Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

Following a very insightful post or two regarding Orson Scott Card's work that is featured on our list, a very interesting discussion had ensued.

The discussion's touched on the subject of the implications of what the political views of famous authors lead to.

In that particular thread I've already stated that I don't believe that there is any singular appropriate way of dealing with the dated or wrongful ideas. Everyone is free to choose how to approach the subject.

I briefly touched on this in this post

Personally I believe that as readers we are always partially responsible in judging the views presented to us through works of fiction. Does that extend to the authors themselves and their lives outside their work? I believe that in this day and age, where all the information is available literally at our fingertips, we should probably be more aware of the subject. Do I think it is always productive? The answer is more complicated than it probably should have been.

I believe that fighting bad ideas is way more important than fighting "bad" people. If any given book promotes bad ideas, it is both our right and duty to explore the subject and possibly call the author out for it. Authors with twisted political views have produced some amazing works of fiction that changed the world for the better. Simply avoiding that work may be a choice, but I don't believe it is a productive one in the long run.

Nor do I believe that any successful work of fiction give any author the immunity from having their views outside the writing itself scrutinized. They are public figures and their opinions matter, therefore their voicing those opinions matters.

I'll have to cut my post short, but I'll bring some quotes over from the other thread later on. There are very interesting ideas and points raised that I would like to see discussed.

Here is an article by somebody who knew OSC that describes the problem with this problem.
https://www.wired.com/2013/10/enders-...

Gabi wrote: "Here is an article by somebody who knew OSC that describes the problem with this problem.
https://www.wired.com/2013/10/enders-..."

I'll copy this link to the OSC thread, thanks Gabi.

I think this thread is more general so I'll start with preamble (and as a lot of my posts it is about me).

I always try not to blindly follow the 'majority' and it is not that easy. Human beings to increase their chances of reproduction try to fit in, to be seen as good.

Therefore, for example despite I never held neither fascist nor communist views, to understand them better I've read Marx, Lenin, Mussolini and still have Hitler in my TBR pile.

The same goes for the literature in general and SFF in particular. For older literature I assume we should judge authors or characters by modern standards. Say, Daniel Defoe wrote highly influential Robinson Crusoe (even for SF there are a lot of Robinsonades). And what we have there? Crusoe is a sailor, who is enslaved by a Moor. He escapes in a boat with a boy named Xury, whom he later sells as a slave. Later, Crusoe shipwrecks from a ship that transported slaves from Africa. On the island he is not much better, capturing "Friday" from another group.

Is this book a white colonialist propaganda with untrue representation of non-whites and with self-righteousness? Definitely so. At the same time it is a seed of many novels, the whole genre and to better understand the evolution of literature one must read it.

Oleksandr wrote: "I think this thread is more general so I'll start with preamble (and as a lot of my posts it is about me).

I always try not to blindly follow the 'majority' and it is not that easy. Human beings t..."

I agree with most of what you are saying. It is great to study all different politics and consider them all critically. And I think there is some value in reading genre defining classics. I definitely see value in reading classics to better understand the past and how people thought/lived. But these readings should obviously always be critical.

As counterpoint though, I question that we need to continue elevating some of these classics. The fact that bigoted white men authored most of the "classics" is itself problematic. Were only bigoted white men talented writers until recently? What books do we not know about that should be classics or were never given the opportunity to be written in the first place?

For myself, I've noticed that my tolerance for reading sexist literature has gone way down. I can't take it anymore and I don't care if I'm passing over classics because of it.

I'm so proud that today's young women feel so confident in their own assessments of what is right in their lives that they can draw boundaries like yours.
AND those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
It's a conundrum.

Kristen wrote: "The fact that bigoted white men authored most of the "classics" is itself problematic. Were only bigoted white men talented writers until recently? What books do we not know about that should be classics or were never given the opportunity to be written in the first place?"

Definitely the prevalence of white men is due to economic growth that started in western Europe (The Netherlands, then England), which increased need in educated secular servants (not for church or gov't), who were both readers and writers. Paternalism led to a much greater share of educated men than women. For example in European Jewish communities, where a lot women were literate, there was a secular literature by and for women

This is an interestic issue and a very actual one too.

