The Sword and Laser discussion

Okay, I might be getting myself in trouble with this one, but am I the only one who felt like CJA was checking off every single box for diverse characters and socially conscious themes? Also, maybe I should have put this in the "self-aware" thread? I keep finding myself liking Patricia and Laurence for brief moments and then I'm smacked in the face by something trying so hard to be all-encompassing and heavy-handed about it.

I'm all for diversity in writing, really! But these didn't all seem organic, more like in-your-face, "absolutely no one will feel left out of this book!". And yet both main characters are white and hetero. There is at least one character of every flavor given a name and at least some small role, even a shut-in guy with an Hispanic name, who's like a magically-disabled person. It seems very much like, "One black person in a science role...check! And hey it's a woman with an afro and she's a bit chubby!" and then, "Asian man, not a ninja, wears a nice suit and does magic not science...check!" and "Isobel gets older and her hair actually gets grey, like a normal person!" What kind of pissed me off was when Patricia kissed the girl (Diantha?) but nothing came of it - it was just there to get a lesbian moment?

And then there's the whole climate change/Earth is doomed thing. And the Science vs Nature thing. And the kids getting bullied thing (which was so over the top I couldn't take it as seriously as I should). And let's go find a new planet to ruin thing. And plants and animals have consciousness thing.

I love that she is trying to do something here besides tell a story, but for me it's just too much distraction and "Hey, look at this!" I'm at 70%, and I'll finish for sure. It's very easy to read and moves along, but I definitely think it's too self-indulgent and trying too hard.

I couldn't disagree more that it was too diverse and (really dislike when this is used perjoratively) "SJW."

I think if a person hasn't felt seriously marginalized, sure, they might not appreciate the lengths CJA went to make sure people of all types were include. Anders, I'm sure, has experienced quite a bit of marginalization, estrangement, being "othered" and so she's going to write a book that includes elements from her life or the lives of people close to her.

I live, work, and am friends with people from all walks of life, ethnically, culturally, spiritually, politically, LGBQT-ly ( :) ), on the spectrum, emotionally stunted/balanced, so this book is VERY refreshing to read. Finally! A book that reflects nearly all the people I encounter on a daily basis.

So no, I don't think it tries to hard. I think it's a step in the right direction to be more inclusive in this global environment.

(This is not to say I don't have problems with the book. I do. But I'm not done yet so I'll wait to see how it all shakes out.)

Michele wrote: "I'm all for diversity in writing, really! But these didn't all seem organic, more like in-your-face, "absolutely no one will feel left out of this book!". "

It's no more artificial than a book where every character is white. But white is the default so we don't feel it needs to be justified -- that's just the way it is -- whereas when an author makes a character anything else, we've been trained to expect there's a reason for it. If a character is black and her race plays no role in the story, it stands out, whereas if the character is white, it's just a natural part of the world.

This is what people mean when they say we live in a racist society -- these assumptions are baked into our culture at a fundamental level, and they're hard to overcome.

San Francisco is 58% not white, so it seems more like basic accuracy to me.

So my question in this category is whether the book is a realistic slice of the diversity of San Francisco or whether it's been put together from a checklist of casting with a set number of every category of race/gender/sexuality/disability put forward.

I'm all for diversity in fiction, but it's more than a little bit disconcerting when you have a small cast of characters that is mostly white except for the black one, the asian one, the gay one and the disabled one. (... and the fat one, the religious one etc). Real life doesn't come in all white, but it doesn't come in the form of a variety box of chocolates with a set number of every sort either.

And to answer my own question, I don't think it was checklist casting in the book, but nor was I counting. If I'd paid more attention to it perhaps this would have bothered me as much as it did Michele.

I agree 100% with Michele

For me the “smacked in the face” moment comes with the fifth or sixth mention off organic restaurants.

1. In my daily job I work with politics. This has lead me to think alot about political fiction, and why it so often fails as art. I have a lot of sympachy for the political project of ATBITS, but there are so many cringeworthy momenty, that it destroys the reading expereince (for me).

Often the characters takes second stage to the ideas and themes. This makes the characters untrustworthy - they are a vehicle for the authors ideas (about diversity etc.), and not persons in af off themselves.

I think ATBITS is a good example of this failure.

2, You might think - Heinlein didn’t have deep and credible characters. SciFi is the litterature of ideas - not characters.

My reply would be: you are 100% correct. But Heinlein doesen’t pretend to write real human beings. ATBITS tries to portray the politics a real human relationship and genre fiction. Is seems (to me) to be more important to have real characters in this type of book, than in a meditation on how spaceships work.

Svend wrote: "I agree 100% with Michele

For me the “smacked in the face” moment comes with the fifth or sixth mention off organic restaurants.

