(1) NOW WITH ADDED KA-BOOM! Filer Charon Dunn is off to the San Diego Comic-Con to plug her new book, A Dark and Stormy Day, the culmination of the Adventures of Sonny Knight trilogy, “which has even more explosions than the last two.”
I’m going to be providing copious updates on my Facebook page, but if you’re not a Facebooker, I’ll do a summary after I get back. If you are a Facebooker, throw me a like. It’s my first SDCC, so I’m mostly going to be wandering around gawking at everything like an utter yokel.
I will be wearing my fabulous SDCC battle armor: a denim vest with the solar system embroidered on the back, to discourage me from buying more superfluous hoodies while giving me a place to display my collectable pins.
Dunn will also be carrying swag to distribute to her readers – don’t miss out!
(2) ONLY HUNDREDS OF SHOPPING DAYS TIL CHRISTMAS. During Hallmark’s Keepsake Ornament Premiere Event from July 13-21, there will be “event exclusive offers” on the Hogwarts Tree Topper and Harry Potter Collection. The castle lights up and plays music. Ooh, ahh!
(3) STATION ELEVEN COMING TO MORE STATIONS. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Emily St. John-Mandel’s award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven is getting a small-screen adaptation. The novel, which won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke award, follows a theatre troupe as they travel around the Great Lakes some decades after a pandemic wiped out most of civilization. It’s an excellent novel, though I have to admit that I find the author’s dismissal of science fiction as a genre to be annoying (much like Ian MacEwan).
CBC Books has the story: “Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven being adapted into 10-episode TV series”.
(4) BOWIE FIGURE. The New York Times shares details of “A David Bowie Barbie: Mattel Unveils Ziggy Stardust Doll”.
On Thursday, the world learned that Barbie is a Bowie fan.
With its release of a doll dressed as David Bowie’s glittering alter ego Ziggy Stardust, Mattel said it was celebrating the 50th anniversary of “Space Oddity,” released in 1969.
The new Barbie doll wears a body-hugging metallic “spacesuit,” calf-high red platform boots and silver earrings with dangling stars. Her dark red hair is slicked back like Ziggy Stardust’s, and daubed on her forehead is the golden circle he wore. Her nails are painted black.
It’s a notably androgynous look for a doll that epitomized the stereotypes of feminine appearance in its earlier iterations….
(5) BARBIE’S SPACESUIT. And that’s not all the Barbie news – BBC reports “Barbie and ESA launch plan to get more girls in space”.
Barbie has teamed up with the European Space Agency (ESA) to encourage girls to become the next generation of astronauts.
Currently, only 15 percent of active astronauts in the world are female and, 50 years on from the first person landing on the moon, no woman has ever landed on the moon.
The ESA only has one active astronaut. She’s called Samantha Cristoforetti.
In order to highlight the lack of female astronauts, the company behind Barbie – Mattel – has made a special one-of-a-kind doll of Cristoforetti.
The astronaut hopes her collaboration with Barbie “will help young girls and boys to dream about their future without limits.”
(6) THE MOTES ON NEIL’S SUIT. A lot bigger and older than Barbie’s, and in need of refurbishing: “Of Little Details And Lunar Dust: Preserving Neil Armstrong’s Apollo 11 Spacesuit”.
When astronaut Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon 50 years ago, it was a giant leap for functional fashion.
The spacesuit he wore was an unprecedented blend of technology and tailoring.
“The suit itself is an engineering marvel,” says Malcolm Collum, the chief conservator for the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “Every single thing on here is a specific function. It is engineered to the last little detail.”
Take the metal fittings that connect the helmet, air tubes and gloves. They’re brightly colored — for example, vivid red metal for the right glove, neon blue for the left. Patriotic, yes, but also exceptionally functional. That’s because NASA wanted to make sure that in all of the excitement of landing on the moon, Armstrong was able to easily connect his gear.
And that attention to detail is evident from helmet to toe. The stitching throughout is meticulous — much of it done by hand in 1969. The suit had to be tough, flexible and airtight. Armstrong’s life depended on a finely guided needle and thread.
