On the positive side, I got to rec Lois McMaster Bujold

[rachelmanija]

This weekend an acquaintance of mine noticed that I was reading an sf book-- which one, I don't recall, but it was by a woman. He remarked that he had only ever read one female sf author in his life, Octavia Butler. (And liked her work.) I asked him who else he liked, thinking to rec more women.

"I love Niven and Pournelle!" he replied.

"Hmm," I said, and recced Bujold.

"Don't you like them?" he asked, noting my lack of enthusiasm.

"Not really."

"Not even Lucifer's Hammer?"

"No... The prose was clunky and it bothered me that once the apocalypse happened, suddenly there were gangs of rampaging black cannibals."

He denied the existence of rampaging black cannibals, and suggested that I had gotten the book confused with a different post-apocalyptic work containing rampaging black cannibals, Heinlein's Farnham's Freehold. I turn the matter over to the wisdom of LJ!

[Poll #1030388]

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I've always suspected that the Negro Cannibal Kings of FF were the unfortunate confluence of two unrelated chains of thought in Cabeza de Heinlein:

1: "Say, why don't I show what's wrong with how we treat blacks by having an equally repressive society run by Africans?"

2: "Let's show how different other societies can be by having them accept as normal something we think is repellent or vice versa (1). I know! Cannibalism!"

Although it is hard to believe that he wouldn't see the PR peril in stocking the book with black cannibals, given that the old stereotype of Africans as man-eaters got used as recently as 2001 by Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman. On the other hand, Mark Gruenwald apparently had no idea of the subtext some people would see in calling a Captain America's black sidekick "Bucky."



1: Venerian taboos about eating would be one example.

[strangerian.livejournal.com]

This sounds very likely. When I read the book as a teenager I took it to be meant as an anti-racist statement, in an unsubtle way.

Responding to comments upthread as well, I'd say Heinlein had a large and very obvious kink about older man/younger woman, without any bar to incest along the way. What's less large and obvious is his frequency of using cannibalism as a plot point or mark of extremism, possibly for its guaranteed shock value. Consider Stranger in a Strange Land. I'm *still* not sure what that one's about.