (especially > _Hardwired_), Harrison's _Soylent Green_ and lots of others especially those > written between 1958 and 1980 portrayed worlds of corporate states, most of > which were highly oppressive of anyone not in the ruling class. I'd go so far > as to say that until the last 15 years, the overwhelming majority of works > portraying "corporate worlds" saw them as grossly, often inhumanly oppressive. > > I'm probably exaggerating (if so Mike Levy will hopefully correct me) but I > get the feeling that sf had sort of "political trends" in the way it > portrayed ruling systems. Did someone evoke little old me? Actually, eh, hem, (excuse me while I put on my expert's hat), there's always been a pretty clear split between sf writers, generally conservative, more often than not associated with Astounding SF/Analog, who portrayed the corporate world as heroic, and other sf writers, generally liberal, more often than not associated with Galaxy SF in the 50s and 60s and more recently with Asimov's, who portrayed the corporate world as villains. Writers like Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Gordon Dickson, Jerry Pournelle and more recently Charles Sheffield, and Michael Flynn have written dozens of stories and novels about heroic entrepreneurs who find it necessary to save the world from big government and those nasty enviro-liberals. See Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon for an early example, Michael Flynn's Rogue Star for a recent one. Pohl and Kornbluth largely pioneered the anti-big business school of SF at Galaxy (they'd met while working in advertising), along with Fritz Leiber, Robert Scheckley, William Tenn and a few others. The feminist and particularly the eco-feminist SF writers of the late 60s and early 80s, like LeGuin and Russ, also contributed. The most serious anti-corporate movement in SF, however, is the cyberpunk movement of the mid-eighties to early 90s. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan and company. Cherryh, Melissa Scott and Kim Stanley Robinson are also worth a mention here. Mike Levy > > > AJ > Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 16:37:25 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: OT US university course structures MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit It should not have happened and I am glad it did not happen for it is wildly off topic. Nuff said, donna ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 16:41:12 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: Sociobiology Again MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I apologize for fueling any part of this ongoing (also) wildly off topic thread. It has become one of those futile debates/conversations on subjects that have strayed far too wide of our main purpose. I will and I suggest all of us take this off list too. donna the "list cop" - we are self-policing after all. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 13:53:10 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: new list - on topic only Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII okay y'all. we now have a new list, which is ON-TOPIC discussions only. feministsf will remain a mroe diverse discussion list and i will give up my attempts to keep it on topic. if you're interested in subscribing to the other one, here's the information: to unsubscribe to this list send a message to: listserv@uic.edu in the body of the message say: unsubscribe feministsf to subscribe to the new list, send a message to: listserv@uic.edu in the body of the message say: subscribe feministsf-lit Myfirstname Mylastname example: subscribe feministsf-lit Laura Quilter ****** DO NOT SEND ANY OF THESE MESSAGES TO FEMINISTSF@UIC.EDU ****** That is the list address. your postings will go to 300+ other readers, who will all be annoyed at their wasted time. and unfortunately your posting will NOT get your subscribed or unsubscribed to the list. only sending to the list SOFTWARE PROGRAM - listserv@uic.edu - will actually affect your list subscriptions. you're perfectly welcome to subscribe to both listserves. but be sure that you keep chat to feministsf and on-topic ONLY to feministsf-lit. future changes (hopefully NEAR future) will include a feministsf-chat and then THAT will be the chat list, feministsf will be general sf including all media formats, and feministsf-lit will be restricted to PRINT literature only. please bear with me in these times of changes. guidelines for the new list will be posted after we've achieved a critical mass of switchers. but basically this is it for now: feministsf - people who are INTERESTED IN and SUPPORTIVE OF feminism and feminist sf - however that can be construed - are welcome to subscribe and talk about whatever topics are remotely related to feminist science fiction. flame-wars however are not permitted. take 'em off list. i'll occasionally interject stern comments but try to let this list be self-managing. topics could talk about birth control, for instance, or social conditions ... if people want to talk about feminism 101 i'll roll my eyes but go ahead and do it (as long as it's congenial). let me re-emphasize, however, that this is still intended to be a friendly community, and i will not allow flaming, haranguing, or, frankly, people hostile to feminism to badger the list. (again, feminism is defined broadly: it's a big tent and there are many camps ... ) and i expect people to take an active role in their own self- defense and feministsf-lit - people who ONLY want to talk about feminist science fiction - currently in all media - talk on this list. DO NOT post humor pieces. DO NOT post petitions however heart-rending the pleas from women, children, and aliens. DO NOT post virus warnings. DO NOT discuss interesting technologies. you may ONLY discuss science fiction (broadly defined to include fantasy utopian literature magical realism) in various media (print, film, tv, internet, etc.). this could be discussions of authors or specific works or the genre as a whole. this can NOT be what is feminism, feminism 101. if a discussion starts moving that way take it to feministsf or off-list. if you have problems with someone else make a complaint to the list manager (currently me) * i am looking for, say, up to 5 people who want to be voluntary moderators of this list. send me an email and say "moderator" in the subject and let's talk about it. i'll still do the technical work of kicking people on & off & managing the HUNDREDS of error messages a day (yes, i'm serious) but i want someone else to deal with the content ... finally, those of you who expressed interest in doing the further development of this whole little happy family of feminist-sf people / websites & lists, i'll get a move on that as soon as i can (maybe after taxes tonight) ps. i also know that there will be a host of problems doing this whole sub/unsub business. please do NOT send your complaints to the list itself. Laura Quilter / lquilter@igc.apc.org "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution." -- Emma Goldman *** NEW TRIAL FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL *** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 16:06:43 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: Political and economic systems in sf Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit This may sound rather peculiar, but I've never thought of Gibson as anti-corporate. (only read Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning Chrome, Count Zero) Although I like all those books, I really feel like they represent a middle class apolitical radical individualist philosophy--not so much anti-corporate as pro "screw you, I'm going to cheat X so that I can retire/plug myself in permanently /lie on the beach"...rather depressing from a moral standpoint, very modern. >>> Michael Marc Levy 04/15 2:16 PM >>> On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 15 Apr 99, at 2:12, Laurel A. Lamme wrote: > > > One series that springs to mind is _Psion_, > >_Catspaw_, and _Dreamfall_, by Joan D. Vinge, > > which would probably fit into your 'corporate city' > > category. The megacorporations are portrayed so > > negatively that it surprised me, even though I > > hold some of the same opinions about many of > > our current powerful corporations. > > _The space merchants_ by Frederick Pohl, some of Jon Williams' (especially > _Hardwired_), Harrison's _Soylent Green_ and lots of others especially those > written between 1958 and 1980 portrayed worlds of corporate states, most of > which were highly oppressive of anyone not in the ruling class. I'd go so far > as to say that until the last 15 years, the overwhelming majority of works > portraying "corporate worlds" saw them as grossly, often inhumanly oppressive. > > I'm probably exaggerating (if so Mike Levy will hopefully correct me) but I > get the feeling that sf had sort of "political trends" in the way it > portrayed ruling systems. Did someone evoke little old me? Actually, eh, hem, (excuse me while I put on my expert's hat), there's always been a pretty clear split between sf writers, generally conservative, more often than not associated with Astounding SF/Analog, who portrayed the corporate world as heroic, and other sf writers, generally liberal, more often than not associated with Galaxy SF in the 50s and 60s and more recently with Asimov's, who portrayed the corporate world as villains. Writers like Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Gordon Dickson, Jerry Pournelle and more recently Charles Sheffield, and Michael Flynn have written dozens of stories and novels about heroic entrepreneurs who find it necessary to save the world from big government and those nasty enviro-liberals. See Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon for an early example, Michael Flynn's Rogue Star for a recent one. Pohl and Kornbluth largely pioneered the anti-big business school of SF at Galaxy (they'd met while working in advertising), along with Fritz Leiber, Robert Scheckley, William Tenn and a few others. The feminist and particularly the eco-feminist SF writers of the late 60s and early 80s, like LeGuin and Russ, also contributed. The most serious anti-corporate movement in SF, however, is the cyberpunk movement of the mid-eighties to early 90s. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan and company. Cherryh, Melissa Scott and Kim Stanley Robinson are also worth a mention here. Mike Levy > > > AJ > Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 16:40:06 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: Re: new list - on topic only In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Laura Quilter wrote: > okay y'all. we now have a new list, which is ON-TOPIC discussions only. > feministsf will remain a mroe diverse discussion list and i will give up > my attempts to keep it on topic. (snip) Will the Book Discussion Group be moved over to the new list or stay on this one? Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 15:05:39 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: Fwd: FEMINISTSF-LIT: possible spam from blansett@FIU.EDU Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu, feministsf-lit@uic.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 16:43:35 -0500 >From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8c)" > >Subject: FEMINISTSF-LIT: possible spam from blansett@FIU.EDU >To: lquilter@HOOKED.NET, Laura Quilter , > Christopher Shaffer > >The following message was submitted by blansett@FIU.EDU to the FEMINISTSF-LIT >list at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU. It is being forwarded to you for verification because >the message has been identified as a possible "spam", that is, an advertisement >or other unsolicited material sent to large numbers of mailing lists with no >consideration for whether or not the material is appropriate for the lists it >is being sent to. A single "spam" can result in the delivery of millions of >unwanted e-mail messages worldwide, costing the victims and service providers a >total of several hundred thousand dollars. The cost to the spammer is usually >under five dollars. To be effective, a counter-measure must neutralize the spam >within the first five minutes. Consequently, there is no time for all the >LISTSERV servers to compare notes with each other before acting, and some >legitimate postings may be intercepted erroneously. If this is the case, simply >forward this message back to the list with an explanatory note. > >----------------- Message requiring verification (123 lines) ------------------ >Received: from rottweiler.fiu.edu (rottweiler.fiu.edu [131.94.128.47]) > by piglet.cc.uic.edu (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id QAA47064 > for ; Thu, 15 Apr 1999 16:42:32 -0500 >Received: from solix3-128 (solix.fiu.edu [131.94.64.220]) > by rottweiler.fiu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3/FIU) with SMTP id RAA10972; > Thu, 15 Apr 1999 17:42:17 -0400 (EDT) >Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 17:42:16 -0400 (EDT) >From: Lisa Blansett >X-Sender: blansett@solix3-128 >To: AMLIT-EARLY@LISTSERV.TAMU.EDU, GAYLIT-L@LISTSERV.KENT.EDU, > PHIL-LIT@LISTSERV.TAMU.EDU >cc: FEMINISTSF-LIT@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >Subject: Extension of proposal deadline for Early Modern Culture Conference (Miami; 10/7-10) (fwd) >Message-ID: >MIME-Version: 1.0 >Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > >We will accept panel and paper proposals through 1 May 1999 for the >October 1999 GECMS Conference. Details from original posting follow. > >> >> ************************************************ >> CALL FOR PAPERS >> >> GROUP FOR EARLY MODERN CULTURAL STUDIES >> (GEMCS) >> >> Coral Gables, Florida October 7-10, 1999 >> >> http://www.frontiernet.net/~gemcs >> >> ************************************************ >> >> >> >>The Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies invites submissions for its >>seventh annual conference, to be held in Coral Gables, Florida, October >>7-10. GEMCS provides a forum for innovative and experimental inquiries >>into all aspects of early modern culture and society. The rubric of >>cultural studies enables us to encompass a variety of disciplinary fields >>and theoretical approaches, among them anthropology, art, history, law, >>literature, and music. Approaches include, but are not limited to, >>feminist, materialist, multiculturalist, gay and lesbian, historicist, >>disability-related, psychoanalytic, postcolonial, and ethnological >>analyses of European, American, Native American, African, Near Eastern, >>and Asian cultures. >> >>This year's theme is "Labor and Leisure, 1440 - 1840," and we seek >>proposals dealing with the social, economic, aesthetic, sexual, gendered, >>artistic, political, racial, and philosophic aspects of either or both of >>these spheres. We solicit works that investigate, discuss, challenge, or >>undermine the definitions and cultural manifestations of labor and leisure. >> >>We are particularly interested in proposals that address the following >>topics: >> >>*Working-Class Authorship *Saturnalia >>*Duelling *Hunting >>*Merchant and Industrial *Able-bodied workers/Disabled Non-workers >> Capitalism *Factory Life >>*Freak Shows, Oddities, and Other Forms of Bodily Entertainments >>*Literature and/as Work *Literature and/as Leisure >>*Revisiting Marxist Theories of Labor >>Rethinking Foucauldian Notions of Pleasure >>*Conspicuous Consumption *Crafts and Hobbies >>*Sex Work(ers) *Commerce and Trade >>*Leisure and Landscape *The Art of Leisure >>*The Invention of Leisure/Leisure Activities >>*Pornography and the Family * Games >>*Labor Relations *The Divisions(s) of Labor >>*The Psychology of Leisure *The Ethic of Work >>*Literature and Landscape >> >>In order to allow the greatest possible amount discussion, presentations >>will be limited to ten minutes. GEMCS actively seeks alternative format >>panels -- workshops, large panels, discussion groups, informal >>presentations. Workshops and seminars on innovative pedagogy and >>institutional politics are especially welcome. Once again, the conference >>will feature a series of critical debates on selected topics drawn from >>the conference theme as well as from contemporary academic concerns. Group >>leaders will facilitate discussions on topics to be announced shortly >>before the conference. >> >>One-page abstracts for individual papers must include NAME, AFFILIATION, >>E-MAIL and POSTAL address; proposals for panels must include one-page >>abstracts for each presenter, as well as the names, affiliations, postal >>addresses and e-mail addresses of ALL participants. Panels of 4-6 >>participants will be given preference. Participants will be notified of >>their acceptance to the conference by e-mail. >> >> >>Address all postal submissions by May 1, 1999 to: >> >>Lisa Blansett >>Department of English >>DM 461 A >>Florida International University >>Miami, FL 33199 >> >> >>Send all e-mail submissions by May 1, 1999 to: >> >>Pat Gill -- gill@wmich.edu >> >> >>****** Send only ONE abstract. Submit abstracts and proposals EITHER by >>post OR by e-mail. Do NOT use both means of delivery ****** >> >>Check the GEMCS website for conference info and updates. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 15:08:34 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Candioglos, Sandy" Subject: Re: new list - on topic only MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" I'm getting a message that it's been locked. -Sandy > -----Original Message----- > From: Stacey Holbrook [mailto:ausar@NETDOOR.COM] > Sent: Thursday, April 15, 1999 2:40 PM > To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] new list - on topic only > > > On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Laura Quilter wrote: > > > okay y'all. we now have a new list, which is ON-TOPIC > discussions only. > > feministsf will remain a mroe diverse discussion list and i > will give up > > my attempts to keep it on topic. (snip) > > Will the Book Discussion Group be moved over to the new list > or stay on > this one? > > Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 17:48:14 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jeri Wright Subject: Re: Raising androgynous children MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've been skimming over much of discussion, but I was delighted to see such a well-written discussion of points that I've always felt both obvious and often ignored in such discussions. Differences between individuals are so much greater than differences between groups (based on gender or any other commonly used grouping) that using group "norms" to discuss anything relating to the individual is more than a little ridiculous. Thomas Gramstad wrote: (the snips are only because of length - his post in its entirity was well reasoned and well worth reading) << # 1 The bulk of human "biological individualism" is NOT related to sex. Most biological differences between people are not related to reproduction. # 2 Emphasizing "group differences" (real or imaginary) always imply deemphasizing, reducing, marginalizing and denying individual differences. In other words: when someone is making an argument that biology is important, that it is the most important factor, that environmental influences are small compared to biological factors, etc., they are not making an argument for biological or inherent sex roles. They may believe they are making such an argument, but if so, they are wrong. While sex roles are based on group identity and collectivism, and on a belief that all men are fundamentally the same and all women are fundamentally the same, and the "opposite" of the men. So, neither biology, nor the social sciences and environmentalist theories about humans, support gender collectivist ideas about sex roles. These ideas are ideological, not scientific. The sex role comprachicos don't have a scientific leg to stand on. >> -- Jeri Wright destrier@richmond.infi.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 01:00:21 +0200 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sven Holmström Subject: SV: Re: [*FSFFU*] Re Raising androgynous children MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: [snip] >Clearly that's true. If more than a very small propotion of a business' >employees are "high maintenance", the business would go bankrupt, so - by >definition - a "high maintenance" employee must be different from the >majority. > >It's the "regardless of how right she is" that makes your comment so silly. >The tallest and shortest, and oldest and youngest employees in a company are >"different" not only "from the majority" but from everybody else but that says >nothing about whether they are low or high maintenance. > >An employee is "high temperature" if her core body temperature exceeds 100 >degrees Fahrenheit. An employee is "high maintenance" if her presence causes >more than 4 hours per week of unproductive supervisory work for her supervisor >(this is the usual top level for supervisors with a span of control of 5). Why >should the first statement be neutral and the second not? But what you never answer to is this simple question: Assume someone is 'high maintenance' just because of being openly gay, that sure will scare away som costumers in some branches (maybe all branches). Should that person be fired? Sure it could be good economics, but if you do that all the time you cant change the world, and all that crap. (And another thing, does that umlaut in my name upset anyones system? I have heard it can do so sometimes, outside the safe cradle called Sweden where everyone uses 8-bit systems.:-) Sven ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 17:13:11 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: Political and economic systems in sf: Levy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mike, GALAXY hardly pioneered the "anti-corporate" school of SF, any more than Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth met while working in advertising (to the best of my limited knowledge, Kornbluth never did work in advertising). Pohl, Kornbluth, Donald Wollheim, Isaac Asimov, Judith Merrill and not a few others tended leftward in the sf scene of the 1930s and even earlier, and their leftism was at least as serious as that of their cyberpunk followers. The ones cited above were among the Futurians in the 1930s and early '40s, and other notable members of this NYC-based group of budding pro writers, editors, etc., included Damon Knight, Richard Wilson, R A W Lowndes, John Michel, Virginia Kidd and others who wrote and published, sometimes in ASTOUNDING, sometimes in their own magazines such as SCIENCE FICTION and ASTONISHING, profoundly anticapitalist work. Mack Reynolds, in the '60s and '70s a very prolific contributor to ANALOG and James Baen's IF, was the son of a (US) Socialist Labor Party presidential candidate (Verne Reynolds), and not an infrequent critic of many aspects of our socioeconomic situation. Robert Sheckley, et alles, should also be grouped with Kurt Vonnegut and Harlan Ellison, who have also had a few words to say about what things like neoliberalism do to us all; under H L Gold, most of GALAXY's writers (not just a few others) were likely to take such matters under consideration at least indirectly, which continued under Pohl as editor (as he published Donald Westlake, Reynolds, and many others). A few words about Herbie Wells and Aldy Huxley may not be out of place, either. Nor would a mention of Kate Wilhelm. There's never been a lack of left voices in SF. --- Michael Marc Levy wrote: > Did someone evoke little old me? Actually, eh, hem, > (excuse me while I > put on my expert's hat), there's always been a > pretty clear split between > sf writers, generally conservative, more often than > not associated with > Astounding SF/Analog, who portrayed the corporate > world as heroic, and > other sf writers, generally liberal, more often than > not associated with > Galaxy SF in the 50s and 60s and more recently with > Asimov's, who > portrayed the corporate world as villains. > > Writers like Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, > Gordon Dickson, Jerry > Pournelle and more recently Charles Sheffield, and > Michael Flynn have written > dozens of stories and novels about heroic > entrepreneurs who find it necessary > to save the world from big government and those > nasty enviro-liberals. > See Heinlein's The Man Who Sold the Moon for an > early example, Michael > Flynn's Rogue Star for a recent one. > > Pohl and Kornbluth largely pioneered the anti-big > business school of SF > at Galaxy (they'd met while working in advertising), > along with Fritz > Leiber, Robert Scheckley, William Tenn and a few > others. The feminist and > particularly the eco-feminist SF writers of the late > 60s and early 80s, like > LeGuin and Russ, also contributed. The most serious > anti-corporate movement > in SF, however, is the cyberpunk movement of the > mid-eighties to early 90s. > William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan and > company. Cherryh, Melissa > Scott and Kim Stanley Robinson are also worth a > mention here. > > Mike Levy _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 17:21:02 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: Political and economic systems in sf: Stanton MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Harry Harrison (another good example, indeed)wrote the story, then novel MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM--the bastardized film was SOYLENT GREEN. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 00:16:54 -0500 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: Political and economic systems in sf In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Jane Franklin wrote: > This may sound rather peculiar, but I've never thought of Gibson as >anti-corporate. (only read Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Burning >Chrome, Count Zero) Although I like all those books, I really feel like >they represent a middle class apolitical radical individualist philosophy >--not so much anti-corporate as pro "screw you, I'm going to cheat X so >that I can retire/plug myself in permanently /lie on the beach"...rather >depressing from a moral standpoint, very modern. Gibson isn't as politically sophisticated as say Sterling or Scott, it's true. His villains are often individual wicked people like the Tessier- Ashpools in Neuromancer. In this sense he's actually rather old fashioned, kind of a reverse Heinlein. Heinlein's heroes were often captains of industry with vision, Lee Iacocca types, whereas Gibson's villains are often decadent captains of industry out to control everything, ie. the Tessier-Ashpools again. Still the villains in Gibson are almost invariable corporate--see Idoru as well as the Neuromancer trilogy and many of the short stories. Frequently they're Japanese corporate. The heroes may not be out for anyone but themselves, and they may be only nominally better than the corporate types they're trying to burn, but they're definitely fighting big business. That's what all those exciting raids through cyberspace are about. The cowboys are always trying to pull off a heist against some major corporation. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 01:17:09 -0500 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: Political and economic systems in sf: Levy In-Reply-To: <19990416001311.2419.rocketmail@web104.yahoomail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Todd Mason wrote: > Mike, GALAXY hardly pioneered the "anti-corporate" school of SF, any > more than Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth met while working in > advertising (to the best of my limited knowledge, Kornbluth never did > work in advertising). If you look back at the post I was responding to, I wasn't claiming (or didn't intend to appear to be claiming in any case) that leftist or anti-corporate sf began with Galaxy. I was merely trying to establish that both anti and pro-capitalist sf did indeed exist prior to the current era. The question that was brought up concerned whether or not the amount of capitalism bashing in SF had changed in recent years. I double checked and I was wrong about Kornbluth working in advertising. He and Pohl were already friends before WWII, but Pohl's first job after the war was as a copywriter. When he and Kornbluth teamed up after the war that experience was obivously fresh in Pohl's mind. Thus anti- advertising, anti-corporate fiction became a mainstay of their published work. Pohl, Kornbluth, Donald Wollheim, Isaac Asimov, > Judith Merrill and not a few others tended leftward in the sf scene of > the 1930s and even earlier, and their leftism was at least as serious > as that of their cyberpunk followers. The ones cited above were among > the Futurians in the 1930s and early '40s, and other notable members of > this NYC-based group of budding pro writers, editors, etc., included > Damon Knight, Richard Wilson, R A W Lowndes, John Michel, Virginia Kidd > and others who wrote and published, sometimes in ASTOUNDING, sometimes > in their own magazines such as SCIENCE FICTION and ASTONISHING, > profoundly anticapitalist work. In terms of actual political interest, the Futurians were probably far more profoundly political than the cyberpunks ever were, it's true; they were caught up in that great wave of leftist sentiment that took over so many young intellectuals throughout that period. And yes the Futurians do predate Galaxy, but relatively little of the work that they published was explicitly leftist prior to Galaxy (although I'm sure we could both come up with some exceptions). My list of Galaxy writers (Pohl, Kornbluth, Leiber, Sheckley) should have included Knight. And I might have mentioned Gunner Cade, the Merril/Kornbluth collaboration as Cyril Judd; don't know where that saw publication first. As for the other writers, Asimov was always liberal in his own politics and the robot stories are clearly leftist (anti-racist, pro-worker) but very little of his politics can be seen as actively anti-capitalist. Wilson and Kidd were talented writers of a limited quantity of fiction and are almost forgotten today. They had little impact on the history of SF, although I believe that Wilson did win a Hugo. Kidd's biggest impact may have been as an agent. Wollheim, although a fairly important editor, was a writer of little if any importance and much the same is true of Lowndes. Michel was one of the group, but his impact on the genre was minimal. In summary, although all of these writers started publishing before Galaxy came on the scene and may have published a few politically relevant stories in other magazines, even Astounding, the first major sf magazine that can actually be seen as a center for leftist and anti-capitalist sf was Galaxy under H.L. Gold. >Mack Reynolds, in the '60s and '70s a > very prolific contributor to ANALOG and James Baen's IF, was the son of > a (US) Socialist Labor Party presidential candidate (Verne Reynolds), > and not an infrequent critic of many aspects of our socioeconomic > situation. Yes, Mack Reynolds was someone I definitely should have mentioned. How he ever came to be a regular contributor to Analog, I'll never know, but Campbell, despite his generally pro-capitalist stance, loved Reynolds' work and published him regularly. I consumed all of Reynolds' work that appeared from Ace in the 60s and he's on my short list of writers I'd really like to see put back in print. I'd forgotten that Baen, far and away the most conservative editor in SF today, published Reynolds in If. It's a strange world. >Robert Sheckley, et alles, should also be grouped with Kurt > Vonnegut and Harlan Ellison, who have also had a few words to say about > what things like neoliberalism do to us all; under H L Gold, most of > GALAXY's writers (not just a few others) were likely to take such > matters under consideration at least indirectly, which continued under > Pohl as editor (as he published Donald Westlake, Reynolds, and many > others). A few words about Herbie Wells and Aldy Huxley may not be out > of place, either. Nor would a mention of Kate Wilhelm. There's never > been a lack of left voices in SF. Of course everything in this paragraph is true, but none of it particularly contradicts what I wrote in my earlier post. I didn't mention Wells, Huxley or the long line of British and American Utopian writers of the late 19th and early 20th century because I was thinking in terms of genre sf. While I'll admit that I didn't mention Reynolds because he simply slipped my mind, I have to say that I didn't mention the others because I was being concise. Give me a half hour with Anatomy of Wonder and Clute/Nichols and who was it? Pohl?'s book on the Futurians (it's around here somewhere) and I could come up with twenty more names, as could you. So, Todd, thanks for correcting my mistake about Kornbluth and advertising and for mentioning both the Futurians and Mack Reynolds. I'll stick with my insistence that Galaxy was the first real focus for anti-corporate sf, although I'll agree that it hardly originated the idea (never meant to imply that--sorry if I appeared to be). Unless we want to argue about Galaxy some more, which would probably bore everyone, I don't see where we're really in any disagreement. :) Mike, the long winded ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 01:55:33 -0500 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: Political and economic systems in sf Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 15 Apr 99, at 14:16, Michael Marc Levy wrote: > Did someone evoke little old me? Actually, eh, hem, (excuse me while I put > on my expert's hat), there's always been a pretty clear split between sf > writers, generally conservative, more often than not associated with > Astounding SF/Analog, who portrayed the corporate world as heroic, and > other sf writers, generally liberal, more often than not associated with > Galaxy SF in the 50s and 60s and more recently with Asimov's, who > portrayed the corporate world as villains. I knew you'd come through. Seriously - I'd be grateful if you could also make a quick survey of the current situation vis-a-vis feministsf in magazines. I'm afraid that my own reading (perhaps like most of us on the list) is too narrowly focused to get the sort of overall view that you've got of the feminist sf world. I'm going to ask Todd Mason to do the same for the left-right split. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 01:57:16 -0500 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: Political and economic systems in sf Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 15 Apr 99, at 17:21, Todd Mason wrote: > Harry Harrison (another good example, indeed)wrote the story, then > novel MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM--the bastardized film was SOYLENT GREEN. Doesn't do to make a foulup on this list! It's the second time I've done this - and the second time (I think) that you've picked it up, Todd. Thanks also for the "leftist political directory" in your other posting; I'm surprised (except for the obvious names) how LITTLE we agree on the left-right split in authors. Perhaps you could also bring us up to date with a quick rundown on today's feminist sf writers. I must be honest here and admit that I'm pretty unsighted on this (except, again, for the obvious names). AJ Anthea Hertley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 01:59:09 -0500 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: Re Raising androgynous children Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 16 Apr 99, at 1:00, Sven Holmström wrote: > But what you never answer to is this simple question: > Assume someone is 'high maintenance' just because of being openly gay, > that sure will scare away som costumers in some branches (maybe all > branches). Should that person be fired? Sure it could be good economics, > but if you do that all the time you cant change the world, and all that > crap. That's like saying someone is "high temperature" just because they're wearing red. No one is "high maintenance" because just of being openly gay. What I think you mean is: if someone has mannerisms ( or dress etc) that offend some customers, should that person be fired? The "gay" part is simply a red herring. Let me answer that straight out (as I have previously): if any employee offends current or potential customers and is not willing or is unable to take corrective measures, then - provided that this can be done within the law (and the law tends to favour the employer in this case) - steps have to be taken to get that person into a position where she can no longer do this, if necessary by firing her. Small companies will generally have no choice but firing. European labour tribunals have accepted the principle that employees have a duty to behave (including dressing) in a way that contributes positively their employer or its interests (it's the implied contract that all employees make). And the depth of that duty varies according to the contact that an employee has with customers. A receptionist has a much stronger duty than a backroom person who never meets the public. Receptionists, for example, have been lawfully dismissed for smoking, eating food, and dressing inappropriately on duty among other things. Clearly repeated offences are necessary; a *single* instance is rarely enough unless the behaviour is extreme. The employer will naturally weigh up the situation carefully. It might be that an employee will repel one type of customer but bring in another type. But in the end, no employer can be forced to hire or retain someone who harms her business. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 02:01:08 -0500 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: Sociobiology again Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 15 Apr 99, at 7:45, Daniel Krashin wrote: > If you phrase this differently -- that neglect during the crucial > period of early life predisposes young people to behavior > disturbances in later life -- it isn't controversial at all. Of course you're right and there is the corollary that "neglect" may involve the failure to reinforce "positive" behavioural traits and discourage "negative" ones. > I think it's important to understand that *all* of this stuff > about how human culture started is nearly pure speculation. A salutary, necessary reminder. > Nobody knows how human culture started (in fact, it almost > certainly predates humanity as some of the later protohumans > have left fossils suggestive of "culture"). For that matter, > most of our primate cousins have fairly intricate cultures > with lots of details about sex roles, food-sharing, etc. etc. Here we part company because I'm at one with those that believe the culture can never have preceded language. I think the fossil record and what we know of "speech organs" of the Neanderthal man shows that he couldn't speak well (although I confess that Lieberman's claim is somewhat controversial). It's interesting at this point to note that I also think that *true* civilisation starts when a dead man can speak directly to a living one - that is when writing is invented. >...one thing you *cannot* do is say, "This is how human culture > started, this is how sex roles got started, women did this and > men did that." Sexual strategies don't leave fossils. Of course. I'm sure that this is just one of the many questions which the "veil of time" has ensured that we will never be able to answer. > Does she explain how this anti-reproductive behavior could have been > selected for? This reeks of group selectionism. Here you show your Darwinian prejudice. "Selection" - what's that? Have you no faith in the new world of mathematical models which show that the need for selection is reduced almost to nothing? (Christopher Wills' _The runaway brain_) But see later... Seriously though, Wynn suggests that it may, paradoxically, be a survival mechanism. You'll recall John B Calhoun's experiments on the effects of gross overcrowding of mice colonies; females failed to complete nests and ate their young, homosexual behaviour occurred, there was excessive fighting often to the death etc. Calhoun concluded that these behaviours were species survival mechanisms intended to reduce the population to a sustainable level. Wynn suggests that most mammalian species, including us, have this behavior "stored away" for use in times of great species stress and that the ability to adopt this behaviour in such times is shown by the existence within the species of members who do not breed (clearly an anti-survival trait). In small, growing populations the proportion of such members is small. Her argument (following the suggestions of Tolman, and Krech and Rosenzweig) is that as a population increases, crowding and the more stimulating environment that this provide stimulates the brain and in some ways was responsible for the development of bigger brains. However, as the population reaches a critical level, the number of non-breeding members increases sharply until as a survival measure, the population reduction strategies are initiated. The argument hinges, I think, on the validity of the suggestion that some genes can be switched on and off under varying conditions so, for example, a trait lost in one generation can re-appear in a later one without any "evolution" being involved (I've GROSSLY oversimplified this). > The intermittent sniping between Gould et al, and Richard > Dawkins et al has provided me with a great deal of > intellectual amusement over the last few years. My little joke about "selection" was, as you've guessed, based on Gould and Lewontin's potshots and, of course, the off-hand dismissal of "selection" by the Grand Man of (expletive deleted), Noam Chomsky. Dawkins' _The blind watchmaker_, in spite of its somewhat sensationalist approach, was perhaps the clearest explanation I've ever read of the central problem of evolutionary biology - how to explain complexity. His demolition of "argument from design" was masterly. Mike [Stanton] and I spent many happy hours as teenagers trying - from the depths of a monstrous ignorance - to argue around William Paley's "watch" analogy of his "argument from design" (in the 1802 _Natural theology, or evidences of the existence and attributes of the Deity_). Mike's uncle - then a young priest but now a monsignor - gave us the book in the hope of squashing what he saw as a most undesirable tendency to atheism. No prizes for guessing whether he succeeded! AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 02:02:54 -0500 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: Jobs in feministsf Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 14 Apr 99, at 18:48, Phoebe Wray wrote: > This discussion has been most interesting and > just catapulted me into, ahem, sff. Women in > sff -- drones? managers? own own "businesses." Do > they work at all? Hmmm... I need to think about > this, but I throw it out to the list because it > struck me as a valid question: what DO our heroines DO? Your question's been niggling me since I read it. Most of us perforce have lives that revolve around our jobs because we've got little flexibility in that line. It's the same in "realistic" fiction such as thrillers or mystery to a major extent. But how many sf heroines are tied to their jobs? How many femsf works revolve around the protagonists' jobs? I'm specifically excluding fantasy and "weird" jobs like spellsingers, crystal diggers (a la McCaffrey) and so on, and restricting it to reasonable extrapolations of jobs existing or conceivable today. McCaffrey's heroines are always well supplied with jobs. The 'body-in-a-bottle' series from _The ship who sang_ onwards always has the heroines running ships etc to make money to pay off the massive debt they owe for the privilege of being put in a can to run ships so that they can pay off the massive debt for the work that put them there ... But when you analyse what they actually do, it's difficult to work out why someone would pay them to do it. Cherryh - the supply-sider supreme - almost always gives her characters a job and motivation (ie the need to eat) to work at it. Often her characters (for example Marie in _Tripoint_) suffer restrictions analogous to those we all suffer from. But again, if one examines the situation closely, what they do is almost make-work. Her Merchanters move through space transporting goods between one space station/planet and the next, spending a few days or weeks in port and then moving on, just like the big oiltankers do today - except that starship crews do this all their lives (which can be very long with rejuv) without hope of reprieve and with advancement restricted to filling deadmen's shoes. They seem to have no desire for change, no ambition to make a better life for themselves and their families. Which is why I sometimes find it difficult to take them seriously. Are there no feminist sf books with real labour problems, extrapolated of course into the future? Surely some one must have written, for example, about how labour relations will change in the future, whether there'll be strikes or lockouts (or extrapolated equivalents) and so on. Or books on the equivalent, say, of the Industrial Revolution or the revolution in our work today where the once high-paying jobs in heavy industry have given way to a mixture of high-paying, high tech jobs and low-paying McJobs in the service industries? Or books that deal with innovative work practices, like extrapolations of telecommuting? AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 11:06:52 -0400 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: Re: Jobs in feministsf In-Reply-To: <19990416065429.22925.qmail@nw128.netaddress.usa.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT How about _Slow River_? I realize we're getting to it in BDG this round, but the ain character's life is shaped by her family's business, and her life during the course of the book is shaped and moulded and restricted by two different jobs; her identity is very very caught up in both of them.... Rudy Leon PhD Student Department of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu (315) 425-8171 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:20:58 -0300 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Patricia Monk Subject: Re: Political and economic systems in sf In-Reply-To: <19990416065627.26831.qmail@nw176.netaddress.usa.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII What is "right" and what is "left" is usully determined by where you think the "middle" is. Presumably, science fiction being speculative and provocative requires a shifting middle. ************************************************************** Dr Patricia Monk patmonk@is.dal.ca Department of English Dalhousie University HALIFAX Nova Scotia B3H 2S3 ignorance is curable * stupidity is forever ************************************************************** On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 15 Apr 99, at 17:21, Todd Mason wrote: > > > Harry Harrison (another good example, indeed)wrote the story, then > > novel MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM--the bastardized film was SOYLENT GREEN. > > Doesn't do to make a foulup on this list! It's the second time I've done this > - and the second time (I think) that you've picked it up, Todd. > > Thanks also for the "leftist political directory" in your other posting; I'm > surprised (except for the obvious names) how LITTLE we agree on the left-right > split in authors. > > Perhaps you could also bring us up to date with a quick rundown on today's > feminist sf writers. I must be honest here and admit that I'm pretty unsighted > on this (except, again, for the obvious names). > > > AJ > Anthea Hertley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 07:24:18 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: Jobs in feministsf In-Reply-To: <19990416065429.22925.qmail@nw128.netaddress.usa.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > Are there no feminist sf books with real labour problems, extrapolated of > course into the future? Surely some one must have written, for example, about > how labour relations will change in the future, whether there'll be strikes or > lockouts (or extrapolated equivalents) and so on. Or books on the equivalent, > say, of the Industrial Revolution or the revolution in our work today where > the once high-paying jobs in heavy industry have given way to a mixture of > high-paying, high tech jobs and low-paying McJobs in the service industries? > Or books that deal with innovative work practices, like extrapolations of > telecommuting? > Nicola Griffith's SLOW RIVER. Her heroine works in a wastewater plant and takes it very seriously - the life & health of the city she lives in depends on the plant functioning smoothly.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:57:53 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: teragram Subject: Re: 'High maintenance' employees (was 'raising androgynous children') In-Reply-To: <19990416065856.23255.qmail@www0t.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Anthea wrote: "(snip) What I think you mean is: if someone has mannerisms ( or dress etc) that offend some customers, should that person be fired? The "gay" part is simply a red herring. > >Let me answer that straight out (as I have previously): if any employee >offends current or potential customers and is not willing or is unable to >take corrective measures, then - provided that this can be done within the >law (and the law tends to favour the employer in this case) - steps have >to be taken to get that person into a position where she can no longer do >this, if necessary by firing her. " So, ummm, if someone's skin color or gender was offensive to current or potential customers (and assuming it were within the law) firing them would be acceptable from your point of view? It seems to be the logical extension of this argument. I don't think this is what you mean. And I understand that the vast majority of examples you deal with everyday may not fall into this catagory - but I think you may be failing to realize that your arguments could be easily used to argue against all types of integration. It's not that employee 'X' is a woman (or black, or gay, or Jewish); it's that she or he is "high maintenance". The vast majority of employees have problems working with 'X'; special accomendations might need to be made for 'X'; customers have objected to the presence of 'X' at the jobsite; 'X' is constantly taking manager's time by arguing wage rates; etc. Now these may all be true - and employee 'X' may therefore fall into the 'high maintenance' catagory, as you define it - and these are also the traditional arguments used for failing to hire or retain women and minority employees. Not the best side to be on, perhaps. "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you might be wrong." - Oliver Cromwell meg *************** "......An absence of something so profound it bears down on the soul, as if I were to take some nails and hammer them into the water - just small nails, driven deeply." K. Johnson ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 21:17:18 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: BEM vs. Bem and BDG MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anyone else keep confusing the scientist with the Bug Eyed Monsters? LOL! Maryelizabeth curious to hear the answer about the book discussion group as well -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 619.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 619.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:33:34 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: new list - on topic only In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If the BDG discussion moves to the new list, it wouldn't be until next month's discussion. I think BDG discussions probably ought to be on an on-topic list, but then they tend as any discussion to generate interesting slightly-off-topic stuff too. However if most people stay on this list, that's where we should stay. I just signed up for the new list. Let's see how it works out. Jennifer At 04:40 PM 04/15/99 -0500, you wrote: >On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Laura Quilter wrote: > >> okay y'all. we now have a new list, which is ON-TOPIC discussions only. >> feministsf will remain a mroe diverse discussion list and i will give up >> my attempts to keep it on topic. (snip) > >Will the Book Discussion Group be moved over to the new list or stay on >this one? > >Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:36:33 -0500 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: Political and economic systems in sf In-Reply-To: <19990416065528.24337.qmail@nw177.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 15 Apr 99, at 14:16, Michael Marc Levy wrote: > > > Did someone evoke little old me? Actually, eh, hem, (excuse me while I put > > on my expert's hat), there's always been a pretty clear split between sf > > writers, generally conservative, more often than not associated with > > Astounding SF/Analog, who portrayed the corporate world as heroic, and > > other sf writers, generally liberal, more often than not associated with > > Galaxy SF in the 50s and 60s and more recently with Asimov's, who > > portrayed the corporate world as villains. > > I knew you'd come through. Seriously - I'd be grateful if you could also make > a quick survey of the current situation vis-a-vis feministsf in magazines. I'm > afraid that my own reading (perhaps like most of us on the list) is too > narrowly focused to get the sort of overall view that you've got of the > feminist sf world. I'm going to ask Todd Mason to do the same for the > left-right split. > > > AJ I think that it's safe to say that all of the major SF magazines will publish feminist sf, assuming it fits their profile. Year in year out, the majority of the best feminist sf in short forms appears in Asimov's, but then the majority of the best short sf of any sort appears in Asimov's. Dozois is an aging 60's leftist of my generation (I believe he went to school at SUNY with a bunch of other now aging 60s liberal SF writers like Pamela Sargent, George Zebrowski, and Jack Dann) and he's very much open to feminist sf. He's almost single-handedly responsible for saving Eleanor Arnason's career (for which he deserves a special place in all of our prayers) and has provided her with her first regular short fiction market since the days of Damon Knight's Orbit. He's also published most of the other feminist short story writers whenever he can, as well as a number of stories with sympathetic gay characters. F&SF has a pretty good publishing record too, first under Chris Rusch and now under Gordon van Gelder. Van Gelder is particularly interested in gender-bending stuff. He's a regular at Wiscon and has published some very experimental novels at St. Martin's. Analog is Analog. They tend to be very conservative on the level of traditional story values, ie. linear plots, hard science, pro-technology, traditional SF themes, but under Stanley Schmidt aren't as politically conservative as they used to be. They're open to feminist SF that fits their other criteria. Joan Slonczewski, one of the most radical feminists in the field in her own quiet way, has published in Analog (her only published short story and, if I remember correctly, her most recent novel), as has Lois Bujold (all of her short fiction and several novels)and our own Catherine Asaro (several short stories including her recent Hugo-nominated piece. She also has a story in the current issue). Amazing Stories has had only the most intermittent existence in recent years, most recently as an anthology series but they, again, publish Arnason and other feminists. I don't read SF Age or Interzone often enough to have an opinion about them. In summary, I don't think that feminist themes are a hinderance to short story publication in SF today. Radical literary experimentation might be. Too much sexual content might be, but feminism per se, no. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 09:39:29 -0500 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: Political and economic systems in sf In-Reply-To: <19990416065627.26831.qmail@nw176.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 15 Apr 99, at 17:21, Todd Mason wrote: > > > Harry Harrison (another good example, indeed)wrote the story, then > > novel MAKE ROOM, MAKE ROOM--the bastardized film was SOYLENT GREEN. > Thanks also for the "leftist political directory" in your other posting; I'm > surprised (except for the obvious names) how LITTLE we agree on the left-right > split in authors. > > AJ > Anthea Hertley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) Anthea, This last statement looks interesting. What disagreements do you have vis a vis Todd's assignment of left or right designators to specific authors? Mike ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:08:54 EDT Reply-To: Zozie@aol.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: Political and economic systems in sf MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 4/16/99 4:48:30 PM, you wrote: <> Think you hit the wrong button, Mike. This is the Anthea, not the list. As much of this dialogue has been. best phoebe Phoebe Wray zozie@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:10:29 -0400 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: Re: new list - on topic only In-Reply-To: <19990416163838060.AAA260.307@jennifer.actioneer.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Has anyone been able to successfully sign on to the new list? Last night it was still locked... We probably shouldn't make plans to change anything until that one's confirmed. On 16 Apr 99, , Jennifer Krauel wrote: > If the BDG discussion moves to the new list, it wouldn't be until next > month's discussion. I think BDG discussions probably ought to be on an > on-topic list, but then they tend as any discussion to generate > interesting slightly-off-topic stuff too. However if most people stay on > this list, that's where we should stay. I just signed up for the new > list. Let's see how it works out. Jennifer > > At 04:40 PM 04/15/99 -0500, you wrote: > >On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Laura Quilter wrote: > > > >> okay y'all. we now have a new list, which is ON-TOPIC discussions > >> only. feministsf will remain a mroe diverse discussion list and i will > >> give up my attempts to keep it on topic. (snip) > > > >Will the Book Discussion Group be moved over to the new list or stay on > >this one? > > > >Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) > > > Rudy Leon PhD Student Department of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu (315) 425-8171 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 13:24:01 -0400 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: Re: 'High maintenance' employees In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT It may seem to be a very SF sort of world, but in Santa Cruz, California a few years back, the ACLU joined up with a group of folk to make appearance inside the law; in Santa Cruz, one cannot be discriminated against for hair color, piercings, tattoos, etc. And in Santa Cruz, folks like these are a significant subculture. Personally, I *love* the image of a stuffy image-conscious place of business having to hire a leather decked violet mohawked facially pierced receptionist! Especially placed against a history of receptionists being required to be 'attractive' in a generically fashionable (and oppressive for the non-size 6'es of us) sense. And also, because Santa Cruz a hippy college beach town, is being increasingly colonized by fairly conservative Silicon Valley types.... Anthea, I have to ask how you carry a fairly unimaginative business- world life -- where you are no doubt excellent at your job, and it quite clearly satisfies and challenges you -- with an enjoyment of speculative fiction that just as clearly exists on many levels to critique many of the platforms of that world -- image, hierarchy, capitalism, or resource management, to name a few. I honestly mean this as a question, I'm curious. I'm in no way trying to challenge you. I'm just trying to get a better picture of you, because these two parts of you sit jarringly in my head. And also because what I love about Fem SF is the very ways it challenges the status quo of the world in all these minute ways, the ways it is able to ferret out oppressive circumstances and blow them up or turn them inside out or upside down... Rudy Leon PhD Student Department of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu (315) 425-8171 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 11:07:33 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: "Time" cover photo 4/12 issue Maryelizabeth said: >show of hands: anyone else immediately think of FEM-SF when they saw the >breastfeeding Albanian mom on the cover? I have to say I didn't. But I thought of so many things. This has to be one of the all time best photographs. Someone had it at work and I found myself looking at it over and over throughout the night. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 14:14:35 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: new list - on topic only MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I see the on-topic list as the exact place for the BDG. The BDG is after all strictly limited to "feminist SFF fiction/literature" at the selection level. (ie. The Russ essays nomination was pointed off list to be discussed.) Besides, why would you want to make BDGer's have to sift through dozens of general discussions to be able to participate in something that is very on-topic specific? < However if most people stay on this list, that's where we should stay. > Folks who are interested will follow the BDG wherever it goes, no? We will never know who leaves and who stays anyhow. We just need to start posting msgs that direct people one way or the other and to change the info on the web page. donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 11:55:44 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sophia Hegner Subject: Re: Jobs in feministsf In-Reply-To: <19990416065429.22925.qmail@nw128.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 02:02 AM 4/16/99 -0500, Anthea Hartley wrote: >Are there no feminist sf books with real labour problems, extrapolated of >course into the future? Surely some one must have written, for example, about >how labour relations will change in the future, whether there'll be strikes or >lockouts (or extrapolated equivalents) and so on. Or books on the equivalent, >say, of the Industrial Revolution or the revolution in our work today where >the once high-paying jobs in heavy industry have given way to a mixture of >high-paying, high tech jobs and low-paying McJobs in the service industries? >Or books that deal with innovative work practices, like extrapolations of >telecommuting? > Well, not to get ahead of the BDG, but I think _Slow River_ fits the bill. Not only does the main character have a realistic job, but it also address labor issues involving an environmental disaster. Sophia ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 16:57:29 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: Vonarburg's Maerlande Chronicles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <*In the Mother's Country* as well as *The Maerlande Chronicles*......Has anyone read this? I'd love to chat about it...the premise is a post-holocaust society in which only 3% of the population is male. The men are subjugated, and the subjugation (and everything else) is questioned/considered by the central character, who is female. There are so many things to discuss...> Do say more on your topical interests or ask more....I have just finished refreshing my memory a bit with some rereading. I saw more than just the men as subjugated. Everyone had a certain "role" based on their fertility and sex. Reds, Blues, Greens. What place in the families, etc. Or no? ******spoiler alert*********************** Both the first time and the last, i took it to be "Elli" or whatever is the true divinity of the novel. Each of the persons the narrator (of the last chapter) says it has been lived in completely different times and throughout time. And it speaks as at once being that person (in their viewpoint) and yet also in the viewpoint of an observor of those persons. As I recall the book refers to Elli being within each of them or that Elli could be a part of each of them? Or perhaps I have it wrong. I remember it being christ-like mostly, hence I "read" the final narrator as the divinity of the entire story. But yet again, I could be wrong? Though I did not read it as Linta or a metafictional voice. At least not in my gut. LOL, if anyone could make it all clear I would tip a thousand hats to them. They way I see it, the narrative path seems to recreate a cycle of unknowing, then new born curiousity or new abilities as it were (seemingly "encouraged" or "implanted" by this last narrator), then discovery of new clues/information, new knowing/understanding, new growth and expansion of the society. It seemed that the final narrator was also invested in steering this universal/societal growth and was able to influence it directly by providing itself at conception. (ie. replacing Erne for Selva to make Lisbei). I really was convinced of this somewhat controlled cycle of life/growth when the final narrator is going to be in present time the "keeper" of Lisbei's journals, as Lisbei discovered and translated (kept) Garde's, etc, etc and how Lisbei had intentionally blocked out portions after having written on how Garde doing the same has catalysed her to think in new ways or in new directions. But make it all clear???? I think I just completely muddied the waters! LOL donna donnaneely@earthlink.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 23:14:02 +0200 Reply-To: thomasg@ifi.uio.no Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Thomas Gramstad Subject: Re: Raising androgynous children. In-Reply-To: Anthea Hartley Stanton 's message of Mon, 12 Apr 1999 12:28:14 -0500 Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On the other hand, there are some people who believe that > biology is just a patriarchal plot... I think that only applies to PC (Patriarchally Correct) biology. Thomas Gramstad thomasg@ifi.uio.no "I can't understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones." -- John Cage ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 17:59:09 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Stacey Holbrook Subject: Re: new list - on topic only In-Reply-To: <19990416163838060.AAA260.307@jennifer.actioneer.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > If the BDG discussion moves to the new list, it wouldn't be until next > month's discussion. I think BDG discussions probably ought to be on an > on-topic list, but then they tend as any discussion to generate interesting > slightly-off-topic stuff too. However if most people stay on this list, > that's where we should stay. I just signed up for the new list. Let's see > how it works out. > Jennifer Thanks. BTW I attempted to s*b and the list seems to be locked up. You managed to get on? I will try again... Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 16:38:47 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jennifer Krauel Subject: Re: new list - on topic only In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" No, I got the same locked out error message as everyone else. I figure Laura will let us know when it's fixed. Jennifer At 05:59 PM 04/16/99 -0500, you wrote: >On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > >> If the BDG discussion moves to the new list, it wouldn't be until next >> month's discussion. I think BDG discussions probably ought to be on an >> on-topic list, but then they tend as any discussion to generate interesting >> slightly-off-topic stuff too. However if most people stay on this list, >> that's where we should stay. I just signed up for the new list. Let's see >> how it works out. >> Jennifer > >Thanks. BTW I attempted to s*b and the list seems to be locked up. You >managed to get on? I will try again... > >Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 20:21:21 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: donna simone Subject: Re: new list - on topic only MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Today (p.m.) I submitted and got a welcome message in return. Submit again I say. Seems to be working finally. donna ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 17:34:17 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: Political and economic systems in sf: Levy (2) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mike, I wrote what I wrote last in response to what you wrote, whether or not it's what you meant. Here's your response to me: --- Michael Marc Levy wrote: > On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Todd Mason wrote: > > > If you look back at the post I was responding to, I > wasn't claiming (or > didn't intend to appear to be claiming in any case) > that leftist or > anti-corporate sf began with Galaxy. And here's what you posted that led to my rebuttal: Pohl and Kornbluth largely pioneered the anti-big business school of SF at Galaxy (they'd met while working in advertising), along with Fritz Leiber, Robert Scheckley, William Tenn and a few others. Aside from the factual incorrectness, misspellings and the notion that only "a few others" were writing this kind of material, I meant to imply, perhaps too subtly, that Pohl did indeed work in advertising after his discharge, in part because he had written a mimetic novel while in the service about advertising, and realized he was interested in the field without knowing much if anything about it. Levy: The most serious anti-corporatemovement in SF, however, is the cyberpunk movement of the mid-eighties to early90s. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan and company. Cherryh,Melissa Scott and Kim Stanley Robinson are also worth a mention here. Mason: I was also responding to the tone of the post, which intentionally or not disparaged the anti-capitalist and anti-corporate work published by pre-Movement types. > > I double checked and I was wrong about Kornbluth > working in advertising. > He and Pohl were already friends before WWII, but > Pohl's first job after > the war was as a copywriter. When he and Kornbluth > teamed up after the > war that experience was obivously fresh in Pohl's > mind. Thus anti- > advertising, anti-corporate fiction became a > mainstay of their published work. Well, a lot of Pohl's work can be read that way, but comparitively little of Kornbluth's fits that description. > > Pohl, Kornbluth, Donald Wollheim, Isaac Asimov, > > Judith Merrill and not a few others tended > leftward in the sf scene of > > the 1930s and even earlier, and their leftism was > at least as serious > > as that of their cyberpunk followers. The ones > cited above were among > > the Futurians in the 1930s and early '40s, and > other notable members of > > this NYC-based group of budding pro writers, > editors, etc., included > > Damon Knight, Richard Wilson, R A W Lowndes, John > Michel, Virginia Kidd > > and others who wrote and published, sometimes in > ASTOUNDING, sometimes > > in their own magazines such as SCIENCE FICTION and > ASTONISHING, > > profoundly anticapitalist work. > > In terms of actual political interest, the Futurians > were probably far more > profoundly political than the cyberpunks ever were, > it's true; they were > caught up in that great wave of leftist sentiment > that took over so many > young intellectuals throughout that period. Not all of the Futurians, by any means. Kornbluth was a conservative, and thus also appalled by capitalist excess (if this is puzzling, one should seek out the true conservatives, who tend to look at capitalism as a necessary evil in need of control, at best). James Blish referred to himself as a "book" (theoretical) Fascist. Many others were relatively apolitical. And yes > the Futurians do predate > Galaxy, but relatively little of the work that they > published was > explicitly leftist prior to Galaxy (although I'm > sure we could both come up > with some exceptions). Actually, about half of what little I've seen reprinted from the Futurian-controlled magazines is at least somewhat politically radical in outlook, including work by Doris "Leslie Perri" Baumgartner. of Galaxy writers > (Pohl, Kornbluth, > Leiber, Sheckley) should have included Knight. And I > might have mentioned > Gunner Cade, the Merril/Kornbluth collaboration as > Cyril Judd; don't > know where that saw publication first. As for the > other writers, Asimov was > always liberal in his own politics and the robot > stories are clearly leftist > (anti-racist, pro-worker) but very little of his > politics can be seen as > actively anti-capitalist. He was a New Dealer all his life. > Wilson and Kidd were talented writers of a limited > quantity of fiction > and are almost forgotten today. They had little > impact on the history > of SF, although I believe that Wilson did win a > Hugo. Kidd's biggest > impact may have been as an agent. Wollheim, although > a fairly important > editor, was a writer of little if any importance and > much the same is true > of Lowndes. Michel was one of the group, but his > impact on the genre > was minimal. In summary, although all of these > writers > started publishing before Galaxy came on the scene > and may have published > a few politically relevant stories in other > magazines, even Astounding, > the first major sf magazine that can actually be > seen as a center for > leftist and anti-capitalist sf was Galaxy under H.L. > Gold. I was citing Wollheim (the author of some provocative stories, including "Mimic" and "The Rag Thing") and Lowndes at least as much as editors as writers, and the notion that Michel, much less Wilson, had little influence on SF sounds suspiciously like "I haven't read them." Wilson's influence is comparable to Clifford Simak's; Wilson was a bit more cynical than Simak, but both wrote quiet stories that put forward a humanism and thoughtful extrapolation that seems to me to possibly have influenced writers ranging from Kate Wilhelm to Algis Budrys to Bob Shaw, just to pick a few. Michel was one of the most challenging proponents of political radicalism in 1930s sf, and influenced the big-name post-Futurian writers whose work we all have read. Was GALAXY the first "major" sf magazine to be a "center" for radical sf? The first wildly popular, by sf magazine terms, perhaps (though the Sam Merwin and Samuel Mines tenures at STARTLING and THRILLING WONDER might have some partial claims to make as well). > Yes, Mack Reynolds was someone I definitely should > have mentioned. How he > ever came to be a regular contributor to Analog, > I'll never know, but > Campbell, despite his generally pro-capitalist > stance, loved Reynolds' > work and published him regularly. I consumed all of > Reynolds' work that > appeared from Ace in the 60s and he's on my short > list of writers I'd > really like to see put back in print. I'd > forgotten that Baen, far and > away the most conservative editor in SF today, > published Reynolds in If. > It's a strange world. Baen also published Joanna Russ's WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO... in GALAXY, and Campbell published T. L. Sherred's "E for Effort," and early Sturgeon, along with late Reynolds. Neat pigeonholes are usually misleading. > Give me a half hour with Anatomy of > Wonder and > Clute/Nichols and who was it? Pohl?'s book on the > Futurians (it's around > here somewhere) and I could come up with twenty more > names, as could you. I believe you're referring to Damon Knight's THE FUTURIANS (1977?), published about the same time as Pohl's memoir THE WAY THE FUTURE WAS (1978). If you make sweeping statements about the field, you have an obligation to be as accurate and thorough as possible, particularly when people are depending on your information (not everyone has access to Barron's book, and perhaps even fewer Knight's). I'm writing this hastily, and haven't had a chance to check my references, myself. But there's concision and then there's minor irresponsibility. > So, Todd, thanks for correcting my mistake about > Kornbluth and advertising > and for mentioning both the Futurians and Mack > Reynolds. I'll stick with my > insistence that Galaxy was the first real focus for > anti-corporate sf, > although I'll agree that it hardly originated the > idea (never meant to imply > that--sorry if I appeared to be). You're welcome. Also, you do realize that the Futurians and other "genre" sf types read, thought and argued about such "non-genre" sf as Huxley's, Wells's, and Wylie's, well before GALAXY...and that some lefty work did appear even in the Sloane AMAZING, to note an unlikely source? > > Unless we want to argue about Galaxy some more, > which would probably > bore everyone, I don't see where we're really in any > disagreement. :) > > Mike, the long winded > Well, you wrote it. We are mostly in disagreement in your mistakes and some of your implications. I agree that GALAXY was the most important of the social-sf magazines in the early 1950s, with its Alfred Besters and despite its tendency to censor its Phil Dicks and William Tenns (Philip "William Tenn" Klass had to publish his "The Liberation of Earth" in R A W Lowndes's SCIENCE FICTION, since H L Gold was apparently afraid to publish it in GALAXY). (And to add to the Oddness of it all, Tenn is remarkably misogynist.) _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 17:45:01 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: Political and economic systems in sf MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Well, I do not claim special knowledge of most of the new writers, and I have a stack of recent issues to go through yet, along with other materials...but defining terms and seeing how they stick is always fun. Just here to provide what facts I have and can be reasonably certain of...love that Rachel Pollack, at least in short form (like John Varley of my golden age, I've been less impressed so far with the novels)... --- Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > Doesn't do to make a foulup on this list! It's the > second time I've done this > - and the second time (I think) that you've picked > it up, Todd. > > Thanks also for the "leftist political directory" in > your other posting; I'm > surprised (except for the obvious names) how LITTLE > we agree on the left-right > split in authors. > > Perhaps you could also bring us up to date with a > quick rundown on today's > feminist sf writers. I must be honest here and admit > that I'm pretty unsighted > on this (except, again, for the obvious names). > > > AJ > Anthea Hertley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 17:47:17 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: problems with new list resolved In-Reply-To: <19990416234352097.AAA89.301@jennifer.actioneer.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII sorry, y'all - all problems should be fixed. if you haven't successfully subscribed you should be able to now ... let me know @ lquilter@igc.apc.org if you have any more problems ... On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 16:38:47 -0700 > From: Jennifer Krauel > To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] new list - on topic only > > No, I got the same locked out error message as everyone else. I figure > Laura will let us know when it's fixed. > Jennifer > > At 05:59 PM 04/16/99 -0500, you wrote: > >On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Jennifer Krauel wrote: > > > >> If the BDG discussion moves to the new list, it wouldn't be until next > >> month's discussion. I think BDG discussions probably ought to be on an > >> on-topic list, but then they tend as any discussion to generate interesting > >> slightly-off-topic stuff too. However if most people stay on this list, > >> that's where we should stay. I just signed up for the new list. Let's see > >> how it works out. > >> Jennifer > > > >Thanks. BTW I attempted to s*b and the list seems to be locked up. You > >managed to get on? I will try again... > > > >Stacey (ausar@netdoor.com) > > > Laura Quilter / lquilter@igc.apc.org "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution." -- Emma Goldman *** NEW TRIAL FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL *** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 20:46:27 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: new list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I thought I had safely filed away in "archives" the address to subscribe to for Laura's new list. Can somebody supply it again? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 20:47:18 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: new list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I thought I had safely filed away in "archives" the e-mail address and directions to subscribe to the new "literature" list. Can somebody supply it again? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 00:31:06 EDT Reply-To: Lurima@aol.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Barbara R. Hume" Subject: Romances with depth, substance, and moral centers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For excellent romance novels that have depth, substance, and a moral center (something missing from much contemporary SF, IMO), you can't beat Mary Jo Putney. Try One Perfect Rose or Shattered Rainbows or Silk and Shadows. I'd be interested in your husband's opinion, also, because I always wonder how the male characters seem to a male reader. Rainbows has a devastatingly realistic description of the Battle of Waterloo, for example. I told Mary Jo that of all the romance heroes I saw come home from the Napoleonic Wars, this one really moved me. She said that it had been her intention to show the horror and tragedy of that war. A romance writer named Georgette Heyer, I've heard, wrote such well-researched material on that conflict that her texts are used in military academies. So there's much more to such books than mush! I prefer a romance in which a couple learn to love and accept each other to the wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am "relationships" you see in many genre novels, and in li-fi, too. barbara In a message dated 4/8/99 3:49:54 PM Pacific Daylight Time, destrier@RICHMOND.INFI.NET writes: << As for me, I've always preferred novels that concentrate on characters and relationships. The niftiest scientific or cultural speculations will leave me cold if I don't care about the characters. So I guess that explains why I love a -good- romance. If anyone wants some suggestions of some excellent titles/authors let me know. I've even suggested a few to my husband (definitely -not- a romance reader) that he has enjoyed. But then, his theory is that good work is good work, and a good novel is a good novel. >> ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 00:49:16 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Business Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 16 Apr 99, at 13:24, Rudy Leon wrote: > Anthea, I have to ask how you carry a fairly unimaginative business- > world life -- where you are no doubt excellent at your job, and it > quite clearly satisfies and challenges you -- with an enjoyment of > speculative fiction that just as clearly exists on many levels to > critique many of the platforms of that world -- image, hierarchy, > capitalism, or resource management, to name a few. Since you know no more of my life than I know of yours, Rudy, I really don't know how you arrived at "... fairly unimaginative ...". Just for the moment imagine that there's only one part of me, and that what you say about speculative fiction applies equally to my business life. If you can do that you'll get a truer image of what I do. It's the demands of my *business* life as much as my own interests that makes me to read widely and eclectically. The image of "big businessmen" as a mob of uncultured boors hasn't been true since the 50s - globalization changed all that. My Sf/f reading is just relaxation - like finishing off the newspaper by reading the comic strips. > I honestly mean this as a question, I'm curious. I'm in no way > trying to challenge you. I'm just trying to get a better picture of > you, because these two parts of you sit jarringly in my head. No offence taken. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 01:25:33 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: SF/F and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 16 Apr 99, at 13:24, Rudy Leon wrote: > ...what I love about Fem SF is the very ways it challenges the > status quo of the world in all these minute ways, the ways it is > able to ferret out oppressive circumstances and blow them up or > turn them inside out or upside down... When I re-read these words of Rudy's a few minutes ago, it suddenly struck me that he's implying that feminist sf/f is, in and of itself, mind-broading. Is there anyone else who believes that? I mean, suppose a woman who had lived in Peoria all her life suddenly took a long-term job in Tokyo, Ulaan Bataar, New Delhi or or even Rome. Would wide reading in fem sf/f help her to understand and fit into the strange environment? More importantly, would it help her to understand and appreciate the culture and the people? Would it make it easier for her to settle down as part of the "native" community or would she remain just another expat with the same knee-jerk reactions as she had back home? Bringing it closer to home : are the people on this list - especially those who've travelled little or not at all outside the US - more cosmopolitan and less parochial because they're omnivorous fem sf/f readers? AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 14:55:42 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: sc Subject: Mary Gentle MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0034_01BE88E2.5D2BF1A0" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0034_01BE88E2.5D2BF1A0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable De-lurking briefly to ask for info. Many years ago I tried to read _Golden Witchbreed_ and gave up after = about 100 or so pages, bored. I'd not looked at Mary Gentle's stuff = again until I picked up a second-hand copy of _Rats and Gargoyles_ last = month and raced through it, absolutely fascinated. The central image of = the massive sprawling city, built layer upon layer on the decaying = remains of older and yet older cities is haunting - and the story and = characters are great too! So, what to read next? _Grunts_ is on my list = (I've always felt that the Orcs got bad press in _LotR_ :->), but I've = heard that _Architecture of Desire_ the follow-up to _Rats_ is not so = good, and I don't know anything about her other stuff. Any advice/opinions greatly appreciated - especially about _AofD_ or = _Scholars and Soldiers_ Cheers SC ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 20:03:10 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: nit picking MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit F&SF's former editor is KRIS Rusch, not "Chris." See her non-genre novel HITLER'S ANGEL. Maryelizabeth -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 619.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 619.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 20:07:36 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: the new list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've subscribed -- yay! I would support the BDG being taken there. It seems perfectly list appropriate. Pax, Maryelizabeth -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 619.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 619.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 11:23:07 EDT Reply-To: DMadrone@aol.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Demetria M. Shew" Subject: Re: SF/F and mind broadening MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 4/16/99 11:25:43 PM Pacific Daylight Time, ajhs@USA.NET writes: << more cosmopolitan and less parochial because they're omnivorous fem sf/f readers? >> Well. Probably not cosmopolitan, and "less parochial" has more to do with fiction than nonfiction. But the very idea of keeping an open mind, seeing differences in individuals as interesting and as ways of improving communication, being curious about other behaviors and cultures and..(.sorry, but you said it)...unfortunate mannerisms, and diversity in gender definitions...has definitely made teaching easier. My classes include students from widely diverse backgrounds and ethnicities...not to mention gender styles...and feminist sf helped to initiate my ability to be interested in differences, and supports that interest, and also supports my ability to see science from a different view point and so to teach it in a way that more of my students hear (at the schools where I teach, students have gone out of their way to tell my supervisors that mine was the first class they took where science made any sense). I suppose it has also helped because it opened the idea of "other ways" of solving problems...perhaps many ways. I came from a small, parochial community and graduated from a Roman Catholic all-white high school. I'd be a cabbage without the door-opening aspects of fsf. Personally, and with respect, I think you are kidding yourself. I think one of these days you are going to chuck that job, and go have some life-adventures. Come on out and play, Anthea. Madrone, who finds the comics stultifying ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 14:57:29 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Marina Subject: Re: new list - on topic only In-Reply-To: <19990416234352097.AAA89.301@jennifer.actioneer.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In case we get to vote on this, IMHO it's better to leave BDG where it is right now. I think that an interesting part about books (and discussing them) is how they influence and interact with real-life issues. In my opinion, isolating the book realm from life will not do much good to either. And I'm afraid that the "ethnicaly cleansed" (from off-topic messages) list will not permit as rich a discussion of a specific book -- and how it relates to life -- as there could be otherwise. Personally, I don't know if I want to sign up for one more list -- I've got plenty to read already, but I still might. And I don't think I want to sign up for the topic purity list only. God may forgive me, but I think there is a lot more to feminist science fiction than books. At the same time, i'd like to participate in the BDG as well. So unless y'all really want to exclude from BDG everyone who's not into the new list, I think it should stay where it has started -- right here. This book discussion list has been created on this list, it has developed on this list, and has functioned so far according to the rules and customs of this list. So if some members want to leave and start a new list, they can as well start a BDG of their own -- one that operates on _that list_ rules and regulations. At least that's the way I see it. Thanks for your time. Marina http://members.aol.com/Lotaryn/index.html "Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society is selling at the time." Naomi Wolf ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 16:51:22 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Claudia Mastroianni Subject: Re: new list - on topic only I agree with Marina. I understand that there are people who want discussions to remain on topic. On the other hand, I feel that the BDG lends a vitality to this list, and I feel that the sum of (this list minus the BDG) and (on topic list) may well be less rich than the current state of affairs. I'll subscribe to the new list for now, but I'm skeptical whether I'll stay for long. Claudia ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 17:20:32 -0400 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: BDG new list? In-Reply-To: <199904172051.QAA11883@login1.fas.harvard.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I had kinda thought that the BDG was an attempt to provide 'on- topic' conversations -- which would make it much more at home on the new list. I understand Marina's concerns about doubling up list traffic, because I feel the same way -- in reverse. I want onto the on-topic list, and away from the heavy off-topic volume of this list, AND I would like to keep the BDG ... Maybe we should think about splitting the BDG off into its own list? That way, it remains available to everyone, and we can all stay on the lists which fit us best. I understand that I know nothing about list ownership, sO i'll admit that right off. We have to find folks both willing and able to take over the running of the list if we take it off list.... my $.02, into the ring. Rudy Leon PhD Student Department of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu (315) 425-8171 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 14:22:41 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: Re: new list - on topic only Comments: To: feministsf-lit@uic.edu In-Reply-To: <199904172051.QAA11883@login1.fas.harvard.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII you know, guys, there's no reason that you can't have book discussion groups - parallel discussions of the same book - on both lists. there's enough people who have expressed interest, over the last several years, to a more focused group, that i think it'll be okay. which is not to say that this group should just go hog-wild with the completely irrelevant and off-topic postings. i *still* think the extraneous (and often stupid) virus warnings, "yeah me too" responses, and "no way you suck" responses are all unnecessary. but y'all can monitor them yourselves now. (you won't have me to kick around anymore - just kidding, i'm still here, but only to get rid of the worst abuses) laura quilter - list-mistress On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, Claudia Mastroianni wrote: > Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 16:51:22 -0400 > From: Claudia Mastroianni > To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] new list - on topic only > > I agree with Marina. I understand that there are people who want discussions > to remain on topic. On the other hand, I feel that the BDG lends a vitality > to this list, and I feel that the sum of (this list minus the BDG) and > (on topic list) may well be less rich than the current state of affairs. > > I'll subscribe to the new list for now, but I'm skeptical whether I'll > stay for long. > > Claudia > Laura Quilter / lquilter@igc.apc.org "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution." -- Emma Goldman *** NEW TRIAL FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL *** ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 00:03:56 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Subject: Re: SF/F and mind broadening In-Reply-To: <19990417062530.6148.qmail@www0n.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:25 AM 4/17/99 -0500, Anthea wrote: >I mean, suppose a woman who had lived in Peoria all her life suddenly took a long-term job in Tokyo, Ulaan Bataar, New Delhi or or even Rome. Would wide reading in fem sf/f help her to understand and fit into the strange environment? Shit, no! I can't speak for all little girls in Peoria, but this one took five years of French, subscribed to the L.A. Free Press and The Green Egg, took world lit and world religion classes, read Nobel Prize-winning authors, went to movies with subtitles, watched PBS and read USAToday. But seriously, I rarely get out of Peoria, but I'm an outside consultant for an international corporation--who happens to have its world headquarters here. I've never talked to Antarctica, but people on every other continent on this planet know me by name and call me for help with their software. And my home company is an ISP, so I get free internet service. And oh, my, this web thing is so broadening! Hello! How can you type when you knee keeps jerking like that? Fem sf/f is just a teeny tiny portion of what I read in a year. I've picked up some interesting stuff on this list and some really boring stuff. Certainly nothing that changed my life. Maybe you'd benefit from something besides fem sf/f. I'd be glad to share my reading list. Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 07:01:20 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Mike Stanton Subject: Re: new list - on topic only Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On 17 Apr 99, at 14:22, Laura Quilter wrote: > you know, guys, there's no reason that you can't have book discussion > groups - parallel discussions of the same book - on both lists. Perhaps there's even a case for TWO BDG books per month - one for the serious, academic reader and the other for the reader who enjoys femsf for its "adventure" side. The first, which would discuss the traditionally worthy, meaty works we have had thus far, would be run on the "on topic" list. The second which would be "adventure/romance etc" books (femsf romance eg Asaro; true adventure eg Cherryh, Fancher) would run on this one. Clearly there would be nothing to stop either book being discussed on the other list. If one looks at the "on topic" BDG discussions since July 1998, it's obvious that the split would not affect discussion of "meatier" works. Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 08:01:07 EDT Reply-To: Zozie@aol.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: new list - on topic only MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 4/18/99 6:07:14 AM, Mike wrote: <> Ahhh, I think this is a bag of worms. It's not what I, at least, assumed this little spllit was about. I agree with the person (sorry, don't remember who) who noted that our BDG discussions sometimes go into fruitful tangents. However, the FSFFU list has continually, over the past couple of months, spun off into non-sff areas with little link to the subject at hand. Besides, I just checked my card and can't figure out if I'm serious or a fuzzy bunny roaring off on adventures, so I'd be stressed. It's not an either/or proposition. Both lists could have their values giving us the best of both worlds. lightly, lightly phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 07:14:18 -0500 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: SF/F and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 17 Apr 99, at 11:23, Demetria M. Shew wrote: > Well. Probably not cosmopolitan, and "less parochial" > has more to do with fiction than nonfiction. But the > very idea of keeping an open mind, seeing differences > in individuals as interesting and as ways of improving > communication, being curious about other behaviors and > cultures [snip]...feminist sf helped to initiate my > ability to be interested in differences, and supports > that interest ... [snip} I was actually thinking of sf/f in connection with broadening the mind to see if anyone thought that anyone thought that reading femSF had a beneficial effect in a specific field. Yesterday we had our first company get-together and I raised the topic when everyone was lounging around in the conference room in end-of-party triste. Most people (including me) thought like you on the general aspects. But as far as travel went, almost everyone - surprisingly - saw the ability to take lots of travel as an innate "window of opportunity ability" and, if one hadn't started by 18, "travel-ability" vanished - regardless of what one read. > Personally, and with respect, I think you are > kidding yourself. I think one of these days > you are going to chuck that job, and go have some > life-adventures. Come on out and play, Anthea. "Life-adventures" always reminds me of the 1960s British "kitchen sink" or _Look back in anger_ school of screenwriters. I can see it now : the camera zooms in on Anthea eking out a life of quiet (correction: noisy) desperation in poverty (correction: bourgeois luxury). Cooking and cleaning, washing and ironing, changing dirty diapers, wiping perpetually snotty noses, fetching-and-carrying after kids. Working 40 hours a week under perpetual threat of layoff. Living in a mortgaged, suburban house, always worried about money. Staring at TV all evening with Richard Burton, her pot-bellied husband swilling beer and breaking wind. Her only stimuli weekly meetings with "intellectual" friends to discuss cerebral books and patriarchal oppression. As the camera zooms back for the final scene, a smiling Anthea is seen hanging herself with a rope of knotted Pampers. Shudder! Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) (who finds 10 minutes a day reading the comics clears the mind) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 07:18:58 -0500 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: SF/F and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 18 Apr 99, at 0:03, Rebecca wrote: > Shit, no! [Snip] That's exactly what I was looking for - does reading femSF have a (reasonably) long-term beneficial effect. I've had 3 private replies ALL of which said sf/f (but not femSF specifically) had been important in pushing them into travel (1 professionally, 2 recreationally). One reason why I asked the question was to see if an answer to "Do you read sf/f?" would be a useful indicator in job interviews (I've got to interview people at Imperial College on Thursday). > But seriously, I rarely get out of Peoria, [snip] > And oh, my, this web thing is so broadening! Although the web is broadening in one sense, it's not broadening culturally. Even a switched-off international flight attendant is far more culturally aware than the most passionate stay-at-home web surfer! Travel involves the senses as much as the intellect. Example: what does romantic Zanzibar, capital of Zanzibar - the fabled Zanj, the Spice Island, the Isle of Cloves - really smell like? (Answer: stale urine) Going to a country not as a tourist but as a "worker" in a job that forces you to mix with the "natives" for (at least) several months, is essential to get to even an inkling about a people and their culture. Even a highly Westernized country like Singapore where I've spend a year in total is beyond most Westerners' understanding. I've been travelling since I was 3 years old and I've worked in foreign countries for months at a time since 1988. Since May 98, for example, I've visited every continent except Antarctica. But I've got no more than an inkling of what the cultures are *really* like in 70% of the countries I've visited. > Hello! How can you type when you knee keeps jerking > like that? Fem sf/f is just a teeny tiny portion of > what I read in a year. I've described femsf (8 private protests) as "like 'reading the comic strips after finishing the newspaper'". As I've said, I read widely and eclectically (in four languages) because my job demands it. Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 13:46:52 -0400 Reply-To: releon@syr.edu Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rudy Leon Organization: Syracuse University Subject: too academic? In-Reply-To: <70f111d0.244b2383@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT It's beginning to get very hard to tell which conversations are on which list! This is responding to Mike's comments about splitting BDG, which I thought was on the new list, but apparently was on the Big List.... Has anyone else noticed that this (the new list) list is assuming an academic orientation? I'm an academic, yes, and I've even had opportunity to use Fem SF in teaching, but my academic life says I do Religious Studies, and American Studies. I read SF for fun, and because it engages my mind. That it also engages a lot of the questions which drive my academic research is surely part of it, but that doesn't make my an Academic Reader of Fem SF. And I wonder how this makes non-academic, serious readers, thoughtful readers, feel about wanting to play here. I've noticed an awful lot of the lists most engaging contributers claiming to feel intimidated or put off by a perceived heavily academic tone, and wouldn't want to drive anyone away who just wants to take 'The Intersection' seriously. There is an MLA SF list that I am subbed to, which is usually tedious and boring and at the moment very very quiet (I stay on because it is quiet, and it helps me remember that there are people in the world Who Just Don't Get It, since I avoid people WJDGI in 'real life'). Those folks seem to have never heard of Fem SF, even though some of them do important theory work in the subfield (Peter Fitting, is, I believe, listowner) Just my two cents, Rudy Rudy Leon PhD Student Department of Religion Syracuse University releon@syr.edu (315) 425-8171 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 01:03:06 EDT Reply-To: Doctorbeth@aol.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Beth Brown Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF Digest - 4 Apr 1999 to 5 Apr 1999 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On April 16 AJ Hartley wrote: >>Are there no feminist sf books with real labour problems, extrapolated of course into the future? Surely some one must have written, for example, about how labour relations will change in the future, whether there'll be strikes or lockouts (or extrapolated equivalents) and so on. Or books on the equivalent, say, of the Industrial Revolution or the revolution in our work today where the once high-paying jobs in heavy industry have given way to a mixture of high-paying, high tech jobs and low-paying McJobs in the service industries? Or books that deal with innovative work practices, like extrapolations of telecommuting?<< Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash features the dissolution of political structure and its place taken over by "franchises" such as Taco Bell, burbclaves, Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, and the Mafia (who specialize in pizza delivery, among other things). Of the two main female characters, YT is a very high tech skateboard deliveryperson, and Juanita is a programmer. Beth ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 22:48:39 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: labor & feminism In-Reply-To: <4e0f1bfb.244c130a@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII one very excellent book that i *love* is Alice Nunn's THE ILLICIT PASSAGE (women's redress press, australia, 1992) - *very* good on class issues. however, it's hard as hell to get any copies. (i got the last available copies in the US from madison's women's bookstore last year, and dispersed them to my friends - would love to see this get re-issued) ... go to your library and try to get it on interlibrary loan, it's excellent ... On Mon, 19 Apr 1999, Beth Brown wrote: > Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 01:03:06 EDT > From: Beth Brown > To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] FEMINISTSF Digest - 4 Apr 1999 to 5 Apr 1999 > > On April 16 AJ Hartley wrote: > > >>Are there no feminist sf books with real labour problems, extrapolated of > course into the future? Surely some one must have written, for example, about > how labour relations will change in the future, whether there'll be strikes or > lockouts (or extrapolated equivalents) and so on. Or books on the equivalent, > say, of the Industrial Revolution or the revolution in our work today where > the once high-paying jobs in heavy industry have given way to a mixture of > high-paying, high tech jobs and low-paying McJobs in the service industries? > Or books that deal with innovative work practices, like extrapolations of > telecommuting?<< > > Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash features the dissolution of political structure > and its place taken over by "franchises" such as Taco Bell, burbclaves, Mr. > Lee's Greater Hong Kong, and the Mafia (who specialize in pizza delivery, > among other things). Of the two main female characters, YT is a very high > tech skateboard deliveryperson, and Juanita is a programmer. > > Beth > Laura Quilter / lquilter@igc.apc.org "If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution." -- Emma Goldman *** NEW TRIAL FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL *** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 11:08:30 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: SF/F and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit See, that's why I think Peoria is such a poor analogy. Peoria is nice. My dad went to school there, I've been there to visit, and it's on my list of "industrial tourism" dream driving holidays. I think Peoria could prepare you quite well for Karachi or Huhata, or what may have you. I grew up in Repugnantville, a suburb of Chicago, and feminist sf did have an appreciable effect when I was a small 'un. Did it have more effect than other mind-broadening things? Well, on me, at times, yes. But that's because I liked science fiction. I expect that a course of late Qing novels or a history of the French Directorate would have had the same effect. But seriously, the cultural poverty of the outer ring suburbs (in general although perhaps not every time) has to be lived to be believed. The thing is, it is often helpful when young to have some sort of sophistication-installing experience. For the lucky among us, growing up a in good-sized city provides that. For the rest of us, we read. I think feminist sf is marginally better than many other types of book for this purpose, simply because it is in constant argument with red-blooded American life, and constant argument forces you to think a bit, which teaches you to be mentally flexible. But with enough care and determination on the part of the reader, any book can be like this. Perversely, I suspect that I live my glamorous urban life partly because of an early trip to Peoria. It looked like a cultural oasis compared to my town, and I was beset with longing to explore. (Which I couldn't, I was en famille) Peoria was a mind-broadening experience. However, I would add that it's hard to live in the US without on'es knee jerking a little periodically. There are such a lot of things one wants to kick... >>> Rebecca 04/18 12:03 AM >>> At 01:25 AM 4/17/99 -0500, Anthea wrote: >I mean, suppose a woman who had lived in Peoria all her life suddenly took a long-term job in Tokyo, Ulaan Bataar, New Delhi or or even Rome. Would wide reading in fem sf/f help her to understand and fit into the strange environment? Shit, no! I can't speak for all little girls in Peoria, but this one took five years of French, subscribed to the L.A. Free Press and The Green Egg, took world lit and world religion classes, read Nobel Prize-winning authors, went to movies with subtitles, watched PBS and read USAToday. But seriously, I rarely get out of Peoria, but I'm an outside consultant for an international corporation--who happens to have its world headquarters here. I've never talked to Antarctica, but people on every other continent on this planet know me by name and call me for help with their software. And my home company is an ISP, so I get free internet service. And oh, my, this web thing is so broadening! Hello! How can you type when you knee keeps jerking like that? Fem sf/f is just a teeny tiny portion of what I read in a year. I've picked up some interesting stuff on this list and some really boring stuff. Certainly nothing that changed my life. Maybe you'd benefit from something besides fem sf/f. I'd be glad to share my reading list. Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 11:27:06 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: SF/F and mind broadening MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I think it's interesting that you say one needs a "sophistication-inducing" experience at a young age...I think that sometimes kids in cultural wastelands (my own is South-Central Kansas) are often drawn to SF or F/SF because they feel "different" in some way and are looking for some outer-world confirmation that they aren't total freaks. Where I grew up, any kid who didn't wear polo shirts and have the right hairstyle, and aspire to a business degree and a career that was lucrative but not mentally broadening, who wasn't a protestant Christian, who wasn't heterosexual, etc, ad nauseum, was (and still is) ostracized by both peers and teachers. I sought travel in order to escape those surroundings--both mental travel via SF and physical travel via the US Army. Joining the military was the only way I could afford to escape, and through it I got to Germany, and because I later realized I was queer I met a whole bunch of local people whose culture would otherwise have been closed to me. Incidentally, also via the army, I travelled to less pleasant places. It was living in Watertown, NY, which makes my current return to Wichita bearable. Here, at least, I don't have to go to another _country_ to find a decent bookstore. And I must also credit listservs like this one with providing me with a temporary, mental escape from a state whose Senator sees nothing at all wrong with announcing that abortion is wrong because it "denies an adequate supply of workers to support the Social Security system." Wildly farther and farther off-topic, Sheryl -----Original Message----- From: Jane Franklin To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Date: Monday, April 19, 1999 11:09 AM Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] SF/F and mind broadening >See, that's why I think Peoria is such a poor analogy. Peoria is nice. My dad went to school there, I've been there to visit, and it's on my list of "industrial tourism" dream driving holidays. I think Peoria could prepare you quite well for Karachi or Huhata, or what may have you. I grew up in Repugnantville, a suburb of Chicago, and feminist sf did have an appreciable effect when I was a small 'un. Did it have more effect than other mind-broadening things? Well, on me, at times, yes. But that's because I liked science fiction. I expect that a course of late Qing novels or a history of the French Directorate would have had the same effect. But seriously, the cultural poverty of the outer ring suburbs (in general although perhaps not every time) has to be lived to be believed. > >The thing is, it is often helpful when young to have some sort of sophistication-installing experience. For the lucky among us, growing up a in good-sized city provides that. For the rest of us, we read. I think feminist sf is marginally better than many other types of book for this purpose, simply because it is in constant argument with red-blooded American life, and constant argument forces you to think a bit, which teaches you to be mentally flexible. But with enough care and determination on the part of the reader, any book can be like this. > >Perversely, I suspect that I live my glamorous urban life partly because of an early trip to Peoria. It looked like a cultural oasis compared to my town, and I was beset with longing to explore. (Which I couldn't, I was en famille) Peoria was a mind-broadening experience. > >However, I would add that it's hard to live in the US without on'es knee jerking a little periodically. There are such a lot of things one wants to kick... > >>>> Rebecca 04/18 12:03 AM >>> >At 01:25 AM 4/17/99 -0500, Anthea wrote: >>I mean, suppose a woman who had lived in Peoria all her life suddenly took >a long-term job in Tokyo, Ulaan Bataar, New Delhi or or even Rome. Would >wide reading in fem sf/f help her to understand and fit into the strange >environment? > >Shit, no! I can't speak for all little girls in Peoria, but this one took >five years of French, subscribed to the L.A. Free Press and The Green Egg, >took world lit and world religion classes, read Nobel Prize-winning >authors, went to movies with subtitles, watched PBS and read USAToday. > >But seriously, I rarely get out of Peoria, but I'm an outside consultant >for an international corporation--who happens to have its world >headquarters here. I've never talked to Antarctica, but people on every >other continent on this planet know me by name and call me for help with >their software. And my home company is an ISP, so I get free internet >service. And oh, my, this web thing is so broadening! > >Hello! How can you type when you knee keeps jerking like that? Fem sf/f >is just a teeny tiny portion of what I read in a year. I've picked up some >interesting stuff on this list and some really boring stuff. Certainly >nothing that changed my life. Maybe you'd benefit from something besides >fem sf/f. I'd be glad to share my reading list. > >Rebecca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:41:43 -0500 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: SF/F and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 19 Apr 99, at 11:27, Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSag wrote: > I think it's interesting that you say one needs a > "sophistication-inducing" experience at a young age...I think that > sometimes kids in cultural wastelands (my own is South-Central Kansas) are > often drawn to SF or F/SF because they feel "different" in some way and > are looking for some outer-world confirmation that they aren't total > freaks. It's not "sophistication" that kids need but "strangeness" - strange countries, strange cultures, strange people, and most of all, strange languages (I'm using "strangeness" in the sense of "foreign to me"). We used go abroad at least once, usually twice a year, mostly to Europe but also to the Near and Middle East. So I grew up expecting, anticipating and *accepting* differences. Which made it much easier to accept even "stranger" things as I got older. So although I was brought up in Ireland (it was so uptight then that it would have made any place in Kansas look like Caligula's palace), "strange" social situations, sexual orientations or customs didn't bother me. Which is why I thought that feminist sf/f would make one more accepting of "strangeness". It's interesting to note that the "vote" on sf/f mind-broadening is roughly 50-50 "yes/no". But your comment, Sheryl, on "kids in cultural wastelands" is, I think, a critical one. Perhaps for people like my associates and I who've travelled since they were little kids, sf/f simply isn't strange enough. I don't mean that pejoratively. I started out in sf with ERB's _Barsoom_ books, which are pretty exotic, but I can remember thinking that Dejah Thoris' palace didn't sound as splendid as St Peter's. And the twin towers of Helium seem puny to someone who'd seen the Eiffel Tower (although it's only about a 1/5th as high!). But for a "kid from a cultural wasteland", sf/f may have a disproportionately greater effect, forcing the child to use her imagination and thus developing a richer, inner fantasy life. In that case, feminist sf/f with its emphasis on acceptance of "different" sexual orientations must surely make it easier for women to accept the facts of their own sexuality. A major proportion of US missionaries and aid workers are from the Mid-West. And I've often wondered whether fantasy born out of childhood reading has had anything to do with it - particularly when one sees how they still need the security blanket of the own familiar lifestyle and customs. AJ AntHea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:44:23 -0500 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: SF/F and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 19 Apr 99, at 11:08, Jane Franklin wrote: > See, that's why I think Peoria is such a poor analogy. > Peoria is nice. My dad went to school there, I've been > there to visit, and it's on my list of "industrial > tourism" dream driving holidays. I used it because a chap I met in Chicago two weeks ago, used to say "we'll see how it plays in Peoria, Ill". Foolishly I got the idea it was a cultural wasteland instead of Paris on the prairie . From now on I use Dullsville (unless there really is such a place). > I think Peoria could prepare you quite well for Karachi... Are we taking about Karachi, Pakistan - the Cloaca Maxima, the Home of Ten Billion Beggars, the Den of the Most Murderous Thieves this side of Manila, the Lair of the Worst Doctors in the World... > ... feminist sf did have an appreciable effect when I was a small > 'un. Did it have more effect than other mind-broadening things? > Well, on me, at times, yes. But that's because I liked science > fiction. By which, (I think) you imply, the "feminist" and the things peculiar to "feminist sf" were not in and of themselves *especially* influential. Other science fiction, I seem to her you saying, was at least equally as important. > I expect that a course of late Qing novels or a history of the > French Directorate would have had the same effect The first, yes but would the second? Directory France wasn't that different from us but Imperial China (even of the 1800s)... The reason I say this is the ENORMOUS effect Robert van Gulik's _Judge Dee_ novels had on me when I read them at 10. The culture in China of the T'ang Dynasty seemed so alien to me that I had difficulty almost in believing it had ever existed; it seemed more alien than ERB's Barsoom! > The thing is, it is often helpful when young to have some sort of > sophistication-installing experience. For the lucky among us, > growing up a in good-sized city provides that. As I've said elsewhere, I can't recall "foreign" cities as being sophisticated - and I grew up, as I've said elsewhere, in Ireland. I don't know whether children growing up in normal middle-class circles get that sophisticated anywhere (not in the sense of "having worldly knowledge and refinement and savoir faire"). I spent my last term before university at school in Basel with bourgeois teenagers from most of the capitals of Europe and I don't recall any of them being particularly sophisticated (unless you define it as "not shaving one's armpits, carrying condoms and frenetically humping the local yokels"!). What I think travel or life in a city teaches one is to at ease with, and accepting of, people with strange customs and culture. Which is the effect I would have thought sf/f could have on someone who's never travelled. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 22:36:48 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Mike Stanton Subject: Re: Mary Gentle Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii On 17 Apr 99, at 14:55, sc wrote: > Many years ago I tried to read _Golden Witchbreed_ and > gave up after about 100 or so pages, bored. I'd not looked at Mary > Gentle's stuff again until I picked up a second-hand copy of _Rats and > Gargoyles_ last month and raced through it, absolutely fascinated. In which case you'll probably enjoy _Scholars and soldiers_ (a book of short stories) because it contains 2 novellas ("Beggars in satin/The knot garden") in the same universe. The other stories (except the silly "The Tarot Dice") in the book are good as well. I was very disappointed in _Architecture of desire_ (the next in the _Rats..._ sequence); it seemed to have lost the bite and acquired a whine. I think anyone of Cromwell's "plain, russet-coated captains" would have given Gentle's Lord Protector Olivia a swift well-deserved kick in the butt. I found the characters too one-dimensional and the parody of the England of the Commonwealth both overdone and predictable. I also didn't think the somewhat twee attempts to include historical characters came off; I wonder how many of her target market will recognise them. _Grunts_ I think is by far and away her best although I felt the ending was anticlimatic in a way (something which slightly spoiled the 2 novellas in_Scholars.._ for me). Gentle is normally so politically correct that she squeaks, but _Grunts!_ shows that she has a nasty sense of humor and is able to poke fun at even the most sacred of cows). The only other one I've read of hers is _Ancient Light_ (although both _Hawk in Silver_ and _Golden witchbreed_ are available). Suffice it to say that if I'd read _Ancient..._ first instead of _Grunts!_, I wouldn't have read any more of hers. If you want bleakness (but without the magic) I can recommend Cherryh's _Merovingen nights_ anthologies (and the starting novel _Merovingen Nights: Angel with a sword_). Mike Stanton (m_stanton@postmaster.co.uk) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 19:30:37 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: SF/F and mind broadening MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >A major proportion of US missionaries and aid workers are from the Mid-West. >And I've often wondered whether fantasy born out of childhood reading has had >anything to do with it - particularly when one sees how they still need the >security blanket of the own familiar lifestyle and customs. > >AntHea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) One reason so many missionaries come from this area is that we were heavily settled by Mennonites, Hutterites, the Amish, and other northern European groups who often see missionary work as integral to their religious paths. My office-mate lives in a Mennonite town, and her daughter looks to be about ready to marry a young man who is busy getting his pilot's license and an education degree so that he can do missionary work in Africa. It doesn't surprise me that many of them need a security blanket of a sort, since they pretty much keep to themselves here at home. If Wichita scares them with its wordliness and sin potential, I can only imagine how they react to a whole new continent. Interestingly (and to sort of keep this on topic), I never hear my officemate talk of the recreational reading her daughter or the boyfriend do. I don't think they read at all. Almost none of my students do. They don't see the value in it, they don't miss it, and they don't understand how this lack keeps them out of contact with the larger world. My two cents.... Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 17:38:49 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: who's in control, the author or the character? Did anyone see X-Files last night? Talk about your characters getting out of control. What if that happened to someone like Tepper and say, the Hippae --- oops, that's for later discussion. I do wonder sometimes when horrible, hateful characters are written if the writing of them doesn't change the author in some way. I know the idea is that exposing one's shadow tends to rob it of power, but the exposure is so ugly. I just saw American History X, it seems indulging that hateful area of one's psyche would have to have some long term effects. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 22:55:52 -0500 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: who's in control, the author or the character? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Joyce Jones wrote: > > Did anyone see X-Files last night? Talk about your characters getting out > of control. What if that happened to someone like Tepper and say, the > Hippae --- oops, that's for later discussion. I do wonder sometimes when > horrible, hateful characters are written if the writing of them doesn't > change the author in some way. I know the idea is that exposing one's > shadow tends to rob it of power, but the exposure is so ugly. I just saw > American History X, it seems indulging that hateful area of one's psyche > would have to have some long term effects. > Joyce's comment made me think of a favorite passage from Doris Lessing's _Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and FIve_: "We Chroniclers do well to be afraid when we approach those parts of our histories (our natures) that deal with evil, the depraved, the benighted. Describing, we become. We even - and I've see it and have shuddered - summon. The most innocent of poets can write of ugliness and forces he has done no more than speculate about - and bring them into his life. I tell you, I've seen it, watched it^Åno, it doesn't do to take these things lightly. Yet there is a mystery here and it is not one that I understand: without this sting of otherness, of - even - the vicious, without the terrible energies of the underside of health, sanity, sense, then nothing works or can work. I tell you that goodness - what we in our ordinary daylight selves call goodness: the ordinary, the decent - these are nothing without the hidden powers that pour forth continually from the shadow sides. Their hidden aspects contained and tempered." I thought the issue of motive in the X-Files episode was interesting...how the writer's task was to understand his characters' motives. When he realized he misread Scully's motives and feelings the other character forced him to keep on with the story. I liked that the episode suggested the incredible power of imagination. But Scully seemed a little under-upset when she found out this guy had been stalking her for some time. Seems like there was something important r.e. the motive of the writer in his conversation with the Brazilian character. He couldn't love? Did you catch that? Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 13:59:53 +1000 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Julieanne Subject: Re: labor & feminism In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:48 PM 4/18/99 -0700, you wrote: >one very excellent book that i *love* is Alice Nunn's THE ILLICIT PASSAGE >(women's redress press, australia, 1992) - *very* good on class issues. >however, it's hard as hell to get any copies. (i got the last available >copies in the US from madison's women's bookstore last year, and >dispersed them to my friends - would love to see this get re-issued) ... >go to your library and try to get it on interlibrary loan, it's excellent >... I would whole-heartedly support that recommendation! It is excellent, and a lot of fun:) I think it was also recommended on this list last year, in relation to feminist cyber-punk. _Illicit Passage_ has been out-of-print for several years, and Women's Redress Press, appears to have disappeared at least for fiction publishing, around 1995/6. Women's Redress specialised mostly in feminist/leftist non-fiction, many of their publications have been taken over by University and other non-fiction publishers. _Illicit Passage_ rarely shows up even on the second-hand book market - which probably supports its popularity, but bookshops specialising in leftist/anarchist publications may also be worthwhile searching. Julieanne jalc@ozemail.com.au ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 23:35:41 -0500 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: Mary Gentle In-Reply-To: <80256758.00781695.00@nun.postmaster.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 19 Apr 1999, Mike Stanton wrote: > On 17 Apr 99, at 14:55, sc wrote: > > > Many years ago I tried to read _Golden Witchbreed_ and > > gave up after about 100 or so pages, bored. I'd not looked at Mary > > Gentle's stuff again until I picked up a second-hand copy of _Rats and > > Gargoyles_ last month and raced through it, absolutely fascinated. > > In which case you'll probably enjoy _Scholars and soldiers_ (a book of > short stories) because it contains 2 novellas ("Beggars in satin/The knot > garden") in the same universe. The other stories (except the silly "The > Tarot Dice") in the book are good as well. I was very disappointed in > _Architecture of desire_ (the next in the _Rats..._ sequence); it seemed to > have lost the bite and acquired a whine. I think anyone of Cromwell's > "plain, russet-coated captains" would have given Gentle's Lord Protector > Olivia a swift well-deserved kick in the butt. > Rats and Gargoyles is one of my favorite fantasies. I love the idea of setting up a world where there are five directions. I agree that the sequel, The Architecture of Desire, is not as good, but it has its moments. There's also a novella length work which is about the same characters, but set in an SF universe, called Left to His Own Devices. Mike ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 23:39:17 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Joyce Jones Subject: Re: who's in control, the author or the character? Susan wrote >>I thought the issue of motive in the X-Files episode was interesting...how the writer's task was to understand his characters' motives. When he realized he misread Scully's motives and feelings the other character forced him to keep on with the story. I liked that the episode suggested the incredible power of imagination. But Scully seemed a little under-upset when she found out this guy had been stalking her for some time. Seems like there was something important r.e. the motive of the writer in his conversation with the Brazilian character. He couldn't love? Did you catch that?<< I think Scully's lack of alarm, aside from the fact that she's a hot shot FBI agent and capable of kicking butt, was part of the power of the guy's imagination. He imagined she would come to him, so she did. That should be a little easier than resurrecting the dead. I think he said Scully was the first one he thought he could love, either that caused his obsession, or the obsession caused him to think he loved her. One more season of X-files, I think. Wouldn't it be lovely if she and Muldur didn't get together at the end? Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 02:08:05 -0500 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: SF/F and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 19 Apr 99, at 19:30, Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSag wrote: > One reason so many missionaries come from this area is > that we were heavily settled by Mennonites, > Hutterites, the Amish, and other northern European > groups who often see missionary work as integral to their > religious paths...[snip]. It doesn't surprise me > that many of them need a security blanket of a sort, > since they pretty much keep to themselves here at home. You're probably right. But it's not "religious" missionaries in the strict sense that cause real problems. They tend to do good work, especially in disaster relief, and respect the views of the locals. The greatest danger comes from "missionaries" bearing the "religion" of Western liberalism and the peculiar views some of these people develop. One US nurse I knew of in Africa - who was into every liberal cause in the book - didn't believe HIV led to AIDS, and was responsible for hundreds of infections amongst Zambian and Tanzanian women. Recently a British aid worker tried to introduce the pagan "Great Goddess" religion to a pious Muslim community in Indonesia and was badly beaten by a group of women. The uneasy mixture of hidden contempt and fake "respect" that some liberal people have for the "natives" in Africa or Asia has to be seen to be believed. Even apparently rational Western protests can have unfortunate effects. Some time ago, a note protesting the actions of missionaries in protecting Thai women from being sold into prostitution was circulated on this list. Thai friends tell me that although the missionaries concerned were undoubtedly arrogant, they were supported by the girls. The liberals of the West who protested were, in fact, supporting a campaign started and maintained by an "association" of Bangkok pimps and brothelkeepers who'd seen their supplies of "fresh meat" slashed. Here one would have thought that sf/f could play a role in depressing cultural arrogance. Stories around the theme of "Terrans destroying the ecology, cultures and lives of peaceful aliens by unthinkingly introducing new ideas and inappropriate technology" are pretty common. And almost every author these days introduces some sort of "Prime Directive" a la Star Trek which forbids advanced races interfering in the culture of more backward ones. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 02:09:40 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Anthea Hartley Stanton Subject: Teenagers' feministsf reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 19 Apr 99, at 19:30, Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > Interestingly (and to sort of keep this on topic), I never hear my > officemate talk of the recreational reading her daughter or the > boyfriend do. I don't think they read at all. Almost none of my > students do. They don't see the value in it, they don't miss it, > and they don't understand how this lack keeps them out of contact > with the larger world. My two cents.... Based on my personal experience, I wonder how many parents really know what and how much their children read. My father (who's been a voracious reader all his life) says that *his* parents used to tell *him* that he wasn't reading enough but *he* did same thing with my brothers and myself - even though he could see us reading a lot. So I always take "she's not reading enough" with a pinch of salt. What *are* teenage girls reading in feminist SF/F these days anyway? Although I've got two older nieces (one 13, the other 11), I really haven't the faintest idea what they read. The girls usually just want to talk fashion, clothes or make-up when I meet them, and I'm too awkward with children to ask them straight out. Siobhan (the oldest) lives in Poland and I'm sure that she must be having trouble getting suitable books. Any suggestions for book gifts anyone has would be very welcome. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 06:36:30 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: SF/F and mind broadening MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anthea wrote: (snip) Recently a British aid worker >tried to introduce the pagan "Great Goddess" religion to a pious Muslim >community in Indonesia and was badly beaten by a group of women. This shouldn't have made me laugh--it wouldn't have if I were a better and more ethical person--but it did. The uneasy >mixture of hidden contempt and fake "respect" that some liberal people have >for the "natives" in Africa or Asia has to be seen to be believed. Ah, but it's the same at home. While I would never characterize myself as a conservative, since people who do call themselves conservative--in my experience and humble opinion--tend to be less willing to see other points of view than their own and to have a great need to see most societal problems as coming from some outside source which must be hunted down and killed, but the classic "white liberal" viewpoint is also not attractive to me. Too often, people who characterize themselves as liberal have a patronizing attitude: that British aid worker, I'm sure, has read a lot of feminist theology/thealogy, and believes that the Great Goddess is archetypally identical to Fatima, the Madonna, Athena, etc., and so is upset and confused when she must confront people who insist on taking their own religion literally and seriously. . . . Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 08:19:24 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Marsha Valance Subject: Re: Teenagers' feministsf reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit My 16-year-old niece enjoys Pamela Dean and Josepha Sherman. The 14-year-old is on Andre Norton, Robin McKinley and Kara Dalkey. Marsha Valance Wisconsin Regional Library f/t Blind & Physically Handicapped 813 West Wells Street Milwaukee, WI 53233-1436 "That All May Read!" My opinions are my own--the library wouldn't want them! >>> Anthea Hartley Stanton 04/20 2:09 AM >>> On 19 Apr 99, at 19:30, Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > Interestingly (and to sort of keep this on topic), I never hear my > officemate talk of the recreational reading her daughter or the > boyfriend do. I don't think they read at all. Almost none of my > students do. They don't see the value in it, they don't miss it, > and they don't understand how this lack keeps them out of contact > with the larger world. My two cents.... Based on my personal experience, I wonder how many parents really know what and how much their children read. My father (who's been a voracious reader all his life) says that *his* parents used to tell *him* that he wasn't reading enough but *he* did same thing with my brothers and myself - even though he could see us reading a lot. So I always take "she's not reading enough" with a pinch of salt. What *are* teenage girls reading in feminist SF/F these days anyway? Although I've got two older nieces (one 13, the other 11), I really haven't the faintest idea what they read. The girls usually just want to talk fashion, clothes or make-up when I meet them, and I'm too awkward with children to ask them straight out. Siobhan (the oldest) lives in Poland and I'm sure that she must be having trouble getting suitable books. Any suggestions for book gifts anyone has would be very welcome. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 07:00:41 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Kimberley Snow Subject: Marriages Between Zones Three, Four & Five In-Reply-To: <199904200500.AAA44256@piglet.cc.uic.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Doris Lessing's Marriages Between Zones Three, Four & Five is also one of my favorite books. Did you know that it was out of print, with no plans to bring it back? Kimberley http://www.snowlight.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 09:12:08 -0500 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: Teenagers' feministsf reading In-Reply-To: <19990420070937.6500.qmail@nw179.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 19 Apr 99, at 19:30, Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > > What *are* teenage girls reading in feminist SF/F these days anyway? Although > I've got two older nieces (one 13, the other 11), I really haven't the > faintest idea what they read. The girls usually just want to talk fashion, > clothes or make-up when I meet them, and I'm too awkward with children to ask > them straight out. Siobhan (the oldest) lives in Poland and I'm sure that she > must be having trouble getting suitable books. Any suggestions for book gifts > anyone has would be very welcome. > Can't vouch for their feminist content, but my daughter is part of a group of 11 year old girlss who read fantasy rather voraciously. Their favorite books, just copying things down off her bookshelf in the room next door: Ella Enchanted (don't know the author's name but it was a Newbery runner up a couple of years ago) The Redwall series by Brian Jacques The Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate (I think those are her initials) The Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen The Ear, the Eye and the Arm by Nancy Farmer More Minds by Carol Matas and Perry Nodelman Tuck Everlasting and The Eyes of the Amaryllis by Natalie Babbitt My Teacher is an Alien and sequels by Bruce Coville Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 07:19:48 PDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Rebecca Neville Subject: teenagers and sci-fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain On 19 Apr 99, at 19:30, Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > Interestingly (and to sort of keep this on topic), I never hear my > officemate talk of the recreational reading her daughter or the > boyfriend do. I don't think they read at all. I think it depends a lot on the teenagers. I suspect that the percentage of teenagers that read a lot on their own is similar to the percentage of adults who read a lot on their own. Certainly most of my friends (all like me around 18 years of age) do and always have. > Almost none of my > students do. They don't see the value in it, they don't miss it, > and they don't understand how this lack keeps them out of contact > with the larger world. Perhaps i think it really depends on the teenagers in question. Personally i'm tired of being told that teenagers don't have contact w/ the larger world and are all complete slackers. Certainly there are teenagers like that, but there are adults like that too. What *are* teenage girls reading in feminist SF/F these days anyway? Depends on the girl and their reading level. I read the same thing adult readers of fem. sf/f read, and have been doing so for a while. The girls usually just want to talk fashion, clothes or make-up when I meet them, and I'm too awkward with children to ask them straight out. Siobhan (the oldest) lives in Poland and I'm sure that she must be having trouble getting suitable books. Any suggestions for book gifts anyone has would be very welcome. If they are more into clothes and fashion and such than they would probably rather read more romance and less hard sci/fi but thats just a generalization. A lot of girls I know like things like the Mists of Avolyn even if they are not big sci/fi fans. Hope that is somewhat helpful and i don't mean to sound harsh but i am tired of being seen as part of some large apathetic mass of coach potatoes -Rebecca _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 09:52:33 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Candioglos, Sandy" Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Rebecca, I don't think Sheryl (or anybody here) was implying that all teenagers are slackers or don't read; I got the impression that she was talking very specifically about one particular Mennonite town, and her students in even more particular (and she's in a reasonable position to know about their reading habits, one would think). What you're seeing here is a few thoughtful adults for whom reading is _central to their lives_ who happen to know teenagers who couldn't care less about books. They're just trying to reassure themselves that what they're seeing is NOT the norm. I don't think they're assuming that it is. :) I can understand your reaction, though; I only graduated from HS 10 years ago, and my close group of friends all read voraciously, as did most of the rest of the kids in my honors classes. I lived through the same kind of comments and preconceptions. You don't need to be quite so defensive on this list, though. :) Personally, I really REALLY wish I'd had something like this list when I was a teenager; neither of my parents "get" SF/F, but I started being interested in it at a VERY young age, and was rather indescriminate in what I read, because my parents couldn't help me. I found a couple of friends by middle school who were also into it, and who had parents or older siblings who read SF/F, but then we moved apart after high school, and I had a housemate in college whose collection of feminist fantasy I raided on a regular basis for the year we lived together (she's where I actually became consciously aware of feminism in SF/F), and then my current BF has some Tepper, which I just _inhaled_ (interestingly, he bought the books, but he's never been that into them, and hasn't even read some of them at all). In the year that I've been on this list, I feel like I've gotten a new lease on life; it feels so good to get so many recommendations for so many _good_ books, and reading all the discussion has made me much more conscious of my reactions when I read, and much more aware of the underlying messages of the stories I read. -Sandy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 13:23:31 -0500 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: teenagers and sci-fi In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Candioglos, Sandy wrote: > Rebecca, I don't think Sheryl (or anybody here) was implying that all > teenagers are slackers or don't read; I got the impression that she was > talking very specifically about one particular Mennonite town, and her > students in even more particular (and she's in a reasonable position to know > about their reading habits, one would think). What you're seeing here is a > few thoughtful adults for whom reading is _central to their lives_ who > happen to know teenagers who couldn't care less about books. They're just > trying to reassure themselves that what they're seeing is NOT the norm. I > don't think they're assuming that it is. :) > Well of course most teenagers don't read! at least in the United States, at least not books. Most AMERICANS don't read. I don't know what the current stats are, but a couple of years ago I saw a statistic that, not counting required professional or school read,ing the average American read just over 1 book a year. The average British/French/German/Swedish/ Japanese/etc. read anywhere from 4 to 15 books a year. Americans, on average, read less than in any other western country. These statistics have nothing to do with the indeniable fact that there are many American teens who read enormous amounts (my not-quite teen daughter devours a book a week, and her friend Katie reads twice that), but such kids are the exception, just as those adults (ie. most of us) who read a lot are the exception. Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 14:47:06 -0500 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: labor & feminism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 18 Apr 99, at 22:48, Laura Quilter wrote: > one very excellent book that i *love* is Alice Nunn's THE ILLICIT PASSAGE > (women's redress press, australia, 1992) - *very* good on class issues. > however, it's hard as hell to get any copies. _The Illicit Passage_ was recommended (as _The Illegal Passage_) by someone on another list. BUT... I'm afraid it's also difficult to get a copy in Britain as my secretary found out when she phoned around. I'll have to have another try when I'm actually there on Thursday and Friday. Otherwise I'm going to have to resort to heroic measures... Thanks Laura AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 14:49:49 -0500 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: Teenagers' feministsf reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 20 Apr 99, at 8:19, Marsha Valance wrote: > ...The 14-year-old is on Andre Norton, Robin McKinley > and Kara Dalkey. I don't know Dalkey, but of course Norton is ideal. Mike [Stanton] has a McKinley (about ?"Robin Hood") stashed away, classified for some reason as "historical" - I must read it. On 20 Apr 99, at 9:12, Michael Marc Levy wrote: > Can't vouch for their feminist content, but my > daughter is part of a group of 11 year old girlss > who read fantasy rather voraciously [snip] Thanks, Mike - the _Redwall_ series is a particular useful one. In fact I think there are several of those animal sequences (like William Horwood's _Duncton Wood_ etc) which I must hunt out on Thursday. On 20 Apr 99, at 7:19, Rebecca Neville wrote: > If they are more into clothes and fashion and > such than they would probably rather read more > romance and less hard sci/fi but thats just a > generalization. Tsk, tsk! That's not only generalizing, it's also stereotyping . To do some stereotyping of my own: instead being teenage scruffs, these two girls go to the other extreme which - to do well - takes both training and cash. The only person they can cajole into supplying both is their "elderly" aunt, Anthea who they rarely see. So instead of wasting limited time talking when we meet, they concentrate on extracting info and cash! AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 16:23:40 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: Marriages Between Zones Three, Four & Five MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I knew, but isn't the collected five-volume set still available? Or did I get one of the last copies? Sheryl -----Original Message----- From: Kimberley Snow To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Date: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 9:02 AM Subject: [*FSFFU*] Marriages Between Zones Three, Four & Five >Doris Lessing's Marriages Between Zones Three, Four & Five is also one of >my favorite books. Did you know that it was out of print, with no plans to >bring it back? >Kimberley >http://www.snowlight.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 16:42:45 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jane Franklin Subject: Re: SF/F and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I was using "sophisticated" more in the sense of "a sophisticated analysis of Derrida's overlap with Marx", rather than in some sense related to chosing a table wine I suppose that one can come up with an Arabian Knights-like list of pejoratives for any city in the world, if one likes. Let's see: Chicago, the lair of the most corrupt minor officials this side of, say, Canton, Chicago, stinking home to a thousand thousand gallons of PCBs, Chicago, land of the derelict and the drab, land of the drive-by...Chicago, home of America's only officially designated Police Riot....etc. I'm not really sure how this advances the discussion, and it interests me that such lists are usually used to describe "exotic" places from a First World perspective. This whole discussion bothers me in a way I can't quite pinpoint. Maybe it's the assumption that priviledge equals innate superiority--I didn't travel when I was a small 'un because my family was too poor, not because my parents had any objection to the major cities of the world. Now one could argue that if the 'rents were really worthwhile human beings, they would have parlayed their talents into a pile of dough from IBM or General Electric, and hence could have hauled us around Europe. Or perhaps simply have had the dough in the first place. Maybe it's the assumption that being from the Midwest is analogous to small-mindedness and a need for some sort of ideological "security blanket". Trust me, folks, I've been abroad and working just like Anthea has, and as far as I could tell there was fairly little correlation between nasty demands for McFood and McLodging and McCulture and lower class or Midwestern origins. Perhaps in the upper echelons of coporate America, the educated and interesting working poor just don't register on the radar . Every post I've read on this thread has at its root an enormous class/regional arrogance. Us hicks out here in the Midwest, us poor people whose families were so foolish as not to accumulate fortunes--yeah, the spread of AIDS is our fault. Even when we are liberal or left or whatever, we GET IT WRONG. I've been biting back all kinds of comments about the ethics of multinational corporations on the assumption that Anthea is not engaged in sweatshop-peddling. But really, this whole thing is getting a little ludicrous. You may find me in the Midwest, where I intend to stay until I leave this ridiculous country. >>> Anthea Hartley Stanton 04/19 3:44 PM >>> On 19 Apr 99, at 11:08, Jane Franklin wrote: > See, that's why I think Peoria is such a poor analogy. > Peoria is nice. My dad went to school there, I've been > there to visit, and it's on my list of "industrial > tourism" dream driving holidays. I used it because a chap I met in Chicago two weeks ago, used to say "we'll see how it plays in Peoria, Ill". Foolishly I got the idea it was a cultural wasteland instead of Paris on the prairie . From now on I use Dullsville (unless there really is such a place). > I think Peoria could prepare you quite well for Karachi... Are we taking about Karachi, Pakistan - the Cloaca Maxima, the Home of Ten Billion Beggars, the Den of the Most Murderous Thieves this side of Manila, the Lair of the Worst Doctors in the World... > ... feminist sf did have an appreciable effect when I was a small > 'un. Did it have more effect than other mind-broadening things? > Well, on me, at times, yes. But that's because I liked science > fiction. By which, (I think) you imply, the "feminist" and the things peculiar to "feminist sf" were not in and of themselves *especially* influential. Other science fiction, I seem to her you saying, was at least equally as important. > I expect that a course of late Qing novels or a history of the > French Directorate would have had the same effect The first, yes but would the second? Directory France wasn't that different from us but Imperial China (even of the 1800s)... The reason I say this is the ENORMOUS effect Robert van Gulik's _Judge Dee_ novels had on me when I read them at 10. The culture in China of the T'ang Dynasty seemed so alien to me that I had difficulty almost in believing it had ever existed; it seemed more alien than ERB's Barsoom! > The thing is, it is often helpful when young to have some sort of > sophistication-installing experience. For the lucky among us, > growing up a in good-sized city provides that. As I've said elsewhere, I can't recall "foreign" cities as being sophisticated - and I grew up, as I've said elsewhere, in Ireland. I don't know whether children growing up in normal middle-class circles get that sophisticated anywhere (not in the sense of "having worldly knowledge and refinement and savoir faire"). I spent my last term before university at school in Basel with bourgeois teenagers from most of the capitals of Europe and I don't recall any of them being particularly sophisticated (unless you define it as "not shaving one's armpits, carrying condoms and frenetically humping the local yokels"!). What I think travel or life in a city teaches one is to at ease with, and accepting of, people with strange customs and culture. Which is the effect I would have thought sf/f could have on someone who's never travelled. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 16:39:03 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit -----Original Message----- From: Rebecca Neville To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Date: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 9:30 AM Subject: [*FSFFU*] teenagers and sci-fi >On 19 Apr 99, at 19:30, Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > > > Interestingly (and to sort of keep this on topic), I never hear my > > officemate talk of the recreational reading her daughter or the > > boyfriend do. I don't think they read at all. > >I think it depends a lot on the teenagers. I suspect that the >percentage of teenagers that read a lot on their own is similar to the >percentage of adults who read a lot on their own. Certainly most of my >friends (all like me around 18 years of age) do and always have. > >> Almost none of my >> students do. They don't see the value in it, they don't miss it, >> and they don't understand how this lack keeps them out of contact >> with the larger world. > >Perhaps i think it really depends on the teenagers in question. >Personally i'm tired of being told that teenagers don't have contact w/ >the larger world and are all complete slackers. Certainly there are >teenagers like that, but there are adults like that too. Of course you're right about adults not reading either. I thought it more information than the list needed or wanted, but it might help my point if you understand that my students are college-aged (that is, they range in age from 18 to 50) people who failed the various tests which would have placed them into the normal first-year composition class. I try to teach them the basic grammar, sentence structure, organization, logic, etc. which will allow them to write in an academic style. I've taught this class for the last two semesters, and I have also done research specifically into the relationship between recreational--NOT assigned--reading and sentence complexity in student essays. My research was informal and not extensive, but it did seem to show a strong relationship. It doesn't seem to matter if they read Dean Koontz or Angela Carter--it's seeing the words on the page in an enjoyable situation that improves their writing. And I can also safely say that my students are pretty much unaware of the world beyond their own lives. They are, for logical reasons, more concerned with getting their missing spouses to pay child support, with finding a home so they aren't on the streets for the summer, with finding childcare for their kids, with paying bills, and occasionally (but too, too often) with having to go to the funerals of their murdered relatives. My point is that they don't believe the greater world is really important to them, or they don't know quite how to get access to it, or they don't have the time to worry about it. But I do know that some of them have never heard of Kosovo, don't know what Barnes and Noble is, and didn't realize that John Lovitz didn't really write the Yellow Pages. They are way, way, way behind and I hope they can catch up. Some of them might.... Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 18:44:09 -0800 Reply-To: shander@cdsnet.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sharon Anderson Subject: sf and mind broadening MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit You don't have to live in a small town to grow up in a cultural wasteland. I grew up in San Diego. (Okay, so both my parents were born and raised in Peoria. ) Nevertheless. My mom quit school in the fifth grade; my dad in the tenth. The most literary article in our house while I was growing up was the weekly Life magazine. We didn't get National Geographic. Too many words.) Both my parents actively and vocally scorned any of the costumed screechers or toe dancers which happened to be on TV, and promptly changed the channel to Roller Derby. On Sunday nights, I used to curl up in my grandmother's bedroom for a taste of exotica that Ed Sullivan provided. Among the many culinary unknowns (until a friend introduced them to me, when I was fourteen) were rice, water chestnuts, and deviled ham. I started reading as a means of escape from the cultural isolation in which I found myself. My church was the bookmobile, which came near enough that I could ride my bike to it on Saturday afternoon. I read everything; but favorites were books by Edward Eager and Eleanor Cameron. Later, Andre Norton. All the way through my own school career, I was aware of being a geek. (The word "nerd" hadn't yet entered our vocabulary.) Particularly for reading science fiction. Some of my acquaintances actually thought that it was BECAUSE I read sf that I was weird. Most of my classmates let me know that a "better" choice in reading material would be a positive first step toward entry into the real world, where normal people lived. Sharon L. Anderson ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 00:40:09 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Laurel A. Lamme" Subject: Re: Teenagers' feministsf reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My suggestions for early teenage feminist SF/F would be: Dragon of the Lost Sea and sequels by Laurence Yep The Darkangel Trilogy (The Darkangel, A Gathering of Gargoyles, The Pearl of the Soul of the World) and the Firebringer Trilogy (Birth of the Firebringer, two others) by Meredith Ann Pierce Arrows of the Queen trilogy by Mercedes Lackey Dealing with Dragons and sequels by Patricia Wrede Moon-Flash and The Moon and the Face by Patricia McKillip I hope these and the other lists that people have written will also be applied to teenage boys, as I have a teenage brother whom I introduced to feminist SF/F at an early age, and he seems to thrive on it! Laurel lalamme@ufl.edu > >What *are* teenage girls reading in feminist SF/F these days anyway? Although >I've got two older nieces (one 13, the other 11), I really haven't the >faintest idea what they read. The girls usually just want to talk fashion, >clothes or make-up when I meet them, and I'm too awkward with children to ask >them straight out. Siobhan (the oldest) lives in Poland and I'm sure that she >must be having trouble getting suitable books. Any suggestions for book gifts >anyone has would be very welcome. > > > > >AJ >Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) > >____________________________________________________________________ >Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 22:34:09 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: [Fwd: [*FSFFU*] SF/F and mind broadening] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------93969382F6E3243A43FBD7A5" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------93969382F6E3243A43FBD7A5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Forgive me if this is a duplicate posting. I never saw it resurface in my Inbox. --------------93969382F6E3243A43FBD7A5 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <371BFA24.DE201CD@csulb.edu> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 20:53:09 -0700 From: Dave Samuelson X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] SF/F and mind broadening References: <001701be8ac5$03ff3580$3baac0d8@default> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------0F15894F5F4EB657ECFE0B7E" --------------0F15894F5F4EB657ECFE0B7E Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > One reason so many missionaries come from this area is that we were heavily > settled by Mennonites, Hutterites, the Amish, and other northern European > groups who often see missionary work as integral to their religious paths. My > office-mate lives in a Mennonite town, and her daughter looks to be about > ready to marry a young man who is busy getting his pilot's license and an > education degree so that he can do missionary work in Africa. It doesn't > surprise me that many of them need a security blanket of a sort, since they > pretty much keep to themselves here at home. If Wichita scares them with its > wordliness and sin potential, I can only imagine how they react to a whole new > continent. Interestingly (and to sort of keep this on topic), I never hear my > officemate talk of the recreational reading her daughter or the boyfriend do. > I don't think they read at all. Almost none of my students do. They don't > see the value in it, they don't miss it, and they don't understand how this > lack keeps them out of contact with the larger world. My two cents.... > > Sheryl You say they don't understand how it keeps them out of contact... As the son of two Salvation Army officers with all the relatives on my mother's side into one mainstream religion or another, my experience was that most of them didn't want me or any of my cousins in contact with the larger world. Since I was the odd duck or changeling, the sickly intellectual child who read for company (and became a first generation college student), my parents left me alone to read, which brought me to sf at about age 13 (1952). Reading in general may have broadened me (or fed my imagination) but in youth I read series books for young people and rejected the classics. For some reason (partly the one world sensibility of sf), I was a gender and racial egalitarian (far beyond my relatively enlightened parents) as early as high school and long before I ever heard of feminist sf. On the other hand, I've run into many people (including women) for whom sf (even feminist sf) is a "fix," like a methadone dose compensating for true and imagined slights in the "real" world. Sf may raise your sights if their relatively low to begin with, but I suspect that its provincial repetitiousness does not necessarily breed open-mindedness. --------------0F15894F5F4EB657ECFE0B7E Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote:
One reason so many missionaries come from this area is that we were heavily settled by Mennonites, Hutterites, the Amish, and other northern European groups who often see missionary work as integral to their religious paths.  My office-mate lives in a Mennonite town, and her daughter looks to be about
ready to marry a young man who is busy getting his pilot's license and an education degree so that he can do missionary work in Africa.  It doesn't surprise me that many of them need a security blanket of a sort, since they pretty much keep to themselves here at home.  If Wichita scares them with its wordliness and sin potential, I can only imagine how they react to a whole new continent.  Interestingly (and to sort of keep this on topic), I never hear my officemate talk of the recreational reading her daughter or the boyfriend do.  I don't think they read at all.  Almost none of my students do.  They don't see the value in it, they don't miss it, and they don't understand how this lack keeps them out of contact with the larger world.  My two cents....

