Comments on: In Which Things Get a Little Explicit http://andersoncreativeonline.com/jmblog/2007/09/09/in-which-things-get-a-little-explicit/ Just blowin' through naptime Fri, 28 May 2010 01:14:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Jeff http://andersoncreativeonline.com/jmblog/2007/09/09/in-which-things-get-a-little-explicit/#comment-10 Jeff Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:56:49 +0000 http://andersoncreativeonline.com/jmblog/?p=20#comment-10 Thanks for stopping by, Rich! You know, I've meant for so long to read <em>The Left Hand of Darkness</em>—guess it's time to check it out from the library. I always did like the original Earthsea trilogy, especially Ged's time in Master Namer's tower and his stay on the sandbar with the, what were they, Kargish prince and princess? I need to dig those out, now. Does Banks's Culture series have a starting book? I've seen the series recommended a few places, but never found out where to begin. Thanks for stopping by, Rich!

You know, I’ve meant for so long to read The Left Hand of Darkness—guess it’s time to check it out from the library. I always did like the original Earthsea trilogy, especially Ged’s time in Master Namer’s tower and his stay on the sandbar with the, what were they, Kargish prince and princess? I need to dig those out, now.

Does Banks’s Culture series have a starting book? I’ve seen the series recommended a few places, but never found out where to begin.

]]> By: Rich Puchalsky http://andersoncreativeonline.com/jmblog/2007/09/09/in-which-things-get-a-little-explicit/#comment-9 Rich Puchalsky Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:47:43 +0000 http://andersoncreativeonline.com/jmblog/?p=20#comment-9 I most definitely agree with your last sentence; just because that's a possible area for SF doesn't mean that it's one that is normally done well. On the contrary, the genre conventions of SF/fantasy mean that it's most likely to be done really badly. I haven't read any Storm Constantine, because I read a chapter or two of one of his or her books and decided that this author was likely to be one of the doing-it-badly ones. I didn't really address gender roles in my previous comments; Ursula K. LeGuin has addressed that so canonically in <i>The Left Hand of Darkness</i> -- probably her best book -- that I have difficulty remembering other books that do. But since I started with Iain Banks, I should probably mention that his Culture characters have the genetic capacity to switch back and forth between male and female physical gender, the process taking probably a few months; it's considered very odd for a Culture citizen to stay as one gender throughout life and not at least experiment with the other. But he also writes that their gender preference generally seems to stay the same, no matter which gender they currently are, which may or may not spoil the whole thing for you. I most definitely agree with your last sentence; just because that’s a possible area for SF doesn’t mean that it’s one that is normally done well. On the contrary, the genre conventions of SF/fantasy mean that it’s most likely to be done really badly. I haven’t read any Storm Constantine, because I read a chapter or two of one of his or her books and decided that this author was likely to be one of the doing-it-badly ones.

I didn’t really address gender roles in my previous comments; Ursula K. LeGuin has addressed that so canonically in The Left Hand of Darkness — probably her best book — that I have difficulty remembering other books that do. But since I started with Iain Banks, I should probably mention that his Culture characters have the genetic capacity to switch back and forth between male and female physical gender, the process taking probably a few months; it’s considered very odd for a Culture citizen to stay as one gender throughout life and not at least experiment with the other. But he also writes that their gender preference generally seems to stay the same, no matter which gender they currently are, which may or may not spoil the whole thing for you.

]]>