sf signal

[badgerbag]

Huh.

Ah, political correctness, the final frontier

came into my in box via feministsf.net google alert:

neil asher, whoever he is, weighs in.

Peter Watts bravely writes evil jew characters to test the limits of censorship. I guess.

So much for my lunch reading.

Okay, back to work!

Comments

[pats-quinade.livejournal.com]

Area Asshole Concerned About Censorship

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

I've read a Neal Asher book, it was one of those hard SF books that I barely even remember now--I don't even remember the title. ('Ware assholes in the comments there.)

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Women over 30 qualify as "older" -- yeah, well.

[badgerbag.livejournal.com]

Well it works out for some of us. We get to go from enfant terrible right to eccentric crone. This means we miss the prime of life, maturity, a solid position in the world, and so on -- but we get to be irrational bitches. It's a great trade-off!

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

woohoo!

[furikku.livejournal.com]

I started trying to read the responses but so many of them just seem to be variations on a theme of "Waaaah, people complain when something offends them WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD TODAY WE ARE SO REPRESSED"

I think Kristine Kathryn Rusch was the best response.

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

I rather liked Hal Duncan's response, although it was a bit long. But it does boil down to "If you tackle those subjects you're more likely to be lauded for it than reviled for breaching the taboo -- assuming you're approaching them /as topics/ rather than just expressing some fucked-up personal freakery.... The imperative being applied here is to treat the subject well, not to avoid it completely. It's not about taboos."

[silk-noir.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I ate before I read comments.

[rhipowered.livejournal.com]

Asher's books are decent. He's big in the UK. I have little further to add, though.

[brownbetty]

Those SF roundtables they round up seem to really scrape the bottom of the barrel every time. It's like the barrel is all bottom.

[kathryn-ironic.livejournal.com]

I remember Peter Watt's very-short-story (one of Nature's ongoing series of SF in their journal) because of that protagonist. The grandfather is evil, and yet I could understand his anger at the apathetic grandson.

Here's a pdf:
http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_RepeatingThePast.pdf