I’ve read some truly hilarious “Science fiction has become nothing more than romance novels in outer space!” arguments in my time, but I don’t think I’ve read one quite as poorly-written and outright hysterical (word used with all due irony) as the article on The Spearhead about “The War on Science Fiction and Marvin Minsky.” (Thanks to Eric Selinger for the link.)
As far as I can tell, the argument in the article can be divided into the following premise and conclusion:
1. Science fiction has been egregiously feminized. Witness the new Battlestar Galactica, where Starbuck is now a woman. (Sidenote: Dear Dirk Benedict: Both Starbucks as played by you and Katee Sackhoff possess gonads. Gonads are not, as you seem to think, strictly male. If they were, that would lead to really interesting results, because assuming humans still reproduced sexually, there’d be a lot more gay sex in the world. Is that really what you’re trying to push for? Think about it.) In short: science fiction is now about stupid relationship drama, and males don’t like stupid relationship drama, they like doing things and exploding things and exploring things and exploding the things they’ve just explored. (I would just like to state for the record that writers like Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Vernor Vinge and Kim Stanley Robinson have never hinged works on the intricacies of human relationship and experience, because that would make them writers of stupid relationship drama, and therefore pansy boys and not at all true purveyors of science fiction.)
2. At any rate, because of this egregious feminization of science fiction, the—ah, fuck it, I’m just going to quote the article verbatim, because it’s JUST THAT GOOD:
As we know science fiction has inspired boys to pursue careers in science, engineering, and technology as men. With women killing science fiction on television, the current generation of boys won’t have this opportunity to be inspired to work in these fields. There is still a great deal of written science fiction that is real science fiction so all is not lost. However, many boys who would have gone on to make scientific discoveries and invent new technologies will not do so since they will never be inspired by science fiction as boys.
I’m not going to attempt to dissect this article line-by-line, because if nothing else, the commenters are doing a decent enough job, but I do want to make two observations:
1. Beneath the anger in the article is a true undertone of fear. This was written by a deeply insecure person, one who sees the world changing around him and is frantic to keep the world static as opposed to adapting to the new realities. This fear is based on a foundation of outraged privilege. When a majority in power has to give up its special privileges, or when it has to share those same privileges with everybody else (therefore making it resemble a basic right, as opposed to a privilege), the majoritarian take is always to cast these losses of power as evidence of bullying, and the sharing of rights as the gaining of special rights by the other minority. As the default milieu changes, the majority will fight to keep things static, because the majority see things as neutral or balanced instead of weighed in their favor. One of the hallmarks—one of the greatest perks, in fact—of societal and cultural privilege is never having to think about it. You just take it for granted. This struggle happens over and over and over again: whenever inroads are made towards equality between the races, the genders or sexual orientations, those who are deeply invested in keeping the things as they used to be start lashing out, with “things need to stay in their place because that’s where they’ve always belonged” being one of their greatest rallying cries.
2. It doesn’t matter that things have never stayed where they belong, and they certainly never stayed in the place envisioned by the people fighting change. Many of the appeals to history or authority by these people are strangely ahistorical. A lot of the appeals to a return to tradition or the right order are typically based on relatively recent history—the pattern I’ve noticed for appeals for a return to traditional womanhood or traditional marriage seem to pinpoint either middle-class white mores of the 1950s or the late Victorian as a desirable era to emulate. And even that’s filtered through a very particular lens: nostalgia, which gives the past a rather nice, fuzzy glow and a pretty gloss over all its intricacies, difficulties and inconsistencies. What’s more, a lot of our current view of the relatively recent past is informed, not by documentarian depictions, but by Hollywood and advertising. We think of John Wayne and Cary Grant; we don’t think of blue-collar families in which both parents worked and scrabbled to make a living. Picking some inchoate time in the past when “men were men and women were women” allows you to ignore things like like how at various points in time, manly men used to wear satin and high heels, or wrote epic poetry about falling in love, and women worked in factories.
