Private Mars Rocket II

Pohl, Frederik & Kornbluth, C. M., "Mute, Inglorious Tam"

An English peasant in the Middle Ages could have been the first SF writer.
But he does not have the vocabulary and the times are not right for this.
So he wonders and works and is terribly unhappy.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1974 (pp. 111-120)

But, as he consoles himself, there was always the beer.

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The motives behind stocking your medieval European castle with black female lesbian swordswomen are deeply suspect - claims that it's not a political fad are laughably naive.

It's difficult for me to engage in our literature (http://baron-waste.livejournal.com/1349916.html) and cinema because I
despise stories like this, and any story which further minimizes the
already ignored role of minorities and the oppressed. I can't stand reading
stories in which the oppressor hero leads the impoverished, suffering, and
oh-so-pathetically grateful subjugated minorities. It causes me physical
pain to view these stories, and it's not because of the poor writing. It's
not the story I'm angry about.

Many people like to brush away those feelings of nausea and disgust with
'oversensitivity'. Why are you getting upset over a simple story? Just read
something else.

It's because I can't read anything else. It's because every book and every
mainstream television show, every movie has been made by this culture, has
been soaked in this culture and this time period's flaws: its misogyny, its
racism, its heteronormativity and ableism. Its transphobia…

It's because, when I'm finished reading, I get to live in a world in which
that poisonous point of view is the norm, is enforced and encouraged. Is
apologized for…

Mmm hmm. Poor you, how you suffer. And who will you be, when no one has to pay any attention to you any more?

Meanwhile,

Classical Mythology Too Triggering for Columbia Students (http://reason.com/blog/2015/05/12/trigger-warning-mythology/print)

“Roman and Greek mythology 'contains triggering and offensive material
that marginalizes student identities in the classroom,' students say…”

“Sad Puppies” exist for a reason. These “unrepresentative” but ever-so-PC stories are as dated as fish, and will be so regarded twenty years from now, or even sooner.

Edited Date: 2015-05-13 05:45 pm (UTC)

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Stocked would be inaccurate. But Africans have been present in Europe from classical times. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries Roman soldiers of African origin served in Britain, and some stayed after their military service ended. According to the historians Fryer, Edwards and Walvin, in the 9th century Viking fleets raided North Africa and Spain, captured Black people, and took them to Britain and Ireland. From the end of the 15th century we begin to see more evidence for the presence of Black Moors in the accounts of the reign of King James IV of Scotland, and later in Elizabethan England. (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/early_times/moors.htm)

Sometimes, sir, facts are not your friend.

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Absolutely - and you might very well find Muslim female ghazis of African ancestry who happened to be lesbian also. Certainly. But the boarding-house reach required to span the credibility gap and place one or more in Norman England or France in ever-so-trendy defiance of white-male-hegemonistic “whitewashing” risks serious muscle strain, and why the author bothered becomes significant. And obvious.

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Why is it more of a boarding house reach to have a lesbian black swordswoman in Norman England than a wizard who does actual magic, or a dragon who can really fly, let alone breathe fire?

Women who made their living with the sword, black women, and lesbians all existed in the past--unlike wizards (aside from con men) or dragons. A person with overlapping unusual characteristics is at least a possibility, unlike wizards or dragons.

As for why the author bothered, some people like stories about dragons.

Why people object seems much more significant. And obvious.

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And obvious

Ah? “Q.E.D. me, mon ami,” as Solon Aquila would say. “Explain myself to me.”

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*bursts into laughter*

Dude, you used it first, and now you have a problem with it?

I gather you think it's obvious that people who write women and minority characters only do it to make a political point (and perhaps a false political point at that, but that is less clear.)

I think it's just as obvious that people who object grew up in a world where women and minorities weren't worth writing stories about, like it that way, and are made uncomfortable by stories that feature them.

I have some sympathy for that; society is changing and change always makes me uncomfortable to start with. But I realize that about myself and try to take it into account so I can go away and think it over before opposing necessary and just changes.

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Okay, I think I can work with that. I have to start by explaining what freedom is, because that's the real point of the debate. Freedom is where you yourself decide whom or what you wish to write about. You may choose to write about G A Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. You may choose to write about Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, at same. It's entirely your decision, and in the course of the work you may change your mind! You need no one's approval to do so.