But decades of being on display throughout the country took a toll. In 2006, Smithsonian technicians noticed Armstrong’s spacesuit was showing signs of age. So they removed it from the Air and Space Museum in Washington, moved it to a storage facility and laid it out in a drawer.
Collum and his team of technicians have had the job of getting Armstrong’s spacesuit standing tall and back on public view again.
(7) SOURCE OF THE TROUBLE. The author of Ash Kickers explains the set-up in “The Big Idea: Sean Grigsby” at Whatever.
Whatever catastrophe nature throws at us, people always seem to make it worse.
Not all of us. Some seek to help and not to hurt, to heal instead of destroy. Firefighters are just one example of a few good people trying to make a difference. I’m proud to call myself one. But, like I said, sometimes there are a few hateful assholes standing in our way.
The Smoke Eaters series is about firefighters versus newly-returned dragons, sure, but there are other big ideas at play. In the first book I talk about corrupt government using disasters for their own gain, and replacing first responders with robots. In Ash Kickers, it’s something much worse…
(8) E UNUM PLURIBUS? Popular Mechanics tells how “Pangea Gave Us Modern Oceans”:
It’s hard to imagine all of the world’s land masses together as one supercontinent. Over 200 million years ago, however, that’s what Earth looked like. The breakup of Pangea was essentially the first step in the creation of the modern world….
Around 175 million years ago, as Pangea was violently being ripped apart, new rifts started opening on the ocean floor. Water-heavy slabs started falling in one after another, faster and farther down than they had before until the water began to evaporate entirely. With no water left, the end result was millions of years of water loss like the planet had never seen.
With ocean levels now rising due to man-made climate change, the idea of chucking all the water into the Earth’s mantle sounds tempting. No such luck, Karlsen says.
“While the deep water cycle can effectively change sea level over hundreds of millions to billions of years, climate change can change the sea level in zero to 100 years,” she says. “For comparison, the present-day sea level rise associated with climate change is about 0.1 inches (3.2 millimeters) a year. The sea level drop associated with the deep water cycle is about 1/10,000 of that.”
(9) CORTESE OBIT. Her credits included Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits (1965) and Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). The New York Times remembers her in “Valentina Cortese, a Leading Italian Film Actress, Dies at 96”.
Valentina Cortese, an Italian film actress best known for her role as a fading, tippling movie diva in François Truffaut’s “Day for Night,” which earned her a 1975 Academy Award nomination and, remarkably, an apology from the winner, Ingrid Bergman, died on Wednesday in Milan. She was 96.
(10) NICKERSON OBIT. BBC reports the death of Willy Wonka cast member: “Denise Nickerson: Violet Beauregarde actress dies aged 62”
Denise Nickerson, the former child actress who played Violet Beauregarde in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, has died aged 62.
Nickerson’s family announced the news in a Facebook post that read: “She’s gone.”
In earlier updates on social media, her family said she had pneumonia and had experienced several seizures.
Nickerson – who was cast opposite Gene Wilder at the age of 13 – had previously survived a stroke in 2018.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born July 11, 1899 — E. B. White. Author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, both of which are surely genre. (Died 1985.)
- Born July 11, 1913 — Cordwainer Smith. Pen name of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger. Most of his fiction was set in The Instrumentality of Mankind series which I know I’ve read once upon a time at in fragments. Both iBooks and Kindle are well stocked with his novels and short stories including Scanners Live in Vain, a most excellent novella. (Died 1966.)
- Born July 11, 1920 — Yul Brynner. The Gunslinger in Westworld and its sequel Futureword. He would also play Carson, a human warrior in the post-apocalyptic The Ultimate Warrior. I don’t think we can consider The King and I genre… (Died 1985.)
- Born July 11, 1925 — David Graham, 84. Early voice of the Daleks on Doctor Who, Dutch as The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth. He also provided a number of the voices on the Thunderbirds. And In the 1984 television Super Bowl advert filmed to introduce the Apple Macintosh computer, he played the role of Big Brother.