I don’t have a good way to end this, other than to point out this bit of absurdity: Starbuck being played by a female, the blurring of old gender roles and the advent of people acting like, y’know, people in science fiction means we’ll have fewer scientists. I know, I know, the article writer specified boys, but really, male scientists are what really count. How’s that for a conclusion?
Edited to add:
One more point I’d like to make. The definition of “male” and “masculine” as used by masculists such as those at The Spearhead are self-reflexive, and it drives me nuts. When you point to men who enjoy the new incarnation of BSG, or who enjoy gender subversion, the first counter is almost always “Well, that’s because they’re not REAL men. Real men are defined by what real men enjoy.” STAB STAB STAB.
I’m sorry, boys, that you find it so difficult to be inspired by the male based comic books, movies and TV shows featuring Summer Glau that cater especially to your prurient interests. I suppose the slew of women who will flock into this field (including myself) will just have to pick up the slack.
Honestly, if you don’t want us in there with you, you can go play in some other sandbox. I hear Westerns are dying off, they could use an influx of whiny, self-obsessed crybabies.
Actually got to this on my blog before I saw it here.
“OMG! Starbuck is a woman!” is so 2003.
That’s right keep ‘em bare foot & pregnant in the kitchen . Nice women don’t want the vote anyway. What year is this? 1900? No? Feels like it.
I have read some other parts of the said website, and they are completely bullshit. Some of them are hilariously bad, being written by ‘manly man’ men who thinks that they are superior to women and (actually) nice men because they can’t keep up with the world. Some entries are just plain annoying, and they even make me feel a bit worried since it seems like something that can be taken seriously by some impressionable youngsters or college douchebags. I know some guys who wouldn’t see anything wrong with the site and might even be ultimately impressed by the articles.
By the way, if seeing a girl in a sci-fi series turn a guy off from being a scientist, I don’t think that guy deserves to become a scientist in the first place. Isn’t science about being open minded?
I personally liked how Scalzi pointed out the possible first science fiction novel was a woman: Mary Shelley. Hah.
The commenter from the original article just summed it all up for me on how this guy wants his SF. Awesome imagery!
Hubby and I discussed this, both of us finding it sad that trying to push women back into a box doesn’t give men everything outside the box to call their own, but it puts them in a different box. Saying ‘this is what a man should be’ is just as damaging to men as it is to say what a woman should be. (He also laughs as someone who watched both BSGs and searched for several minutes for a word for the original Starbuck before settling on ‘elfin’ and nowhere near that traditional definition of men, while the newer Starbuck could be described as ‘butch’ and nowhere near the traditional definition of feminine.
My point had been that traditionally “manly men” didn’t go into science. Science was something nerds did while trying to avoid getting beat up by the “manly men.” I suppose he’s talking about the fictional aeronautic engineers though. The space cowboys. Captain Kirk.
Giving these people more to look forward to than another hill to climb always made sense to me.
Um, that should say “written by a woman…”
The point about nostalgia for a time that we know about through TV is spot on, and marked in the spear boys’ complaint: the blog talks about SF generally but only gives TV shows as examples. One could argue that patterns in current shows have everything to do with instructions from people—ahem, men—like Robert McKee and Blake Snyder about how to write a blockbuster. Their advice is everything about personalizing the conflict, not technologizing it.
It is a source of heartwarming satisfaction to know that my very existence upsets these creatures, and that by *writing* and *reading* science fiction which actually contains *homosexuals*, I am subverting all they stand for. Oh yes, I am filled with glee 🙂
But one thing. Stop saying this bloke needs to get laid. Why should a self-respecting goat have her evening ruined just to keep him happy?
I think, as an act of charity, we should send the anonymous coward who wrote this drivel, a ‘man-size’ (heh) tube of lanolin. He must be chafed after all that wanking. An extra tube or five to Dirk Benedict. I hear he doesn’t have much else to do these days [/preferred Richard Hatch anyway pbbbt!]
This is a great article – much more eloquent than the article it’s critiquing! Thanks for writing it, and for the smart people commenting here. You’ve calmed my girlish nerves!
