the stuff your describing… I’d expect in some off-beat 1950’s scifi, or something.
Weird. (Not to say that we’re perfect, but, yeah. the casual sexism in Asimov’s was… jarring. I didn’t remember from when I last read it… which to be fair was in middle school.)
Asimov’s women characters still had the ingredients of people, and were allowed independent agency. They could present both problems and solutions in the plot, etc. Yes, at worst it could be bad, but he wrote women in plenty of different lights.
For the time, he often put women characters in fairly progressive roles, even.
Meanwhile, the only time Cixian Liu allows a woman character to make decisions, is when he needs something to go wrong for the plot.
I mean, I’m not being overly critical of Asimov. he’s largely a product of his time. (you can see similar attitudes with nuclear weapons and radiation. Hell, he wax’s poetically about bathing in the stuff. the ‘warm glow’ he describes is actually literal… humans can perceive Xrays, after a fashion..)
I just think it’s a jarring contrast to a modern scifi. but then, also, I had to put Daemon by Daniel Suarez down, with disappointment in a friend that recommend it.
Yeah, I just meant to say that Cixian Liu pulls some stuff that I would think out of place even in Asimov’s time.
The only memorable “female” character that I can remember going outside what seems Liu’s preconceptions about women, is the alien murder-despot-robot controlled by the aliens.
Yeah so in the story the aliens pretend to want peace when humanity manages to get things into a standoff-situation.
The aliens are still en route to earth, so to give them an ambassador of sorts, a female humanoid android is built for them to control remotely.
However the second the standoff is resolved, the aliens take over the planet, and she is put in charge of earth. Her first order of business is to start wielding a katana with reckless abandon, followed by limiting living area and food supply to the point that only a fraction of the current human population can be supported, and then announces “guess some of y’all will starve, now fight each for food, you insects”.
Sci-fi carried that weird male superiority thing well into the late 80s, that’s part of what put me off the entire genre when I was younger. It was incredibly difficult for women to break into the sci-fi boys club until the 90s or so, the shift happened around the same time as the x-files caught on.
wow… that book was published in 2008?
the stuff your describing… I’d expect in some off-beat 1950’s scifi, or something.
Weird. (Not to say that we’re perfect, but, yeah. the casual sexism in Asimov’s was… jarring. I didn’t remember from when I last read it… which to be fair was in middle school.)
Asimov’s women characters still had the ingredients of people, and were allowed independent agency. They could present both problems and solutions in the plot, etc. Yes, at worst it could be bad, but he wrote women in plenty of different lights.
For the time, he often put women characters in fairly progressive roles, even.
Meanwhile, the only time Cixian Liu allows a woman character to make decisions, is when he needs something to go wrong for the plot.
I mean, I’m not being overly critical of Asimov. he’s largely a product of his time. (you can see similar attitudes with nuclear weapons and radiation. Hell, he wax’s poetically about bathing in the stuff. the ‘warm glow’ he describes is actually literal… humans can perceive Xrays, after a fashion..)
I just think it’s a jarring contrast to a modern scifi. but then, also, I had to put Daemon by Daniel Suarez down, with disappointment in a friend that recommend it.
Yeah, I just meant to say that Cixian Liu pulls some stuff that I would think out of place even in Asimov’s time.
The only memorable “female” character that I can remember going outside what seems Liu’s preconceptions about women, is the alien murder-despot-robot controlled by the aliens.
ooo boi… sexy alien murder bots?
isn’t that like… a requirement for pulp scifi? (Dammit now I have to go read Murderbot again. the snark spoke to me.)
Now that’s a fun series! I hope we get more.
Second/Third book spoilers
Yeah so in the story the aliens pretend to want peace when humanity manages to get things into a standoff-situation.
The aliens are still en route to earth, so to give them an ambassador of sorts, a female humanoid android is built for them to control remotely.
However the second the standoff is resolved, the aliens take over the planet, and she is put in charge of earth. Her first order of business is to start wielding a katana with reckless abandon, followed by limiting living area and food supply to the point that only a fraction of the current human population can be supported, and then announces “guess some of y’all will starve, now fight each for food, you insects”.
Sci-fi carried that weird male superiority thing well into the late 80s, that’s part of what put me off the entire genre when I was younger. It was incredibly difficult for women to break into the sci-fi boys club until the 90s or so, the shift happened around the same time as the x-files caught on.