Now imagine that you may only write on Approved Topics. Sitting Bull is approved - Custer is not. This is to “correct historical oppression” which you did not enact, or to “redress perceived injustices” by committing new, very real ones. For the greater cause of “Social Justice” (the most recent hate movement to cloak itself in high-sounding but empty rhetoric), you are no longer free.

Now, you may have intended to write on Sitting Bull all along. You might even agree that the other side have been shortchanged by history and their own story ought to be included. Perhaps. (My friend chris_gerrib, and he is a friend, is of this school of thought.) If so, you are fortunate, for you are not trammeled by the walls now in place. Others are not so fortunate. Sooner or later your own luck will run out also - for those walls are placed without consulting you.

How pleasant a place the world would be
If everyone in it agreed with me…

A utopia forcibly imposed - the stagnant, fearful world of Political Correctness, where “follow the leader” goes in daisy-chain circles of safe conformity and Victim Cards™ come in silver, gold and platinum, awarded by accident of birth.

Like its progenitor and role model “socialist realism,” works produced under Political Correctness are flat, formulaic, badly written - but glorifying the “historically oppressed” and disregarding the “oppressors,” both of which are rigidly and inflexibly defined. Like their role model, the Soviet Writers' Trade Union, those who do not conform are shunned, shut out. Good luck self-publishing! Maybe you can sell copies by hand…

The problem with rigidity is that it is brittle. It doesn't give way, flex, adapt - flexibility is “Trotskyite deviationism” - thoughtcrime. Instead it cracks. But technology and society are flexible, dynamic, and their advances are impossible to pin down to rigidity. So inevitably the cracks widen, as more and more people realize that a world exists beyond Political Correctness - a world of freedom, where people can write about Sitting Bull OR about George Custer, about black female lesbians OR about white Anglo-Saxon males as they alone decide. [And no one will then “correct” their stories to conform to imposed “social justice” quotas, as I was hearing about recently…]

Enthusiasm for Political Correctness wanes swiftly when it is no longer possible to punish the unenthusiastic. No wonder the “Correct Ethnic / Gender Studies” commissars are screeching bloody murder - like the Party they came from, they're losing their grip on the present and the future is no longer theirs. They're about to become completely irrelevant, unimportant, disregarded - and they know it.

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Okay, so some people are choosing to write about black lesbian swordswomen. That's freedom.

Other people are going "Oh, hot dog! I always wanted to read stories with that kind of protagonist!" and buying them. That's freedom.

Other people are saying "I want more stories like that!" or "I want stories written this other way!" That's freedom.

Other people are looking up and going "you want stories with women protagonists? Or gay protagonists? Werewolf packs composed mostly of teen girls? Sure, I'll write them if you'll buy them." That's freedom.

And some people are saying "no, thanks, I'll keep writing stories about manly men who save the day and have beautiful women swoon in their arms." That's freedom.

Nobody is *able* to force a writer to write this way or that way. The most they can do is not buy the work. Or read the work and tell their friends, "gosh, that was awful" or even say "you know, that guy advocates for putting gays in jail when he's not writing books. Are you sure you want to spend your book-buying dollars on a guy like that?" That's freedom.

And their friends might say "you have a good point" or they might say "nah, I'm still buying that guy's work." That's freedom.

I don't understand why you have such a problem with this. My freedom to point out that black lesbian swordswomen are more realistic than fire breathing dragons doesn't interfere with your freedom to seek out books in which women never touch a sword except to polish it.

Nothing is being imposed, utopia or otherwise, and certainly not forcibly.

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your freedom to seek out books

Thank the Lord for eBay.

(http://i.imgur.com/ArK1UIm.jpg)

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Are you having trouble finding books of that type?

I am only half-way through Ken Liu's _The Grace Of Kings_ but so far it has only one woman character, and her skill is herbalism; she hasn't laid a finger on a sword. Also she mostly stays home. You might like it.

I just finished Cixin Liu's _Three Body Problem_ and while it does have some woman Red Guards, they don't fight (one gets killed while waving a flag, as I recall). There is only one major character who is a woman and she is a scientist, but her contributions to the plot have very little to do with science. You might like that one.

Have you read Andy Weir's _The Martian_ yet? The vast bulk of it follows the efforts of one man; women scientists and astronauts exist, but take up very little of the story. You might like that one.

I'm only about half-way through Brandon Sanderson's _The Way Of Kings_ but so far women don't fight, and there are plenty of examples of men striving with each other, and with monsters, in manly combat.

