Robert Silverberg, you suck.

Cafe Society
1

I have been ill the last few days, with fever and chills and aches. So I took the time that I was bedridden today to read Hot Sky at Midnight, by Silverberg. I am now thoroughly disgusted by him and his awful book. I am so disgusted I have dragged myself from my bed and am swaying wearily over the keyboard to tell the whole world just how much he sucks.

I know it’s mostly my own fault. Ever since I got my English degree I have swerved away from all male science fiction writers. See, in my undergrad degree I learned about these little ways to criticize works of fiction. There is deconstructualism, there is symbology, and there is feminism (among many others). The last discipline is what keeps me from reading male-written science fiction, because a lot (I’m not saying all) of it is soooo angry or dismissive towards women. One of the biggest violators is The Integral Trees, where a woman goes from NOT wanting sex to being systematically RAPED and then most improbably to wanting to have sex with ANYONE. If you can’t draw the obvious conclusion from that, I can’t help you cause I’m sick and I’m really talking about Silverberg.

Strangely enough the works that I find most offensive are the authors that are most highly esteemed. Niven has won several awards, and the cover of Hot Sky at Midnight proclaims that Silverburg has also won somewhere in the neighborhood of nine awards.

I really don’t feel that well so I’m just going to make a list of the male and female characters in this crappy book, and how they are described:

Women:

Isabelle – a nagging, whining bitch. Deluded. Annoying. With a magic vagina.

Jolanda – a cow. Stupid AND deluded (twofor!). A slut, and happy about it. Also with a magic vagina.

Jeanna – frigid. Unhappy.

Kovalcik – insane.

Men:

Nick – brilliant, tortured soul. Moral.

Paul – also tortured, also intelligent. Trying to be moral, doing what he thinks is best.

Farkas – brilliant high-ranking sexy man. Good at spying. Powerful. Has no eyeballs.

Enron – sneaky, intelligent, intense.
I think my displeasure with this book calcified around the tenth or twentieth time Silverberg described Jolanda – the nicest woman in the book – as a cow. And of course a walking pheromone. I don’t want to keep this book, but I don’t want to sell it back to the bookstore for fear someone else will read this tripe. Maybe I will burn it or throw it away to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

A cow! Sheesh!

I hope my point is clear to everyone, even though I am trembly and sick. I think I will read Sunshine by Robin McKinley again. And put a cold washcloth on my hot, aching head.

2

I know exactly what you’re talking about. Well, not that book specifically, but I’m amazed at the level of misogynism that’s still alive and well in the world. It’s so pervasive and insidious that most men and even some women don’t see how women are still so degraded and treated as only worth our vaginas. Our MAGIC vaginas. :rolleyes:

The person that really strikes me as being a woman-hater is Bill Maher. I would try to watch his show because it was an interesting concept, but he really makes me see red.

3

One of the worst of the “magic vagina” school of SF writing is Heinlein. I like him a lot, but his attitude toward women makes me want to cringe, laugh, and weep, all at once.

I highly recommend the work of the late James Tiptree, Jr., who turned out not to be a man after all, but a middle-aged woman named Alice Sheldon. Silverberg once wrote a foreword to a Tiptree book, back in the days when nobody knew Tiptree’s real identity. Silverberg triumphantly declared that it was a certainty that Tiptree was male. Hardy-har.

4

Magic vaginas?

That sounds like fantasy to me.

Ooh, that came out wrong.

5

Am I being whooshed here or are you serious?

6

Here’s an excerpt from Robin McKinley’s Sunshine

7

Funny, my geek friends and I were discussing this at dinner – misogyny in early SF, that is. Can’t count the number of novels where introduction of woman character = upcoming sex scene and disappearance of said woman. That is, when there are woman characters at all.

Not sure what exactly you mean by “magic vagina”, though I can guess.

8

EmeraldGrue, “magic vagina” was what the author called it. I won’t attempt to elaborate on his putrid prose.

Squink, I suppose you are suggesting that the only reason I like Sunshine is because there are women getting kicked around in it? Perhaps you are suggesting that feminists like reading about single mothers? Actually I do not. I like Sunshine because it’s silly and and a fun read. It also has several strong male characters as well as strong female characters – a balance you should note is not present in Silverberg’s crappy novel.

I’ve been up hacking my lungs out. I am going to go to sleep now. Hopefully I will be able to respond more tomorrow.

9

Not at all. Most plots involve someone getting kicked around in some way or another. Having never read Sunshine, or anything by McKinley, I was curious as to what her style was like. It doesn’t look like any more like great literature than Silverberg, some of which I have enjoyed, and some of which I’ve put down after an unsatisfying few chapters.
If you were so inclined, you could turn your “little ways to criticize works of fiction” upon Sunshine, and demonstrate that it was an awful bit of tripe, but still, a silly, fun read is a good thing to have when you’re feeling low. Silverberg doesn’t often deliver silly, but sometimes he does deliver fun; even if he is a bit of a neanderthal at times.

10

[quote]
If you were so inclined, you could turn your “little ways to criticize works of fiction” upon Sunshine, and demonstrate that it was an awful bit of tripe, but still, a silly, fun read is a good thing to have when you’re feeling low.
But that would violate the whole point of deconstructionism. You’re probably one of those people who thinks it necessary to study a subject, gather evidence, and reach a conclusion that has some demonstratable connection with the evidence. It’s a lot less work to just ignore what the work or author actually said and assign your own meaning to it.

