On re-reading the piece I posted earlier about girl cooties in SF, I noticed I never actually explicitly stated another point I was trying to make: People often equate emotion with stupidity, and assume that books whose raison d’etre is an emotion—a womanish emotion, at that—are all automatically intellectually bankrupt and could’ve been written by a chimp with a typewriter. This assumption is implicit in Day’s contemptuous dismissal of female SF writers and the romance novels in space they write. Romance bad, esoteric physics theories good, unga unga ooka ooka. Another false dichotomy, of course. A good love story is, in my opinion, extremely hard to write. Traditional romance novel authors don’t need to worry about the implications of nanotechnology; instead, they have to deal with something as squirrelly and in some ways every bit as complex, exotic and difficult: portraying a couple falling in love, and doing it convincingly. Someone like Catherine Asaro often juggles both types of squirrelliness at the same time. Not too bad for a mentally-polluted woman.
I found your blog through Romancing the Blog. May I say that reading it has been a real pleasure. It’s funny, thoughtful and just an all-around good read.
I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve posted it to my live journal where several of my flist have followed the link and gotten as big of a kick out of it as I have. This is a real gem of a journal.
If I’m every lucky enough to have either your or Sarah read/butcher/praise any of my fiction, I shall frame the entry and put it on my wall either as bragging rights, battle stripes or simply as a great example of snappy wit and a true talent for the turn of a phrase.
Ahhh, gorsh… *turns pink* Glad you enjoy the blog, White Raven. We aim to please—and when we don’t please, we at least aim to entertain.
Hey white raven – thanks for the lovely comment. I’m not sure what I’m aiming for, but if I hit it, woo damn!