Even SF writers can be assholes
Mar. 1st, 2005 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperSpotted this over on Patrick Nielsen Hayden's blog today, a post wherein he introduces his readers to an individual who goes by the name Thomas Beale and the alias "Vox Day". This has reminded me that even people who write science fiction can be supreme assholes, as this quote of Mr. Day/Beale's illustrates:
I find this attitude so offensive that I scarcely know where to begin to rant about it. Perhaps with the part where hypocrites such as this man sneeringly claim that women cannot 'hack' physics while avowing that any decent woman wouldn't be trying to step beyond her place by studying hard science in the first place--no doubt because they are scared that a woman with brains will prove them wrong. Or perhaps the part where he's ignoring that hundreds of men write soft SF and fantasy as well--including, I might add, Mr. Day/Beale himself. Or perhaps the part where all the hard science in the world, no matter how accurately depicted, does not mean squat if the author is not presenting a story the reader cares about.
I don't know physics. I'll be the first to admit it. I've never taken a physics class in my life. But the blame for this squarely rests upon my tumultuous teenage years, in which I changed schools four times, making it almost impossible to hold to the regular track of classes through which one might expect to proceed while staying four years in the same high school. One might ask why I didn't take physics in college, but there are only so many electives a college student can cram into her schedule--and other things competed much harder for my attention. Language classes, for example, and various and sundry electives more pertinent to my major of Computer Science and my minor in English. To assert that a woman is an inferior thinker, that she does not possess a rational mind and clearly cannot 'hack' physics, is nothing more than a misogynist excuse to keep her out of the field in the first place.
Maybe I haven't studied physics, and perhaps hard sciences are distinctly absent from my fields of study, but you know what? This has a lot less to do with my being a woman than it does with my deliberate choice to study where my aptitudes are stronger: in music, in computers, in language and literature and words. And it does not mean I don't have appreciation and respect for proper science. It does not mean I do not think.
As for "romance novels in space", I have some names for Mr. Day/Beale: Julie Czerneda. Sharon Shinn. Liz Williams. Kathleen Goonan. Sure, all of these women have included love stories as part of their plots, but you know what? So has practically every single novel I've ever read by men, too: J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Dennis Danvers, James P. Blaylock, Jim Butcher, and all of the other gentlemen who share space on my shelves with female authors.
I'll stand up and yell it loud and proud: I LIKE LOVE STORIES. I want to see the boy get his girl. Or the girl get her boy. Or the boy get his boy, or the girl her girl. But this does not mean I want that to be the only point of the story, or that it will be the only point of any story I write.
Lastly, let's talk a bit about this half-baked assumption that fantasy novels are somehow less subject to rigorous critique than hard SF novels. Just because you're making up the universe does not mean you have license to suck. In fact, I would argue that you have to be even more rigorously consistent than a hard SF writer, because you do not have the luxury of falling back upon the foundations of known scientific principles to establish your author cred. Nor does it mean you are somehow ignoring basic science when you're trying to create a world from scratch, or that you are just going to handwave and say "it's magic" because you're writing a fantasy novel.
But then, what would I know? As a woman and a feminist, one who is working on both fantasy and soft SF novels, I fully expect that I would be classified by Mr. Day/Beale as one of the "mentally polluted".
I find myself strangely unperturbed by that prospect.
The mental pollution of feminism extends well beyond the question of great thinkers. Women do not write hard science fiction today because so few can hack the physics, so they either write romance novels in space about strong, beautiful, independent and intelligent but lonely women who finally fall in love with rugged men who love them just as they are, or stick to fantasy where they can make things up without getting hammered by critics holding triple Ph.D.s in molecular engineering, astrophysics and Chaucer.
I find this attitude so offensive that I scarcely know where to begin to rant about it. Perhaps with the part where hypocrites such as this man sneeringly claim that women cannot 'hack' physics while avowing that any decent woman wouldn't be trying to step beyond her place by studying hard science in the first place--no doubt because they are scared that a woman with brains will prove them wrong. Or perhaps the part where he's ignoring that hundreds of men write soft SF and fantasy as well--including, I might add, Mr. Day/Beale himself. Or perhaps the part where all the hard science in the world, no matter how accurately depicted, does not mean squat if the author is not presenting a story the reader cares about.
I don't know physics. I'll be the first to admit it. I've never taken a physics class in my life. But the blame for this squarely rests upon my tumultuous teenage years, in which I changed schools four times, making it almost impossible to hold to the regular track of classes through which one might expect to proceed while staying four years in the same high school. One might ask why I didn't take physics in college, but there are only so many electives a college student can cram into her schedule--and other things competed much harder for my attention. Language classes, for example, and various and sundry electives more pertinent to my major of Computer Science and my minor in English. To assert that a woman is an inferior thinker, that she does not possess a rational mind and clearly cannot 'hack' physics, is nothing more than a misogynist excuse to keep her out of the field in the first place.
Maybe I haven't studied physics, and perhaps hard sciences are distinctly absent from my fields of study, but you know what? This has a lot less to do with my being a woman than it does with my deliberate choice to study where my aptitudes are stronger: in music, in computers, in language and literature and words. And it does not mean I don't have appreciation and respect for proper science. It does not mean I do not think.
As for "romance novels in space", I have some names for Mr. Day/Beale: Julie Czerneda. Sharon Shinn. Liz Williams. Kathleen Goonan. Sure, all of these women have included love stories as part of their plots, but you know what? So has practically every single novel I've ever read by men, too: J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin, Dennis Danvers, James P. Blaylock, Jim Butcher, and all of the other gentlemen who share space on my shelves with female authors.
I'll stand up and yell it loud and proud: I LIKE LOVE STORIES. I want to see the boy get his girl. Or the girl get her boy. Or the boy get his boy, or the girl her girl. But this does not mean I want that to be the only point of the story, or that it will be the only point of any story I write.
Lastly, let's talk a bit about this half-baked assumption that fantasy novels are somehow less subject to rigorous critique than hard SF novels. Just because you're making up the universe does not mean you have license to suck. In fact, I would argue that you have to be even more rigorously consistent than a hard SF writer, because you do not have the luxury of falling back upon the foundations of known scientific principles to establish your author cred. Nor does it mean you are somehow ignoring basic science when you're trying to create a world from scratch, or that you are just going to handwave and say "it's magic" because you're writing a fantasy novel.
But then, what would I know? As a woman and a feminist, one who is working on both fantasy and soft SF novels, I fully expect that I would be classified by Mr. Day/Beale as one of the "mentally polluted".
I find myself strangely unperturbed by that prospect.