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

[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.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

You meant To Sail Beyond the Sunset, but The Door into Summer does have a bit that squicks some people.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

(I haven't read The Door into Summer, either.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

In The Door Into Summer, the hero marries his step-daughter, whom he first falls in love with when she's nine. Much comparison of her pre-pubescent spunkiness to her mother's evil womanly ways.

In Time for the Stars, the hero marries his great-niece. This is an even closer genetic relationship than it usually would be, because she's the grand-daughter of his identical twin brother.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

In The Door Into Summer, the hero marries his step-daughter, whom he first falls in love with when she's nine. Much comparison of her pre-pubescent spunkiness to her mother's evil womanly ways.

Not quite. She's the hero's business partner's step-daughter and her mother is dead. The Evile Fiancee is unrelated.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

You are correct! But the Evile Fiancee is cheating on the hero with his Evile Business Partner, so I mut have conflated the three adults into some sort of menage a trois parental situation. Or, as my step-mother once phrased it, "the three of them were living in a melange."*

*On Dune, presumably.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

...special.

[larryhammer]

In Time for the Stars, the hero marries his great-niece.

With whom he's been in telepathic contact since she was a preadolescent.

---L.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Although in comparison with the bit in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, in which a young girl [1] marries back into her own line-family and is sent off to bed with the patriarch of the family, the relationship in Door is practically wholesome.

1: I can't recall if she was 12 or 13 or if she was Hazel Stone or the inspiration cannon-fodder character.

[larryhammer]

Not Hazel, but another daughter of the line-family. And she survives, IIRC.

Moon, though, has much less to squick at than, say, Time Enough for Love or I will Fear No Evil -- let alone FF or Sunset.

---L.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Who was it who is found on the ramp, with a laser hole between her breasts? I thought it was one of the lunar lolitas?

[elynne.livejournal.com]

It was a... rather extensive family. *ahem*

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Ludmilla, the one who makes such a fuss about marrying out of the family that they let her marry in. Pretty sure that's the one you're thinking of.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Is there any chance that you have confused The Door into Summer (http://cloggie.org/esseff/millennial-3.html) with To Sail Beyond the Sunset (http://www.vintagelibrary.com/pd.php?pcode=rah027)?

Door is also very very creepy but free of the Lazarus Long taint.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

My apologies! You and Thomas are both right.

[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.