As a rule, I always try to divide the artist from the work of art, not only for literary works but in general. I think this is easier to do when the work does not reflect the author's ideas and one can consider the writing as a completely isolated system. In most cases this will probably not be true as the authors' ideologies will probably inexorably leak into their work and it might become difficult to read about ideas one disagrees to. But considering SFF and other fiction, I generally enjoy the classics as I can usually focus on those qualities that made them "classics" in the first place.


At the opposite side lie those works which are profoundly affected by the author's system of beliefs to the point of being more instances of political propaganda rather than fiction. In this case I generally behave according to two possible scenarios: the author is dead, or the author is still alive.

In the former case, I tend to agree with Oleksandr: knowledge might be good by itself and can help in framing controversial topics better.
On the other hand, if the author is still alive, I recognize as an ethical issue supporting (either directly, if one buys the book, or indirectly, the mere act of borrowing a book somehow gives it some importance) a person whose ideologies I deem problematic or even dangerous to produce more works and gain more relevance.

I had a bit of a related dilemma yesterday. A person I greatly admire recently died. (Not from the pandemic.) A conservative columnist (R.D.) who's views I detest wrote an lovely post about this man. I decided to share it among my FB friends, many of who, like me, know both the columnist and the deceased. I feel a little dirty about it because I don't want to promote that columnist and I'd rather people not read his many anti-gay and anti-trans articles.

It's hard. In High School, he was a close friend of both me and my boyfriend. I have pictures of him and us from Mardi Gras 1985. In more recent years, he has written column after column about how sick gays are, and considers trans people even worse. It is exactly the kind of stuff O.S. Card wrote his screeds about: most people who are gay are that way because they were sexually abused, most secretly want to be strait, most want to molest young boys, the government and media are pushing liberal views on people, etc. Yuck! The main difference is Card is Mormon and my old friend is Orthodox Christian.

But, his remembrance of our mutual friend was lovely, and so I did share it.

I don't feel as though choosing not to read certain books that were once considered classics is the same as forgetting history, though. If you are interested in gaining a deep understanding of the evolution of literature, sure, but for my level of interest, I can gain the information I need about many of these classics by reading the work of others who do have a deeper level of knowledge. While I value making up my own opinion about things, I know that I have neither the time nor the training to be able to understand everything about everything. I am much more likely to seek out nonfiction that can help me understand both the work and its context, and focus on reading fiction that I actually enjoy.

Personally, while there are some authors I absolutely will not read any more solely on the basis of who they are outside of their writing (OSC and MZB chief among them), I try to decide this on a case-by-case basis, rather than making hard and fast rules. I would rather knowingly read something by someone I consider a terrible person than to downplay horrible things in order to try to justify my reading choices to myself.

And I guess it's somewhat the same when it comes to the content of the books - my tolerance for misogyny and homophobia is pretty low, but I do still make exceptions and when I do I try to be honest about it.

Oleksandr wrote: "Kristen wrote: "The fact that bigoted white men authored most of the "classics" is itself problematic. Were only bigoted white men talented writers until recently? What books do we not know about t..."

Right. So the voices of women and other minorities were silenced by white men. Which means that whatever contribution art from white men may have given humanity, it was at the expense of the contributions of art from women/minorities. We are learning from a one sided history and have been robbed of the valuable perspectives of those who are not white or male. That is a kind of violence. So the "classics" that exist are the fruit of violence. Precisely how much are we supposed to honor that? In fact, is there not an argument to be made that honoring it at all is more destructive than beneficial?

Kaa wrote: "I don't feel as though choosing not to read certain books that were once considered classics is the same as forgetting history, though. If you are interested in gaining a deep understanding of the ..."

Yep, all of this. Me too. (Except I'm not sure who MZB is referencing.)

Cynthia wrote: "I'm so proud that today's young women feel so confident in their own assessments of what is right in their lives that they can draw boundaries like yours.
AND those who forget history are doomed to..."

