Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
I suppose I should apologise for having brought up Heinlein, since he seems to have unduly dominated much of this thread.
I have one thing to say though: any author who voices extremist views and then needs to be defended by the claims that they have to be viewed 'in context' or that 'they're just the views of the characters' has failed. Either they have failed through over-subtlety and obscurantism or they have failed through a lack of the courage of their convictions, however vile those might be. Heinlein's failure may well have been a mix of both of these, and I think the extents to which people have to go to defend him demonstrates how confused and disordered his thinking was.
I see someone has mentioned The Female Man as another book that was designed to shock. Whatever you may think of Russ, it would be absurd to claim that Russ didn't really mean what she said in that work, and doing so would be an attempt to strip the book of its power. When it comes to Heinlein, though, people start waving their hands around and having to explain, which simply demonstrates the real problem.
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Joanna Russ is a feminist with an "Agenda," - someone "On a Mission" - which is to explode male patricarchcal dominance in today's (or yesterday's) society. She uses gendered role reversal to shock, entreat, and "Teach a Lesson" to her reader - presumably, a male-dominated audience. In her World cosmology, heterosexuals are oppressed.
I personally find her novels preachy and didactic in tone and message.
Her short stories are sometimes brilliant (when she remembers to tell a story).
Some would argue she hasn't written much of merit in 25 years; others would argue the time more likely to be 50 years. (She started publishing SF in 1959.)
I find the bulk of her writings anchored in a crude intellectualism, without the softening compassion that is needed for Great Literature.
Don
ADDED: Now, back to Zombies and playfully recumbant "Dead Things"
