J: So from 1965 to 1970 is a short decade, but there was a tie in there, so it was actually 7 books. And the first thing I notice about them right off is that they’re all science fiction. Various kinds of sf, but not a single fantasy in there.
K: Mmm. Yes, you’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it, but they are all science fiction — that is, fiction based around some kind of scientific idea. With the possible exception of Dune, which takes place so far in the future that in spite of the fact that they have advanced technology, it’s almost a fantasy.
J: Well, to me the one that felt the most like fantasy was The Einstein Intersection. That was just bizarre.
K: Okay, that one was pretty weird also, and had very little obvious science in it. But the argument can definitely be made without much trouble that these were all science fiction.
J: I just had to look up if SFWA maybe started out as just science fiction. But while the name only had Science Fiction in it and not Fantasy, it does say on their site that it was understood to cover both. They just.. didn’t reflect that when they were handing out Nebulas to novels.
K: And I don’t know enough about what was published at that time to know if there was any fantasy coming out that I would find more deserving. Though it wouldn’t take much to be more deserving than one or two of these books.
J: World Fantasy Awards didn’t start until 1975, so there’s no easy way to find out that way. The Hugo Awards have some nominees in there that look like they might be fantasy. I couldn’t point to one and say for sure though. I don’t think it’s because fantasy was nonexistent. I don’t even know that it was really being written by a different set of writers. SF/F writers have always crossed from one to the other as a general rule. If not in their novels, then in their short fiction.
K: Then we’d have to examine the short fiction lists to see if the exclusion was complete, and that’s a bit beyond the scope of this project. I think we just have to take it as an interesting fact and see if the trend continues as we move forward.
J: Well, one obvious trend is towards male writers! We’ve only got Le Guin so far.
K: I can’t say I’m surprised, though. One expects it to be this bad in the 60s. What was more surprising was the relatively diverse casts of the books. Certainly nothing approaching realistic, but we had far more racial diversity than I would have predicted. And even a few female main characters.
J: Yea, that was really surprising to me every time I encountered it.
K: I have to say that’s why Ringworld stuck out like such a sore thumb. Not all of the plots treated their female characters very progressively, but I can’t think of another that actively disrespected them to such an extent.
J: Yea, it was horrible. And it didn’t do well on race either! Just treated Earth like one giant melting pot so Louis Wu isn’t really anything. I don’t know what people saw in that. I really don’t.
K: Well, I will say that Niven wasn’t the first person to speculate that increased contact between parts of the world would lead pretty much to a pale brown colored human race without too many defining ethnic characteristics.
J: It’s an idea that sunk into my head at an early age.. and I wonder it didn’t just get into other people’s heads and reused without them stopping to think about it much. One other trend I noticed, which did not surprise me was psi powers. Mostly telepathy, even seemingly randomly in Left Hand of Darkness. But also prescience. I expected it to such an extent that one passage in Flowers for Algernon actually confused me because I thought he was getting into someone else’s head. But instead it was just him dissociating as Charly. That book and Rite of Passage are the only ones lacking that as an element.
K: They are a common plot element, and I agree they seemed pretty randomly tacked on to Left Hand of Darkness, though perhaps there was some symbolic reason for them there I was just beyond attempting to fathom. Any thoughts on why that is? They’re certainly something I find intriguing to think about, and they can be used in a lot of different ways.
J: I don’t know.. maybe it’s like vampires. People are drawn to the idea and I guess there’s a lot of things to explore around them. I think they were particularly big in the 60s and 70s. Maybe all those drugs and meditation in the culture at the time? Cold War ESP experiments? Men staring at goats and the like. Not that they don’t pop up in places now, Twilight, Harry Potter, but it doesn’t seem quite so pervasive. Not in 5 out of every 7 sf/f books, surely.