But as a seventy year old man he fails to have the exact same point of view as an eightteen year old Liberal Arts major and naturally he is wrong in this. And of course, anything a character thinks in a work of fiction can be assumed to be the same thoughts the author holds. And who could argue against the obvious truth that reading a single book by an author who’s written over three hundred makes somebody capable of forming conclusions about not only that one authors’ entire body of work but also all of the works by other authors who write in the same genre.

11

Damn, hate it when I screw up the codes

But that would violate the whole point of deconstructionism. You’re probably one of those people who thinks it necessary to study a subject, gather evidence, and reach a conclusion that has some demonstratable connection with the evidence. It’s a lot less work to just ignore what the work or author actually said and assign your own meaning to it.

But as a seventy year old man he fails to have the exact same point of view as an eightteen year old Liberal Arts major and naturally he is wrong in this. And of course, anything a character thinks in a work of fiction can be assumed to be the same thoughts the author holds. And who could argue against the obvious truth that reading a single book by an author who’s written over three hundred makes somebody capable of forming conclusions about not only that one authors’ entire body of work but also all of the works by other authors who write in the same genre.

12

Sounds like somebody needs to read The Stars My Destination. :wink:

13

Nemo, sounds like you want a fight. You have said that I ignored what Silverberg said and assigned my own meaning to it. That I’m an eighteen-year-old Liberal Arts major (ouch!) and that I have, based on this one book, formed an opinion on every other male author in the science fiction realm. Sounds like you have formed your own opinion on a similar amount of scanty evidence.

I didn’t ignore what Silverberg said in his book. How could I? His point was so clear and driven home so forcefully he might as well have used a pickaxe. I assigned no alternate meaning to the book. I merely pointed out his pathetic treatment of women.

I’m not an eighteen-year-old Liberal Arts major. I haven’t used this book as a reason to write off every other male science fiction writer. There are plenty of other books that have helped me with that decision. And there are some male science fiction writers that I enjoy, although I usually have to ignore everything they say about women.

I think it’s really funny that you are casting aspersions on me and, at the same time, sticking up for Silverberg. Kind of says it all, really.

14

Then why are you reading male science fiction authors?

Cross them off your list. Remove them from your library. I’m sure you can find recommendations for works that will not offend you in any way.

I’ve read several of Silverberg’s books–some quite good. I didn’t noticed misogyny as an overriding theme.

15

Personally, I find that unless an artist’s personal beliefs and moral philosophy exactly matches my own that their works are entirely worthless and have utterly no aesthetic merit.

16

So it would be your opinion that promiscuity is NOT a possible response to a traumatic rape?

17

You appear to have found meaning in my post that wasn’t there. Perhaps you should try out this new method of literary analysis called “reading the words that the writer wrote”. The meaning of the words can best be determined by “looking them up in a dictionary”.

If you apply these methods to my previous post, you will discover:
1 - It was addressed to Squink’s post
2 - You were not mentioned
3 - I didn’t express any opinion on Robert Silverberg or his work

I realize there is a downside to putting aside deconstruction as a literary tool. It forces the reader to abandon the comforting illusion that they are the center of the universe, that everything they read is addressed to them personally, and that somehow by some form of magic (maybe involving vaginas) their beliefs and opinions can enter into a work of fiction and change the meaning. If you’re a feminist, you can find feminist ideas (or anti-feminist ones). If you’re a fascist, you can find fascist ideas. If you’re a communist, you can find communist ideas. And it doesn’t matter whether or not the author agrees with your interpretation; Jacques Derrida says your opinion about what the author is saying is just as good as the author’s because all meaning is subjective.

18

Sci-fi is especially vulnerable to this sort of criticism, and sometimes it’s justified, and a whole hell of a lot of the time it ain’t. (I haven’t read this book and I haven’t read SIlverberg since I was 15, so I have no comment on the present case.) But sci-fi in general is about reimagining things. That includes social mores. But it’s absurd to think that the only reimagined mores should be idealized, or that the author means them to be. Sci-fi is meant to explore the real world by metaphor. If we can only do so creating worlds where things are better, what can we ever learn about ourselves?

Let’s also face facts – science fiction is read overwhelmingly by men, and very often men of a certain age. You’re surprised, therefore, that there are female characters that exist solely as sexual or romantic goals for the protagonists? Have you ever read Bridget Jones’ Diary? The inclusion of female characters who aren’t fully developed as characters isn’t mysogynistic, it’s just a function of the fact that books have 320 pages to get everything across and sometimes it’s more important to discuss the things the protagonist does to win his love than why she’s worth it.

–Cliffy

19

Then what were you doing reading Silverberg in the first place?

In the second place, what a ridiculous attitude you have! If I had that attitude, I would never have read any Connie Willis, Octavia Butler, Ursula LeGuin, and so on because obviously they cannot have anything correct to say about men. I’d be missing out, as you are.

20

That isn’t a practical solution. There are some female sf authors, and very good ones at that, but the majority of the field is male. There are even (gasp) male authors that manage to write books without insulting half of the human race. I am a life-long science fiction nut, and will use deconstructionism as a literary tool only at gunpoint, but I have also noticed misogyny in the so-called “greats” of sf.

I hate it because it interferes with my enjoyment of the story, but also because I would like to date a fellow sf geek without a warped view of femininity and women. And it is very hard to find one that doesn’t require massive deprogramming.