Switching between Voyager & TOS rewatches, I find myself struck by how far gender discourse hadn't come in 30 years. *So* much reductive thinking: about women, about relationships, about masculinity.
But it's the writers, not the generation. (TNG & DS9 were between them, & much better!)
Every generation has had people who see us all as people... and people who can't imagine drama outside crude stereotypes.
Who was the first writer you remember really *getting* a different human point of view?
@MLClark It strikes me as what was considered progressive at the time versus what is considered progressive now. A few years ago I rewatched "Designing Women" and was struck by plots and dialogue that just weren't as progressive as they could have been, but were certainly progressive for the time.
Good example.
I think about that a lot for Roddenberry. He was acutely aware of how negatively some men reacted to seeing women in positions of authority, so he'd have women on the bridge but temper their authority by routinely giving them speech for the male characters to correct, or by centring their action around flirtation.
I don't think it would have occurred to him not to write defensively. Always an option! But not one we're always able to perceive that we can take.
@MLClark There was also the reality of southern TV station owners threatening to drop the show if it had anything that didn't meet with their approval. There were memos about story aspects that had to be toned down or eliminated to keep the southern station owners happy.
@MLClark
Thank you for posing this question! I am not able/ready to answer yet, but it is going to be fun thinking! 🙏
Oh, I'm glad to hear that. I look forward to your answers, if any come to mind!
@MLClark why is it that it’s the bad ones who make a more lasting impression? I remember reading fantasy writer Robert Heinlein in the 80s as a teen, who built idealized futuristic dream worlds…
for men - the women functioned as little more than readily available sex-pots. He had a fantastic imagination, with a hugely misogynistic blind spot.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with that last part: it's maddening *because* they can imagine so much, but remain so obstinately blinkered in this one, strikingly obvious way.
It would make more sense, perhaps, if our population wasn't nearly evenly split between these gendered categories. How does one move through the world with so much exposure to fellow human beings, while retaining such an incurious attitude toward them?
I swear, many know how to write dogs better.
@MLClark 🎯 😂/😫
Right?! We’re over 50% of the pop! I’m in my late 50s,& the arch of progress has been slow, but as non-male writers/producers/directors make headway into creative fields, things have steadily improved IMHO.
The advent of streaming has helped break the conservative constraints of broadcast TV & introduce the world to books, stories & scripts written some amazing non-male authors. (I don’t read much now due to my eyes, so judging mostly by what I see in visual media).
The Hays Code really set us back as a culture, didn't it?
Film's early eras included some phenomenal female directors and performers, and productions with rich and nuanced looks at life that... well, got certain media execs very worried about society going to hell in a handbasket with all its empowered women and "untraditional" lifestyles on screen. 🙃
But oh! Just imagine what we might have created if not for that "moral" block between 1934 and 1968.
@MLClark It might have been John Wyndham for me. The Chrysalids.
Such a haunting read! Great choice. Wyndham really captured the feeling of estranging oneself from fellow human beings - out of fear, and ignorance, and a desire for an impossible level of "order" in our great big wonderful mess of a world - and the consequences of such a small-minded POV.
What do you lean toward reading most these days?
@MLClark I tend toward historical whodunnits or fantasy comedy. So Pratchett and Gaiman, CJ Sansom (The Shardlake series) and Lindsay Davis' "Falco" novels.
Terrific fun! And hopefully still genres thriving with new offerings - though there are indeed a lot of splendid classics in the field to trip through, too.
@MLClark I don't know if he's the very first but the way Robert Heinlein wrote Valentine Michael Smith in "Stranger in a Strange Land" is amazing.
He was able to write a character with no human bias or culture programming whatsoever and he pulled it off masterfully.
Oh, neat choice! The 60s and 70s were filled with SF that explored counterpoints to Anglo-Western culture through outsider critiques, but Heinlein still set an extremely high bar for later outings. Glad it resonated!
@MLClark As a novelist, I am a xenofiction specialist. My whole focus is on using non human perspectives to make insights/observations on humanity/culture.
The idea that Heinlein was able to create xenofiction _through_ a human main character is one of the many reasons he's considered a GOAT.
This is one of the reasons his picture hangs near my computer in my office nook.
Most of my sci-fi also features *expressly* alien aliens, so this is a key component of my writing, too. Social contract theory is best explored in the genre through confrontations with very different ways of being.