The history is very much remembered in my case haha. I don't need to keep the trauma present in my pleasure reading. ;)

Ed wrote: "
But, his remembrance of our mutual friend was lovely, and so I did share it."

Thanks for sharing this with us as well. These days the news are mostly dominated with disheartening instances of the opposite. Between White House and the media there are few heartwarming stories out there.

Kaa wrote: "I would rather knowingly read something by someone I consider a terrible person than to downplay horrible things in order to try to justify my reading choices to myself.

And I guess it's somewhat the same when it comes to the content of the books - my tolerance for misogyny and homophobia is pretty low, but I do still make exceptions and when I do I try to be honest about it"

This to me is a commendable example of honesty that is very valuable in our society.

Kristen wrote: "I don't need to keep the trauma present in my pleasure reading."

Yes, exactly!

MZB = Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose Sword and Sorceress anthologies were incredibly important to me growing up, but both she and her husband were child molesters.

@Art: Lol, you'll notice I didn't say I always succeed! Being honest about the flaws in things you like is hard.

Kristen wrote: "Right. So the voices of women and other minorities were silenced by white men. Which means that whatever contribution art from white men may have given humanity, it was at the expense of the contributions of art from women/minorities.

I don't think that it is as simple as that. There is also the society that has to be taken into the account.

Instead of expanding on this particular subject, let me shows you a slightly more isolated example of the point of view I'm trying to present:

The Age of Science and the Renaissance of science was largely dominated by the British and the mainland Europe (French, Italian and German walk into a bar..). During that time the majority of credit went to a bunch of people who belonged to the established scientific society or who were in correspondence with a member of such.

Numerous inventions in chemistry, biology, physics, archeology, geology, you name it, are falsely attributed to Brits. Well documented findings of Danish and Swedish and otherwise less important at the time European scientists have since then had been uncovered and in fact some of the findings were 30 or 40 years ahead of the official "discovery".

Now even in that scene there would be those scientists that took advantage of their position in the Royal Society and went an extra mile to steal, coerce, discredit any findings of their rivals. But then again there were also selfless servants who just wanted to make the world a better place.

My point is that there was a time when we had all the bad systems, did anything good come out of it? It sure did. Should we try and turn back time and reinstate those practices? Definitely not. Are all of those who existed in a corrupted system equally at fault? Statistically impossible.

On the subject of writers being despicable human beings:

Dahl was an anti-semite who actually agreed with many of the things Hitler did. Did his work influence me as a child for the better? I would like to say yes, even though I'm horrified to learn all those things about him now.

Hemingway was a failed KGB informant/aspiring spy, I doubt he is getting his citizenship posthumously revoked.

Charles Dickens was a terrible husband, evil and petty. Not much of a father either. His work has and continues toinfluence generations of people.

Jack London - racist of a grand caliber.

The list goes on and on, ranging from pedophiles to rapists and homophobes. I wish the work I respect and enjoyed reflected in the writer, but that is not always the case.

Kaa wrote: "MZB = Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose Sword and Sorceress anthologies were incredibly important to me growing up, but both she and her husband were child molesters...."

yikes..

Art wrote: "Kristen wrote: "Right. So the voices of women and other minorities were silenced by white men. Which means that whatever contribution art from white men may have given humanity, it was at the expen..."

Yeah, I hear you. Of course societal systems are at fault. I guess I just feel this abstract grief for all the superior art we've been deprived of. Because if we consider the work of rapists/racists/etc to be among the best that we have...how much greater would the art that was suppressed have been? What does that mean practically? I'm not sure. Just, for myself, I'm not going to keep bowing down and worshipping "classics" by evil men.

Oh, and another practical application of my abstract grief is seeking out current minority authors.

Kristen wrote: " We are learning from a one sided history and have been robbed of the valuable perspectives of those who are not white or male. That is a kind of violence. So the "classics" that exist are the fruit of violence. Precisely how much are we supposed to honor that? In fact, is there not an argument to be made that honoring it at all is more destructive than beneficial?

