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Anne McCaffrey and Implicit Social Values in Fiction
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This started as an attempt to discuss why I dislike the casual sex in Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer trilogy. It got away from me at some point and turned into a more general discussion of things I dislike about her fiction.
I have nothing against casual sex, per se. What I dislike is McCaffrey's implicit attitude toward sex, and particularly toward indiscriminate casual sex with multiple partners. She treats it as something less meaningful than a good conversation, until she gets into romance mode, at which point sex becomes Special and practically spiritually charged.
Maybe this reflects what sex is like when you share it with somebody you don't really give a damn about vs. somebody you genuinely care for. I still don't like it. For one thing, if you don't care about a person, why would you bother having sex with him, especially if you know what it's like when you do care about your partner? It seems like sex for the sake of the readers' titillation... except without the titillation, because she never describes it in any detail.
Maybe she simply wants to say that if men can sleep around, women can too. If so, that strikes me as extremely stupid -- just because men have acted like pigs for thousands of years doesn't mean women should act like pigs in the name of gender equality. :-)
Anyway, I dislike a lot of McCaffrey's implicit social attitudes, as expressed in her fiction: militant veganism; intellectually incoherent fwuffy bunny animal love (love nature, but save the otters from the wolves! no matter what effect that may have on the ecological balance of the region!); trite environmentalism without acknowledging industrialism's great success at lifting people from poverty; a glorification of the individual over the group; and especially a disdain for people who work together and create the stable societies her Special people must escape. (The glorification of Special people is particularly evident in The Rowan and its sequels, in which a small coterie of powerful psychics essentially rule humanity from behind the scenes, and are always proved right in the end. That's not the overt message of the books, but it's a strong undercurrent, and the more I think about the implications the more disquieted I become.)
The thing I like most about the Crystal Singer trilogy is that McCaffrey acknowledges, for once, that her Special people can be unpleasant, self-defeating, and flat-out wrong. Of course, Killashandra gets a happy ending anyway -- courtesy of a not-terribly-convincing change of heart and a handy deus ex machina -- but at least some of her obstacles are internal rather than imposed by a heartless, faceless social order that doesn't understand her Specialness, or whatever.
On the other hand, McCaffrey's ill-treatment of her non-favored characters is still blatant. It's not enough for the Trundumoux in Crystal Singer to be a moderately xenophobic and highly ordered (read: "inflexible") society; they have to wear garish outfits and be stupid as well. It's not enough for the Elders of Optheria, in Killashandra, to be controlling the population with subliminal orders; they have to be plagiarists as well. It's not enough for the scientists in Crystal Line to be absorbed in their work and understandably disdainful of a non-specialist's opinion; they have to be stiff, pedantic, humorless, and trapped in a seemingly unhealthy marriage as well.
McCaffrey's Special characters share her disdain for their non-Special counterparts. It's not enough for Bollam, Lanzecki's hapless assistant in Crystal Line, to be physically weak, timid, and inexperienced; he has to be completely inept at everything. Everyone insults and bullies him with no remorse, and Lanzecki's treatment of him -- essentially using Bollam as his method of suicide -- is monstrous. No one shows compassion for him in the aftermath, either; Killashandra's only reaction is furious jealousy that Bollam was mentally injured enough by a mach storm to mostly forget the incident.
I also find it noteworthy that Lars Dahl's chief reaction to the repressive Optherian government is not outrage at the mental control of thousands of Mainlanders, but indignation that the Elders are preventing Theach and Nahia from displaying the full spectrum of their Specialness. To him and to Killashandra, the Mainlanders are almost less than human; they don't count. In a certain light, Lars and Killashandra, like most of McCaffrey's heroes, are halfway to sociopathic.
I have a different attitude toward implicit social standards in fanfiction and in published original fiction. While I do hold fanfiction to basic standards of mechanics, characterization, and logic, I don't demand that fanfiction be as rounded as published fiction. I think a lot of fanfiction is written specifically to scratch an itch roused by canon, and as such it's very narrow in focus. If somebody wants to respond to canon by writing nothing but sex, that's fine by me. (I probably won't read it -- I prefer plot -- but it's no skin off my back.)
But original published fiction is not a pure response to something else. It's an attempt to create a new thing, a whole thing. Therefore, I pay more attention to the implicit aspects of the stories and worlds... at least in part because those hidden, half-thought-out pieces of worlds are what I often respond to when I write fanfiction. When I think about what McCaffrey's books imply about sex in particular, and human relationships in general, I get really ticked off. People exist within social networks -- people cannot be human without other people -- and McCaffrey so rarely acknowledges the need for compassion beyond a narrow circle of blessed Special people. She so rarely acknowledges that social systems exist for a reason, even when they're frustrating or seem to keep Special people from achieving their goals. She so rarely acknowledges that people can disagree with her Special people without being wrong, stupid, or outright evil.