1. In my daily job I work with politics. This has lead me to think..."

Oh come on. Heinlein is as political as it gets. He did a lot more than just "medidate on how spaceships work". As does just about every sci-fi classic from Asimov to Haldeman to Tiptree. This willful disregard of exactly how politcial sci-fi as a genre is annoys the crap out of me.

Sci-fi is a genre of ideas, but those ideas very rarely are limited to technology. It's nearly impossible to think up a technology and the impact on a society and not have that be colored by your own political outlook.

I'm NOT saying heinlein. Clearly is.

I'm saying it is easier to write about Tech with flat characters and semi-poor plot, than identity politics and litterature.

*"I'm NOT saying Heinlein is't political. He clearly is."

(Sorry for the messing words. I'm writing this on my phone)

Svend wrote: "I agree 100% with Michele

For me the “smacked in the face” moment comes with the fifth or sixth mention off organic restaurants...."

You've never been to SF have you? Or, well, any west coast city.

Congrats Michele. The unironic use of SJW just activated my bozo filter and now I can ignore your comments (in case you REALLY don't know, it's a term thrown around by Gamergater types)

@svendi - " You might think - Heinlein didn’t have deep and credible characters. SciFi is the litterature of ideas - not characters."

Says WHO? You? Sorry, kid, but you don't get to define what SF is and what it's not.

@Rick. Ok i'll just stop here then. I don't know if it is my language skills or what, but it seems you insist on misinterpreting my point.

I was trying to make the point, that political art is hard to do right. The political heavy handedness often destroys any real attempt at art.

You call me a bozo for that.

I work in Labour Union with the chairman of LGBT immigrants in Denmark. Don't make me something I'm not.

Thanks. Godbye.

Absolutely it's there, and I 100% think it's intentional and purposeful. Laurence and Patricia's childhoods are overwhelmingly white and hetero and suburban middle class, and their primary conflicts are living as the "weirdos" (the nerd, the goth, etc.) who don't belong in crappy boring Standard White Middle Class America. Only once they get the hell out of their crappy vanilla hometown and go to a cosmopolitan city that is both a centre of technological progress and New Age/counter-culture do they find a place to belong.

Lindsay wrote: "So my question in this category is whether the book is a realistic slice of the diversity of San Francisco..."

I was only there for a week a couple of years ago, but in my limited experience yes. But it's also not that unusual for a large city in North America. (I live near Toronto, where it's estimated over 200 different languages are spoken.)

Now, you might question if all these different ethnicities and subcultures actually associate and hang out together to this extent, and I couldn't really say. But the two societies in question (the witches and the superscientists) aren't real-world societies. They don't actively recruit people, individuals stumble across their abilities by themselves (talking to animals, making a time machine) and this marks them as members of the society.

Thus, both societies avoid the inherent biases of institutions in the real-world, where the gatekeepers end up recruiting and nurturing people who are mostly like themselves even if they're not conscious they're doing so. So the witches and the superscientists are examples of how societies or institutions that are actual meritocracies--where merit is determined by something objective and not the subjective judgment of other fallible humans--might look like.

To follow up on Joe's points, it's absolutely utterly realistic, utterly realistic, for these groups to be diverse in the way that they are-- they are pulling the best and best and best and brightest and brightest and brightest from all over the world. Of course they're going to be radically diverse! And w/r/t political themes like climate change dominating-- that's the conceit of the book. It's a book about two groups with opposite and awful perspectives about how to do good in the world. The plot and characters both naturally grow out f this context. Get rid of the apocalypse, and it'd be like ditching The One Ring in Tolkien.

Is it a perfect book? Of course not. Will we, decades from now, kind of cringe at a few elements? Of course we will, just as we cringe at some elements of novels that were progressive for their time a few decades ago. But this book is not SJW check listing, not SJW allegory. It's thematically progressive fiction that wrestles with and problematizes rather than preaches multiple progressive attitudes, which features a realistic set of characters responding to an extreme world, which does indeed interrogate both ideas and personalities, which achieves a weird satirical mimesis for all its exaggerated setting.

Last month the author got criticised for having no diversity (all male) and this month there's too much diversity.

I never noticed either. When CJA introduced new characters I found the ordinariness of them refreshing. They weren't all models out of a fashion magazine but people just like the rest of us. fat, thin, old, young etc

Of course the magical community is going to be diverse. That is the make up of the cities they are in.

I hate the name "Social Justice Warrior". It's one of those terms that if you are one, you embrace it and all it's hipster wankerisms and if you aren't one you use it as an insult. (Like I just did ;-) )

So...I know that SJW is used by people like the Puppies and the Gamergaters as a pejorative - but it is also a very fitting description and many people have embraced it. I certainly am in favor of all the things that SJWs represent.

