science fiction

Foreigner – C. J. Cherryh

Published on May 25, 20113 Comments

Cover of Foreigner

Foreigner
C. J. Cherryh
423 pages
published in 1994

Foreigner is the fifth book in my Year of Reading Women project. It is the first novel in one of C. J. Cherryh’s more popular series, yet until now I had never read any of them. She is such a prolific writer that it’s easy to miss a series or two. She also has such a wide range, writing anything from fantasy to space opera, that not everything she writes appeals to every one of her fans. The number of people I’ve known who hated her breakthrough novel Downbelow Station for example…

Yet, once you’ve read a few of her novels, you discover that there is one narrative trick all her stories have in common, no matter what the setting or the plot is. What she likes to do is to take her protagonists out of their comfort zone, get them at their most vulnerable and then put the pressure on. Every one of her novels I’ve read has the same structure. The protagonist is a young man (rarely a young woman) put in a position of responsibility but without power. Usually he’s an outsider in an alien culture, cut off from his own people, in the middle of some sort of political crisis he barely understands let alone can influence. She then let’s this crisis heats up, makes sure her hero gets little to eat and less sleep and is as far removed from the centre of the crisis as possible, yet still has a vital role to play in resolving it, even if he not necessarily knows it. To make sure the reader is as much in the dark as the hero, she usually makes sure they’re only looking at the story through his eyes.

Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille — Steven Brust

Published on May 18, 2011

Cover of Cowboy Fengs Space Bar and Grill

Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille
Steven Brust
223 pages
published in 1990

Sometimes when I’m depressed I go on a book reading binge — I managed to read every Wheel of Time book up to Lord of Chaos in a week when I was at a low point during my time at college. Pure escapism, fleeing into a story to temporarily ignore the world around me. A few weeks ago I fled back in that habit when my wife was having a very bad night, the day before she had to go back to hospital again. I was sleeping on the couch to try and give her an easier night’s sleep but then couldn’t sleep myself, so I grabbed the nearest book at hand. This turned out to be Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille.

Which perhaps wasn’t the best book to keep the night terrors at bay. Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille is a strange book, if only because it’s one of Steven Brust’s rare science fiction novels, but also because it’s a light adventure story about a Strange Bar, set amongst a series of nuclear holocausts. Amongst Brust fans it’s apparently a bit of a controversial book with some hating it, but for me it was the right book at the right time. It may be strange to think of a book that has a succession of nuclear wars at its heart as comforting, but that’s what it was.

China Mountain Zhang — Maureen F. McHugh

Published on May 15, 20111 Comment

Cover of China Mountain Zhang

China Mountain Zhang
Maureen F. McHugh
313 pages
published in 1992

China Mountain Zhang is the fourth novel I’ve read in my Year of Reading Women project. It had been on my shelves unread for over a decade before that, silently accusing me every time I walked past. Some novels are like that, shoved aside each time for a more interesting looking book. Which is one of the reasons I put it on my list of twelve science fiction novels written by women to read this year: to force me to finally read it.

Because I should’ve read this long ago. China Mountain Zhang was Maureen McHugh’s debut novel and was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1992, winning the Lambda Literary Award (best science fiction with LGBT themes), the Locus Award for best first novel, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award (feminist themed science fiction). It also has always been a highly regarded novel in the fan circles I hang around in. Yet until now I never had even tried to read it, largely because everytime I looked through my bookshelves the cover repelled me. And of course you should never judge a book by its cover, but in this case the cover did seem to promise something worthy but dull I never was quite in the mood for. A bit dumb, because of course China Mountain Zhang turned out to be just as good as its hype had made it out to be.

The Female Man — Joanna Russ

Published on April 3, 20112 Comments

Cover of The Female Man

The Female Man
Joanna Russ
214 pages
published in 1975

The Female Man is the third book in my list of works by female sf authors I’ve set myself as a challenge to read this year. Of the books on the list it is the most explicitely feminist one, a cri de coeur of “second wave feminism”, a science fictional equivalent of The Feminine Mystique. Written in 1970 but only published five years later it was somewhat controversial, science fiction never having been the most enlightened genre in the first place. Reading it some thirtyfive years later it’s tempting to view it as just a historical artifact, its anger safely muted as “we know better now” and accept the equality of men and women matter of factly, its message spent as sexism is no longer an issue, with history having moved on from the bad old days in which The Female Man was written.

