In Which Yr Hmbl Hostess Has Not Had Enough Caffeine

[rolanni]

Bruce Sterling is trying to make a point over here.  Mind you, I’m not sure what his point is.  It sorta smacks of the old assurance from A Certain Male SF Writer that his female colleagues didn’t have to write fantasy!  They could, with only a little research, learn to write science fiction, too.

Lack of caffeine, right.

Anyhow, Mr. Sterling provides a list, lifted from a Must Read SF posting at The Galaxy Express, with the note that there is not a single male author appearing.  One of the authors listed is Steve Miller, who, last time I checked — quite recently, in fact — was male.  And an author.

When this was pointed out to Mr. Sterling, he amended his editorial to exclaim that there was a male author of half a book! on the list.

Since there were three books listed by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Mr. Sterling clearly can’t do arithmetic, either.

Back to the point of the thing.

If there is only a single male author of SFRomance on the list compiled by Galaxy Express, does that mean there are no men writing SFRomance?  I confess that I can’t think of a name — ref. lack of caffeine — but perhaps someone else can?

And!  If there are “no” men writing SFRomance, does that automatically make SFRomance an Inferior Form, as Mr. Sterling’s commentary seems to suggest?

Discuss.

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

I think there's a distinction to be made between SF Romance and SF With Romantic Elements. The plot in Weber's Honor Harrington novels is never driven by the romantic elements in the story: they are nearly always a sub-plot, of much less importance than the military and political events that drive the main plot.

Heck, by that argument you could call The Lord of The Rings a romance, because Aragorn finally weds Arwen toward the end of Book 6. Even if you have to read the appendices to get the whole tragic story of the relationship.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

In that case, though, many of the works on the original list fall off. I don't think Jaran or Merchanter's Luck or The Planet Savers are any of them primarily romances.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm being overly limiting here, but it seems to me that if the tension and conflict in the developing relationship between the principal characters is not a significant element in driving the plot, then it's not something that I can consider a romance, even if there are romantic elements present in the story. Which is why, using Lois Bujold as an example again, that I see Shards of Honor as being a romance, and its sequel Barrayar as not being a romance, even though there are romantic elements twined all through the plot in the latter book.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Wow! I would have said Barrayar is all about "Can this marriage survive?" That's the heart of the book -- not the plot to overthrow the government, but whether a lifelong democrat and feminist can live under a patriarchal (literally) and aristocratic society for the sake of love.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

And we're now down to the differing ways in which different people read the same story. I obviously did not get the same sense of Cordelia's experience as you did from reading the book. It never seemed to me to be about whether Cordelia could manage to live on Barrayar, but rather about how she would do so, and how much she would wind up changing Barrayar in the process. But then I subscribe to the theory that SF is a modern form of Romance, (in the literary sense,) in the same tradition as the chansons de geste and Dumas pere, so that proper SF protaginists are larger than life, and face challenges that are beyond the ordinary. So that likely colors the way I read the stuff.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I love learning about the different ways people read books. I was discussing P.C. Hodgell's latest, Bound in Blood with a friend. We both love Hodgell; I loved BiB, the friend was disappointed. It turned out that I love Hodgell for the intricate worldbuilding and she loves Hodgell for the intricate plotting. That meant that for her, BiB, which is definitely the middle book in a series, was disappointing; I, catching more glimpses of a complex and developing world, was completely happy.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I think I overstated; Barrayar is obviously about both. That said, I think that without the dramatic revolution plot, the marriage would ultimately have collapsed. It is the part she plays in the revolution that gives Cordelia power on Barrayar, power that she can use to accomplish her political and philosophical ends. It is also power that she can use to defend her son against her father-in-law.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

And I didn't get that sense that the marriage would ultimately have collapsed had not Fate Intervened. (Funny how Fate has a habit of doing that, innit?) But there is not, thank all the Gods that be, any rule that requires us to have taken the same things away from any given book.

And since I dislike fanfic on aesthetic grounds, I feel absolutely no inclination to explore alternative endings.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

The good ended happily and the bad, unhappily. That is what Fiction means. -- Miss Prism

[slweippert.livejournal.com]

Remember the Honor series has lots of books in them. Early ones I agree that her romance was only a minor element, but in later books, i.e. "At All Costs", it's a major plot IMO. Forbidden love leading to a pregnancy is what I think of as a 'romance' plot.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

Again, I think we're at a level here where two individuals read the same book in different ways. I simply didn't see the romantic threads in At All Costs as being the principal threads in the book's plot, any more than the romantic attraction between Horatio Hornblower and his female passenger aboard H.M.S. Lydia (whose name I am currently misremembering,) was the central theme in Forester's Beat To Quarters! This despite the fact that Hornblower eventually gets the lady at the end of Flying Colours, the third of the Hornblower novels.