Of course the story has to be between characters who act like real people, but if the story is not influenced by it happening in space, why is it a story about space exploration? If you retell Arthur Hailey’s Airport on a space station, would it be good sci-fi? If you retell Greys Anatomy with the characters as astronauts instead of doctors, would it be good sci-fi?
Defying Gravity hilariously uses faster-than-light communications because the writers are either uneducated, lazy, or think their intended audience is uneducated and/or lazy. Trying to make sci-fi appeal to an audience that would normally not be interested in sci-fi often produces bad sci-fi. People seeing it might then think all sci-fi is bad.
Regarding gender roles, The Day of the Triffids was shocking to this 20-something male, and we’re long past that. I’m also against professional boys’ clubs, be them military or computer programming. But today’s men are confused by the conflicting messages, and girls should really tell a guy ahead of time whether they would be offended by the guy opening the door for them or by the guy not opening the door for them. I suppose in my grandpa’s time, he would know for sure what was the polite thing to do.
“If you retell Arthur Hailey’s Airport on a space station, would it be good sci-fi?”
Could be. Depends on what gets done with the premise. Star Trek is just a western in space (and in many ways, not really science fiction) but it had been tremendously influential in encouraging people to explore ideas in a sci-fi setting.
“Defying Gravity hilariously uses faster-than-light communications because the writers are either uneducated, lazy, or think their intended audience is uneducated and/or lazy.”
Dude *no*. FTL is one of those accepted impossibilities which makes the rest of science fiction *possible*. How can you seriously have stories set in space or on other planets, or with aliens, if you insist on restricting space travel to the physics we have now? I love a definition of science fiction I read years ago which went along the lines of “Fiction is asking ‘what if?” Science fiction asks, ‘My god, what if?’” What the hell is wrong with taking a concept which allows the settings to expand and the imagination to soar? If you’re going to limit science fiction to the strictly possible, then you’ll kill the genre stone dead.
I use FTL in my stories, knowing it’s impossible and I am neither uneducated nor lazy. Neither is my audience. There’s dumb science in so-called science fiction (Dr Who anyone) and then there’s convention.
“girls should really tell a guy ahead of time whether they would be offended by the guy opening the door for them or by the guy not opening the door for them.”
Why should men, who wrote the rules in the first place, be given special help because the society *they* dominate is changing, and so are social mores?
Is it so very hard to actually, you know, like *ask* women what they want?
I get the feeling you sympathise with Mr Spear Chucker’s post. You’re not likely to gain a lot of traction on a blog like this if you do.
I just love some of the comments. The one from the dude whose wife was a heinous slut who now hates all women. Priceless.
You know, my ex was a lazy, useless sack of crap who was content to let me carry the entire load—financially and otherwise—while he played World of Warcraft 14 hours a day. Come to think of it, the only thing that’s changed is I’m not stuck washing his dirty socks. But does that mean I hate all men? Am I raising my sons to be man-hating castrati? Have I replaced Clive Owen in my fantasy Clive Owen/Me/Angelina Jolie sandwich with Scarlett Johansson?
Call me a pie-eyed optimist, but I still see something worthwhile in that ol’ Y chromosome. Less now, though, after reading that wank-fest…
Recently, I was at a literary science fiction and fantasy, and I ran across an online reviewer who spoke out against the rise of female protagonists & urban fantasy. He mentioned that he’s very sick of publishers sending him books “with another goth chick” on the cover. Later, I was told by my friend who attended the conference with me that during the “What you should be reading now” panel, books of that type (female protags in urban fantasy) were banned from inclusion. Hmm.
While I can understand a person getting tired of a popular trend, there seemed to me to be an undercurrent of something beyond fatigue happening there, a sentiment that sci fi/fantasy as a genre was being hijacked by women.
Later, a pair of young women asked me if I ever feel pressure to take the romantic subplots out of my stories in response to attitudes such as his. This actually echoed a question that I’d heard while on one of the panels as well. Inwardly, I sighed heavily. No matter how far we come, someone wants us to feel guilty and turn away from what we like to read/find entertaining. As you can probably guess, I told the young writers to write their stories the way they want to write them and I assured them that current trends in publishing prove that there are plenty of readers who will enjoy reading about romantic plots and subplots.