- Born July 11, 1956 — Amitav Ghosh, 63. Author of the absolutely brilliant The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium and Discovery. Really go read it and with we’ll discuss it over a cup of chai masala.
- Born July 11, 1958 — Alan Gutierrez, 61. An artist and illustrator, specializing in SF and fantasy cover art. His first professional sale was to the now defunct semi-professional Fantasy Book in 1983. He then began producing work for Baen Books, Tor Books,Pequod Press and other publishers. He has also painted covers for Analog magazine, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and other SF magazines.
- Born July 11, 1959 — Richard James Bleiler, 60. Genres breed academics. One of them is this bibliographer of speculative, crime, and adventure fiction. Among his papers are “The Fantastic Pulp Fiction of Frank Belknap Long” which appeared in Gary Hoppenstand’s Pulp Fiction of the ’20S and ’30S and “Forgotten Giant: A Brief History of Adventure Magazine” which was published in Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
- Born July 11, 1972 — Leona Wisoker, 47. Green Man Reviewer and author of the excellent Children of the Desert series.
- Born July 11, 1984 — Marie Lu, 35. Best known for her Legend trilogy, a dystopian and militarized future. Lionsgate has optioned it for a film. She’s also a novel in the DC Icons series, Batman: Nightwalker. And a YA series called the Young Elites.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- How do you like this selection of “Rejected Wizard of Oz Characters,” courtesy of The Argyle Sweater?
(13) HE CAN SIT ANYWHERE HE WANTS. Camestros Felapton did something rather amusing with the new poster art for Star Trek: Picard — “New TNG Spin Off Looks Interesting”.
(14) TRUE GRIT. Gizmodo finds a very good way to make a dry topic interesting: “Research Sheds Light on Strange Seaway That Once Covered the Sahara”.
The Sahara might seem like one of Earth’s most lifeless regions today, but its fossils show it was once a vast seaway filled giant fish and some of the largest sea snakes the planet has ever seen.
From 100 million to 50 million years ago, a large seaway up to 160 feet deep covered much of West Africa, leaving behind lots of marine fossils, including vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and microbes. Many of them were surprisingly large. It’s difficult to study this region due to harsh geopolitical and physical climates, so a group of scientists decided to compile and synthesize lots of existing research on the area
(15) ON THE SCALES. Paul Weimer analyzes the pedigree of Evan Winter’s new book for readers of the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog: “Gladiator Meets The Count of Monte Cristo in the African-Inspired Fantasy Epic The Rage of Dragons“.
The Rage of Dragons, the debut epic from self-publishing success story Evan Winter, distinguishes itself by its setting, a fantasy world inspired by Africa, but truly impresses with its storytelling. It weaves a tale of determination, love, revenge, and war that is, at its core, the story of one young man who, even as he seeks to improve his life by learning the art of war, must grapple with deadly politics, powerful magic, and a threat that could destroy an entire civilization.
(16) RELATIVITY. The Hugo Award Book Club blog reviews a set of finalists in “Best Related Work: Category or Collection of Categories?”. One work on the list is —
The Story Of The Hugos
It seems odd to us that this is only the second time that Jo Walton has appeared on a Hugo Award ballot. It can be argued that several of her novels and non-fiction works warrant the recognition.
Her Informal History Of The Hugo Awards, based around the Tor.com blog posts of the same name that she wrote a couple of years ago, traces the history of the awards through their creation in 1953, through to the year 2000. True to its name, this is a subjective look at both the winners and the shortlists, livened with insight and personal anecdotes.
The book version adds significant material, additional essays and footnotes, as well as a curated set of comments from the blog. Walton has a deep and rich knowledge of science fiction and of fandom, and it shines through in essay after essay tackling controversies of years past, or years where she might disagree with the verdict of Hugo voters.
This is a work that we believe will have enduring value. In most years it would be a lock for the top of our Best Related Work ballots.