I think the Temeraire books wouldn't work for you; a pity, as they are some of my favorites, and offer plenty of fighting. Likewise John Ringo and David Weber, while writing lots of books with fighting, have women involved rather a lot. (Though this is not sword-fighting, as their work is space opera--does that help? If so, allow me to recommend those authors.)

I think the current publishing scene is not as short of books-without-women-fighting-that-also-don't-have-racial-issues as you seem to think.

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https://archive.org/details/galaxymagazine?&sort=-downloads&page=1

As I say - I ABSOLUTELY DON'T need to concern myself with today's fads and foibles beyond a moment's casual interest. With the mere click of a mouse I may pass utterly beyond their reach.

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Yes! You absolutely don't! There is plenty of the writing you like out there! Good on you for realizing that!

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And the publishers of this stuff are for-profit businesses. If people weren't buying it, it wouldn't get published.

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I'll second catsittingstill's comments.

I'll also point out that your are persistently missing the point. To restate - exceptional people exist, and we tell stories about exceptional people, not the Typical Joe.

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- Well, unless that's the point of the story; R Silverberg's “A Happy Day in 2381” comes to mind, as does T Disch's 334, where the story is about the society, not the individuals therein. [Not coincidentally, both settings have crushingly high populations where individuality is steamrolled by sheer numbers.]

Having a character be exceptional is splendid. Defining “exceptional” by identity politics is not.

[Lady Triệu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Tri%E1%BB%87u), “The Lady General clad in Golden Robe,” was exceptional. Beaucoup exceptional.

"I'd like to ride storms, kill sharks in the open sea, drive out the aggressors, reconquer the country, undo the ties of serfdom, and never bend my back to be the concubine of whatever man."

She was indeed a non-white, non-Western non-male. Triple Score! But that's NOT why she was exceptional. … Or is it?]

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I have no idea what your point is.

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Okay - stories are written about exceptional people. Granted. [I ought not to have mentioned the possible alternative in the same comment - that may be what confused you.]

Now, if you write of someone because that person kicked ass and took names, if that person's individual achievements and qualities make them exceptional - as by definition it would - that's fine and dandy.

If you classify that person as a what and not a who, if being a non-white, non-Western non-male is what makes that person “exceptional” in your book and thus worthy of writing about, that's defining “exceptional” by identity politics.

[James Earl Jones has expressed understandable annoyance at being called “a great black actor.” “Why must they make the distinction?” he said. “Why can I not simply be considered a great actor?” Because that's not how the game is played. If you're the right what, who you are personally takes second place.]

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Well of course a book about boring people who do and see nothing of interest is boring, no matter what the race etc of the characters may be.

I haven't found that the race of the characters affects that much. White-straight-male is done to death, of course, but it's still possible to come up with interesting plots that involve them. But by the same token, the werewolf book that was great with white-straight-males wouldn't become boring if it were done with black lesbians.

One of my musical friends once said "they still haven't come to an end of the tunes that can be written in C major." However it doesn't follow that there's something wrong with writing in D mixolydian, and I've come up with some very nice tunes that way.

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Muslim female ghazis of African ancestry who happened to be lesbian also

Sounds like an interesting character. But the combination would not likely be coincidental. Lesbianism would be a motive for leaving Muslim society and Muslim areas (but perhaps keeping the religion). Leaving home she'd want self-protection, so learning swordsmanship would fit. A striking appearance might help her get hired as a palace guard, and the further from home, the more exotic she would appear and the better pay she could get.

So, good reasons for the combination. What would bother me is if her presence is treated as unremarkable. Yanno, the sort of token that is not the villain, is not cured, is not the focus of the story, etc etc. If she'd been part of the palace staff and accepted by the inner circle long enough ago that they found her unremarkable, it might be possible In-Universe, depending on how many NPCs you meet. But as a reader, I'd probably get more interested in her backstory than in the author's current story.

/ houseboat here /

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If the author was interested in credibility, yes. “if her presence is treated as unremarkable” - like the Western chris_gerrib was talking about, where Approved, Correct group identities were plugged in simply and only to “run up the score” of PC points - “let's see, a PoC, LGBT… yep, that'll do it. Sure to be published… Darn, where's the cisgendered otherkin?” The character herself is irrelevant to that thinking; what matters is working down the checklist. “All oppressed minorities must be represented by proper quotas,” even when their presence in the story is simply ridiculous. “Where's the wheelchair ramps in that castle? Check your privilege!”