This was a wonderfully provocative viewpoint! I can interpret this two ways:

First, the "Hardcore" version. All art in written history, except for the last 50-100 years, has been a product of societies and cultures that silenced women and minorities, so they are all tainted with violence. Therefore, we should just trow them all to the trashcan. Burn down the museums; start with a clean plate.

This is what the Futurists wanted, and I cant' deny it has a certain romantic appeal. However, I'm a historian by education, and this kind of vision makes my neck hairs rise. Yeah, history is not a nice place, but still, good art is *good*, no matter what kind of society created it.

The Reneissance palaces were built with the blood, sweat and tears of serfs (or peasants living in serf-like conditions), but they are still beautiful. Throwing that beauty away because it was built on suffering seems a waste - no, more than that: at least the suffering wasn't pointless, if it created beauty. Should we throw that beauty away, we would take even that away from those long-dead nameless serfs.

But perhaps you meant the "Lite" version: lots of women and minorities were silenced throughout history, and even those who did manage to get their books published didn't become "classics" - not because their work was inferior, but because of bigotry. Therefore we should pay less attention to the "classics" and more to these underappreciated works from the same eras.

This is fairly unobjectionable prospect: if there are hidden gems of literature that people have unfairly passed in the past, it seems like a pure win to start reading those instead of inferior "classics". Even if the classics are of equal artistic value, we would still benefit from reading those forgotten treasures, since they would give us more diverse viewpoints.

As good as this sounds, I still feel like we would be losing a lot if we just stopped reading the classics. First of all, we would be losing a shared cultural canon. It's useful to have concepts like "a white whale" or "Kafkaesque". And in order to have those kinds of concepts you need some reasonably small core of books that are considered "common knowledge": everyone should be at least somewhat familiar with them.

Second, we would be losing historical continuity. There are books that have been read throughout centuries, others that have been hugely influential for decades. When you are reading The Odyssey, you become a part of a long LONG chain of readers that extends through Western history. That is one way to connect with the past generations. If the classics were simply thrown aside, much of the past would become even more incomprehensible to us than it already is, and I can't see that as a good thing.

Kristen wrote: "I just feel this abstract grief for all the superior art we've been deprived of."

Absolutely. That is why it's important to expose the systems at fault and not to revere the enablers and profiteers.

All in all I agree with Cynthia and Antti, it is our responsibility to learn from history, not to rewrite it. Exposing the hidden truths is a big part of it though.

Wow! This is the BEST book conversation I've encountered in AGES!
Thank you fellow members.

Cynthia wrote: "Wow! This is the BEST book conversation I've encountered in AGES!
Thank you fellow members."

Yes, we're pretty lucky with our regulars. I'm hopping that our little social experiment of reading all the Hugos and Nebulas will be educating for the future generations of readers to follow.

I agree, the discussion goes great so far, let's keep it so! I have several comments on posts so far.

Kristen wrote: "So the voices of women and other minorities were silenced by white men. "

While I agree with the general idea, I guess precise phrasing should be different. It maybe my non-native English but 'silencing' sounds as an active deed. And say in SFF, there were cases not only ones like Campbell's, who stated something like "women can't write SF", but also was Hugo Greenback, who actively called women to send their SF stories. And Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is the author of the first modern SF novel, before Jules Verne introduced the term.

Therefore, I think under-representation of women and minorities was both because supply and demand factors: lesser share of literate minorities and smaller interest in their POV by white men. Once again, we concentrate on English literature first of all. For example, Ukrainian XIX-early XX century literature has both women (Марко Вовчок, Леся Українка) and minorities (former serf Тарас Шевченко I think qualifies) more represented than more dominant Russian (Ukraine was part of the Empire) but it can be viewed as a counter culture. Also gays, who weren't open about it like Oscar Wilde or Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, where part of the establishment

My solution to the dilemna is finding out who profits. If an objectionable artist (author/actor/etc) is in/directly benefit from my consumption of their work, I tend to avoid that consumption. Once an objectionable artist has died and can no longer benefit from my consumption, I am comfortable with consuming it.