(17) HUGO REVIEWS. Bonnie McDaniel is back with “Hugo Reading 2019: Best Novelette”.
4) “The Thing About Ghost Stories,” Naomi Kritzer
This is a lovely story about just what it says–ghost stories, not ghosts. Although ghosts definitely make an appearance, in the form of the narrator’s mother, who recently succumbed to Alzheimer’s. (The details of this ring scarily true, by the way.) This is another quiet story, but in this case, the still waters run deep, and the mother-daughter relationship depicted here is sad and beautiful.
(18) GRAPHIC STORY. J.C. Reid does a good rundown of one of the more rarely-reviewed categories: “Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 -Graphic Story”. First up —
Abbott by Saladin Ahmed, art by Sami Kivelä, colours by Jason Wordie, letters by Jim Campbell
A journalist fights racism and magic in 70s Detroit.
You can’t go past a good high concept, and Blaxploitation Call of Cthulhu is a pretty great high concept. What rapidly becomes apparent is that Ahmed has aspirations beyond kick ass action comics, and is engaging with more than the superficial trappings of blaxploitation. It starts with the setting – 70s Detroit in washed out colours, newspaper headlines, and near ubiquitous smoking. Everywhere we visit in the story we see divisions along race, gender and class, and the genius at work here is to carry these divisions over to the supernatural.
(19) IN THIS CORNER. James Davis Nicoll orchestrates a cage match between two classic names in “Heinlein’s Juveniles vs. Andre Norton’s Young Adult Novels” at Tor.com.
Something about Heinlein’s characters that eluded me when I was an idiot teen: some of his protagonists (in particular Rod from Tunnel in the Sky) were not necessarily the sharpest pencils in the box. They’re always good-hearted fellows, but also naive enough to justify folksy lecturing from mentors. This also allows readers to feel just a little superior to the fellow who, for example, can’t seem to work out that another character is a girl even after he wrestles with her, then partners up with her (leading a third party to inquire, “Rod…were you born that stupid? Or did you have to study?”).
(20) OBJECTS MAY BE SMALLER THAN THEY APPEAR. NPR says “At The T-Rex Races: On Your Mark, Get Set, Rawwrr!”
At first glance, the starting gate at Emerald Downs racetrack looks relatively normal. But then the gates open and the race begins, and instead of thoroughbreds a mass of people bursts forth, running as fast as they can — while wearing oversized T-Rex costumes.
“The T-Rexes stand at the ready — and T-Rexes away!” track announcer Tom Harris yells, as prehistoric — and hilarious — chaos breaks out on the track.
At the wire, a dino named Regular Unleaded took the victory, holding off Rex Girlfriend by a tail.
[Thanks to Olav Rokne, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Bonnie McDaniel, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]
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There’s this Post that’s been in my Scroll
All the time, Pix-Pix-Pixel-o oh oh
(1) Wheee! I’m charging stuff! I’m putting apps on my phone! I’m getting prepared!
(3) STATION ELEVEN COMING TO MORE STATIONS.
It’s a pretty good book, but the worldbuilding definitely requires a lot of willing suspension of disbelief. It will be interested to see what they make of it.
Clickity
Pixel killer, qu’est-ce que scroll
@4: the BBC version of this story is a punfest.
The BBC also discusses why this Mulan will be different. tl;dr version: China is now a serious market, so burlesquing their history is a bad economic move.
@12 When I saw the comic strip about rejected Oz characters, the first thing I thought was, maybe they were not all rejected after all. L. Frank Baum and his successors went through a lot of odd, even desperately odd, characters in the dozens of sequels that followed “The Wizard of Oz”. The Argyle Sweater’s sandwich-making Lunchkins may come closest to a possible oz character. I remember one of the Oz books (Ozma of Oz, 1907) featured an orchard where box lunches grew on trees. Ownership of the orchard is claimed by the Wheelers, people with wheels instead of hands and feet, who are far more hostile than the Lunchkins in the comic strip. In fact, they come off as Baum’s fever-dream of a motorcycle gang.
