(urth) Gollancz list (was: Re: Book of the New Sun won the contest!)

[Jerry Friedman]

> From: Jane Delawney <jane_delawney at sky.com>

> 
> On 28/07/11 16:27, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>>  Sigh. Not a single book by a woman made the list.
...

> On your comment: well as a woman I care far less about the lack of female 
> presence in the top 10 than I do about the *absence* of Ringworld and also The 
> Disposessed.
> 
> Praise the Lord, or the higher power of your choice, that neither of these made 
> it!
> 
> Niven is one of the most sexist male SF writers ever IMO (so even if Ringworld 
> itself isn't sexist (I don't know, because I'll never read a Niven 
> ever again after looking briefly at the Man-Kzin Wars / Known Space series);

That's a bit unfair, since Niven hardly wrote any of the Man-Kzin Wars.  I don't remember /Ringworld/ as being especially sexist, but it does contain the line "Every woman has a tasp."  (A tasp is a machine that stimulates the pleasure center.)   And of course most of the characters, human and alien, are male.

> Le 
> Guin is ... well I don't know what to say. I did not manage to read more 
> than 1 chapter of The Disposessed; she was so intent on banging her drum and 
> drilling into our heads the contrast between her idyllic but backward 
> egalitarians and the technologically advanced sexist b*****ds.

Well, that /is/ one of the main things the book is about, except that the egalitarians aren't all that idyllic.  (Still much better than the capitalists.)  I happen to like that sort of thing at times, and have enjoyed rereading /The Dispossessed/, /That Hideous Strength/, /The Fountainhead/, and for that matter BotLS and BotSS and /The Wizard Knight/, which are by no means free of preaching.

> Hated the sheer 
> manipulative lameness. Hated every sentence of it.

I find it interesting to compare this criticism to Wolfe's praise of /The Lord of Rings/ in "The Best Introduction to the Mountains".  Wolfe clearly liked LotR for non-political reasons too, but the subject he singles out is its portrayal of societies that he considers better than ours.  True, Tolkien spends far less time than Le Guin on the way the societies work--so much less that I think it undermines Wolfe's point--but sociopolitical aspects such as the relationship between Frodo and Sam, and the restoration of the true king, are fundamental to LotR, as is the immorality of greed for wealth and power.

> Only Le Guin adult fic I ever managed to finish was The Lathe of Heaven. On the 
> other hand I loved the original Earthsea series, though not the follow-up 
> recantations (should have said 'quod scripsi scripsi, deal with it, IMO).
...

As I recall, /Tehanu/ might have recanted a flaw of the three original books ("weak as woman's magic"), but /The Other Wind/ seemed like a retelling of /The Farthest Shore/.  Did it recant something?  The same thing?

Jerry Friedman