Strange Horizons, July 2002 Read online

  Ellison creates a social system closer to our own than the surreal elements of his story would have us believe, and it is the ability to read AM as a metaphor for patriarchy which brings a certain clarity to what patriarchy is and how it adversely constructs men. Johnson says that “Men pay an enormous price for participating in patriarchy” (29), and we see this “enormous price” in the types of individuals Ted and the other male characters become. It is the paths of least resistance created by the need to control and the fear of losing control that construct men who are insecure, scared, and have a chronic need to prove themselves by gaining more control. It ultimately creates men who are isolated and disconnected from relational existence (Johnson 29-30). The ultimate manifestation of isolation occurs when Ted, after he has regained some measure of control by killing the others, transforms into a green jelly with no mouth.

  An exploration of Candas Jane Dorsey's cyberpunk piece “(Learning About) Machine Sex” is interesting in the context of this essay, for it is a story about a female, Angel, who seemingly succeeds in a patriarchal system by creating a machine sex program that simulates orgasm in those that use it. In Science Fiction Culture, Camille Bacon-Smith defines the cyberpunk movement as a “concerted effort” by male authors to force women out of science fiction, part of a backlash against the entrance of women into science fiction in the 1970s (10). What Dorsey does is explore the nature of this backlash which finds its way into the narratives of cyberpunk authors (and the cyberpunk myth as a result) by introducing a female character who apparently thrives in a male-dominated, cyberpunk environment.

  The cyberpunk setting portrayed in the short story is a patriarchal system founded on the need to control and the fear of losing control. The opening scene has Whitman, Angel's employer, physically abusing her because she will not reveal the machine sex program to him when he asks (Dorsey 746). Whitman goes out of his way several times to remind Angel that he has “the option” on her bioware or owns the computer programs she creates (Dorsey 747). The control and fear created by this cyberpunk environment is manifested most significantly when Whitman sleeps with Angel one last time before he tells her that he has sold the software company she has single-handedly made successful (Dorsey 751). Each of these episodes demonstrates Whitman's fear of losing control based on Angel's genius as a computer programmer.

  Even though she becomes a success in this patriarchal system, the price exacted from Angel is that she becomes as disconnected and isolated as Ted (and the other male characters) in Ellison's “I Have No Mouth.” At Rocky Mountain House where she spent her childhood, Angel completes her machine sex program and allows a local cowboy to be the first beta tester. A computer's ability to generate an orgasm seems perverted to him, and the ensuing conversation concerns the nature of love in Angel's life which reveals much about her character. For example during their conversation, she discovers that she has left her drugs in Toronto. She remembers her attempt to “clean up her act” at this moment and how it ended: “All that had happened was that she had spent the days so tight with rage that she couldn't eat ... for the record, she thought, she'd rather be stoned” (Dorsey 757). When she is clean, the resulting rage, directed at Whitman and other men who have used her, severs her from any other emotion; her consequent decision to remain stoned isolates her from reality. The paths of least resistance for Angel is to gain control and to prevent others from gaining control which is embodied in how she succeeds in this cyberpunk environment: “I know how to set up power blocs. Except in mine there is only one party—me. And that's the way it's going to stay. Me against them from now on” (Dorsey 758). Like Ted, she isolates herself, disconnects herself from everyone because of the insecurity of losing control.

  The machine sex program itself is a physical representation of the ways in which patriarchy adversely affects men. In discussing the ethics of the program, Angel reveals her definition of intimacy: “Even when someone finally made me come, it was just a feather in his cap, an accomplishment, nothing personal. Like you said. All I was was a program, they plugged into me and went through the motions and got their result” (Dorsey 760). In “I Have No Mouth,” intimacy becomes nothing more than a service; in “Machine Sex,” intimacy is nothing more than a program. Both stories demonstrate how the acceptable ways of acting defined by the innate predispositions of control and fear adversely construct those who participate in a patriarchal system.

  In “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Donna Haraway says that “In a fiction where no character is ‘simply’ human, human status is highly problematic” (179). Blumlein's narrator crosses boundaries and explores experiences which make the acknowledged categories of “male” and “female” problematic. Perhaps the narrator is not mad at all. The narrator concludes “The Brains of Rats” by saying “I am still baffled. It is not as simple as the brains of rats.... I want to possess, and be possessed” (Blumlein 645). Blumlein's short story is about the difficulty of defining masculinity in terms other than those acknowledged by patriarchy. Within the particular patriarchal system in which he is participating, the narrator cannot be anything else but baffled. The innate predispositions of the social system, represented by the rhinovirus which only recognizes the categories of “male” and “female,” will not allow the narrator to conceive a reality in which he can possess and be possessed, control and be controlled. He is asking what it means to be a man, a prescriptive question. Perhaps the better question is a descriptive one: “Who are we?” What feminism has done is create a consciousness that allows science fiction writers not only to explore alternatives to acknowledged genders, but also to explore the masculine monster created by patriarchy.

