science fiction is one of those fascinating industries that almost everyone who isnt directly involved in seems to think has always been historically way more progressive and inclusive than it is in reality, when in doubt, recall that we are the field that gave you HP Lovecraft
Reposted from
Erin Reed
How did the tech bro crowd, growing up on stories of sci-fi, transhumanism, virtual reality and limitless ability to modify one's body, "biohacking," etc. end up becoming so viscerally anti-transgender? Truly boggles my mind.
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All those male writers conveniently forget that the 1st Sci-Fi novel was written my a woman, Mary Shelley.
Gibson's _Neuromancer_ famously not using any American brand names frex, the late 70s/80s fear of America being eclipsed by its rivals.
I'm not sure if that makes RAH gender-critical or an early trans rights fan.
Remember how the main character in Ringworld is 200 years old but is in perfect physical condition due to a longevity drug and has a young woman for a lover? Not great.
I'd also note, one counter example does not disprove a trend.
Stuff published for the first time when he'd already dropped out of college is less formative than the Heinleins he read as a teenager
I really loved how the posthumanist scholar N. Katherine Hayles discussed Dick's writings, it gave me a whole new perspective on him.
As a writer married to another writer, I totally get it.
It does speak volumes about Dick that he was open to constructive criticism.
I thoroughly recommend this article:
There's "you can't lead a horse to water..." but it's quite another thing when the horse made the watering hole in the first place
Stranger in a Strange Land is one of my favorite books, but he supported Goldwater for President and his Starship Troopers (unlike the movie) wasn't making fun of militaristic authoritarianism.
I struggle to read a ton of writers particularly early mid 20th century ones as the racism and misogyny is so pungent
he's applied a word that means "truly understand on the deepest level" to a system that's mathematically incapable of understanding anything
I'm not up for defending RAH here, but Elmo picking him specifically seems kind of odd, you know?
But I don’t know Mr Weber other than through his works, so maybe?
😱🤮🤮🤮
Ted Sturgeon was much more progressive than his peers in gender and sexuality. Got blacklisted for it.
DC Fontana had to write under a man's name.
Sturgeon explored sexual hypocrisy while Hogan could imagine star-spanning planet destroying aliens but not women working as anything other than secretaries.🤦♂️
Mal Reynolds, only successful and winning.
Come to think of it, the big crisis in RW Engineers was caused by letting people repurpose tech needed to keep the RW working.
Sometimes that means cryptofascists dreaming of space marines, sometimes it’s Ursula Le Guin or Marge Piercy dismantling the patriarchy.
Im so tired
Repost my pinned post
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Remember how the scifi world responded to that? Deciding that actually, space opera sucks now, and they want to be called "SF" bc scifi is a slur. Fun times.
Every fandom has idiots
When we pointed out all the political episodes (trying to think of one that wasn't, but can't), he said "That was social commentary."
SOCIAL COMMENTARY IS HOW ART DOES POLITICS YOU DUMB GRUP
reading about orson scott card: ...oh
You should see him deepthroat Mossad and praise the MOVE bombings ("Carrion Comfort," the only worthwile bit is the title), and in the reissue, he spends forty pages on an author's note to spew hate on every woman in publishing he worked with.
https://cloggie.org/books2/2024/08/hyperion-the-fall-of-hyperion-dan-simmons/
That series makes such a hard turn that I’m pretty sure Illium was written pre-2001, and Olympos post
Why is everything built on white supremacy?
It quickly gave the same vibe as hearing a stranger spout racist stuff in everyday conversation. That distinct "I hope I misunderstood the meaning of that, but I suspect I didn't" feeling.
I read that book as a kid, and "men in the jungle" shortly before or after (don't remember). I had a hard time to process it of course, as there was no wikipedia page (nor wikipedia) to explain me what I just read.
An author who occupied an equivalent level of popularity in Sci-fi as an off-broadway musical.
Despite his entire thing being that he had a transformation fetish he put in every book.
And he was only 6/7 out of 10 on the perverted SF writers rating.
But I keep wanting to say that SF used to be way more horny until about the—
Then every decade I think of some books that got real horny in a weird way.
And I keep pushing the year up till I say “Is Piers Anthony still alive?”
MOST SF writers are some degree of pervert and Le Guin is a part of the 10% I can’t say that about.
It says something that Anthony is the most problematic of that trio considering…….
And while Dune itself is pretty vanilla, but the later ones get real weird. (The Fish Speakers get the prize for most irrelevantly weird; the Honored Matres at least have plot relevance to their stuff.)