Mr Featherstone, best known for the invention of the pink plastic flamingo, was the fellow who did the engraving on all the Apollo suit fittings. When the Apollo era was over, he left Wyman-Gordon of Worcester, Massachusetts, for Unions Products of Leominster, Massachusetts, where he engraved blow molds, and he did the engraving of the molds for the pink plastic flamingoes he invented.
Source–he -told- me–I worked at Union Products for six weeks between the time my college classes were over, and when I headed out to go on active duty in the USAF. If another remembers the costume I did at Westercon in 1975, all those plastic saucers were rejects from Union Products, which I had been packing plastic plant pots (and saucers for below them…) for those six weeks….
Sigh, I misremembered, it was not Wyman-Gordon, it was Hamilton-Standard? Anyway, whichever company I think was part of United Technology….
(3) I don’t know why it’s a popular trope, but forced cannibalism in post-apocalyptic novels as a means of forcing people to join and/or staying in a tribe, doesn’t work for me. If anything, I would think being forced to eat human flesh as part of a ritual would make unwilling members of the tribe all the more likely to try to leave ASAP.
And don’t get me started on Seveneves, where sins of the progenitor are passed down to the clones unto the Nth generation.
(1) Best of luck Charon!
11) Cordwainer Smith’s work has its faults – sexism, homophobia, a tendency to slip into cutesy – but I love it because there isn’t really anything else like it(*). Scanners Live in Vain is a decent place to start but I’d recommend Norstrilia (his only novel) for the full experience. Otherwise, maybe The Game of Rat and Dragon or Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons.
His famous book on psychological warfare (as Paul Linebarger) is on Project Gutenberg, too – I recommend it as an interesting historical document. There’s a whole essay on post-War American imperial attitudes to be got from the change in tone between the main book’s WW2 camaraderie and the red scaremongering of the extra chapter added after the Korean War.
(*) Micheal Coney’s “Celestial Steam Locomotive” series is a creditable attempt in some ways, but shows why just imitating the style isn’t enough.
“The pixel-scroll is made of files. The pixel-scroll is made of files. Files, files, files, files, files. The pixel-scroll is made of files.”
[ my apologies to RatherGood.com, but it’s at least tangentially credential-related ]
(3) I enjoyed the book, but (I suspect like JJ) I was unconvinced that the scavenger economies depicted could support so large a professional entertainer class.
Bruce A writes
Thing is, it’s not a uniquely post-apocalyptic trope. You see this kind of behaviour in modern and historical cults – you’ve now done something so transgressive, canibalism, rape, murder, that you can never go back. You’re one of us now.
modern examples include the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda.
nickpheas: I enjoyed the book, but (I suspect like JJ) I was unconvinced that the scavenger economies depicted could support so large a professional entertainer class.
Yeah, I spent the whole book thinking, “well, this is a very interesting thought experiment, but I’m not buying for a second that it could really happen”.
But then, I had the same reaction to Too Like the Lightning and Infomocracy.
Pixel less, scroll more
@JJ Currently reading and enjoying ‘Null States’ and agree that I can’t see the path to a system like micro-democracies. At the very least the leaders of our nation states would be loath to give up their power! Nevertheless, it is a system I like the idea of much more than that described in ‘Too Like the Lightning’. It would be a good start until The Culture or the Hain rescue us.
The economic/political systems of most fantasy or SF worlds do not stand up to close analysis by the way, so the above examples are no worse than many others. ‘Station Eleven’ is on Mt TBR at present.
@JJ, @Ken, et al —
I loved Station Eleven to death. One of my favorite books in the year I read it. Ditto Too Like the Lightning. In contrast, I tried three times and finally completely gave up on Infomocracy — not only was there no story involved that I could discern, but the political system was enough different from that in TLTL, in enough un-swallowable ways, that I scoffed every time anything about it was mentioned.
(3) I don’t remember forced cannibalism in Station Eleven at all?
@Bruce A – sure you’re not mixing it up with Lucifer’s Hammer?