Anyway, thanks for posting this thread. I am sorry that some guys are frustrated and fearful, but no matter how much they rant or how tiresome I find it to answer their rants, we have to keep countering them. Otherwise theirs could be the only words some young writer hears.
**Pointing and laughing, as per Scalzi.**
@Tina C.:
What?? We were married to the same man??!! Lazy, useless sack of crap, and a polygamist to boot!
You have to admit that the article makes a very valid point: no one has ever become a scientist without first being a reader of science fiction. Ever. If not for the genre, science as we know it would not have come to exist, and if we don’t stop screwing it up by letting the characters in it have feelings, people will stop caring about science now. We women are literally ruining the world.
Newton, Descartes, Galileo? ALL HUGE SCI-FI FANS. They wouldn’t have cared about science without it.
Wait, the first science fiction novel was published when? Damn. Well, there goes that theory.
How in the world could someone as intelligent and reasonable as the author of that article get anything wrong? I mean, my moronic, relationship-obsessed female brain only understood every other word he wrote, but I was sure someone who used such a persuasive and rational arguments would think his theories through.
I essentially see this as some jerks who are upset with the direction Sci-Fi television/film is taking and needing someone to blame it on. Fortunately for them, they have a little club that involves “anti-feminism” and so one decides that it must be the women who are to blame. As a whole. Oh, and the gays.
If you are unhappy with the quality of your sci-fi, let’s discuss it, as one adult to another. Don’t go pointing your finger at me like we’re in third grade and we’re debating who passed gas. This is a genre that many people love, and we should debate the future of it together.
I have some serious issues with the idea that genres should be created for one particular group of people only. Honestly, THAT is how art stagnates.
I would like to inspire boys to pursue careers in science, engineering, and technology as women. (As human beings, ideally. At certain times in my graduate life, I pursued science as a unbalanced, angry, passionately frustrated mess.)
I know! And with his internet porn addiction, it’s a wonder he found time to not have sex with us both!
Articles/blogs/posts like the one you are writing about always make me laugh. As the mother of 7, the first 5 of whom were all girls, I have my own perspective on science fiction and females. My 7 year old daughter has, since she was 4, been a huge fan of shows like Dr. Who and movies such as Spiderman. She even likes to play pirates (when she’s not pretending to be a princess). My 16 year old is studying chemistry and physics, along with several math subjecs, because she wants to be “either a veterinarian or a physicist.” My 15 year old wants to work in forensics for the FBI. My 17 year old writes her own science fiction, and she’s good at it.
I learned early in life that assuming things about people based on gender roles is a very unscientific approach that is fraught with errors.
I read about this on Scalzi’s site yesterday.
My response is to ask the author just how small his dick is, and if that’s why mummy didn’t love him?
Cause damn, that boy has insecurities and issues with girls that clearly go to his core.
I’d also like to reassure him that it doesn’t matter that boys are inspired to be scientists anymore, because we women are picking up their slack just fine!
I like to think the author’s problem was that he never got a puppy when he was widdle…
*laughs*
seriously, the fellow should get out of his mother’s basement and see the real world.
you know, the one *with* women.
I just need to say this before the comments get closed and as I am about to hit the hot tub I don’t have time to read the whole blog post or all the comments yet.
I am female, I am an engineer, I grew up on hard core SF (Herbert, Niven, Vinge, et al). I’m one of those older engineers from back when females in engineering were scarcer than hens teeth. I owe my career to none other than Scotty from ST:TOS. I thought he had the cool job. For the longest time I was” icked” out by any romance in SF novels because the guys didn’t know how to write it. Asimov even said (I think) that he avoided it because it made him nervous. (I’ll look that up sometime). Asimov’s venture into sex in one of this last Robot novels shows he was right to avoid it. Some women can’t do it justice either (Katherine Kurtz comes to mind).
I figure SF (especially TV which really can’t be likened to “real” SF as in the book kind) is just going through a phase and hopefully in a few years romance and hardcore SF will have melded nicely into well rounded explosions of both the physical and physics kind.