Bollocks of course, but seductive bollocks. The reality is that for all the progress made since The Female Man was published, its anger is not quite obsolete yet, or we wouldn’t have had the current debate about the lack of female science fiction writers in the first place. What’s more, The Female Man ill fits in this anodyne, whiggish view of history anyway. Russ is much more angry than that. She’s utterly scathing in her view of men in this novel, reducing them to one dimensional bit players: thick, macho assholes her much more intelligent heroines have to cope with. You might think this “hysterical”, “shrill”, “a not very appealing aggressiveness” but Russ is ahead of you and has included this criticism in her novel already, on page 141: “we would gladly have listened to her (they said) if only she had spoken like a lady. But they are liars and the truth is not in them.” Russ was too smart not to understand that no matter how non-threatening and “rational” The Female Man might have been written, (male) critics would still call it emotional and not worth engaging. But Russ uses her anger as a weapon and tempers it with humour and some of the angriest, bitterest scenes are also grimly witty.

The Female Man is about four women, or four versions of what could be the same woman. There’s Janet Evanston Berlin, from the all-female world of Whileaway, ten centuries in the future but not our future, who is sent on a crosstime reconnaissance of other Earths. There’s Jeaninne Dadier, a librarian in a WPA library in New York in 1969, on an Earth in which WWII never happened and the Great Depression kept grinding on, lost between her own desire grab the brass ring of marriage and children and her own knowledge/fear that this won’t make her happy either. There’s Johanna, also from 1969 but more like our own and not coincidently sharing a name with her author. And finally there’s Alice Reasoner aka Jael, from an Earth in which men and women live completely separated from each other, in a state of Cold War. It’s Jael who had brought the other three together, to recruit them and their world for the war between the sexes.

For a Link I Tarry

Published on March 28, 2011

SF, fantasy and horror fans get to grips with the reality of Japan crisis
“Now it’s the turn of the science fiction, fantasy and horror communities to give something back following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that has left the country dealing with the possibility of nuclear disaster.”

Genre for Japan
The online auction for science fiction, fantasy and horror fans to help Japan.

John Scalzi reacts to the news that Diana Wynne Jones has died
“News is coming across the Twitter that writer Diana Wynne Jones passed away in the night; I imagine it will be confirmed by official sources soon enough. I have no connection to Jones other than as a reader, but I think that’s enough to celebrate her life and mourn her passing. My favorite book of hers was one called Dogsbody, in which the personage of the star Sirius, accused of murder, is sent to Earth, where he has to live in the body of a dog, and in that form discover the truth about his situation.”

M. John Harrison: On both yr houses
“If science fiction and “literary fiction” so clearly share the social, structural & economic qualities of a genre or marketing category–a clear & obvious commodification–is it any wonder that both so often represent the very worst of what writing has to offer ? The effect of “literary fiction” on literature has been as destructive as the effect of the sf & fantasy genres on the fiction of the imagination. It has reduced surface to a kind of Farrow & Ball blandness, experiment to some clever jokes & humanity to charm. It’s the fictional equivalent of John Lewis.”

Red Dawn as “a deeply left-wing, pro-Sandinista” movie
“Conclusion: the scenario of Red Dawn is far too ridiculous for it to be a credible warning, therefore it is an allegory; the egregious and unnecessary presence of Nicaraguan troops makes it clear that this is an allegory about Latin America and the US in particular; the message of the allegory is clearly anti-imperialist; therefore Red Dawn is an anti-imperialist, pro-Sandinista document.”

Great Expectations, by Dickens Charles
“Great Expectations is a novel which has been historically acclaimed as a portrait of the Victorian society of Eng-land, and of the social mobility that was taking place during this time of upheaval. Named for the autocratic monarch of the country at that time, this period was marked by a gradual liberalisation of the native warlords (who began taking on a more political than military role) and of the gender-segregated and caste-based society. The author of the novel, Dickens Charles (Man or Male-person, a common Eng-land name), was one of the most representative writers of Eng-land.”

On the differences and relative merits of Pratchett and Adams
“It follows from all of the above that Adams was never a world-builder; I think he felt that the world we had was an absurd and rather shoddy mess which didn’t bear too much investigating, and any other worlds we visited would almost certainly be no better.”

Damien G. Walter asks: can fantasy ever tell the truth? A: Yes.
An interview with John Norman, Pornographer of Gor.
The latest issue of Stone Telling, “a new poetry quarterly that seeks to publish literary speculative poems with a strong emotional core”.