Feminism has ruined Ben Bova for me

[asterroc]

I'm reading Ben Bova's "The Alien Within", Book 2 in the Voyagers series, and it's been years since I read the first one. Bova writes interesting complex characters^*, with layers upon layers of deception, sometimes including self-deception as well. His women however are always described in terms of their sexuality - their appearances are described in sexual terms, they react to the other characters^* in the story in sexual ways, the other characters (both male and female) react to them sexually (men analyzing their sexual attractiveness, women treating other women as rivals for sexual favors), and every woman with a name slept her way into her current position. It's absolutely disgusting.

^*Where for Bova "character" means "white male", and everything else is an exception.

Bova also exoticizes the "orientals" in the story, using the exoticism as another sexual attribute in the "oriental" women, and as a sign of strength/power/fighting skill in the "oriental" men.

This book is really the product of a maladjusted mind. I'm willing to finish it (there's very few non-fiction books I won't finish after I've voluntarily started them^%, and fewer yet in SF/fantasy), but I don't think I'm ever going to read another Bova novel. Shame, he's written so much.

^%A couple corrections are noted in this sentence - strike throughs indicate removed, italics indicate added.

Comments

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Holy crap.

(I was reading Analog as recently as 2005, and it still seemed stuck in the 1950s.)

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

Analog has had the same editor since Ben Bova left in 1978, Stanley Schmidt. If you wish to read SF that isn't trapped in the '50s, you need to steer a wider path than Analog and Asimov's. There are a number of small circulation, well-edited SF magazines that showcase SF with a more modern feel. The big guys stay big by appealing to the conservatism of their audience.