Now I’m off to the hot tub.
Ooh, and when the WoW really started to take over…it’s sad to find yourself thinking, “I know there’s something seriously wrong here—he’s curtailing his porn.”
I just don’t know how he managed to juggle his WoW, the internet porn, that occasional part time job, AND find time to pick apart my housekeeping skills—AND do all the same things with another woman! Truly a Renaissance man.
At the risk of public flogging, and informing everyone here that while I have read Scalzi’s critique and this one, I have not read the original post, I’d like to add my 2 cents to this discussion.
I consider myself a fan of science fiction. That is to say, I like Star Trek, Michael Crichton, Ray Bradbury and some Asimov. I have even read a couple of older school science fiction books that I liked very much, including one called Lucifer’s Hammer though I don’t remember the author. But, this is rather immaterial and here is why.
I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about science fiction. And woah did I get a lesson. Just like in romance where there are quite a number of sub-genres, science fiction as an overarching genre has many sub-genres too. There are space operas and speculative fiction, futuristics and scifi (an amalgamation of generally “soft” science fiction, all sorts of sub-genres but only one sub-genre is called science fiction. And science fiction is defined by one aspect – the science. The science of core science fiction has to be “hard”, i.e., backed up by real science. So, for example, Star Trek does not qualify as core science fiction; it is Space Opera.
My point in writing this is not to defend anything written, because I don’t know precisely what was written, but to give a brief description of science fiction as defined by readers and authors of science fiction as it was explained to me. I say this because so often word choice (semantics) make a huge difference because different people have different definitions of things.
Almost everything I enjoy as science fiction does not qualify as core science fiction under the classification rules explained to me. You can imagine my surprise at learning that.
Lastly, I feel I must add this disclaimer: I have read Scalzi’s blog on occasion, I have never read any of his books. I do not know how he classifies the genre. What I have written above is what I was told, which I am simply passing on.
Hi, Monique. In this case, I think you do have to click through and read the original article being critiqued. If you really care to read a bunch of drivel, that is. I get the point you’re trying to make, but trust me, you are being much more reasonable about this than the Spearhead guy(s) in even trying to draw distinctions. He really made no such effort to distinguish between the variety of long-standing traditions in the SF and F genres, nor did he attempt to examine his (ridiculous) assumptions which blatantly ignore the history of the genre entirely. He is, in short, wrong; and easily countered by any rational 10 year old with a good SF anthology in hand.
While it is true that fans of SFF often distinguish between “hard” SF and everything else, the idea that “hard” SF is only written by or read by men (and only by manly man science-loving men at that) is patently idiotic. It would be idiotic whether applied only to “hard” SF or the genre as a whole. And the idea that SF written by women or even (gasp) for women, or written with women protagonists and featuring relationships that seem realistic and important to the plot, will somehow prevent boys from pursuing careers in the sciences is so beyond absurd a two year old would see the faults in logic. So no, Monique. No benefit of the doubt for these guys. Read the article and I think you’ll agree.
Oh, kind of a rant. Excuse my fervor, please. Apparently, this shit still ticks me off a day later.
(Okay, did I say “hard” enough times to be a manly manly man?)
Wow, color me stupid.
I know very well that I never agreed with ultra-feminists, but I had no idea that there was a counterpart in ultra-hetero-white-males. But I should have. After all, I live in a small town that is based in that culture.
And I cannot name one of those males that I met who ever read anything besides the sports pages. If even that. Most often they focused on the comics section.
Perhaps sci-fi would be better served with no female characters or writers what-so-ever. All the men could be amoeba-like and reproduce on their own.
But geesh, then they wouldn’t truly be he-men, would they?
word: include54 Include being the optimum portion
Can’t talk. Busy destroying an entire literary genre.
One of my favorite reactions so far: when telling the boyfriend about the article about how Starbuck being a woman has somehow ruined true TV science fiction like Star Trek by loading BSG with “stupid relationship drama,” he interrupted me and said, “Wait, did these guys actually ever WATCH Star Trek? Like, any of it?”
