asterroc | Entries tagged with science fiction

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.

Am I the only one who is severely bothered by the seasons in "A Game of Thrones"? A big premise of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series is that seasons last multiple years. But, at least in the first book, there isn't any explanation of this given, not even a supernatural/fantasy one.

( Cut for people who don't care about why this bothers me. )

In the end, I think I have to conclude that Martin doesn't know jack about astronomy, even what they teach you about the seasons in elementary school, and just move on and try my best to stop gritting my teeth every time he refers to multi-year seasons.

And I'll leave you with this.

Is it a common stale sci-fi trope to have a supposedly sentient alien race actually have only males be sentient and females are bestial breeding stock, or is it only Orson Scott Card (the Piggies in Speaker for the Dead) and Larry Niven (Kzin and Puppeteers in the Ringworld/Man-Kzin Wars universe) who are guilty of it? This sort of things is really the worst possible example of how many authors assume males are standard and only put in females if they're making a point.

Are there any cases of the reverse, a supposedly sentient alien race where actually only the females are sentient and males are bestial breeding stock?

Relatedly, does anyone remember enough about Anne McCaffrey's Catteni (Freedom's Landing series) to recall much about Catteni females? I've a distinct impression that either their females were also non-sentient, or at best they weren't mentioned as being anything special. Certainly the protagonist female wasn't anything special, with her battered woman syndrome that's taken for entirely normal.

I am currently listening to an unabridged audiobook¹ of Frank Herbert's Dune with a full cast doing the different characters. I am wondering about the editorial/production choice to have a full cast, and about the claim of unabridged.

The conversations as read have very little "Paul said," "Jessica replied" sort of commentary. They tend to be only what the individual people actually said. For example, if Jessica were and Paul were talking about his homework over breakfast, and Leto walked in in the middle of it...

"So did you finish your homework last night?"
"Very quickly, it was just algebra."
"And what did you learn from it?"
"If you drop a book from the top of a building, its motion is governed by a quadratic equation."
"That isn't what I was taught, since you also have to take air friction into account."
"But you can simplify the equations if you make the assumption that there isn't any air friction."
"And we haven't gotten up to air friction yet."²

In the audio book, since there are three different readers for the lines said by Paul, Jessica, and Leto, it is obvious who said what, but there aren't any "Leto walked into the conversation and commented that..." that in a print version of the book would indicate who said what in a long exchange, or if three people are involved in the conversation. Is this lack of "Paul said" actually in the original text, or was there an editorial decision to remove those? If the original text did not include any "Paul said"s, that would explain the production choice to have a cast.

And while I'm asking, is there a name for doing "Paul said"s, or for not doing them?

¹The production is copyright 2007 Audio Renaissance, and narrated by a cast listed on Audible.com as Scott Brick, Orlagh Cassidy, Euan Morton,and Simon Vance, but possibly including more.
²In case you're curious, my intent here was for the speakers to be JPJPLJP, though the last L and J could be swapped and still have it make sense.

I just started the audiobook of "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, and I'm nearly done, it's a short and enthralling read. It's aimed at young adult readers, but it's really secretly hard Sci-Fi / speculative fiction in the grand style of old: it proposes a future setting and explores how people (in this case an 11-year-old boy) would react within that setting.

calzephyr77 I think it was you that liked YA and wanted to read more SF; this one is definitely worth the (short) read. The audiobook production tries to enhance things by adding ambience music; I recommend the print version instead.

Edit: I didn't realize that this book had been out forever, so it didn't occur to me that there might be spoilers in the comments. There are, though not horrible ones as of yet. Just don't read the comments if you don't want to be spoiled.

It's not a spoiler if it's just speculation, but still, read on at your own risk.

WGL and I, w/ a little help from JT, decided we know how Year 7 is going to end. Firstly, she said two major characters are going to die, right? Well one's obviously gotta be Voldemort. Harry has to be the one to kill Voldie according to the prophesies, and as the main character he can't be the other one. It's going to be Snape: he will die giving Harry the assist on Voldie. It's just perfect, we've been wondering all along which side he's on. He *has* to redeem himself after the acts of the last one, and the best way he can do this is to give his life in the process.

Snape is Judas. He's the inside job. He's the necessary betrayer, his actions required by the victim of his betrayal. I guess the only question in the end is whether Voldie or Dumbledore is Jesus. (If not both.)

And speaking of Dumbledore being Jesus, he's not dead. Or he's coming back. (A) They never found a body. (B) His familiar is the phoenix, who dies and rises again. Ooh, I think I'm on to something here, w/ the death and rebirth and Jesus imagery... Is Harry Paul or something then?

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this is not a journal title

hyuk

Entries tagged with science fiction

Feminism has ruined Ben Bova for me

"Winter is coming"

Trope?

If you've read Dune... conversations?

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Potter Potter Potter Potter - A Snape! A Snape!

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