The history in commercial SF is fraught, though, with a bit of "noble savage" carryover from westerns and philosophical discourse, which also use an outsider POV to critique internal failings. Heinlein wasn't the first, but he definitely made the trope his own!
@MLClark I honestly feel like I could write a book about Heinlein's failings.
He was a man of his time. Good, bad, and cringe.
His work is greater than he was as a person.
Oh, I love Heinlein's work. Tunnel in the Sky was my go-to reread throughout my adolescence. I don't have heroes, so I don't mind that he's a flawed human being. We all are.
When I read him today, I also see the context he was writing in - a *lot* of SF wrestling with religious failings, and new cults. He captured his moment well.
Who else brought you to your love of xenofiction? I feel like Silverberg reaaaally tried, but his characterization always undermined worldbuilding.
(Also, if any of your other creative influences are from the fur world, that totally counts! I have a scaly in the fam - very much aware of the crossovers!)
@MLClark I'm an otherkin and therian. My first real convictions of non-human identity go back to my earliest memories.
We have a lot of intersection with furry culture and thus I have a lot of fur and scaly friends.
This dichotomy then, fascinates me. I'm living the isekai life.
A lot of my writing, I think is driven by my attempts both to communicate whats going on behind the scenes in my own soul, as well as share what I see in the world around me.
(1/2)
@MLClark Getting away from the personal aspect...it's to ask a question.
Is that which makes us different, enough to save us all?
There's a concept the Trekkie crew here on CoSo often talks about, from Vulcan philosophy: "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" (IDIC). It goes back to an episode in TOS, and celebrates that we cannot achieve truth and beauty without embracing the fullness of cosmic experience. Andy Weir has a short story, "The Egg", that imagines similar: only once we've experienced all subject positions in life can we transcend to a deeper state of being.
So one can only hope, eh? 🤞🏻🐇🕊
@MLClark My dad shared the Egg story with me as a child, and it is treasured.
As for Star Trek, life time fan for many reasons.
Roddenberry had some things truly dialed in.
Ah, otherkin! I had more exposure to groups back in uni, but it's been a while since my last sighting "in the wild", as it were. Thanks for sharing, Rebecca.
That is a beautiful aim with literary practice. We could spend a lifetime putting to words the truths we feel within ourselves and our worldly relationships, and never do more than skim the surface. Do you find that your writing surprises you, or is there more a sense of "rest" at finally putting down a truth burning within?
@MLClark Very much both. No matter my intentions, the only way I've ever found to make a manuscript work is to let it be itself. The second I try to impose my will, it tends to break and go sideways on me
I understand that I am quite eccentric, and some of these concepts are so foreign and complex the easiest way to get there is to tell a story.
Beyond that, monocultures are death. Life exists in a cacophony of expression. Which means, in order to thrive, we must incorporate a myriad of ideas.
"a cacophony of expression" is a perfect way of describing it. More discord than order, most of the time, but in that discord a symphony all its own. :)
And what joy that you have a creative practice for communicating truth that bridges the gap and ever-stimulates deeper understanding within you! An ongoing journey of self- and communal-discovery, I'm sure, but the alternative seems thoroughly boring and antithetical to a life lived deeply and well. 💛
@MLClark If we are the universe perceiving itself then the very point of life is to question, to wonder, and to know ever in pursuit of the next mystery.
It means that all of creation is rooted in discovery and wonder.
You are a very good egg, Rebecca Snow Hare. 🤗 The universe is lucky to have you.
You are truly kind. I am humbled and grateful that we've had a chance to talk and understand each other a bit.
@MLClark Anne McCaffery and 3 of her series;
The Brain and Brawn series
The Acorna series and
The Crystal Singer series
I have not read her post 2000 works or Dragons of Pern series
I never got into McCaffrey! (Definitely more of an SF than a fantasy kid.) What were some of the different human points of view you felt these books conveyed well?
Some examples for me:
I loved Ian McEwan's depiction of 13-year-old Briony Tallis in Atonement, and David Mitchell's 15-year-old Holly Sykes in The Bone Clocks.
William Faulkner's pregnant Lena Grove in Light in August.
Iris Murdoch's Charles Arrowby in The Sea, The Sea.
Elspeth Huxley's depiction of four generations of Kikuyu tribesmen in Red Strangers.
There's certainly no reason we can't write different subject-positions well! It just takes a genuine interest in other people's humanity.