I will start this somewhat long post by stating clearly that I am not a literary guy. I’m not that poorly-read, but I am not an expert on literary analysis of theme, characters, setting, or anything else. I’m a librarian, dirty old skateboarder, tabletop RPG gamer, and enjoyer of science fiction. So this post is really me, thinking “out loud”, trying to reconcile my enjoyment of some novels with the recently-revealed-to-me probable horribleness of their author.
So, the author of the Hyperion Cantos, Dan Simmons, died recently.
I’ve read the first three books. I’ve been waiting to read the fourth one as kind of a year-end “treat” one of these years. People who don’t like SF will pick them apart, of course, but I think they are really good. I enjoyed them. They are “out there” even as SF goes. They contain some wild SF ideas all worked into a fairly complex “world”.
I have to admit that while reading them there are some problematic elements. Stuff where I thought “hmmmm…this is kinda wrong.” I find that a lot of the more “literary” SF authors (Heinlein in particular) go off the deep end at some point and start exploring their own weirdnesses in their writing. Sometimes they do it early in their careers and it just gets worse.
Perhaps this happens in other literary genres? I have mostly read SF. That’s what I know. I’d like to think that current SF authors are a little more thoughtful and aware of when they are being creeps, or racists, or whatever. Example: It is hard to read Starship Troopers and NOT conclude that Heinlein was a fascist wannabe. And don’t even get me started with the sexual weirdness in Time Enough for Love. One can say that the author is “exploring” how notions of morality might change in the future, but again, it often feels like they are just indulging themselves.
There are some things in the Cantos, especially Endymion, that when I read them I thought “wow – he is really treading close to the line on this.” Uncomfortably close.
To be fair, that book also contains one of the most moving beautiful scenes I’ve ever read in a SF novel. A stunning, well-written, understated moment of care, tenderness, and rebirth on the part of the protagonists, especially when contrasted with its analog on the part of the antagonists.
Most of the time descriptions of sex, women’s bodies, etc are done really poorly by SF writers. At best they are clumsy. At worst they are offensive. That kind of thing is just really now in the typical SF writer’s skill set. I find it better if they avoid it altogether, or just minimize it. They just don’t do it well, and honestly if you are reading SF maybe that isn’t what you are looking for? [insert horny nerd comment here]
It’s no secret that HP Lovecraft was a fairly typical racist of his time. Actually maybe quite a bit worse than typical. I don’t buy the arguments that people back then “didn’t know it was wrong.” Still, I have read almost all his work, and I think I have listened to all of it on audiobook. It just feels like sometime between Lovecraft’s life and Dan Simmons’ life things might have changed a bit more than they have.
So, back to Dan Simmons. I read the first three books in the Cantos over the last few years. I was told that his horror writing was good. Unlike many authors I enjoy I did not really read anything ** about** Simmons, other than a tiny bit about his background. Since his death a lot of criticism has been surfaced of both his personal views and some “problematic” stuff in his work. It seems like the personal views are, indeed, pretty bad. And when you read about his personal islamophobia and conservative dumbass-ism, it is really hard not to view even his better work through that lens.
And that is a bummer.
A lot of authors step in a big pile of dookie from time to time. One of my favorite SF novels, Downward to the Earth by Robert Silverberg, has a really clumsy intimate scene. It was written in 1970. Modern readers would certainly rip it apart. Silverberg was born in 1935. It’s clumsy, includes dopey descriptions of a woman’s body, but is about what I’d expect from a novel of it’s time. I will say that for all its clumsiness it is short and not just totally gratuitous. It’s a short, standalone SF novel. Now, it is certainly possible to write an incredibly offensive short novel, but I think when an author starts into these “mega-work” series of long novels maybe it just gives them too much freedom to indulge the dumber or more offensive parts of themselves.
It also feels like the more “noteworthy and literary” the author (Heinlein, Simmons, etc) the more prone they are to fall on their face. I have read well over a dozen SF novels by Alan Dean Fosterover the last few years. Foster has written a ton of books. He is known for doing lots of movie novelizations. A lot of people consider him to be kind of a “workman” author. I’ll admit his work usually doesn’t change my life, but taken as a whole his Humanx Commonwealth novels present an interesting setting and the stories are fun, exciting, and imaginative. Foster writes adventures.
In all the ADF novel’s I’ve read, I don’t think I’ve seen a single description of a woman’s breasts. Somehow Foster manages to write entire novels without bouncing boobily down the street. The only description I can think of that is even approaching a “bad description” of a woman’s body is in the Icerigger trilogy, in which one of the woman characters is chubby. In one of the Commonwealth books Foster talks about a male Thranx (an insectorid race) admiring a female’s ovipositors, which are twitching as if she is interested in him. I have wondered if Foster included this as a joke – kind of a gig at authors who love to describe women’s sexual characteristics. Considering that none of the other novels I’ve read have any of that stuff, I feel like it is meant that way. I emailed Mr. Foster, who did respond to an earlier email, but he has not yet responded. He’s a busy man.
You could, and I’m sure someone would, argue that the Humanx Commonwealth suffers from being a paternalistic colonial setting. Maybe so. It is a futuristic interstellar government of different planets that have been terraformed, colonized, invited into (but not forced), or otherwise added to the polity. Humans have spread to to other worlds and over the course of centuries formed a close relationship with the insectoid Thranx species. Thus – the Humanx in the name. It is colonialism? Hell, I don’t know. Is the United Federation of Planets, in Star Trek? I don’t think it matters, really. I feel like if you write novels, currently, to never cross any accepted line you might have some pretty homogenous and boring novels.
This all reminds me of when I found out that at least a couple of members of the band X are morons. It is disappointing.
I will probably read the final book of the Cantos, Rise of Endymion, this year. I will of course be reading it through a different lens than I read the previous three books.
A few days back I wrote this post about our trip to the bookstore, during which I bought three books.