I am a half white, half Korean, raised like a white girl, nerdy, geeky. I've still never seen anyone like me in a SFF novel. And I'm okay with that, because I don't look for a character to resemble me physically - I mostly connect with characters emotionally. Still, I'm all for more diversity in fiction.

I recently read Karen Memory and it had a nicely diverse cast with a white lesbian MC, her East Indian love interest girl, a strong black US Marshall and his Native American companion, and they all went and fought off an evil gangster with an evil steampunk machine who was engaging in sex slavery and other horrors. And nothing about it felt "off". Each felt like a fully-formed character and the themes felt organic to the story.

ATBITS feels "off" to me. I think perhaps its because the side characters (the ones who make up all this diversity) aren't given any depth. We don't ever get any of their thoughts. They're just the geeky scientists or the magic weirdos who are in the background of the scenes. Sometimes they spout off some technobabble or magic philosophy.

I think it's like CGI - two white hetero people acting in front of a green screen while the world around them is computer-generated San Francisco (and yes, I currently live in the Silicone Valley - I know exactly how diverse it is here). So yes, this book is excellently diverse - in the background. So that's good.

But if you're trying to tell me, "Well, at least I saw a representative of my culture/lifestyle/skin color as an extra in that scene with the mad scientists - and hey! He got a line or two! And that's better than nothing, right?" I suppose it is better than what we often get in novels. But why couldn't Laurence be a Muslim? Why couldn't Patricia be bisexual?

I dunno - this one annoyed me and Karen Memory didn't and the only thing I can come up with is that CJA's characters all took second fiddle to her overall plans - even Laurence and Patricia didn't get to show us much depth. They got tortured a lot, but that's mostly external. They bounce around the story like they're in a pinball machine. They are always reacting but rarely do anything proactive without external manipulation.

So, I come to the opinion that in trying to cram so much stuff into the story, all of it suffers a bit. It's heavy-handed in places and sometimes it's only superficial. It's message fiction that annoys me with it's messages even though I agree with those messages because I'm noticing the message too much.

I liked the story okay. I really liked the mix of magic and science, and I thought the end was very cleverly done. I kind of wish Patricia and Laurence had never become a romantic couple, but that was expected.

Karen Memory was brilliant. One of the girls in the brothel was a cross-dressing man (I'm not sure you can use the term trans for someone who lived decades before the word was coined) and apparently she (Elizabeth Bear) was questioned about it. She then pulled out a copy of a photo from a Seattle brothel taken in the 1800s clearly showing a cross-dressing man as one of the workers.

And the black US Marshall was a real guy; apparently the basis for the Lone Ranger.

I still react to SJW as a term to avoid because of its origins, even though I don't see why it's supposed to be an insult.

I'm about 2/5 into the book (I got sidetracked a while back and started up again listening to it last night). So I'm near the beginning of the SF stuff; my only problem so far is the narrator didn't give even a hint of the described accent to the black witch guy. (I'm also getting really annoyed by the narrator's pacing, but oh well...) So I can't speak to the experience of the rest of the book.

I wanted to mention from the start, when this book was picked (and I didn't for fear I'd get grief for even taking notice), that Charlie Jane Anders is an openly trans woman. I think, given the bullying in school and the diversity that's enough to be taken as a checklist, it's time it got openly said.

What does it mean? Damned if I know. But I'm not one who says "I just look at the work; knowing anything about the author is wrongo wrongo wrongo." I like to know where the author's coming from.

Mileage may vary.

"I still react to SJW as a term to avoid because of its origins, even though I don't see why it's supposed to be an insult. "

As do I (see above). The reason it's supposedly an insult is that the people who started to use meant it that way, meant it to mean someone who cares only about all of the politically correct things and makes sure that they have the right mix of those thing (LGBT diversity, race diversity, etc). GGers and others also seem to use it to mean people who are killjoys - "why can't we have scantly clad warrior women in our game!!!? You SJWs..." etc.

The implication is that instead of writing good old fashioned SFF, those darned SJWs just want to remove all the FUN out of things.

Michele - my apologies for lumping you in there but I do think you risk that reaction by using the term without explanation.

On the book - I can see what Michele is driving at. Some of the newer SF does incorporate diversity in a kind of paint by numbers, recipe-like fashion. "Ok we need one gay character. Stir in a Korean punk.... then add a dash of gender bending...." It's really just a different take on the problem of building a convincing world. We've all seen it before in other books... the stock "saw too much in the war" character meets the stock "seems naive but really understands things at a deep level" one and...

I *really* need to write up my review of this book...