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  Neil Baird and his family live in Reno, where he is working upon his Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric. He has recently become a proud father of a baby boy; hopefully, the first word out of his mouth will be “Gandalf.” His miniature schnauzer's name is “Q” (from Star Trek).

  This article is a small part of a much larger work. As such, Neil welcomes any comments and criticisms, including suggestions of other works that he should consider, either via e-mail or the Forum.

  Works Cited

  Bacon-Smith, Camille. Science Fiction Culture. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2000.

  Blumlein, Michael. “The Brains of Rats.” The Norton Book of Science Fiction. Ed. Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery. New York: Norton, 1993. 633-645.

  Carter, Raphael. “Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation.” Starlight 2. Ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden. New York: Tor, 1998. 89-106.

  Dorsey, Candas Jane. “(Learning About) Machine Sex.” The Norton Book of Science Fiction. Ed. Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery. New York: Norton, 1993. 746-761.

  Ellison, Harlan. “I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream.” The Mirror of Infinity. Ed. Robert Silverberg. San Francisco: Canfield, 1970. 269-284.

  Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. 149-181.

  Johnson, Allan G. The Gender Knot. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1997.

  Knight, Damon. “The Handler.” The Norton Book of Science Fiction. Ed. Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery. New York: Norton, 1993. 45-48.

  Le Guin, Ursula K. “American SF and the Other.” The Language of the Night. Ed. Susan Wood. New York: HarperPerennial, 1989. 93-96.

  Sargent, Pamela. Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories by Women about Women. New York: Vintage, 1974.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The Golden Age of Fantasy Is Twelve: SF and the Young Adult Novel

  By Rachel Manija Brown

  7/8/02

  Like many people destined to become science fiction and fantasy fans, I discovered the genre at the age of twelve. The termite-gnawed shelves of an Indian library, a pack of bullies who chased me to and from school every day, and a family friend who later eloped with my father all had roles in the
matter. But my age may have played the most important part of all.

  The years between eleven and eighteen are crucial ones for making fans. People who pass their teens without getting addicted to SF rarely acquire a taste for it later on. But while younger children automatically encounter fairy tales, fables, and surreal classics like Alice in Wonderland via school assignments and parents who read aloud, teenagers find their own books; and even the brightest teen is likely to be put off if the first novel they tackle after Harry Potter is by Greg Egan or Gene Wolfe. While the latter two are admirable writers, their books not only involve exceptional levels of narrative complexity, they deal with specifically adult issues unlikely to be appreciated by a teenager.

  The bridge between the lands of children's and adult literature is that of YA: young adult. But while there's a sharp separation between realistic YA novels and realistic adult novels—no one has ever mistaken The Black Stallion for The Horse Whisperer—the country between YA SF and adult SF has disputed borders.

  This is partly a matter of marketing, as a number of SF novels have both adult and YA editions. But there are deeper reasons for the fuzzy border, which explain the marketing confusion as well.

  YA novels may be as thematically or morally subtle as adult novels, and may have intricate plots and richly detailed settings. The best of them are as well-written as the better adult novels in any genre. But the favored prose quality for YA is clarity. That same clarity, in which individual sentences may be elegantly structured, but are never so complex or quirkily fashioned as to call attention to themselves and so pull the reader from the story, is also highly valued in the world of adult SF.

  Likewise, experimental or highly difficult prose is virtually unknown in YA novels ... and it's also far less common in adult SF than in adult mainstream literature. Even Gene Wolfe's prose is fairly straightforward on a sentence-by-sentence level; his novels are difficult because of their narrative complexity and the extent to which the reader must probe the subtext to make sense of the plot. So one similarity between YA novels and adult SF and fantasy is stylistic: both commonly aspire toward a transparent prose style that is unnoticeable yet well-wrought.

  But this similar goal is often better-achieved in YA. Contrary to popular belief, the prose quality of the average YA novel is generally higher than that of the average SF novel. The lowest common denominator of YA fiction, represented by cranked-out series like K. A. Applegate's Animorphs or Francine Pascal's Fearless, can be dreadful. But on a sentence-to-sentence basis, they're not half as badly written as comparable adult fantasy like R. A. Salvatore's series starring Drizz't Do'Urden the Dark Elf or Piers Anthony's lecherous Xanth novels, of which The Color of Her Panties serves as both representative title and warning.

  The popular mainstream of YA fiction is often also better written than the popular mainstream of adult SF and fantasy: Lois McMaster Bujold and Barbara Hambly are splendid storytellers, but their prose can't match Jane Yolen's mountain-stream clarity, Margaret Mahy's startling metaphors, or Robin McKinley's evocative detailing of place and emotion. And Mahy, Yolen, and McKinley are not outré cult writers, but the popular favorites of both critics and teenagers.

  Adult SF and fantasy also have master stylists, but few achieve mass popularity. In YA, the best-selling and beloved writers are very commonly the best prose stylists as well. This conjunction is not unknown in adult SF, but it's far less common. Randomly opening a novel from the adult fantasy best-seller's list is more likely to turn up a sentence like this, from Stephen Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane:

  “He was a leper; he could not afford suppositions.”

