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

[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.