Man, I haven't flung a book across the room in forever!

[solarbird]

A. E. van Vogt's The Changeling is almost like a parody of sexism, except for the part where it's not!

Everybody who feels like criticising Heinlein for that should probably breeze through the first 20 pages or so of this thing to see what some contemporaries were writing. Or just, I dunno, punch yourself in the face a few times. Either would work.

I mean, damn.

(Caviat: I could only read 20 pages. Then I managed to skim about 20 more before t3h fl1ng. Maybe it was sekrit parody. But I'm pretty sure not.)

gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Comments

[annathepiper]

Ah, that'd be the Water! books, right? I wasn't terribly thrilled about those works of hers, either; I didn't like them nearly as much as I liked the Strands of Starlight book and the ones that followed it.

But yeah, I do strongly suspect that she wrote the male characters that way on purpose. I note that a lot of the 'good' male characters, even in the Strands series, are ones who are specifically 'feminine'. She makes a point of describing Varden that way, as I recall.

[quen-elf.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Water books. I can't remember whether I finished the series even... I was reading them from the library and I'm glad I didn't buy them :)

('Strands of Starlight', with all its faults, remains one of my favourite books.)

I think I kind of object to only 'feminine' male characters being 'good'. I mean, I'm not the most masculine person in the world, and I'm happy about that, but... I don't think anyone more butch than me is the devil incarnate. :>

[annathepiper]

It kind of bothers me, too, now that I think about it, and now that I am thinking about it I think it might have twigged me some when I read the books to begin with. But yeah, from what I remember, there was very much this undercurrent of 'masculine equals bad' all throughout her books, and I believe I wound up buying them all. I haven't re-read any of them, though.

She does have some goodness in her writing, but it would be interesting to re-read her books with a more objective eye and see if these trends of hers get in the way of that goodness for me.