I liked the diversity, I didn't experience it as heavy handed - it reminds me of my own workplace which is in tech in Melbourne, Australia. I like that Patricia and Laurence moving away from home and moving to a bigger city meant there was more diversity - and especially with what they were doing it made sense to me that it would look/feel like that. As for all the organic/hipster place mentions, I took it as a tongue in cheek joke being shared with the reader, because the hype around those places can get a bit ridiculous (even if the food is often delicious). The bullying... all I really want to say about that is that it seemed pretty realistic to me and reminiscent. I want to think it's getting better for young people now, but I don't know if I can believe that. I also think that using the term SJW without explanation risks miscommunication that could be avoided - especially since the issue is with *how* the diversity is executed - not that there *is* diversity.

Serendi wrote: "I still react to SJW as a term to avoid because of its origins, even though I don't see why it's supposed to be an insult. "

Being someone who fights for social justice is a good thing.

But SJW is used ,ironically, for someone who is more of a slacktivist. They will preach at people online with their "holier than thou" attitudes. But not actually say anything constructive.
SJW's don't just want everyone to be PC, they demand it.

I think you can be socially aware and want equality for everyone without being politically correct all the time.

That wasn't me that said that, it was Serendi.

Ju wrote: "I liked the diversity, I didn't experience it as heavy handed - it reminds me of my own workplace which is in tech in Melbourne, Australia. I like that Patricia and Laurence moving away from home a..."

The hipster stuff got to me but I didn't consider that maybe it was being used ironically till you mentioned it (which ironically is hipsterish).

It reminded me again of Melbourne - which has such a hipster vibe about a bunch of the 'trendy' places to go etc, and we all go to these cafes and such and the food is usually *awesome*, but we also poke fun at the jars for glasses and the 'trendy' menu options that pop up periodically - and you know it because they're everywhere. Softshell crab was a thing for a while, so was pulled pork and it was just hilarious. (But also delicious).

Lindsay wrote: "That wasn't me that said that, it was Serendi."

I don't know how that happened :-? Sorry.

Fixed :-)

Uh.... you folks are really bothered by the fact that SF is depicted as a hipster, upscale city? Really? Have you... been to SF?

One note that struck me as feeling very true was that all the characters lived with roommates. Very accurate to present day SF housing prices.

Tassie Dave wrote: "But SJW is used ,ironically, for someone who is more of a slacktivist. They will preach at people online with their "holier than thou" attitudes. But not actually say anything constructive. SJW's don't just want everyone to be PC, they demand it."

And yet in practice it's used as a blanket term to denigrate anyone who expresses any kind of feminist point of view or argues that racism is a cultural system that goes beyond mere bigotry.

Sean wrote: "And yet in practice it's used as a blanket term to denigrate anyone who expresses any kind of feminist point of view or argues that racism is a cultural system that goes beyond mere bigotry. "

Sean, this point is *really* well made, thank you.

Yes, while being a Warrior for Social Justice seems like an admirable thing, it's not a term I embrace because it was coined to label a particular type of straw man for a particularly reactionary right-wing crowd.

I'm not reading the book but this paragraph from Emily Asher-Perrin on Tor about not making Luke Skywalker gay may be relevant to your discussion:

These are important aspects to delve into when we talk about the improvement of entertainment, even if they seem overly-specific. In this day and age, we know that representation shouldn’t simply be a list of boxes that we tick off one by one. No one should get praise for that. When creatives and companies think of these decisions as an appeasement or placation, they don’t broaden anyone’s horizons or create good stories. It’s not about reaching a quota or being behind (or ahead) of the curve. It’s not about feeling good that you “did your part.” It’s about abolishing laziness. It’s about making better choices that elevate marginalized voices. It’s about offering audiences enough variety in your cast of characters that every person can find the hero (or antihero or villain) that they need.

Michele wrote: "Okay, I might be getting myself in trouble with this one, but am I the only one who felt like CJA was checking off every single box for diverse characters and socially conscious themes? Also, maybe..."

I actually really disagree with this assessment. I didn't find it to be too noticeable at all, and it wasn't until you pointed out just how diverse the novel was that I thought back and realized just how diverse the novel was.

I have read novels where I felt the diversity was 'pasted on, yay'. I find that it happens if the author stops the story in order to proclaim, LOOK AT THIS I AM WRITING A X CHARACTER, as opposed to integrating the character naturally in the story. For all that this book isn't my particular cup of tea, I do think CJA integrated her diverse characters very naturally and organically into the story.

Though your point about how shallow it all is, is on point. But I found that was a writing problem, as everything was a bit shallow and under-developed and not just the characters.

Isn't being offended by the therm "SJW" exactly the type of thing people who use that term negatively are accusing "SJW" people of? lol

Buzz wrote: "Isn't being offended by the therm "SJW" exactly the type of thing people who use that term negatively are accusing "SJW" people of? lol"

Being offended by juvenile terminology meant to belittle those who express ideas contrary to the person throwing out the term? Yeah, I'll cop to that.

I'm a native of San Francisco. It pretty much reflects SF - to the point that I'm looking for these unnamed restaurants and cafes that keep getting mentioned.