Yes; also it wasn’t just Bel, but a recognized option (chosen by the parents) on the planet Bel (and Miles’ mother Cordelia) came from.
That book came out well before I, at least, started hearing about alternative pronouns; I suspect that’s why Bujold wound up with “it”, which she makes quite clear isn’t considered pejorative. LeGuin had a similar problem in Left Hand of Darkness, also written well before common pronoun discussions; and used the default “he”, a decision she later wrote an essay regretting.
I haven’t read Lecke. Maybe I ought to give those a try.
Lecke won a Hugo for those books, so many people are a big fan! I understand it’s about a collective AI being cut off from its collective and becoming sentient, so of course it starts off very sterile and emotionless - it’s a machine. That doesn’t mean it stays that way. (Talking to my husband about it makes me want to try again. It sounds interesting.)
Mmm, my mistake. I didn’t quite word that at all correctly. I meant the disuse of the singular they is quite recent. The history of using the singular they is quite expansive. I wrote the total opposite of what I meant and what my paper argued. My paper didn’t “suck,” but my writing has degraded a bit in the 20 plus years since. My apologies.
The ‘juveniles’ are the best entry to Heinlein and is how so many people got hooked on them. They very carefully don’t have any of the problematic sexual stuff that crops up in his more mature works. They’re definitely of an age, but I wouldn’t call them sterile. They’re generally adventure stories written for young adults, with all that entails. Try one of the ones above (well, not Between Planets - it’s not great) if you feel like giving him another try. They’re quick reads. Still may not twirl your beanie, particularly if you are an adult uninterested in teen adventures. You’d have to pay me to read a Hardy Boys book at this point. But it would give an idea of what people found attractive about Heinlein beyond semi-dreck (IMHO) like Friday.
FTR - I’m not the person who said your paper sucked. I quoted that bit from someone else’s post to beef at the person who said that. Although I was beefing about another aspect of what they wrote, not about their opinion of your paper.
I of course have no opinion of your paper, never having seen it.
Well, yeh, his characters are pretty two-dimensional and don’t go through much if any growth during the stories, but if you accept that as a given and just read them as fun adventure stories of another era, they’re more palatable.
Yes, I realized you weren’t the person I was trying to post to a while after I wrote that. I think I was in a rush to wipe the tarnish off myself. My paper did address the singular they usage in grammar as far as single noun single pronoun. The gender usage, afaik, wasn’t a thing that I or my out lesbian professor knew about.This was around 1999 or 2000.
I was a fan of Philip K. Dick and a coworker was a fan of Heinlein. We agreed to pick five books of our fav to swap with each other. I read all five and did not come away as a fan. I don’t think Heinlein could write a psychologically accurate woman character to save his life (but I thought that way back when I read Stranger in high school). My coworker didn’t read any of the books I gave him. I thought that was fitting.
I do see one of our posters has started a “books read as a youth” (10-20) thread, and think moving the Heinlein/Changing standards discussion there would be appropriate.
I posted this comment to the wrong person so here it is again to the correct person:
Mmm, my mistake. I didn’t quite word that at all correctly. I meant the disuse of the singular they is quite recent. The history of using the singular they is quite expansive. I wrote the total opposite of what I meant and what my paper argued. My paper didn’t “suck,” but my writing has degraded a bit in 20 plus years.
Anyway, I really hate making obvious mistakes like that. My paper dealt with the very same usage of the singular they in Moriarty’s example. The gender neutral usage that is causing so much angst hadn’t made it to my attention, my out lesbian professor’s (asfaik), or in any of the research I did. I was looking into the recent prescriptive use of they as a general singular pronoun.
I don’t think Miles and Bel ever hooked up. Bel certainly offered, but iirc Miles never got past his Barrayaran upbringing enough to accept, which he sort of regretted later in life after they were both married.
My wife and I have recently started listening to books of tape together, and I tried her on Shards of Honor. She tapped out about a chapter in, citing the book’s misogynist tone. We hadn’t even gotten to the rape stuff yet, which I figured was probably for the best, and didn’t push the issue. Probably wouldn’t have loved Bel and the pronoun choice Bujold made there, either.
This was a few years ago, but to the best of my recollection, it wasn’t written as some kind of huge surprise reveal. Just a casual mention of “his black skin,” or something like that. The only reason we had any discussion about it was because it was a writing group, where we were critiquing each other’s work.
I honestly don’t think she intended it as any kind of “gotcha” for the readers, and her response to my comments wasn’t as accusatory as I may have made it sound. It was a perfectly cordial discussion. I do think that she may have been pushing back slightly against the trend that I mentioned above, where race is rarely mentioned unless it’s not-white. But nothing more in-your-face than that.
This was a vampire romance/adventure, although that particular character was not a vampire. So most of the time, any physical descriptions provided were largely about how preternaturally sexy everyone was.
I really wish that wasn’t the first book in the series. Or that it was better written. It’s not a bad book, but it’s not the genius stuff that came after it. I liked it as a romance, I thought the near-rape was a little cheesy, but of course it affected and elucidated so many things that came later in the series.
One thing I loved about it is (IIRC) when she betrayed him for her job, and a more boring author would have made this into an artificial crisis, but Aral was like, “Meh. Of course your work comes first.” Complete non-issue. I found that refreshing.
We hadn’t even gotten to the rape stuff yet, which I figured was probably for the best, and didn’t push the issue. Probably wouldn’t have loved Bel and the pronoun choice Bujold made there, either.