I personally knew an artist who I had a lot of respect for who was arrested and pled guilty to something I could not accept. Their works were deleted from my digital library. I couldn't undo my financial support of them, but hearing the music turned my stomach. I know that my personal interactions with this person is a big part of why I can't enjoy their work anymore, while I'm okay with some others.

For me, its a case by case basis.

Antti wrote: "This was a wonderfully provocative viewpoint! I can interpret this two ways:"

Thank you for understanding and engaging with my argument. I pretty much agree with everything you say. I also love history and value having common references. But I do want to challenge myself and the attitudes I was raised with that classics are automatically great and good and have become classics for pure reasons.


Oleksandr wrote: "While I agree with the general idea, I guess precise phrasing should be different. It maybe my non-native English but 'silencing' sounds as an active deed. And say in SFF, there were cases not only ones like Campbell's, who stated something like "women can't write SF", but also was Hugo Greenback, who actively called women to send their SF stories. And Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is the author of the first modern SF novel, before Jules Verne introduced the term."

I think the silencing was both active and passive. In some cases it was definitely purposeful. On a large scale, maybe not? It really comes down to the question of how much responsibility falls on the system/society versus on the individual. But for women and many minorities, it doesn't matter much. No matter the reasons or who to blame, lots of talented people weren't given the chance to leave us their gifts.

So yeah, individually, maybe not all male authors hated women and actively silenced them. And I'm not saying that there aren't classics by white men that I don't adore. I have very soft spot in my heart for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy for instance. I hope everyone realizes that I'm not saying to throw all the classics away. I'm just trying to challenge our assumptions and be critically conscious.

I think Oleksandr is probably right in stating that the smaller representation of female and non-western authors in older SF literature might have been mostly a matter of supply and demand.

Indeed traditionally SF has been written by western authors for boys/young adults. The transcript of this interesting article, that reports the results of a study about the demographics of SF readers in one of the most representative periods of the genre (between the 50s and 70s), exactly shows that the vast majority of the readers have been young males (even though the fraction of female readers had have a steady increase along the years).

If one considers that most SF classics were written in this period, then it appears reasonable that the gender of the authors reflects that of the readers. This would also explain why most of the characters in the books written in that time are males: readers usually like to read about characters with whom they can connect.

In the last decades the number of women reading SF has increased drastically and consequently has done the number of female writers.
I think we are seeing a similar trend with respect to the ethnicity of the readers. For example, SF has boomed in China in relatively recent times, as a consequences the number of chinese authors has also increased drastically and we are seeing an increase in popolarity of chinese SF books also in the West.

Necot wrote: "I think Oleksandr is probably right in stating that the smaller representation of female and non-western authors in older SF literature might have been mostly a matter of supply and demand.

Indeed..."

I disagree with your conclusion that there are more books by and about men because men were the only interested readers. Doesn't the inverse make more sense? That women weren't interested in reading books by and about men? Especially when those books are generally extremely sexist? And women are actively (especially back then) discouraged from the sciences? The rise of female authors in scifi has been the result of arduous struggle. Which to me, suggests that women have always been interested in scifi, but have had to fight for our place as creators and consumers in a male dominated realm.

Kristen wrote: "I disagree with your conclusion that there are more books by and about men because men were the only interested reader."

I agree with Kristen. The supply and demand reason never made much of any sense to me. I've been exposed to many aspects of society, from both professional and personal points of view. The scale of sexism even in the modern world is beyond comprehensible to an average person. I believe that whenever any type of discrimination is so perverse as to become intrinsic, to a point where the victim of discrimination believes all the negative comments to be true, then the success of that type of prejudice is absolute.

Many women themselves believe that they are less than. I'm not saying that other persecuted groups (based on racial, sexual or other traits) have it any easier. I'm just saying that sexism is on another level in being an acceptable way of life.

As it comes to the subject of scifi and fiction in general there were so many unfathomable hurdles to surpass that I doubt that even modern women, let alone modern men can understand, myself included.

@Kristen: I see your point, and you are absolutely right in saying that women back then were discouraged to study sciences ( and in the 60s to have higher education in general), which definitely had a role in the lower representations of female readers. I also agree that some prominent SF authors had sexist views which make their books not so attractive for women.