Which brings up a question: has there actually been any TV science fiction that actually satisfies the hard SF definition? I can’t think of any. TV SF, because of the constraints of the medium, generally tend to be soap operas in space or Westerns in space.
(Also note that I’m using the term “soap opera” and “Western” with all due affection.)
By the way, Monique: tell your friend that hard SF is not “core” SF, because the genre is widely acknowledged to be considerably larger and considerably more expansive than his definition, and that I’m metaphorically beating him over the head with the Complete Works of Ray Bradbury. (I’m using “he” as a default, but replace it with the pronoun of your choice as appropriate.)
I’d be happy to let her know. 🙂 As for your question about TV shows and hard SF, I cannot think of a single one in popular culture that would qualify.
I had first read about the Spearhead (snorf, giggle, gack) article in Whatever – The Scalzi’s blog, and I though HIS smackdown was particularly good, but Candy – girl – you are MAGNIFICENT.
I suspect that the author of that particular bit of dogpooh hasn’t actually read much science fiction, from the fifties or today. I get the strong feeling that all he’s done is look at the overtly sexist and sexualized covers from ‘50’s and ‘60’s pulp publications – the kind featuring large breasted women clinging to spacsuited men either holding phallic-like ray guns or phallus-shaped rocketships in the background (or both), and never actually read anything inside the cover.
I don’t need to add that the really great Sci Fi from the so-called Golden Age was as relationship driven as it is today – Asimov, Clark, Heinlein wrote about the human condition – not only about sciency-type things. That’s what made it great, and lasting. And it’s going to be the same for Science Fiction written today – David Brin, Sherri Tepper, Olivia Butler, Catherine Asaro, John Scalzi, etc. – their works succeeds not on the hard science, but on the characters – you want to care about these stories. It’s the people that inspire – not the lasers and test tube and hot babes.
Oh, God. How many times were we forced to go through the “hapless native woman falls for Kirk” trope? Was there ever an episode where Kirk didn’t get some lovin’ even if it was from some triffids? Or the even worse “Uhura is slipped a mickey and suddenly can’t keep her hands off Spock” storyline. TV SF is chock full of that soap opera fodder, and if you don’t love to hate it, I’m pretty sure you’d find ALL of the SF ever aired pretty unwatchable.
If only the Chuckleheads, er that is, Spearheads were arguing against those kinds of male fantasy relationships. But no. It’s the female or non-hetero fantasies they can’t handle. it’s just so pathetic. (pointing and laughing)
Yeah. That would be “tribbles” not “triffids.” Just for all the Trekkers who are pointing and laughing at me.
Sigh.
“Fiction is asking ‘what if?” Science fiction asks, ‘My god, what if?’”
That made my day.
Scalzi`s roller derby teams with spears also made my day.
:headdesk” @ article
I’d just like to say that the article is totally craptaceous
::headdesk::
Sheesh, I have to wonder how this guy got this far in life, as a movie/TV SF fan, and never saw Star Wars. Or did he just cringe every time Leia shot someone or took charge?
Hi Candy!
SF has been ruined, but not through “feminization.” A lot of short fiction suffers from SERIOUS FICTION Wannabe Syndrome. Epiphany fiction. Epiphanies have no place in SF (2001 A Space Odyssey notwithstanding) in my arrogant opinion. SF should be all about entertaining stories that push the envelope of the possible and ideally have at least a little wow factor to them.
Anyway.
As for television SF, it’s been the pits for a long, long time. Think Lost in Space, the original Battlestar Galacticrap, even a lot of the old Star Trek episodes which I dearly love but which were NOT good SF. The Prisoner was a good series. Old Star Trek had its moments, as have some of the later Trek incarnations. Blake’s Seven, Firefly, and Lexx were all pretty good. But there has still been an awful lot of crap.
Sometimes I wonder if the stuff I consider good SF is really all that commercial. Thinking about SF blockbusters like Star Wars, aren’t these just glorified Westerns?
Which, *umm*, is what you just said. 🙂