Like Asimov was, at best, a creep. And Heinlein, oof, just...it's a lot to unpack.
Those ships whose names he borrows are self-aware AIs, intellectually superior to humans and yet - somehow - universally benign and helpful.
🤔
The author himself never grapples with the moral implications but I can’t see Musk being bothered.
He's in that weird sweet spot of loving misogyny.
g,d&rvvvf
…
Woof. The gender politics, light hearted talking about rape
That, and “Starship Troopers” had a pretty strong pro-military authoritarianism/fascism bent
Here’s a nice discussion:
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/26352/did-heinlein-advocate-the-apparently-militaristic-if-not-fascist-society-of-sta
People tend to forget Lovecraft died a regretful Eex-racist.
not uhh not super prescient unfortunately
Wanderer woman who has sex with Our Hero
Vampire woman who has sex with Our Hero
Old woman who has sex with Our Hero
Young woman who has sex with Our Hero
Woman who has had sex with Our Hero.
Note, all but one die.
Homer's Odyssey was what will would call sci-fi, or even soap-opera, with the hero navigating to the endless space, I mean sea, and conquering aliens, I mean barbarian while have sex with every Witch, Divinity and Princess he could.
I bet it's probably even older than that, as "hospitality" in the ancient world and probably in prehistoric times included sex.
hobby appears to be going to conventions solely to insult the hell out of each and every vendor in the dealer’s room.
"Looking Backward" was good. That was 1899 I think.
Either way science fiction a field where you have women trailblazers papered over by insecure men.
P.K. Dick can't go 3 pages without talking about tits! It was so fucking off-putting!
That said, people are still people. Orson Scott Card is a homophobe.
HP Lovecraft wrote horror. If you count him, might as well count J K Rowling.
And in Flash Gordon, Ming(!) the Merciless---well, do I have to even say anything there...?
Plus colonial nonsense
Put funny ears on your hero and now it's a mouse, or a dog. But you still keep the template and tropes.
Space opera keeps imperialist and racist tropes alive in disguise, often.
1. He wrote the best thing ever.
2. He was a monstrous killer.
There’s no contradiction between 1 and 2. He was an admirable writer, and a despicable man. We all contain multitudes.
also in nerd-dom, Gary Gygax, man infamous for severely sexist, racist, and regressive views that colored the design of D&D to this day and are why a half of OSR is regressive chuds
People assume literal progression as a political endorsement of an authors writing.
Normal for the time, but not especially progressive.
But Asimov put himself forward as progressive (e.g., signing the Secular Humanist Manifesto), so I think he should have done more than he did.
And then he became... *gestures* that.
This is who he always was.
What a ruffian.
This is when he did his secular humanist revival meetings at cons, satirizing the Christofascists he later allied with.
Then there's the basic plot premise for the Solaria Bailey novel :-(
(FYI met the guy in high school)
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html
Not just an arsehole, but someone who KNEW he was an arsehole
I was a huge Asimov fan in my early teens, one of my favourite writers. To say I've had a reassessment since then is an understatement. (And not just because of him as a person, my tastes in sff have evolved more than I could have imagined.)
Oh gods no, especially the Solaria book with the horrible plot assumption requirement
Whereas when rereading Clarke I found it more progressive than I'd noticed before--not great but still quite good
"I JUST WOULD LIKE TO ASK THE MEN HERE TO CONSIDER IDLY IN SOME SMALL MOMENT. IF BY ANY CHANCE THEY'VE BEEN BUILDING WALLS TO KEEP THE WOMEN OUT. OR TO KEEP THEM "IN THEIR PLACE".
Ursula K Le Guin 1975
"I've never met Ursula, by the way, I'm not sure I ought to. In the last few years, she has become just about the most highly regarded writer in science fiction and if I should, by sheer force of habit, greet her with the suavity which is usual to me [con't]
Which is something to keep in mind when you see #feminist in some otherwise offensive dude’s social media bio.
She’s a slave girl.
Modeling a piece of jewelry.
I recently reread Foundation and I was thinking “WTF did some plague kill off all the women in this universe and the men are just clones?” Which makes extra sense since every man is the book is indistinguishable from every other man.
The embarrassment is magnified because it’s a book about a guy so smart he can predict the future.
But there’s really nothing in Asimov that is indispensable to science fiction.
I haven’t read Foundation in over 30 years but I can place at least 3 gender swaps just among the major characters.
*my father was a colleague of Asimov’s and didn’t like him. Dad called him “Ike” and he hated it.