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]

As I recall it, the cannibals were a mob in LH (and forcing new members to eat human flesh was a way of breaking them to the rule of the cannibal gangs). In FF, the ruling class were the source of cannibalism.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I have not read either Farnham's Freehold or Lucifer's Hammer and cannot comment upon the existence of rampaging black cannibals therein. However, Heinlein and incest: seriously, WTF, man? As bad as manga! The Door into Summer broke my adolescent affection for Heinlein, what with the Maureen/her dad, Maureen/her son, Maureen/getting turned on by a *gynecological exam* from her *father*. It was fifteen years before I could read him again, and my feelings have never quite recovered.

PS

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

The commonality I take from the above is: plain and straightforward prose. So maybe Connie Willis, Susan Palwick, Greg Egan ... other people can rec more.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I refuse to read either of those crappy books again to identify any raging black cannibals.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I couldn't quite finish FF. Also, I traded it back to the bookstore as soon as I could get someone to drive me there. Yick. I can't remember the details well, because I wiped them from my memory as soon as possible. I remember the dad was extremely annoying in it. Like a usual Competent Heinlein Patriarch only to the nth degree.

[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).

[pameladean]

I think FF was intended as an anti-racist statement, but if it ever worked at all, it sure doesn't now. LH is much ickier, and that is where the rampaging is. In FF the ruling classes do not need to rampage and are in fact quite civilized in the trivial definition of that word. Possibly it would all have worked better if Grace had still been quite civilized, since she is the most obvious, although not the only, counterpart to the ruling classes.

And speaking of strange treatment of women, Grace. Holy Toledo.

P.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I haven't read LH, I meant to say that. So it may have cannibals, I don't know.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering what kind of curious reading trajectory would expose someone to Niven and Pournelle and Octavia Butler...but no other female SF writers.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the Niven/Pournelle, so I don't know whether it has cannibals, but the Heinlein sure did... and after reading his very early Sixth Column, which can be summarized as 'ASIAN COMMUNISTS WILL KILL US ALL', I think FF is decidedly a symptom of deeper Serious Problems going on there.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

....ya know, I read some Ringworld-sequel-the-title-of-which-I-do-not-remember-now, when I was 12, and thought "Hunh, vaguely nifty," and then read half of Ringworld and was all "Uhh, crappy writing," and then I discovered Language of the Night and through Le Guin Philip K. Dick and Mervyn Peake and E.R. Eddison and all sorts of other writers and I do think that was where I Strayed. Because I have never ever been able to put up with crap writing in sf "for the sake of the ideas."

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Actually, I have not read Farnham's Freehold, but Door into Summer remains one of my few auto-recs for Heinlein (the others are Starship Troopers, All You Zombies, Friday, and ). BUT, I reread it maybe 3-4 years ago, and was appalled at the decline in quality my copy had suffered while sitting quietly on my shelf. I'm afraid to reread it now.

Also, I refuse to recommend Stranger in a Strange Land to anyone in this lifetime. Ever.

Also also, the Niven sequel to Ringworld I apparently read before that one was called -- no, damme, it wasn't a sequel. I remembered it by its delightfully cheeztastic cover: it was The Integral Trees.

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

My memory of LH is so vague that I'm not even sure if I read it or not; or if I did, whether I merrily skipped over large sections. I haven't read FF in years, as it's the one Heinlein book I really dislike, but as I recall, there was no rampaging, merely a spot of well-behaved cannibalism.

Heinlein's women are like no woman I know, and the more alpha of his men get on my nerves, but this hasn't stopped me from reading everything he wrote.

[mystcrave.livejournal.com]

Speaking of incest, in FF before the family is found by the black rulers I think there was a conversation about repopulating the world where the daughter seems quite willing to have a child with her father or with Joseph (the black houseboy/accounting student). I think that Heinlein often extrapolated the fears of American society that were current when he wrote. For example, FF was published during the civil rights era and the cold war so it dealt with nuclear war and also inverted the relationship between the races, placing the blacks in a position of power over whites. Another example might be his treatment of female characters such as Friday, Deety, and Maureen following the feminist movement.