  Although the execution may vary, the ideals of YA prose and adult SF prose are far more similar to each other than to those of realistic adult literature, and that comprises a large part of the interplay between the former two genres.

  But more importantly, YA novels are about issues that concern teenagers: leaving home and exploring strange new environments, acquiring knowledge and skills, discovering sex and falling in love, finding one's place in the world, trying to change the world, and recognizing one's true identity. Or, in other words, growing up.

  Adult SF and fantasy address those issues to a far greater extent than adult mainstream literature does. Not only that, but the protagonists of SF and fantasy, especially epic fantasy, are often young: teenagers or people in their early twenties. So the divide between adult and YA SF is not always an easy or obvious one, and is best determined by a close look at individual books.

  My own first exposure to that border was also my entrance into fandom: the book was Andre Norton's The Stars Are Ours!, a novel and author who have captured more than a few new SF readers, and I came across it in a library, that birthplace of fandom.

  An adult friend had recommended it, sending me on a trek from my usual confines of the children's section to that of adults, a realm so vast that it had to be divided by genre. The object of my quest was a yellowing paperback in the science fiction section. On the cover, a voluptuous redhead clad in a towel sat in a metal capsule and languorously accepted a drink from a gray-haired male doctor. I was dubious, especially since I'd have to hide the book and its sexy cover from my mom, lest she decide it was one of Those Books and confiscate it.

  I opened it and read, “The ship had planted in the middle of an expanse of gray-blue gravel or sand—backed at a distance by perpendicular cliffs of reddish rock layered by strata of blue, yellow and white. As the scene changed, those in the control room saw the cliffs give way to the mouth of a long valley down the center of which curved a stream.

  'That water's red!’ Dard's surprise jolted the words out of him."

  Blue sand! Red water! Pulpy prose and all, I was hooked.

  But the resemblance to the ordinary making of a fan ends there, for the library I read it in was a small, dusty, neglected room in the small, dusty, neglected town of Ahmednagar, India. My Californian parents had moved across the world in search of enlightenment when I was seven. I was the only foreign child in the town, and probably the only one within a hundred mile radius. The local kids, with that instinctive hatred of the Other that cuts across all cultural and geographical boundaries, treated me as one would expect.

  I was an alien. An explorer crash-landed on a hostile planet. A stranger in a strange land. And I wanted to read about people like me.

  The Stars Are Ours! showcases Andre Norton's trademarks: a young misfit protagonist; a breathless round of fights, escapes, and last-minute rescues; intriguing descriptions of strange landscapes; friendly and unfriendly aliens and alien animals; and an assurance that no matter how different you feel, you will eventually find friends and a community to value you for what you already are.

  Norton's prose is serviceable at best, and often clumsy and melodramatic. Any poetry lies in the images, not in the words themselves. But her themes spoke to me, that adolescent alien, and to other misfit teenagers whose alienation, while perhaps not as dramatic as mine, was equally painful.

  Many fans got hooked on SF by reading a book by Andre Norton, a fact which is only partly explained by her popularity. I've met lots of people who read a Heinlein or Clarke or Asimov novel or two when they were young, but never read more in the genre; but I haven't met a single non-fan who remembers reading one by Norton. While Norton's books were less widely read in the first place, it's also possible that the teenagers who found her novels tended to come back for more. Norton's novels may appeal even more strongly to adolescents than Heinlein's juveniles.

  Heinlein's young heroes start out naïve, but they quickly evolve into supercompetents who scorn ignorant wusses who don't know how to use a slide rule or gut a fish. Norton's heroes spend less time reveling in their abilities and more time struggling to keep their heads above water. If they have psychic or other special talents, they don't know how to use them. As often, they're ordinary space brats, orphans, or refugees who do the best they can and, by the end of the book, find that it was good enough. We may wis
h to be like Heinlein's protagonists; but most of us, especially when we were teenagers, are more like Norton's.

  The Stars Are Ours! doesn't just happen to resonate with teenagers; it was probably written for them. The first hardcover edition was marketed as a juvenile, but the paperback that I read was aimed at the adult SF audience. I had fortuitously found a YA novel, clearly written and with themes that went straight to my heart, in a location that was my first entrance into a strange and marvelous new realm. Although the friend who'd recommended it ran off with my father the next year, I still give her a fantasy novel every Christmas.

  The Stars Are Ours! was my first exposure to the concept of genre. Children's and YA novels are shelved together regardless of subject matter, Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack beside Little House on the Prairie beside So You Want To Be A Wizard?. The Norton experience, which was followed quickly by the discovery of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong, taught me that if I wanted to read about wizards and robots, I could go to a section of the bookshop where, for shelves and shelves, any book I laid my hand on would contain magic or spaceships, and sometimes both. And so a fan was born.

  YA literature is not merely a lure into adult literature, but a complex and rewarding genre in its own right. But it's the interplay between the genres that offers the pleasures of taxonomy. The borderline between adult and YA is real but can be ambiguous. I'll take a look at four books on either side of that great divide in order to examine the qualities that place a book firmly to one side, and those that make certain novels dance around the boundaries.

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