K: Things do become cliched and played out after a while. Not that that’s stopped the vampire/werewolf crowd in any way. It would be interesting to see the prevalence of certain tropes over time. Like the social security name popularity index. Psi powers are the Madison of the 60s.
J: *snicker*
J: I think, despite the flaws I can see in it now, and how much I can see how it could be better and wish it were better, Left Hand of Darkness is still my favorite of the 7 of them. Followed by Rite of Passage. And the rest.. don’t even come close. Which one’s your favorite?
K: Hmm. Favorite, I think I’d have to say Rite of Passage barely manages to edge out Dune. I think we’re both in agreement over which one was the worst of the lot, so I’ll just come out and say it: Ringworld, by far.
J: Oh yes, no question. Which is good news for The Einstein Intersection.
K: Yeah, that would be second worst, though not by the sort of distance Ringworld managed to achieve. Now, moving on from the novels as a whole, who was your favorite character? Can you pick one?
J: Mmmm. Estraven from Left Hand or Mia from Rite of Passage. Depending on my mood, I think. I can swing either way.
K: I guess I shouldn’t find your choices surprising, but I do. I have a hard time picking out any of the characters from these books as ‘favorite’, but if I had to, I would probably land on Lady Jessica or Princess Irulan (who wasn’t even really a -character- in the first book).
J: Well, your choices don’t surprise me much. Why did mine surprise you?
K: Just… I don’t know. They’re obviously very much your type of character, Estraven moreso than Mia, though neither is a wildly uncharacteristic choice. Maybe it’s just that I disliked Left Hand so much, and mainly because I did not engage with the characters.
J: Well, Estraven’s definitely not an easy character to get to know. It’s all filtered through Genly, for one thing. There’s definitely a distancing there. Maybe it’s more that I found “him” intriguing. And at least “he” was intelligent! Unlike a lot of the characters in these books. Oi. (Or should I say Ai?)
K: He was certainly more intelligent than Genly – and perhaps Genly’s superiors, who dispatched such a fool on an important mission. Maybe they just didn’t have any other volunteers.
J: I bet I can guess your least favorite character! It probably would’ve been Genly, until we got to Louis Wu. :)
K: Ha. So is your guess Louis Wu?
J: Yes, with or without his Motley Crew.
K: Hmm. I guess in one way you’re right — he’s the character whose behavior and attitude I liked least, though Genly was definitely up there. But the crappiest character as a character was definitely Teela Brown. She was pointless and useless. If she had been omitted from the book it would have been far less offensive.
J: I had trouble even seeing her as an entity, I guess.
K: Exactly. So who would you pick as the worst character?
J: Louis Wu ticked me off and is fresh in my mind. But the most offensive one was that bad guy from Dune.
K: He was pretty bad, I agree, though he was obviously designed to be offensive.
J: I don’t think he was designed to be offensive in the way he was offensive to me. He was fat, which was a sign of.. depravity I guess. And he was.. I think supposed to be a gay pedophile or something. Which was also a reason you were supposed to dislike him.
K: Well… yes, it was obvious the gay thing was supposed to count against him, but pedophile is still nasty regardless of whether it’s little boys or little girls.
J: I didn’t get the impression they were little boys. Maybe 15-16? Or were they younger? Because if it was a teenage girls, that just wouldn’t get the point across that he was evil quite so well.
K: It’s been a while. In any case, it was obviously non-consensual.
J: I’m not saying it would’ve been /better/, but I do think he was using gay as a shortcut for ‘a guy you should detest’. But anyway.. which story do you think had the best, most interesting idea behind it? If science fiction is at least partly, if not entirely, about big ideas.
K: That’s a good question. And looking at all 7 of our books this time, I’d have to say the one that seems most original and interesting to me from that perspective would have to be Babel-17.
J: Me, I have to go with Left Hand of Darkness. That’s a world and a biology I want to know more about. That I could see myself writing fanfic in.
K: I’ll be interested to see how these first books stack up against the coming decade — next up is the 70s.