@Ken Richards – agreed. Not sure I buy it ever coming to be, but I like the concept a lot. BTW, who are the Hain? All I can find is a food group when I google.
(3) “The sky over Station Eleven was the color of television tuned to Station Eleven.”
Doug, see also Tickmore Stalkless. Great minds?
Scrollers tick in vain.
They’re from Ursula K. LeGuin’s SF — the advanced founders of the interplanetary civilization that features as background in many of the books.
….and we’re back to cannibalism.
(3) Like Becca, I don’t remember any forced cannibalism in Station Eleven, a novel I liked quite a bit, despite its various implausibilities.
(8) Shouldn’t that be “Ex Uno Plures?”
The title of this article alone makes it worth linking to: Purple fairy wrasse named Wakanda discovered on reef in twilight zone
I wasn’t very impressed by Station Eleven. The standard tropes with a bit of reminiscence. Ok, but forgettable.
(19) Heinlein’s middle class guys can probably can get away with being kind of stupid. Norton’s Dipple refugees would get eaten alive if they were dense.
Also, I’m bemused that for all that Norton’s books oftentimes barely have women in them, Heinlein is the one that comes off as egregiously sexist. Maybe its something about the way Norton managed to avoid cheerfully mentioning 14 year old prostitutes.
Contrarius says I loved Station Eleven to death. One of my favorite books in the year I read it. Ditto Too Like the Lightning. In contrast, I tried three times and finally completely gave up on Infomocracy — not only was there no story involved that I could discern, but the political system was enough different from that in TLTL, in enough un-swallowable ways, that I scoffed every time anything about it was mentioned.
Infomocracy failed my three chapters rule. If I can read three chapters and not figure out what’s going on, then I move on to the next novel in my ever expanding TBR pile.
Quite possibly. I don’t know if using the correct Latin would make the joke better or nonexistent.
(20) I drive past Emerald Downs on my way home a couple of times a week. It’s about twenty minutes from the house. It’s super weird to see something there getting national attention.
That said: We have a friend from out of town in August. We may go check out their Corgi races.
I first read Ken’s comment as Haim, which is completely different.
Cat Eldridge on July 12, 2019 at 9:55 am said:
I’ve encountered too many good novels where I had little or no idea what was going on till near the end (and sometimes not even then) to follow such a rule. Sometimes (sometimes), the play of words and imagery or ideas is enough. And I admit I have a higher tolerance for the sheerly bizarre than many people.* But I do have a similar rule: three chapters or so to intrigue me or engage my interest.
Some people insist on finishing something any book they’ve started, which sounds to me like pure masochism. Or a recipe for learning to hate reading.
*The ambiguity of this sentence is deliberate. 😀
I found the political system in Infomocracy quite plausible and very interesting but yes, how the world could get from here to there is not remotely obvious.
Another July 11th birthday: Roy G. Krenkel, one of my favorite illustrators from back in the day.
https://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=1456188
There’s a nice, fat, 300-page book on Roy Krenkel coming out this fall: Roy G. Krenkel: Father of Heroic Fantasy.
Ooh! Tell me more!
Or alternatively I can just preorder it from Amazon … 🙂
@Contrarius
I felt the same about Too Like the Lightning and Infomocracy. I loved Too Like the Lightning, though it’s not the sort of thing I usually go for and found Infomocracy deadly dull. An added problem was that the political system depicted was similar enough that it became even more apparent that one novel had a story tell that used its political and social system as a background and the other was so enamored with its system that it forgot to tell a story.
“Scroll on, pixel off.”
@Rose Embolism:
Perhaps that’s because too many of the girls and younger women in Heinlein are cute-and-stupid (or at least fitting exactly into 50’s-sitcom-style roles rather than showing agency). We have very little idea what women are like in Norton’s universe before Ice Crown and the Witch World books, where they have agency; Heinlein leaves no doubt about what many of them are like in his universe. This isn’t universal — sometimes the plot required a young woman of sense (e.g., Leda in Citizen of the Galaxy is someone Thorby can trust to show him the ropes) — but it’s true often enough to grate.
