June 1998 L&SF Online Bulletin
Date: 98-06-02 11:25:06 EDT
From: ocls@ipa.net (George Elgin, Suzette Haden Elgin)
To: ocls@ipa.net
L&SF Online Bulletin for June 1998 -- June 2, 1998
Greetings; may the weather treat you gently!
1. In the last issue of L&SF I mentioned my disbelieving reaction to a reviewer's claim that Mary Doria Russell's THE SPARROW was a ripoff ("derivative" is the word he used) of James Blish's novel A CASE OF CONSCIENCE -- and I admitted that I hadn't read the latter. Pat Mathews immediately sent me the Blish book, bless her, and I read it. And I am now prepared to say that I absolutely do not agree with the reviewer.
Blish also has a Jesuit priest with an elaborate name, on a mission to another planet that has a sentient species, plus a moral/ethical conflict over how that should be dealt with. There the similarities end. (The commotion over THE SPARROW and CHILDREN OF GOD, on Internet lists of all kinds and in the press, is astonishing -- and terrific. We need commotions like these: to draw people to reading sf who ordinarily won't have anything to do with it; to reassure sf readers that not everything appearing on the stands today is a throwaway "this will get me through the flight to Toledo" book; and to inspire the passionate discussions and arguments that are now going on about such matters as what is/isn't "real" sf, whether the books are wicked or wholesome, whether the awards the books are getting are deserved and/or appropriate, and so on.
Lots of defining and redefining of terms going on, which is all to the good. (When I was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, we students were taught -- even when listening to lectures by Margaret Mead or Enrico Fermi -- to bellow "Define your terms!" every time the lecturer failed to do that. Useful. It kept them on their distinguished toes.)
2. The upcoming "Editor's Choice" issue will be on the topic of Hillbilly/WhiteTrash/Redneck Science Fiction. (I hope I think of some more graceful way to label it before I have to produce it, but that may not be possible.) I have been searching everywhere, on and offline, for a *bibliography* of such sf, and can't find anything even remotely like it.
If you know of such a bibliography, or even a brief list, please let me know; if you can offer me titles and references for works that ought to be included in such a bibliography, I'll be very grateful.
3. One of the suggested topics for the upcoming issue was the interface between linguistics/language and the *arts* -- the visual arts, that is. I think that's a wonderful suggestion. The reason I didn't take it up is that it's so difficult a topic that I knew I couldn't do it fast enough. I'm going to assume that it will be the topic for the July/August 1999 issue and begin gathering material now.
If you have things to include, or thoughts, they're welcome. (Most people sending suggestions requested repeats of previous Editor's Choice issues -- Sapir/Whorf, music, poetry, metaphor. I'd enjoy repeating those, but thought a Hillbillies In SF issue was perhaps more urgent.)
4. I just got back this week from attending ConQuest, an sf con in Kansas City, Missouri, and can offer a very brief report. I enjoyed myself, but was frustrated (as I am always frustrated at cons of this kind -- leisurecons) by my perception that there wasn't enough programming and what there was wasn't being taken seriously enough.
I came out of the two panels I was put on (one on "Does psychic/paranormal phenomena exist?" and one on "shameless self-promotion" ) VERY cross. Cross enough to write in capital letters, yes. The "paranormal" panel was the worst, and the after-panel discussions in the hall just about did me in. I think perhaps it's time I made a decision that at leisurecons I will only do pleasant and noncontroverisal panels that have topics I'm entirely indifferent to. I apologize here, formally, to all those among you that I was abominably rude to. Forgive me.
The art show at ConQuest was pretty good, but I don't think it was taken especially seriously either. Everyone was there to shmooz (schmooze?) and have a good time and renew/strengthen relationships, not to do anything heavy. I'm all for that, even when I get fidgety about it myself. My drawings of alien possums didn't sell [many thanks to all of you who've sent me possum-stuff!], but there were lots of approving comments and questions like, "When is your possum book coming out?"
I can recommend ConQuest (annually in Kansas City, always Memorial Day weekend) as a well-run leisurely low-stress highly social convention where interesting people can be found in abundance and the parties are fabulous. There is a masquerade, a dance, a children's programming track....all that good stuff.
5. I've had several helpful letters from people trying to help me learn to deal with the Macintosh for doing the newsletter. Much hilarity (gentle hilarity) at my attempts to straighten out the spacing when I was using italics by inserting/deleting spaces. "Trust the Mac," they tell me; "it knows how to deal with this stuff!" Hah. All these years people have been telling me I'd be so much better off doing word processing on the Mac because it's "wisywig" -- what you see is what you get .... No it's not.
Not only do I have to put up with its arrogant and infuriating insertion of Greek squiggles where I've typed Roman ones, I can't tell from looking at the screen whether there is or isn't a space between words. Wisywig me no wisywigs. I'll try to do better, however. (I'm using "MacWrite Pro for Power Mac," for what that may be worth as an explanation.) The consensus seems to be that the newsletter does, as George swore it would, look better done on the Mac; I'll hang in there.
6. My "portable grandmother" book -- retitled THE GRANDMOTHER PRINCIPLES -- will be coming out from Abbeville to coincide with Grandparent's Day (September 7th); books should be in the warehouse in August and in the stores by September 1st. I've seen the bound galleys (which were much more attractive than many final books I've seen, I might add!), and I'm pleased. (Everything about dealing with Abbeville has been a pleasure, and continues to be.) TGP will be a lead title, and the editors/publishers seem to me genuinely interested in marketing it -- pretty much a first in my experience with editors/publishers.
Abbeville Press is considering giving the book its own "mini Web page," where I (and presumably pundits galore) could interact with readers about grandmothering; if that turns out to be true, I'll be delighted. And if the book does well, the effect of that will be a plus for the earlier books even though they have little or nothing to do overtly with grandmothering. Now if I could just convince science fiction publishers to count my nonfiction sales figures when considering a submitted novel......
7. In October 1999 (7th to 9th) I will be speaking -- doing a plenary session -- at the Second Biennial International Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference, "Challenging Rhetorics: Cross-Disciplinary Sites of Feminist Discourse," at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. All of that part is horribly intimidating. (I don't know what it means, no; but I plan to find out.) Less intimidating is the letter telling me that I am "welcome to speak on any aspect of your work in science fiction." I think it would be most appropriate for me to talk about some "aspect of my work" that could be pigeonholed sloppily under linguistics and language. Maybe the idea of sf as a way of doing thought experiments with human language, given the fact that it's usually unethical to do them in the real world, and what I write as an example of such experiments?
Maybe using my sf as a way of resisting violence? Maybe the SNAIL hypothesis? Maybe why the idea of a language to express women's perceptions didn't sweep the world? ??? I don't know, exactly.... We have lots of time, more than a year; I will welcome your suggestions; please send them, and please don't hesitate. I don't want to disappoint or bore people, and I don't want to waste the opportunity.
8. I will be at Conestoga (Tulsa, in June) and at Conjuration (Columbia, Missouri, in July); I'm definitely going to be doing a book tour sometime in September/October, and where that will take me I don't yet know. I look forward to seeing some of you along the way...
That's it for now. All my best to you...
Suzette