The point Chris returns to is that such people did provably exist, and it's only right and fair that “their stories be told.” Sure - if that's what the author is actually doing. It's not, of course. Check… check… check (http://sjwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page)…

Edited Date: 2015-05-14 04:03 am (UTC)

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It's actually pretty hard to find stories with well-rounded characters of multiple races, or LGBT characters or characters that are not of binary gender or realistically disabled characters. It can be done if you make an effort, but your contention that *nobody* is leaving them out is, in my experience, so not-justified as to appear a bit bizarre.

If you aren't comfortable with people who advocate for inclusion of such characters in the field, they're pretty easy to avoid--quit reading far-left book reviews (and far-right ones--if there's *anyone* who pays more attention to the bleeding edge of progressivism than lefties, it's righties; I think they need a boogieman to push back against or something.)

Check out the book reviews on Elitist Book Reviews (you'll like them--they review about 3 times as many books by men as women, which should start to help with the "too many active woman characters" problem right there.) Asimov's and Analog magazines would probably also be good places to check for book reviews if you live in the US; they have similar ratios, and no women on their review staff. If you live in the UK, try Vector.

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and no women on their review staff

That's an oddly specific recommendation; what difference does that make?

pretty hard to find stories with well-rounded characters of multiple races, or LGBT characters or characters that are not of binary gender or realistically disabled characters

In my experience, that's because this becomes the point of the character, why he's included - either as an element within the story or simply for PC cred (“See how hip and with-it my story is?”) If it's irrelevant, there's literally no reason to bother laying it all out, and if it's relevant it tends to dominate the depiction of the character.

One notable exception - from forty-five years ago, which may be why - is Wilson Tucker's The Year of the Quiet Sun, where not until the final chapter is it revealed that the main viewpoint character is black. It's a zinger, and powerful in the story context, but this had simply not mattered to anyone, including him. (“Are you being disagreeable, civilian?” Surrounded by military officers, being a civilian was what mattered more.) *

Books and movies, particularly SF, tend to be set when they're made as much or more than their fictional setting. It's a matter of style, which is to say fashion, which is to say fad. If you like the fashion, the result is pleasant - the 1976 movie Logan's Run is howlingly dated, but fondly remembered for that very reason, not because anyone takes the story seriously. (In truth the production could have been done far better, if anyone had really cared.) Likewise, I'm pleased to have a massive coffee-table compendium of the 1929 Buck Rogers newspaper comics, wherein Wilma Deering, 25th Century Action Girl, is a flapper! Bobbed hair, narrow figure and all - and she's charming! (But then, so is the strip, imbued throughout with a quirky humor and sense of fun that never intrudes. When Dick Calkin died in 1940 the strip became generic, stupid, the product of lesser minds.)

If you don't like the fashion - the Fifth Columnist “nuke-freeze” propaganda of the 1980s, the feminist make-believe and toxic misandrism of the 1990s - and before, and after; not until recently did I discover that what I suspected at the time was correct, that at least one SF author wrote stories with normal, sane characters and then global-searched-and-replaced all the gender pronouns, producing the feminist-approved mockmen and eunuchs that alone were being published at that point. Correct Thought speaks with one voice…

Well, then, as you say, simply don't read it. Move on. Which, I gather, SF fandom is doing now, dwindling year by year, dispersing to other venues. (Romance novels aren't what they used to be - as long as hero and heroine find a happy ending together, it can be time travel or vampires or alternate history or, indeed, pretty much what science fiction used to be, before it became an engine of Politically Correct propaganda and “social engineering.” That's where I was going, with my alternate-history wartime spy-drama romance of an albino neo-Wiccan heroine and a PTSD combat-veteran hero. A ball-busting mockman she ain't; she IS disabled, and a complete outcast, and strangely enough, so is he…)

People don't want what the Left pushes at them - they never do - and they “vote with their feet.”

* Apropos of that, in his memoirs astronaut Michael Collins mentioned a fascinating what-if footnote: The application to join NASA did not question the applicant's race. The only reason there were no black astronauts during the Moon Race era was because none qualified. (Damn few of anyone did!) … Save one. A USAF Major, combat pilot, engineering degree, “The Right Stuff” all the way - and as it happened his ancestry was (primarily) African, not European. If he had not died in a training crash, one of the men who stood on the Moon could have been black. The social and political consequences might have been far-reaching.

