the book that made Shonalika angry and gave Adam depression
Shonalika and Adam talk about M. John Harrison's Light
two corrections and some final notes from Shonalika:
"1. Want to rectify ‘people identify with this character therefore he’s meant to be sympathetic’. People misinterpret media e.g Joker, Fight Club all the time as endorsements of the subject they explore. This wasn’t a fair comment on my part (however I do Kearney *is* meant to be at least partially sympathetic, based purely on the text itself).
2. Instead of ‘all the women are sex objects’ I should have said; ‘treated on a sliding scale of sexism that could be *intended* to be critique, but shows a lack of the required understanding of the subject for critique. The result is straight depiction without meaningful subversion or commentary.’
Finally, highly privileged people can write excellent science fiction. However, when alleged valuable content is so deeply buried, it’s worth remembering that you don’t *need* to waste your time on M. John Harrison or other writers like him. The notion that you *should* give a writer the benefit of the doubt, that there *must be* something of value else why the critical acclaim? - the culture of assumed competence and automatic authority - is, like many white men’s careers, the product of patriarchy; a system that science fiction, of all genres, would do better to question.
For every self-important white man there are a hundred marginalised writers of equal skill, greater insight, and a fraction of the adulation.
If you want to think outside the box, look elsewhere than the box itself."
Shonalika's stuff // Adam's blog