Sheryl


You say they don't understand how it keeps them out of contact...

As the son of two Salvation Army officers with all the relatives on my mother's side into one mainstream religion or another, my experience was that most of them didn't want me or any of my cousins in contact with the larger world.  Since I was the odd duck or changeling, the sickly intellectual child who read for company (and became a first generation college student), my parents left me alone to read, which brought me to sf at about age 13 (1952).  Reading in general may have broadened me (or fed my imagination) but in youth I read series books for young people and rejected the classics.  For some reason (partly the one world sensibility of sf), I was a gender and racial egalitarian (far beyond my relatively enlightened parents) as early as high school and long before I ever heard of feminist sf.

On the other hand, I've run into many people (including women) for whom sf (even feminist sf) is a "fix," like a methadone dose  compensating for true and imagined slights in the "real" world.  Sf may raise your sights if their relatively low to begin with, but I suspect that its provincial repetitiousness does not necessarily breed open-mindedness.
  --------------0F15894F5F4EB657ECFE0B7E-- --------------93969382F6E3243A43FBD7A5-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 02:59:15 -0500 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: sf and mind broadening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 20 Apr 99, at 18:44, Sharon Anderson wrote: > All the way through my own school career, I was aware of being a > geek. (The word "nerd" hadn't yet entered our vocabulary.) > Particularly for reading science fiction. Some of my acquaintances > actually thought that it was BECAUSE I read sf that I was weird. Sharon's raised what I think are two important points here. The first and most obvious is "Does one's reading make one into what one is or or does one choose one's reading to match one's real or hoped-for self-image?" Or does what we read have nothing whatsoever to do with what or who we are? Or perhaps our reading tastes are like our tastes in condiments - the product of a more or less enduring whim. An extreme example of this question (taking it to ridiculous limits) would, of course, be the debate on the relationship between sex crimes and erotica/pornography. > Most of my classmates let me know that a > "better" choice in reading material would be > a positive first step toward entry into > the real world, where normal people lived. The second point is particularly topical in the light of the Columbine High School tragedy where the two suspects were described as part of a group of "outsiders" (known as the "Trench Coat Mafia") at the school. "Does what one reads read make one identifiably different from one's classmates / workmates / social circle?" Clearly the comments by Sharon's classmates were uncomplimentary but is that as far as it goes or could things turn nasty? Is it conceivable that what one reads, or even because one reads, could so offend one's classmates etc that one becomes an actively-disliked or despised "outsider"? I myself was in a small school (188 pupils the year I left). The teachers knew everyone's weaknesses and strengths, took care to ensure all children were drawn into socialization and, unusually for Europe, there was no "bullying". But there were still outsiders. Being an outsider wasn't necessarily bad of course. For example, being part of an "established couple" immediately made one an outsider while at the same time conferring a backhanded social cachet. Other people - the nerds, geeks or just loners - were outsiders by choice and were either respected for it (if they were bright) or ignored. But there were a very few *actively* scorned "outsiders" - children with whom nobody could get along and who were deliberately, obviously, sometimes cruelly excluded from social activities. In our society none of them were excluded because of their reading, but does it happen elsewhere? After all, Feminist sf/f is clearly a minority reading taste. It covers controversial topics in ways that many people (especially "conservative Christians") would reject. The views on sexual orientation, innovative economic systems, abortion and "family values, for example, expressed in much femSF/F clearly raise the bloodpressure of some people who consider themselves "liberal" let alone the many conservatives around. So if any reading could cause one to be actively disliked within one's community, feminist sf/f is surely it. Does anyone know of cases where this has happened? AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 03:01:17 -0500 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: teenagers and sci-fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 20 Apr 99, at 13:23, Michael Marc Levy wrote: > Well of course most teenagers don't read! at least > in the United States, at least not books > ...[snip] ... Americans, on average, read > less than in any other western country. Perhaps there's a good and valid reason for that. The reasons *we* (ie those of us in this discussion) read is (generally) for pleasure or information. If we could obtain the pleasure or information elsewhere more easily and efficiently, would we be wrong to abandon the physical act of reading? Taking a science-fiction example: if we could plug in a modem cable and get data for "profit and pleasure" delivered directly to the brain, wouldn't we be foolish to carry on using a much less efficient method of data transfer? I think it's generally accepted that Americans have by far and away greater access to non-reading information and pleasure sources than anywhere else in the world especially if one considers the dozens or even hundreds of US broadcast, cable and satellite television channels showing entertainment and providing info 24 hours a day. Maybe it's not necessary for them to read in a way that Europeans, for example, are compelled to. Why read a book or news paper and have to pick out the facts oneself if one can listen to CNN for pre-digested, politically correct, news compressed into 30 second video bites? Perhaps we're entering a post-reading age and the reason why Americans read less than other Western people is that they are the leading edge of the revolution. Maybe illiteracy is *good*, even the next step along the road to the perfect culture. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) (who's feeling in a provocative, devil's advocate type mood today) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 07:37:15 -0400 Reply-To: asaro@sff.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Catherine Asaro Subject: Teenagers' feministsf reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My daughter is eight/almost nine, so she doesn't really qualify as a teenager (though it seems to be coming on fast! ). She does read well above her grade level, though. The SF she most recently read was A WRINKLE IN TIME, which she absolutely loved. She read it, then reread it, and told me that she kept on thinking about it. -- Best regards Catherine Asaro http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 08:26:56 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hm. Your points about why we read got me to thinking, Anthea. I would agree that I often read for "data transfer," especially now that I'm (supposed to be) studying for my Master's comprehensive exams. And yes, here in the Land of Efficiency (hee!) we do have lots and lots of sources of information, many of which we almost can't get away from, to choose from. I know I don't need to go into the differences in brain function that occur in reading as opposed to TV. . . but there are some reasons for reading actual books that you didn't mention. What about the smell? What smells better--ok, baking bread, the back of a cat's head, a pine forest, but stay with me--than a good-quality book, with its different inks and cloth or leather binding? And how can we quantify the feeling of heft and suppleness that we get from a well-bound trade paperback? And don't you all love the flupflupflupflup of pages in one of those monstrous tomes printed on bible paper? OK, maybe the last one is a stretch, and it occurrs to me because I've carrying the Norton anthology around for too long--but reading is a sensual experience which goes far beyond the intake of information, don't you agree? Or do I hear a strained silence, a long pause, and then an echoing voice announcing, "No, Sheryl......It's Just You." ? >Perhaps there's a good and valid reason for that. The reasons *we* (ie those >of us in this discussion) read is (generally) for pleasure or information. If >we could obtain the pleasure or information elsewhere more easily and >efficiently, would we be wrong to abandon the physical act of reading? > >Taking a science-fiction example: if we could plug in a modem cable and get >data for "profit and pleasure" delivered directly to the brain, wouldn't we be >foolish to carry on using a much less efficient method of data transfer? > >I think it's generally accepted that Americans have by far and away greater >access to non-reading information and pleasure sources than anywhere else in >the world especially if one considers the dozens or even hundreds of US >broadcast, cable and satellite television channels showing entertainment and >providing info 24 hours a day. Maybe it's not necessary for them to read in a >way that Europeans, for example, are compelled to. Why read a book or news >paper and have to pick out the facts oneself if one can listen to CNN for >pre-digested, politically correct, news compressed into 30 second video bites? > >Perhaps we're entering a post-reading age and the reason why Americans read >less than other Western people is that they are the leading edge of the >revolution. Maybe illiteracy is *good*, even the next step along the road to >the perfect culture. > > > >AJ >Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) > (who's feeling in a provocative, devil's advocate type mood today) > > >____________________________________________________________________ >Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:51:08 -0400 Reply-To: kamholse@fuse.net Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Sally Kamholtz Subject: Re: Teenagers' feministsf reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > What *are* teenage girls reading in feminist SF/F these days anyway? Although > I've got two older nieces (one 13, the other 11), I really haven't the > faintest idea what they read. The girls usually just want to talk fashion, > clothes or make-up when I meet them, and I'm too awkward with children to ask > them straight out. Siobhan (the oldest) lives in Poland and I'm sure that she > must be having trouble getting suitable books. Any suggestions for book gifts > anyone has would be very welcome. > > AJ > (ajhs@usa.net) > > Other work for young people whose feminism I cannot vouch for, but which has interesting female characters, is Philip Pullman's Golden Compass and Subtle Knife (and a promised third this summer). My daughter and I had a wonderful time reading these. She says it's way up there with Wrinkle in Time (the book that started me in SF, back when I was in 5th grade, in the dark ages).Sally Kamholtz ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 07:09:36 PDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Daniel Krashin Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain >Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 16:39:03 -0500 >From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage >Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi [snip] >Of course you're right about adults not reading either. I thought it more >information than the list needed or wanted, but it might help my point if >you understand that my students are college-aged (that is, they range in age >from 18 to 50) people who failed the various tests which would have placed >them into the normal first-year composition class. I try to teach >them the basic grammar, sentence structure, organization, logic, etc. >which will allow them to write in an academic style. I've taught >this class for >the last two semesters, and I have also done research specifically >into the relationship between recreational--NOT assigned--reading >and sentence >complexity in student essays. My research was informal and not >extensive, >but it did seem to show a strong relationship. It doesn't seem to >matter if >they read Dean Koontz or Angela Carter--it's seeing the words on the page in >an enjoyable situation that improves their writing. I have heard (from teachers of SF writing) that they see increasing numbers of would-be writers who *do not* read and *have not* read. They know few mainstream writers, and even few SF writers, and are ignorant of the history of the genre. These students typically make obvious and gross errors with language. I happen to be reading C.S. Lewis' "Experiment in Criticism" at the moment, so his distinction between good and bad literature and good and bad readers comes to mind. On a more political note, sometimes I suspect that the inability of American schools to teach students about American culture, history, or logical thought is a deliberate tactic to keep the public in "Bread and Circuses Mode." But I'm probably just being paranoid. Danny _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:23:45 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > >On a more political note, sometimes I suspect that the inability >of American schools to teach students about American culture, >history, or logical thought is a deliberate tactic to keep the >public in "Bread and Circuses Mode." But I'm probably >just being paranoid. > >Danny Well, this may be true, on an unconscious level, anyway. But also consider that what you and I might think of as "bread and circuses" might be thought "moral and Christian" by others. Here in Wichita, we have a controversy going on concerning a local high school curriculum, which includes several Neil Simon plays and also Macbeth. Some parents are trying to have these removed from reading lists because of foul language. I'm not sure what is wrong with Macbeth, but it's possible that they object to its "promotion of witchcraft." And no, I'm not kidding. I think that at the public high school level, as a nation, we want our kids turned into Good Citizens and Christians. We certainly _don't_ want them turned into critical thinkers, because, I think in my more cynical moments, then we can't get them to enlist in the army or support a rapacious government agenda. I say this as a veteran, by the way--I didn't know anything about anything when I was 18, any more than a lot of kids do today. Reading anything feminist, or most things SF, might sneak some opposing points of view into kids' heads, and then again the SF part might not. Depends on how much Heinlein and Niven they read.... my officemate, again--someday I'll have to tell you all her name--laments the lack of patriotism she sees in her students, but I wonder what she means by that. My lack of patriotism comes from having had a Top Secret security clearance and thus becoming jaded about US overseas operations. Maybe I'll write a thinly-veiled SF novel about that someday. Hm... Sheryl ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 10:32:53 -0500 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: teenagers and sci-fi In-Reply-To: <19990421080012.29601.qmail@.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 20 Apr 99, at 13:23, Michael Marc Levy wrote: > > > Well of course most teenagers don't read! at least > > in the United States, at least not books > > ...[snip] ... Americans, on average, read > > less than in any other western country. > > Perhaps there's a good and valid reason for that. The reasons *we* (ie those > of us in this discussion) read is (generally) for pleasure or information. If > we could obtain the pleasure or information elsewhere more easily and > efficiently, would we be wrong to abandon the physical act of reading? > > I think it's generally accepted that Americans have by far and away greater > access to non-reading information and pleasure sources than anywhere else in > the world especially if one considers the dozens or even hundreds of US > broadcast, cable and satellite television channels showing entertainment and > providing info 24 hours a day. Maybe it's not necessary for them to read in a > way that Europeans, for example, are compelled to. Why read a book or news > paper and have to pick out the facts oneself if one can listen to CNN for > pre-digested, politically correct, news compressed into 30 second video bites? > > Perhaps we're entering a post-reading age and the reason why Americans read > less than other Western people is that they are the leading edge of the > revolution. Maybe illiteracy is *good*, even the next step along the road to > the perfect culture. Yes and no. Ultimately, there's nothing innately holy about the reading experience. If a modem connection or television could provide the same info as efficiently, that's fine (not that I'd necessarily give up my books, though). Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. Studies also show that Americans tend to know less about world affairs than people in most other western countries and less about their own government than people in other western countries know about theirs. We are in fact using non-book media, but we're primarily using them for play. Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 21:21:16 +0000 Reply-To: mystgalaxy@ax.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: teenage reading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sharon: I loved Edward Eager too. My fave was SEVEN DAY MAGIC. Didn't you always want your copy to be the same one the kids found? Teens and sf reading. My 13 year old's primary source of SF reading is the Buffy novels (not novelizations, though). Which is otay by me. She just did a book report on Katie Waitman's DIVIDED, and is thinking of reading Connie Willis's REMAKE and has been enthralled with Francesca Lia Block's DANGEROUS ANGELS until the fifth volume (Baby BeBop?). One more optomistic way of looking at the one-book-per-year in the US statistic is that I do know friends who read daily, but read strictly periodicals. I'm sure this is a Pollyanna approach to the whole thing, but in an increasingly scary world where I'm sending my kids to school each day wondering if today will be the day someone decides to shoot other kids at the school, I'll take my optimism where I can make it. Maryelizabeth -- *********************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 619.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 619.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@ax.com *********************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 13:16:19 -0400 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: "texts" and reading (was: teenagers and sci-fi) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:32 AM 4/21/99 -0500, Mike Levy wrote: >> >> Perhaps we're entering a post-reading age and the reason why Americans read >> less than other Western people is that they are the leading edge of the >> revolution. Maybe illiteracy is *good*, even the next step along the road to >> the perfect culture. > > >Yes and no. Ultimately, there's nothing innately holy about the reading >experience. If a modem connection or television could provide the same >info as efficiently, that's fine (not that I'd necessarily give up my >books, though). >snipping insightful comments that don't directly relate to the brilliance I am about to impart upon the list< While I praise Mike's troubling of our tendency to prefer printed texts to non-print, I question the asserion that the act of reading a printed text should be prized for its efficiency above its other benefits (which may not even be what Mike really intended to argue). In fact, it is the imaginative interactivity which so many habitual readers bring to a text that is the most attractive facet of the reading experience to me. I find that creators of other media (film, music...) are able to "say in a story what can't be said in words" (to paraphrase Le Guin), but that it is primarily in reading printed texts that the audience engages in creating and maintaining a private vision of the shared, fabricated world. It seems to me that even the best of other art forms rarely provides such fertile ground for an audience member's personal creativity. Joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:22:13 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Danny Krashin wrote: > I have heard (from teachers of SF writing) that they see increasing > numbers of would-be writers who *do not* read and *have not* read. They > know few mainstream writers, and even few SF writers, and are ignorant > of the history of the genre. These students typically make obvious and > gross errors with language. Editors of academic fanzines (fsf) report similar findings in mss. contributed by budding scholars. > I happen to be reading C.S. Lewis' "Experiment in Criticism" at the > moment, so his distinction between good and bad literature and good and > bad readers comes to mind. The kind of reading Lewis posits is not simply medieval-bound. Close observation applies to "reading" everything, not just words. Cf. Gorgik's reading of the castle in Delany's "Tales from Neveryon." > On a more political note, sometimes I suspect that the inability of > American schools to teach students about American culture, history, or > logical thought is a deliberate tactic to keep the public in "Bread and > Circuses Mode." But I'm probably just being paranoid. Whatever teaching the schools can do is set in a larger context driven by commercial considerations. The focus is almost always on what's (allegedly) new or in. That may always have been the case for popular culture, but tv and the net have driven it further. The museum function of the educational system offers less-commercial contexts but in less-commercial delivery systems. Do we fight them or join them (more likely a little of both)? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:32:31 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > On 20 Apr 99, at 13:23, Michael Marc Levy wrote: > > > Well of course most teenagers don't read! at least in the United States, at > least not books > > ...[snip] ... Americans, on average, read less than in any other western > country. > > Perhaps there's a good and valid reason for that. The reasons *we* (ie those of > us in this discussion) read is (generally) for pleasure or information. If we > could obtain the pleasure or information elsewhere more easily and > efficiently, would we be wrong to abandon the physical act of reading? > > Taking a science-fiction example: if we could plug in a modem cable and get data > for "profit and pleasure" delivered directly to the brain, wouldn't we be > foolish to carry on using a much less efficient method of data transfer? > > I think it's generally accepted that Americans have by far and away greater > access to non-reading information and pleasure sources than anywhere else in the > world especially if one considers the dozens or even hundreds of US > broadcast, cable and satellite television channels showing entertainment and > providing info 24 hours a day. Maybe it's not necessary for them to read in a > way that Europeans, for example, are compelled to. Why read a book or news paper > and have to pick out the facts oneself if one can listen to CNN for > pre-digested, politically correct, news compressed into 30 second video bites? > > Perhaps we're entering a post-reading age and the reason why Americans read less > than other Western people is that they are the leading edge of the revolution. > Maybe illiteracy is *good*, even the next step along the road to > the perfect culture. We may be entering a post-reading age though not in a "weak" (passive?) sense. We still need to be able to read instructions, if not stop signs. Though iconography may be taking over, people who make signs and websites and tv programs still need to communicate through writing. In a "strong" (active?) sense, however, fewer people are willing to go through the effort of reading as critical interaction with text. I don't mean literary or media criticism per se (a refined or decadent variety), but engagement with plural and indeterminate meanings. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 14:09:37 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Misha Bernard Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi In-Reply-To: <004901be8c02$91652220$c264afce@default> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Connie Willis (I think it's in a collection of her short storie) has an excellent story about restricted literature and high schools- including Shakespeare's plays. She lives (I believe... at least the story's author does) in Greeley, CO where the Univesity of Northern Co. is- definately a cowtown. misha On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage wrote: > Well, this may be true, on an unconscious level, anyway. But also consider > that what you and I might think of as "bread and circuses" might be thought > "moral and Christian" by others. Here in Wichita, we have a controversy > going on concerning a local high school curriculum, which includes several > Neil Simon plays and also Macbeth. Some parents are trying to have these > removed from reading lists because of foul language. I'm not sure what is > wrong with Macbeth, but it's possible that they object to its "promotion of > witchcraft." And no, I'm not kidding. I think that at the public high > school level, as a nation, we want our kids turned into Good Citizens and > Christians. We certainly _don't_ want them turned into critical thinkers, > because, I think in my more cynical moments, then we can't get them to > enlist in the army or support a rapacious government agenda. I say this as > a veteran, by the way--I didn't know anything about anything when I was 18, > any more than a lot of kids do today. Reading anything feminist, or most > things SF, might sneak some opposing points of view into kids' heads, and > then again the SF part might not. Depends on how much Heinlein and Niven > they read.... my officemate, again--someday I'll have to tell you all her > name--laments the lack of patriotism she sees in her students, but I wonder > what she means by that. My lack of patriotism comes from having had a Top > Secret security clearance and thus becoming jaded about US overseas > operations. Maybe I'll write a thinly-veiled SF novel about that someday. > Hm... > Sheryl > Misha Bernard Cultural Studies PhD student mbernar1@gmu.edu George Mason University ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 11:29:56 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pamela Bedore Subject: Stealth Feminism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Someone used the term "stealth feminism" on this list a few weeks ago. I think it's a very useful term, especially when discussing "lighter" feminist science fiction, and I'm thinking of using it in a paper. Who should I credit? Has this term been used in publication? If not, I think it should be! Cheers, pamela bedore department of english simon fraser university ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 19:36:55 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >I have heard (from teachers of SF writing) that they see increasing >numbers of would-be writers who *do not* read and *have not* read. >They know few mainstream writers, and even few SF writers, and >are ignorant of the history of the genre. I don't understand this: why would people want to write books if they don't read them? (Maybe it's the very occasional megabucks advances some writers get? - the ones that get reported in the media - because I wouldn't have expected anyone to pick on writing books - presumably we are talking fiction here? - as a reliable way of making money). Or are the wouldbe writers thinking screenplays and TV rather than print? Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 14:50:44 -0500 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: teenagers and sci-fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit On 21 Apr 99, at 9:22, Dave Samuelson wrote: > Whatever teaching the schools can do is set in > a larger context driven by commercial considerations. > The focus is almost always on what's (allegedly) > new or in. That may always have been the case > for popular culture, but tv and the net have driven it > further. The museum function of the educational > system offers less-commercial contexts but in > less-commercial delivery systems. Do we > fight them or join them (more likely a little of both)? One of the biggest complaints I've heard from employers in the US and Britain is that few business major graduates can write decent English. For our recent job interviews on the US East & West coasts, our panels summarily rejected 190 of 430 (275 West & 155 East Coast) applications because the applicants couldn't write a decent single-page description of themselves. Almost 25% of the 112 applicants for the interviews we're having in London tomorrow and Friday were rejected for the same reason. The excuse I got from business lecturers in Britain was "It doesn't matter if our students can't write good English, provided you can work out what they mean. A secretary can always tidy up their writing. We don't like to prescribe rules to students because it stifles their imagination and initiative". I wonder whether this excuse is also used in the US. AJ Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) ____________________________________________________________________ Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 13:27:17 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Candioglos, Sandy" Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" AAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!! "It can be cleaned up by a secretary", indeed! That's a bit ironic, on secretary's day, huh? :) Because, of course, you know it's going to be the SECRETARY's fault if the manager was NOT able to make themselves understood. Not letting a 2-year-old get away with swearing at perfect strangers "stifles their imagination and initiative", too. -Sandy > -----Original Message----- > From: Anthea Hartley Stanton [mailto:ajhs@USA.NET] > Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 1999 12:51 PM > To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] teenagers and sci-fi > The excuse I got from business lecturers in Britain was "It > doesn't matter if > our students can't write good English, provided you can work > out what they > mean. A secretary can always tidy up their writing. We don't > like to prescribe > rules to students because it stifles their imagination and > initiative". I > wonder whether this excuse is also used in the US. > > > AJ > Anthea Hartley Stanton (ajhs@usa.net) > > > ____________________________________________________________________ > Get free e-mail and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 15:31:13 -0500 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: teenagers and sci-fi In-Reply-To: <19990421194327.10558.qmail@.netaddress.usa.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > > The excuse I got from business lecturers in Britain was "It doesn't matter if > our students can't write good English, provided you can work out what they > mean. A secretary can always tidy up their writing. We don't like to prescribe > rules to students because it stifles their imagination and initiative". I > wonder whether this excuse is also used in the US. > On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I'm warm and fuzzy and I teach science fiction and children's literature, but on Tuesday and Thursday I wear a tie and teach business writing. I've heard this nonsense before, but mostly from business writing students. The employers know it's nonsense and so do most business writing teachers I interact with in the U.S. What I tell the students who come up with this is that 1) those wonderful (generally female) executive secretaries who used to save your fathers' lives by fixing their lousy English, have almost all taken jobs as managers and are too busy moving up the corporate ladder to worry about your problems, 2) the secretaries who are left are, with a few exceptions, not particularly good writers and, if they are, will probably be moving past you on the corporate ladder some day soon, 3) more and more lower and mid-level executives are being expected to do their own correspondence and report writing via computer without any secretarial intervention except the idiot spell-check and grammar programs, none of which will catch more than approximately 80% of the errors in a given piece of writing. Mike Levy ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 15:52:56 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Michael Marc Levy wrote: > Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 15:31:13 -0500 > > > What I tell the students who come up with this is that 1) those wonderful > (generally female) executive secretaries who used to save your fathers' > lives by fixing their lousy English, have almost all taken jobs as managers > and are too busy moving up the corporate ladder to worry about your > problems, YES! 2) the secretaries who are left are, with a few exceptions, not > particularly good writers Some, like their bosses, are nearly illiterate, and I've run into a few admin. assistants at the University whose English is plainly a second language/ > idiot spell-check and grammar programs, none of which will catch more than > approximately 80% of the errors in a given piece of writing. > There's a poem about spell-checkers. Uses a lot of homynyms to great comic effect. I, of course, being a witch, always use one.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 18:14:30 EDT Reply-To: Zozie@aol.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Phoebe Wray Subject: Re: Stealth Feminism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 4/21/99 6:30:17 PM, you wrote: <> I think that was Robin Reid talking about Jaran... best phoebe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 18:17:34 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Laurel A. Lamme" Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Connie Willis (I think it's in a collection of her short storie) has an >excellent story about restricted literature and high schools- including >Shakespeare's plays. She lives (I believe... at least the story's author >does) in Greeley, CO where the Univesity of Northern Co. is- definately a >cowtown. > >misha > I believe the story you are referring to is called "Ado," which I found in the collection _Impossible Things_. It is one of the funniest stories I have ever read, and also encourages some serious thought about censorship. Laurel ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 15:34:25 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------BA016D482D453A5A80D7E47D" --------------BA016D482D453A5A80D7E47D Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lesley Hall wrote: > >I have heard (from teachers of SF writing) that they see increasing > >numbers of would-be writers who *do not* read and *have not* read. > >They know few mainstream writers, and even few SF writers, and > >are ignorant of the history of the genre. > > I don't understand this: why would people want to write books if they don't > read them? (Maybe it's the very occasional megabucks advances some writers > get? - the ones that get reported in the media - because I wouldn't have > expected anyone to pick on writing books - presumably we are talking fiction > here? - as a reliable way of making money). Or are the wouldbe writers > thinking screenplays and TV rather than print? > Lesley Hall > lesleyah@primex.co.uk I had a student in my office 25 years ago who wanted to major in crerative writing but not read literature. "Reading just f***s up your mind," he said. Similarly, in the late-lamented-Wall Kelly's comic strip Pogo, Albert Alligator said "I don't reads 'em, I just writes 'em." --------------BA016D482D453A5A80D7E47D Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lesley Hall wrote:

>I have heard (from teachers of SF writing) that they see increasing
>numbers of would-be writers who *do not* read and *have not* read.