As most complex things, I think there has been an interplay between several factors that created a kind of negative-feedback loop that kept for one reason or another women at the margin of the SF landscape until recently.

As I like to read SF but I don't really know too much about the history of this genre, it would be interesting if someone could share some resources about it, which maybe can help to understanf how the loop was interrupted.

Necot wrote: "... it would be interesting if someone could share some resources about it ..."

Maybe start with the essays in Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965. Since it is an academic publication, it is quite expensive. Maybe you can find it in a library someday, if those ever re-open.

So, maybe start here: https://www.wired.com/2019/02/geeks-g...

It says that women were at least 15 percent of the writers and 40 percent of the readers in the pulp era. "So why do we have such a distorted view of history? Yaszek says that the first science fiction anthologies were published during a backlash against first-wave feminism, and that male editors such as John W. Campbell and Groff Conklin specifically excluded women from their lineups."

Here is another article also by Lisa Yaszek about the same thing: early involvement of women in SF.

Ed wrote: "Here is another article also by Lisa Yaszek about the same thing: early involvement of women in SF."

Wow, thanks for sharing! It is pretty depressing to learn that there actually were tons of female authors we just haven't remembered.

Kristen wrote: "Ed wrote: "Here is another article also by Lisa Yaszek about the same thing: early involvement of women in SF."

Wow, thanks for sharing! It is pretty depressing to learn that there..."

There are anthologies trying to help them be remembered. I'm currently reading Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958 to 1963): Yesterday's Luminaries Introduced by Today's Rising Stars I've seen others though I don't have titles handy. Sad part to me is the number of people who never submitted, or got desk rejections because of their gender or ethnicity that the world never got to hear from.

Rebecca wrote: "Sad part to me is the number of people who never submitted, or got desk rejections because of their gender or ethnicity that the world never got to hear from."

Definitely. Thanks for the title. I've added it and the one suggested in the shared article to my "want to read" list. Are you enjoying it? I have this feeling of expecting old sci-fi to be terrible, but I think that might just be because all I've encountered has been revoltingly sexist.

I have totally stopped discussing politics with everyone I know. Too often, I started to dislike people I did like before I knew their politics. I feel the same way about authors. Sure, I giggled a bit when L. Ron Hubbard put his politics and religion in the spotlight, but I still think back and remember Battlefield Earth with pleasure. I had a vague sense of the political views of Heinlein and Asimov from their writings, but I never made an effort to try and confirm it. I had no idea that there are people that object to Orson Scott Card, because I don't know anything about his personal life.

I remember when I was a very young adult I found Sci Fi reads on the bookshelf by looking at the cover and reading the descriptions. That, BTW, was the only way other than word of mouth to find new books, and I didn't know anyone else who read Sci Fi. I used to skip over the books written by women, because, as a teenage boy, I had concluded that the female authors wrote stories that I didn't like. I remember being suspicious of authors that used only initials for their first names, because female authors knew that Sci Fi was a teenage boy market back then, and they would mask their gender. Later on, as I matured, I stopped screening authors by gender. It was possible to find a few people who also liked Sci Fi, and the first word of mouth book I read was Dune, albeit more than 10 years after it was published and recommended by a GIRL ( my sister). Then came Dragon Riders of Pern. Anne McCaffrey broke through my prejudice, Margarett Atwood and Ursula Le Guin ended it.

So yeah, Sci Fi from 40 to 50 years ago was different, because the target audience was different. The social morals and customs were different, and publishers were different too. Despite that, female authors did eventually prevail. We can not retroactively apply todays ideas on the past too harshly, we didn't get where we are now overnight.

This thread has made me want to go through some of the links to the earlier female works, to see just what my immature male mind refused to see way back then.

edit: Rebecca, thanks for the link. Six dollars at Amazon

Edt2: No, I did not read the forward to "Rediscovery..." Before I made my post.

Ed wrote: "Necot wrote: "... it would be interesting if someone could share some resources about it ..."

Maybe start with the essays in [book:Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-..."