@Chip Hitchcock
I’m not seeing this.
For example, as I mentally go through the juvenile novels, I’m having trouble thinking of a “cute and stupid” female character at all, but am having no trouble at all thinking of females which are smart. In fact, the females are often smarter than the males (thinking of Caroline being smarter than Rod in Tunnel in the Sky; you mentioned Leda and Thorby; in Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Peewee is said to be a genius while Kip is not). I don’t think there is much evidence that any of the women in The Rolling Stones (Hazel, Edith and Meade Stone) are dim. Holly (and Ariel) are clearly brighter than Jeff in “The Menace from Earth”.
Same thing with his adult fiction — Wyo is probably smarter than Manny in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; Penny is probably smarter than Lorenzo in Double Star.
The only female character of any consequence that I can think of in Heinlein that is overtly stupid is Farnham’s mother-in-law in Farnham’s Freehold (and she is not by any means cute.)
There are lots of women/girls who are cute and smart, and lots of women/girls who have lesser social status than men, but “stupid” just isn’t a personality trait that Heinlein seemed to have cared to write about very much.
bill: I’m having trouble thinking of a “cute and stupid” female character at all, but am having no trouble at all thinking of females which are smart.
I love Heinlein. He and Star Trek were my entrees to science fiction.
But he had this huge blind spot wherein almost all of his women characters, even the smart ones, eventually turned out to feel that their highest calling was getting married and having babies.
I don’t disagree with that. But wanting to screw, get married, and have babies isn’t congruent with stupid.
bill: I don’t disagree with that. But wanting to screw, get married, and have babies isn’t congruent with stupid.
There’s a big difference between portraying women as wanting to do those things, and portraying women as having those be their only real life goals and purpose.
@ Cora. I thought the political systems of Infomocracy and TLTL were very different, infomocracy is not too far off from America today with a few tweaks. TLTL envisions a highly changed world. Both were more concerned with their philosophy than telling a story, which is fine by me. TLTL was initially more interesting since there were more changed factors to think about, but I found the events of Seven Surrenders to be quite unrealistic and I dislike conspiracy theory explanations of political events anyway. So for now, I like Infomocracy much more.
@ Rose Embolism. I would guess expectations play a role. I didn’t find the Heinleins I have read to be particularly sexist. But then I read the afterword of Podkayne and -wow. I’ll definitely be reading any future Heinleins with a different eye – looking for signs of sexism.
@bill: Knott brighter than Manny? “Wyo thinks an electron is about the size and shape of a small pea.” And Penny is … emotionally unstable, and a follower; I don’t think there’s evidence either way on intelligence.
I was particularly choking on the girls in The Star Beast and Starman Jones, but I think you can find others with thought.
extending @JJ’s remarks, consider (for an early example, as opposed to the later twits) the female co-lead’s last line in “Lost Legacy” — “now I can get married.” They’ve just dealt with an appalling threat, but her concern was it meant she had to be busy? Kareen Koudelka was suitably pointed about that attitude in the couch scene in A Civil Campaign.
Physics wasn’t a field which interested her–that’s a lack of field-specific knowledge, not (necessarily) a lack of intelligence. Sherlock Holmes probably thought the same…
But yes, while Heinlein frequently claimed his female characters were smart, it often seemed like an informed ability.
@Xtifr: that’s not field-specific knowledge; it’s basic ignorance — and was given as representative of her complete cluelessness concerning anything technical. Knott was not nearly as focused as Holmes, and did not make a fetish of specialization.
Wyoh is far more politically engaged than Manny and would make a better governmental official. Manny was a very competent computer hardware guy, but wasn’t very interested in anything outside that.
Thinking an electron as being the size and shape of a small pea is Manny’s representation of Wyoh’s knowledge – not necessarily accurate.
Thought of a bad example in the juveniles, though – in “Have Spacesuit Will Travel” Kip’s mother was Kip’s father’s best student – who apparently did no work in her field after getting married (and has virtually no lines in the book at all).