>They know few mainstream writers, and even few SF writers, and
>are ignorant of the history of the genre.

I don't understand this: why would people want to write books if they don't
read them? (Maybe it's the very occasional megabucks advances some writers
get? - the ones that get reported in the media - because I wouldn't have
expected anyone to pick on writing books - presumably we are talking fiction
here? - as a reliable way of making money). Or are the wouldbe writers
thinking screenplays and TV rather than print?
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk


I had a student in my office 25 years ago who wanted to major in crerative writing but not read literature.  "Reading just f***s up your mind," he said.  Similarly, in the late-lamented-Wall Kelly's comic strip Pogo, Albert Alligator said "I don't reads 'em, I just writes 'em."
  --------------BA016D482D453A5A80D7E47D-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 09:48:43 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: "Candioglos, Sandy" Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Aaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!! This reminds me of a short story I read a while back that was a group of teachers getting together to prepare the shakespeare curriculum; they had to hack it all absolutely to bits for all these special interest groups that found insult in various phrases and scenes. The play they ended up doing (was it Hamlet?) ended up being about a page long, and (suprise!) the kids had trouble understanding it. Anybody read that and remember what it was/who wrote it? I'd love to re-read it! -Sandy > -----Original Message----- > From: Jocelyn & Sheryl Denton-LeSage [mailto:jocysher@SPRYNET.COM] > Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 1999 7:24 AM > To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] teenagers and sci-fi > > > > > >On a more political note, sometimes I suspect that the inability > >of American schools to teach students about American culture, > >history, or logical thought is a deliberate tactic to keep the > >public in "Bread and Circuses Mode." But I'm probably > >just being paranoid. > > > >Danny > > > Well, this may be true, on an unconscious level, anyway. But > also consider > that what you and I might think of as "bread and circuses" > might be thought > "moral and Christian" by others. Here in Wichita, we have a > controversy > going on concerning a local high school curriculum, which > includes several > Neil Simon plays and also Macbeth. Some parents are trying > to have these > removed from reading lists because of foul language. I'm not > sure what is > wrong with Macbeth, but it's possible that they object to its > "promotion of > witchcraft." And no, I'm not kidding. I think that at the > public high > school level, as a nation, we want our kids turned into Good > Citizens and > Christians. We certainly _don't_ want them turned into > critical thinkers, > because, I think in my more cynical moments, then we can't get them to > enlist in the army or support a rapacious government agenda. > I say this as > a veteran, by the way--I didn't know anything about anything > when I was 18, > any more than a lot of kids do today. Reading anything > feminist, or most > things SF, might sneak some opposing points of view into > kids' heads, and > then again the SF part might not. Depends on how much > Heinlein and Niven > they read.... my officemate, again--someday I'll have to > tell you all her > name--laments the lack of patriotism she sees in her > students, but I wonder > what she means by that. My lack of patriotism comes from > having had a Top > Secret security clearance and thus becoming jaded about US overseas > operations. Maybe I'll write a thinly-veiled SF novel about > that someday. > Hm... > Sheryl > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 17:27:01 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------16E9F6D01841A0CEDE443628" --------------16E9F6D01841A0CEDE443628 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote: > One of the biggest complaints I've heard from employers in the US and Britain is > that few business major graduates can write decent English. For our recent job > interviews on the US East & West coasts, our panels summarily rejected 190 of > 430 (275 West & 155 East Coast) applications because the applicants couldn't > write a decent single-page description of themselves. Almost 25% of the 112 > applicants for the interviews we're having in London tomorrow and Friday were > rejected for the same reason. > > The excuse I got from business lecturers in Britain was "It doesn't matter if > our students can't write good English, provided you can work out what they mean. > A secretary can always tidy up their writing. We don't like to prescribe rules > to students because it stifles their imagination and initiative". I wonder > whether this excuse is also used in the US. I can't speak for what happens across the US, but I direct a technical communication program at a large West Coast public university and I have always taken pride in my modest conception of my job as "teaching reading and writing," so I have tried to keep up with how writing is taught here in general. Ours is the only campus in a system of 22 to require only one writing course (Freshman Composition), though many students need remediation to get up for it. Because of complaints that students could not write, the system installed as a graduation requirement a passing score on a writing examination holistically graded by 2 (now 3) paid faculty volunteers from various departments (another reader takes over if any two diverge by more than one grade point on an ABCDF scale). This insures only minimal standards, which some students can get around after failing several times, especially if they come from a different linguistic community. Our campus like the Los Angeles Basin is multicultural and multiethnic, with hundreds of students for whom English is not their first language). Faculty teaching an average of 12 units (four courses) per semester generally leave it to English to handle writing instruction, making us the "heavies." Faculty in other disciplines say they are not trained to teach or edit student writing, that concentrating on writing takes away from the content of their courses, and that they are not paid enough to do extra work. They do assign papers, however, reading them mostly for content. The most serious offenders may be sent to a student-staffed Writer's Resource Center essentially for Band-Aids (UK "plasters"?), but few repercussions follow from their not going or not learning what they are taught there. If our campus is regarded as having one of the best writing programs in California, you can tell there's some distance between ideals and reality. For our Technical and Professional Writing Certificate, students must pass ("C" or better) at least four courses in writing instruction, one in grammar or editing (includes grammar), a one-unit tutorial and a 2-unit internship in a real workplace. They also take 3 "elective" courses chosen from prescribed lists in Analytical Reading, Business and Professional Skills, Computer Applications, Creative Writing, Intercultural Communication, and/or Visual Communication. I bring all this up because after all that we can be fairly confident that they write as well as a college graduate was expected to write 30 years ago! What does all this have to do with science fiction? To complete an English B.A. with a Special Emphasis, students may take science fiction (which I teach) on top of their TPW Certificate courses. With Feminist SF? Only that it forms a part of the sf course (and I've mentioned before that a majority of certificate students are female). --------------16E9F6D01841A0CEDE443628 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anthea Hartley Stanton wrote:

One of the biggest complaints I've heard from employers in the US and Britain is that few business major graduates can write decent English. For our recent job interviews on the US East & West coasts, our panels summarily rejected 190 of 430 (275 West & 155 East Coast) applications because the applicants couldn't write a decent single-page description of themselves. Almost 25% of the 112 applicants for the interviews we're having in London tomorrow and Friday were rejected for the same reason.

The excuse I got from business lecturers in Britain was "It doesn't matter if our students can't write good English, provided you can work out what they mean. A secretary can always tidy up their writing. We don't like to prescribe rules to students because it stifles their imagination and initiative". I wonder whether this excuse is also used in the US.

I can't speak for what happens across the US, but I direct a technical communication program at a large West Coast public university and I have always taken pride in my modest conception of my job as "teaching reading and writing," so I have tried to keep up with how writing is taught here in general.  Ours is the only campus in a system of 22 to require only one writing course (Freshman Composition), though many students need remediation to get up for it.  Because of complaints that students could not write, the system installed as a graduation requirement a passing score on a writing examination holistically graded by 2 (now 3) paid faculty volunteers from various departments (another reader takes over if any two diverge by more than one grade point on an ABCDF scale).  This insures only minimal standards, which some students can get around after failing several times, especially if they come from a different linguistic community.  Our campus like the Los Angeles Basin is multicultural and multiethnic, with hundreds of students for whom English is not their first language).

Faculty teaching an average of 12 units (four courses) per semester generally leave it to English to handle writing instruction, making us the "heavies."  Faculty in other disciplines say they are not trained to teach or edit student writing, that concentrating on writing takes away from the content of their courses, and that they are not paid enough to do extra work.  They do assign papers, however, reading them mostly for content.  The most serious offenders may be sent to a student-staffed Writer's Resource Center essentially for Band-Aids (UK "plasters"?), but few repercussions follow from their not going or not learning what they are taught there.  If our campus is regarded as having one of the best writing programs in California, you can tell there's some distance between ideals and reality.

For our Technical and Professional Writing Certificate, students must pass ("C" or better) at least four courses in writing instruction, one in grammar or editing (includes grammar), a one-unit tutorial and a 2-unit internship in a real workplace.  They also take 3 "elective" courses chosen from prescribed lists in Analytical Reading, Business and Professional Skills, Computer Applications, Creative Writing, Intercultural Communication, and/or Visual Communication.  I bring all this up because after all that we can be fairly confident that they write as well as a college graduate was expected to write 30 years ago!

What does all this have to do with science fiction?  To complete an English B.A. with a Special Emphasis, students may take science fiction (which I teach) on top of their TPW Certificate courses.  With Feminist SF?  Only that it forms a part of the sf course (and I've mentioned before that a majority of certificate students are female). --------------16E9F6D01841A0CEDE443628-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 20:29:15 EDT Reply-To: TMBouwman@aol.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Tanya Bouwman Subject: Re: teenagers and sci-fi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 4/21/99 9:33:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time, jocysher@SPRYNET.COM writes: > What about the smell? What smells > better--ok, baking bread, the back of a cat's head, a pine forest, but stay > with me--than a good-quality book, with its different inks and cloth or > leather binding? And how can we quantify the feeling of heft and suppleness > that we get from a well-bound trade paperback? And don't you all love the > flupflupflupflup of pages in one of those monstrous tomes printed on bible > paper? OK, maybe the last one is a stretch, and it occurrs to me because > I've carrying the Norton anthology around for too long--but reading is a > sensual experience which goes far beyond the intake of information, don't > you agree? Or do I hear a strained silence, a long pause, and then an > echoing voice announcing, "No, Sheryl......It's Just You." ? No, Sheryl, it isn't just you. I also love that flupflupflupflup sound, as well as all the other sensory feedbacks you mentioned about reading. However, first and foremost I love being able to open a book and shut out everyone and everything else and NOT have anyone or anything (or at least rarely have) intrude on my newly found world. (Of course, this is after the kids are in bed and before my husband has come home.:)) Tanya ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 18:56:04 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: stealth feminism The first time I saw it used, some time ago, was in reference to Lois McMaster Bujold's work. I'll see if I can dig up the reference. You may be able to find it yourself at www.dendarii.com, though the server is a bit slow. jessie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 22:43:17 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: jenn mottram Subject: Planetary Systems In-Reply-To: <371DFD9F.50F9924C@csulb.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The Discovery Channel has a show titled "Size and Scale" today, where Astronomer Sheldon Schafer, talking in real english, not techno-, dressed like a real person, no labcoat in sight (though he does wear a tie with splashy planets on it) is describing astronomical distances in ways that the average human can comprehend. One way he's done this is to paint the outside of the 33 foot planetarium a sunny yellow, then placing relative-sized planets relatively distanced from the planetarium to show the reality of "really really far". Mercury is a quarter mile away from the planetarium dome, and Earth is a mile away in a gas station and is only 4 inches in diameter. Jupiter is a thousand times bigger than earth -- and ten miles away, in an apartment building -- it is amazing to see the comparatives. My lowly paragraph doesn't do it justice. What a neat show, definitely worth watching. And, oh yeah, this all takes place in Peoria. :-) jenn Discover Magazine, from Peoria, Size and Scale Explore size and scale in a variety of applications. Compare the diversity of living creatures, explore the solar system, visit the heights of modern skyscrapers, and analyze flight technologies. athena@geocities.com http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2464 ------------------------------------- * You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 21:39:47 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: [Fwd: [Fwd: warning virus]] Comments: To: "cla-faculty@csulb.edu" , sfuf listserve , Orange County Society for Technical Communication MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------FA53294F80B8A9EC6EAF17B3" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------FA53294F80B8A9EC6EAF17B3 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Virus warnings from this student of mine have proved reliable in the past. --------------FA53294F80B8A9EC6EAF17B3 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from itdc.koreanair.com ([4.19.65.20]) by postman.csulb.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA14193 for ; Wed, 21 Apr 1999 16:41:21 -0700 (PDT) Received: from itdc.koreanair.com [192.168.3.17] by itdc.koreanair.com with ESMTP (SMTPD32-5.01) id A1B9A82403E4; Wed, 21 Apr 1999 16:39:37 PDT Message-ID: <371E62D5.7A7AF11D@itdc.koreanair.com> Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 16:44:21 -0700 From: Jennifer Wilkins Organization: Korean Air -- ITDC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "all@itdc.koreanair.com" , Brenda Choe , "Athanikar, Anu" , Daniel Leu , Dave Samuelson , Elliot Wright , Eric Oh , FSA , FSW , Hanjoo Kim , "J.M. Park" , Jay Shim , Jin Kwak , Judith Bennett , Laurel Wright , Nancy Park , Paul Yun , Penny Pfaelzer , ROF Subject: [Fwd: warning virus] Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------27BF282661B7C9CD92889CF6" X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------27BF282661B7C9CD92889CF6 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit --------------27BF282661B7C9CD92889CF6 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from hotmail.com [207.82.250.28] by mail.koreanair.com (SMTPD32-5.01) id ADB6AB8703AC; Wed, 21 Apr 1999 16:22:30 PDT Received: (qmail 99644 invoked by uid 0); 21 Apr 1999 23:24:29 -0000 Message-ID: <19990421232429.99643.qmail@hotmail.com> Received: from 204.149.45.46 by wy1lg.hotmail.com with HTTP; Wed, 21 Apr 1999 16:24:28 PDT X-Originating-IP: [204.149.45.46] From: "diana nguyen" To: ameliagh@yahoo.com, binh_q@hotmail.com, debcaroll@hotmail.com, dewi_chee@hotmail.com, hannah@dynasys.com, wilkinsj@itdc.koreanair.com, ng_ken@usa.net, kerry@dynasys.com, gimchi@inane.com, mtika@yahoo.com, narinet@hotmail.com, nilza@usa.net, RPAgard@worldnet.att.net, robot73@hotmail.com, smane@hotmail.com, Tsmith@Kollbren.com, tim_aleong@yahoo.com, Xtrnguyen@aol.com Subject: warning virus Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 16:24:28 PDT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain X-RCPT-TO: Hi Guys: Read the following important message!!! Subject: Fwd: Fwd: ATT:READ AND PASS ALONG ******************************************* Someone is sending out a very desirable screen saver, the Budweiser Frogs BUDDYLST.ZIP. If you download it, you will lose everything on your hard drive, it will crash, and someone from the Internet will get your name and password! DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!! IT JUST WENT INTO CIRCULATION YESTERDAY. This is a new very malicious virus and not many people know about it. This information was announced yesterday morning from MICROSOFT. Please share it with everyone that might access the Internet. Once again, pass this along to EVERYONE in your address book so that this may be stopped. Also do not open or even look at any mail that says RETURNED OR UNABLE TO DELIVER . This virus will attach itself to your computer components and render them useless. Immediately delete mail items that say this. America Online (AOL) has said that this is a very dangerous virus and that there is NO remedy for it at this time. _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. Visit http://www.msn.com --------------27BF282661B7C9CD92889CF6-- --------------FA53294F80B8A9EC6EAF17B3--