Thanks for the resources Ed, I read the two interviews to L. Yaszek: it was interesting to know that there were actually quite some female writers since the early days of SF, even though still a small minority, and that they wrote about the same topics characteristic of that period of SF.
It was also interesting to know that their writings were mostly welcomed and appreciated at the time and that if most of people nowadays are not aware of them is mostly due to their exclusion from the first authoritative SF anthologies issued much later.

Fortunately, thanks to the Internet we now have access to a lot more of information and we can rediscover a lot of works that, for a reason or another, got forgotten over the time.

Kristen wrote: "... It is pretty depressing to learn that there actually were tons of female authors we just haven't remembered..."

Most of the male authors from the early pulps are forgotten as well, except by people who read them at the time, or who make a special effort to discover them.

I have read all of the above posts with enjoyment. I have little to add, particularly in the face of the female readership numbers and the rationale for them discussed above.

All I can do is explain my own experience, (and by doing so, yes, I am exposing my age.)

When I hit the 7th grade, my "special" class got transferred from one nearby public school to another. (In 1963-63, "special class" translates as the smarter kids--I made it in by the skin of my teeth as I still don't know what 7*8 is, but my reading and vocab were off the charts.)

Anyway, the new school was attached by a walkway to the public library. Once a week we got to go to the kids' department of the library in our free period. (This was the library I always went to, just not with my whole class before.)

Having read all the "j" books, we congregated in one corner where they had books for the older kids. All the girls started reading these fluffy books about high school girls. But I thought they were stupid. So I started reading Heinlein juveniles instead.

There were probably about 25 kids in my class and 25 in the other class that was not "special," split closely 50/50 M/F.

No other girls read SF with me. So 1 in 25 girls, approx.

Yes, I was that odd even back then . . . and yes, I am that old. Don't hold it against me.

Several general notes.

1. on shares of male/female readers of SFF. There is definitely a changing demographics, I see 40% women SF readers highly suspicious figure for the 1950s-60s. Indirect arguments - there are WorldCon membership data, calculated by guessing name by gender: https://www.adastrasf.com/worldcon-me... , the ratio is 70/30 to 80/20. Another note - one older woman SF fan wrote here on GR that SF magazine subscription regularly changed her name to male form (IIRC Angela to Angelo) - this also supposes relative rarity. The growth of women SFF fans linked not only to a greater number of female SF authors and more diverse writing but to the blooming of fantasy since the late 60s

2. I fully agree that older SF written by males was usually not diverse and male-centered but I think it hasn't been to exclude women, the authors just didn't care - from Asimov's Foundation with only two women mentioned (and only one with just a few phrases) or Astronauci (1951), which I'm currently reading with no women at all in the whole book...

Oleksandr wrote: "... I see 40% women SF readers highly suspicious figure for the 1950s-60s. ..."

The figure of 40 to 50% reported by by Lisa Yaszek is for the earlier period when Hugo Gernsback headed the leading magazine. The Campbell years were not the focus of her study. Campbell definitely made it harder for women to get published. I suspect, but don't know, that the female readership also declined.

These days, most consumption of SF is from TV and movies. I know very little about what kids are doing these days. But according to essays in Guys Read -- Other Worlds, boys these days learn that reading is considered a girls activity and they tend not to read anything. (Which is something the "Guys Read" series tries to correct.)


The demographics of readers and writers is an interesting subject. But this thread was supposed to be about something else, such as: Can I still enjoy "The Cosby Show" or "Leonard Part 6" now that I know Bill Cosby was a serial rapist?

For me, I still can separate the creator from the work. I can still enjoy works produced by flawed people, and I expect that everyone is flawed. I could still enjoy "The Cosby Show", but I won't be seeking it out, and I certainly won't be laughing if I hear his old jokes about "Spanish Fly" again. (I never did laugh at those.)

Ed wrote: "The figure of 40 to 50% reported by by Lisa Yaszek "

I'm more interested on what she based this figure. Bearing in mind that women read more (e.g. see here https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/bl... ) it is possible that while larger share of men name SF their fav read, the shares are close

Oleksandr wrote: "I'm more interested on what she based this figure. ...."