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I say "no women on the review staff" because you seem to hate books with women warriors, and women reviewers are, in my admittedly limited experience, more likely to seek out and enjoy such books.

Also statistically women on the review staff, and percent of books reviewed that are by women authors do appear to have some correlation, and again, I would expect women authors to be more likely to write books that featured women in active roles you appear to want restricted to men.

Speaking of art affected by when it is made as much as the setting, of course it is. The consumers of the art live when it is made, not when it is set. Thus you see medieval manuscripts with David (of David and Goliath) wearing a cotte and hose, or Renaissance depictions of Solomon's wives wearing "gates of hell" surcoats. That is why 40s and 50s depictions of space suits, with their form-fitting gold lame and clear glass bubbles around their heads look so unlike actual space suits.

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clear glass bubbles around their heads - Yes, and it's fascinating to see what an enormous difference exists before and after World War II. The depictions of technical equipment, gear, became enormously more realistic simply because so many guys had had real-world experience with it as pilots, frogmen, firemen, whatever.

I love the 1950s Ley-von Braun-Bonestell-Collier magazine view of “Our Future in Space,” where “Because it's there!” was all the justification needed for a massive national outpouring of money and effort to Get Out There…

https://youtu.be/KeRaAFw5a5I

[Allen Steele's The Tranquility Alternative is set in that world, but in the present day, where - let's face it - that really WASN'T enough of a justification, not sustainably, considering what we haven't found out there. So it's pretty much a ghost town setting now, duct tape on the seats of the orbital shuttle and the once-magnificent Space Wheel slowly falling apart - but the technology to develop what we DID find is coming out, slowly coming on line, with cutting-edge Eurotech companies getting to the Moon their way while the aging goldfish-bowl-helmeted “Greatest Generation” crew watches them go past…]

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you seem to hate books with women warriors

Speaking of being “interested in credibility”… It will suffice to say that if commanders could have armed cattle they would have, if that would provide additional usable troops. If Disney's “Sorcerer's Apprentice” could have put swords into the hands of his marching servant brooms instead of water buckets - y' know? The point being that apart from the (very) odd exception, if women COULD be warriors they certainly didn't lack for chances to prove it. What they proved, everywhere and always, was that they are NOT - though this awareness does not follow the current Party line and is therefore doubleplus crimethink.

Yet women certainly are not helpless.

http://althistory.livejournal.com/41671.html

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Interesting that you should reframe "hate books with women warriors" as "interested in credibility."

So do you also dislike books with dragons? Do you also dislike books with faster-than-light travel? Do you also dislike books with functional magic?

Also I disagree with you about women "not lacking for chances to prove they could be warriors." In an awful lot of societies, they certainly did lack for such chances. In other societies they fought alongside men, if not in the same numbers. (There's a memorable passage in one of the Roman accounts of the conquest of Gaul, I think, saying that the Gaulish men fought hard enough but if one called his wife to stand beside him, she was even fiercer in battle. There's an account in one of the chronicles of the Crusades of one of the men-at-arms who was a woman--it's just like a paragraph and mostly says that she was embarrassed with all the attention and wanted to get on with her man-at-arms job if the writer would just quit goggling at her now. There's Joan of Arc whose first "miracle" was single handedly defeating two mounted, armed, trained knights sent to bring her home--when she was sixteen years old. There were the Sarmatians, whose women fought alongside the men, and who may have been responsible for the accounts of Amazons. In archaeology there are the multiple graves, taken for those of men because they had swords in them and were therefore assumed to be warriors graves, that turn out to contain women's skeletons. They still have swords in them, which seems odd if they weren't warriors.)

But I'm threatening to make this all about women who fight, instead of focusing on the real point--if this is actually a case of being "interested in credibility" do you similarly dislike any books with dragons, magic or faster-than-light travel?

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The book you refer to is Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear. The author is a full-time writer with over a dozen novels (http://www.elizabethbear.com/?page_id=97) to her credit. She has no trouble getting published, and apparently enough people like her books to earn her a full-time living.

Again, sir, facts are not your friend.

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Now, now, don't be ill-tempered. All I know of the book is what you've said of it.

- And as to that, Why IS this post called “The Eiger Sanction”?

Edited Date: 2015-05-14 01:58 pm (UTC)

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Well, if you make a slur to the effect that the only way a book got published was to meet a checklist, you might want to Google the author's name first.

The "change a $9 bill with $3s" is from the movie.

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