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

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I was going to see whether the cannibals reappeared in The Number of the Beast, which unlike the other two I do own, but I appear to have become highly allergic to the banter. I google instead.

Black aristocrats eat white slaves in Farnham's Freehold (http://www.mail-archive.com/scifinoir_lit@yahoogroups.com/msg00965.html), but it's just like A Modest Proposal, honest (http://www.troynovant.com/Stoddard/Heinlein/Farnhams-Freehold.html).

Meanwhile, in Lucifer's Hammer, the bad black people are cannibals and thieves, and they talk funny, but there's a black astronaut so nothing is really wrong (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=226907).

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I wonder if LH has the same weird race bit that Oath of Fealty did, where they are very diligent in pointing out that Preston Sanders, one of the important people at the World's Largest Gated Community, (http://cloggie.org/esseff/millennial-19.html)
is black but not descended from slaves.