The Art of the Possible

Wow, post a day this month. I had some thoughts on SF and politics, and political SF...and science fictional politics? Not sure about that last one. Bulleted lists, I guess?

• So I came across an article on io9 attacking the idea that women don't like science fiction, which (my sisters are here to tell you), is indeed a folly and a fallacy. But the lady writing it cited as examples the new BSG, and the former CEO of the SciFi channel, Bonnie Hammer. Oops.
  
  If you're trying to say women like SF, maybe you shouldn't cite a show that deliberately removes all similarities to any sample of the genre. Still worse is it to hold up the woman responsible for that channel showing wrestling, who is pretty much universally reviled as a complete fan-hater, purely because of the programming she chose for her network.
  
  I wouldn't pick Noam Chomsky (a Holocaust denier, did you know?) as an example, if I were concerned to refute the anti-Semitic canard that Jews are rootless and disloyal.


• I'm allowed to mention Atlas Shrugged because the magic Galt metal makes it (awful) science fiction, but anyway I realized the fundamental problem with Objectivism (other than its totally incoherent metaphysics and the fact it derives its war-ethic from pure physical cowardice). Fundamentally, they believe in spiritual aristocracy—to the point where they believe "great" people are allowed to seduce others' spouses. How precisely is that different from any cult leader you care to name? Go take a look at Rand's affair with Branden and then tell me she wouldn't have had them bringing her toddlers if her tastes had happened to run in that direction.
  
  Worse, they don't believe their spiritual aristocracy is under any obligations to nonmembers, which makes it a worse example of one than, e.g., Hinduism. Galt and co. retreat to wait out the apocalypse like a bunch of spadefoot toads burying themselves in the sand.
  
  Who is John Galt?
  
  
  A Hindu would say that the Brahmins, during said apocalypse, should get down there and continue to sing the people's prayers, and the Kshatriyas get down there and continue to kill their enemies. But the allegedly superhuman Galt hides his candy ass in the Rockies. Again, cowardice.
  
  Also, Capitalism is not the system with a free market, it is the system with an investor-employer class. Industrial capitalism, to say nothing of its agricultural forebear the English landlord system, predates the Free Trade movement by at least half a century. And however "self-reliant" Galt and co. crow that they are, I'd like to see their little artists' commune build anything. Seriously, how much track do you think Dagny Taggart could lay on "her" railroad (unless we're using "laying track on her railroad" as a euphemism)? Simply forgetting employees' existence like that makes Atlas an argument for Communism, not against it; remember my theory Rand was a Marxist sleeper agent?


• I think I incline to a "weak" anthropogenic climate change position, in that I'm quite sure our output of various chemicals into the ol' air-envelope isn't having no effect. I'm just hesitant to overestimate this effect, since I know just how big a thing said envelope is.
  
  But I think there is some connection between the "strong", i.e. apocalyptic, climate change position, and people's strange ideas about terraforming. If you think terraforming Mars would be a quick proposition—and there's some question whether it'd be possible—you're doubtless more amenable to the idea that we're doing something major to this atmosphere.
  
  Guess I did have something to say about science fictional politics.


• I was looking for discussion on the undeniable trend, in SF and especially fantasy, toward what can only be called "demasculinization" (it's not quite identical with "feminization"). But unfortunately, this brought me into contact, as I probably should've expected, with the Men's Rights Movement—who are the least manly creatures I have ever come across. What's really annoying is that much of what they denounce is eminently worthy of denunciation, but they do it in the exact same shrill, paranoiac tone they claim to decry in feminism. For instance, nobody not either stupid or devoid of empathy can deny that much of what our schools do to boys is unfair, unethical, and even emotionally abusive—but when you characterize it as "rape", I'm afraid this is my stop.
  
  But, specifically RE: SF, gentlemen, did you know Dave Sim is not an authority? Anyone who thinks stories written "for women" (a gross slander, as they're actually written for a very narrow segment of women) are concerned with emotions, relationships, and family/children, has somehow managed to miss multiple decades of feminist de-legitimizing of motherhood. They are very specifically for the Bounderette, modern feminism's great achievement: the woman who emulates the absolute worst kind of man. Leaving to one side that the Men's Rights Movement is the same in reverse (they ape the very worst kind of woman, especially with their substitution of self-righteous tears and accusations for reasoned argument), if you think science fiction's paucity of female characters period, let alone "strong" ones, was not a flaw, you are not qualified to judge the written word.
  
  They also say a lot of nasty things about gay men (most of whom I've ever known were a damn sight more manly than them), but they sure do seem to prefer their own sex's company. Just sayin'.


• But still, what the hell's with SF? It's less a problem in print SF (which has other problems), but all visual science fiction is becoming Supernatural, except with halfwitted philosophical "naturalism" substituted for the halfbaked version of all the world's mysticism. Torchwood is slash fiction; Firefly consists entirely of male anti-Sues and the female Sues who show up their utter worthlessness every twenty minutes; Battlestar Galactica is nothing but indecisive handwringing and hystrionic gestures in precisely equal amounts, it's quite seriously like a satire against women's suffrage.
  
  It can basically be summed up that women like novels and men like romances. Women, that is, like stories about people and what they're like, and men like stories about people and what they do. Obviously there's overlap—things have to happen in novels, and if I don't know anything about a character I don't give a tin shit what he does—but the division is an important one, and as a broad statement about the sexes' preferences it's largely accurate...
  
  ...And thinking about it, I've just realized the true cause of the "feminization" of science fiction! It's not directly related to gender politics at all, and I was wrong, it is a problem from print SF. Know what it was? Simple: it was the New Wave. New Wave, "soft", S-stands-for-speculative-not-for-science SF, is novels. "Hard" SF was always romances, always about cool people doing cool stuff in cool places, just like Treasure Island; but it's not the stuff people think of when they think of SF of "literary quality". No it's not fair—I'd put Stevenson and Scott, or even Dickens, up against any novelist except Jane Austen in the literary quality category—but literary analysis is almost exclusively devoted to novels, and romances get short shrift. So it's no wonder SF is increasingly novelistic, and therefore increasingly catered to the tastes of the women who prefer novels.
  
  Whoo, I'm actually relieved. I'm sure feminism and our culture's weirdass gender-Marxism didn't help, but this is actually just a literary fad. Therefore, the solution is not to complain about the "feminization" of SF, but to re-legitimize the romance as a form of prose fiction. Step one would probably be, oh, acknowledging that it exists.


• Another loogy to snag at Rand would be, do you know what her books remind me of? Lots of people have pointed out her breathless, Fabio-on-the-cover prose, but it's also got that element of female-misogyny and übermensch-worship running through it that I've only seen one other place.
  
  
  Twilight.
  Who is John Galt?