I'm curious, too. All she said in the Wired article is this:

"...women writers were relatively common throughout the pulp era, and the proportion of women readers was even higher. “At least 15 percent of the science fiction community were women—producers—and reading polls suggest that 40 to 50 percent of the readers were women ...”

So, I guess somebody did some polls or surveys back then to find out who was reading the pulp magazines. Maybe she puts more details in her books.

Ed wrote: "But this thread was supposed to be about something else, such as: Can I still enjoy "The Cosby Show" or "Leonard Part 6" now that I know Bill Cosby was a serial rapist?"

I think that this subject is very complicated, so we are mostly left to our own devices when it comes to the questions of morality.

Clear thinking gets muddled when you introduce thought exercises. What if a truly evil, disturbed person creates a work of art that humanity only benefits from. In our instance, a book that has all the right words and all the moral benchmarks one could only hope to be able to clear.

It is difficult to disassociate any given work from its creator, but I guess it is the reader's duty to draw all the valuable lessons any work has to offer. Just as it is important to hold others accountable for the evil they do.

I just think that wasting time looking for faults where there are none or are insignificant, takes away the time and energy from the fights worth fighting.

Back from more general questions to more author related ones.

Marion Zimmer Bradley was considered by many as the feminist fantasy writer, her The Mists of Avalon was a retelling of the Arthurian legend from the point of view of Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar, maybe the earliest re-telling of the classic story from a woman POV. I have to admit I haven't read it and become aware only after I found out that her personal life is problematic to say it mildly: her daughter, Moira Greyland, accused her of sexual abuse from the age of three to 12.

Is there anyone who know more on this subject? Initially I assumed that as a champion of women's rights, Bradley just adhered to views that society's norms about sexual rights (primarily of women) are a subject of men dominance and just allowed for voluntary (!) practices for her teenage daughter, but when I saw the starting age in this case I withdraw the argument.

I did a little bit of reading up on the MZB case a couple of years ago, and found it so upsetting that I don’t even want to do another search right now to post some links. Suffice it to say that while I own Mists of Avalon, purchased long before I knew anything about her crimes, I cannot imagine ever being able to stomach reading it. Especially since I’ve been told there are aspects of women being forced to perform sexual acts in the novel...

The Mists of Avalon was a primary influence in my early spiritual journey. After being raised in a very restrictive Evangelical Christian church afraid of the "sinfulness" of my own pagan leanings and sexual stirrings, this novel introduced me to the concept of the Old Religion of northern Europe and its struggle to survive as Christianity spread worship of the all-powerful masculine.
I remember the power, beauty and devotion portrayed in the book. I strongly identified with the young initiates learning their duty to the path, the welfare of the land and people. I don't remember any one being forced into sexual acts, although Arthur himself was lured and tricked into participating to fulfill the tradition. It is true that I came away with the sense that even in my own life all acts of sexual union are rituals of the goddess and god uniting to open great forces for the use of good or evil. In my own experience many men cannot relate, are intimidated or simply devalue and misuse that potential.
I tried to read some of MZB's other works and never recaptured that sense of wonder and power.

I never did read any of the MZB books. And because of what (little) I know now, I will not be trying them. There are so many other things I can read instead.

MZB and her husband were active in SF fandom in California. Lots of other writers were friends with them, including Philip K Dick. It was a time and place for all sorts of social and sexual change, so things that might have been red flags in a different time and place might have been overlooked. Still, I wonder what PKD and others saw or knew.

I have read the Darkover books several times. Not the new ones that other people really wrote--the ones with two authors--but all of the others. Some are pretty amateurish--her early work. But I have always liked that world. I never read the Arthurian books, though.

Back to more general rules. While it seems we all agree that what MZB did was wrong, even heinous, what about much lesser transgressions. Say, an author (assume male) left his wife for a mistress or just known as a womanizer (but not a rapist). What is enough to stop reading them? What if s/he used different set of rules because lived in the past, like some Greek philosophers that has underage boys as lovers?