I dislike those implicit attitudes immensely.
---------------------------------------------
Your mileage may, of course, vary. Please feel free to point out any factors I may be ignoring or misinterpreting.
Anne McCaffrey and Implicit Social Values in Fiction
---------------------------------------------
This started as an attempt to discuss why I dislike the casual sex in Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer trilogy. It got away from me at some point and turned into a more general discussion of things I dislike about her fiction.
I have nothing against casual sex, per se. What I dislike is McCaffrey's implicit attitude toward sex, and particularly toward indiscriminate casual sex with multiple partners. She treats it as something less meaningful than a good conversation, until she gets into romance mode, at which point sex becomes Special and practically spiritually charged.
Maybe this reflects what sex is like when you share it with somebody you don't really give a damn about vs. somebody you genuinely care for. I still don't like it. For one thing, if you don't care about a person, why would you bother having sex with him, especially if you know what it's like when you do care about your partner? It seems like sex for the sake of the readers' titillation... except without the titillation, because she never describes it in any detail.
Maybe she simply wants to say that if men can sleep around, women can too. If so, that strikes me as extremely stupid -- just because men have acted like pigs for thousands of years doesn't mean women should act like pigs in the name of gender equality. :-)
Anyway, I dislike a lot of McCaffrey's implicit social attitudes, as expressed in her fiction: militant veganism; intellectually incoherent fwuffy bunny animal love (love nature, but save the otters from the wolves! no matter what effect that may have on the ecological balance of the region!); trite environmentalism without acknowledging industrialism's great success at lifting people from poverty; a glorification of the individual over the group; and especially a disdain for people who work together and create the stable societies her Special people must escape. (The glorification of Special people is particularly evident in The Rowan and its sequels, in which a small coterie of powerful psychics essentially rule humanity from behind the scenes, and are always proved right in the end. That's not the overt message of the books, but it's a strong undercurrent, and the more I think about the implications the more disquieted I become.)
The thing I like most about the Crystal Singer trilogy is that McCaffrey acknowledges, for once, that her Special people can be unpleasant, self-defeating, and flat-out wrong. Of course, Killashandra gets a happy ending anyway -- courtesy of a not-terribly-convincing change of heart and a handy deus ex machina -- but at least some of her obstacles are internal rather than imposed by a heartless, faceless social order that doesn't understand her Specialness, or whatever.
On the other hand, McCaffrey's ill-treatment of her non-favored characters is still blatant. It's not enough for the Trundumoux in Crystal Singer to be a moderately xenophobic and highly ordered (read: "inflexible") society; they have to wear garish outfits and be stupid as well. It's not enough for the Elders of Optheria, in Killashandra, to be controlling the population with subliminal orders; they have to be plagiarists as well. It's not enough for the scientists in Crystal Line to be absorbed in their work and understandably disdainful of a non-specialist's opinion; they have to be stiff, pedantic, humorless, and trapped in a seemingly unhealthy marriage as well.
McCaffrey's Special characters share her disdain for their non-Special counterparts. It's not enough for Bollam, Lanzecki's hapless assistant in Crystal Line, to be physically weak, timid, and inexperienced; he has to be completely inept at everything. Everyone insults and bullies him with no remorse, and Lanzecki's treatment of him -- essentially using Bollam as his method of suicide -- is monstrous. No one shows compassion for him in the aftermath, either; Killashandra's only reaction is furious jealousy that Bollam was mentally injured enough by a mach storm to mostly forget the incident.
I also find it noteworthy that Lars Dahl's chief reaction to the repressive Optherian government is not outrage at the mental control of thousands of Mainlanders, but indignation that the Elders are preventing Theach and Nahia from displaying the full spectrum of their Specialness. To him and to Killashandra, the Mainlanders are almost less than human; they don't count. In a certain light, Lars and Killashandra, like most of McCaffrey's heroes, are halfway to sociopathic.
I have a different attitude toward implicit social standards in fanfiction and in published original fiction. While I do hold fanfiction to basic standards of mechanics, characterization, and logic, I don't demand that fanfiction be as rounded as published fiction. I think a lot of fanfiction is written specifically to scratch an itch roused by canon, and as such it's very narrow in focus. If somebody wants to respond to canon by writing nothing but sex, that's fine by me. (I probably won't read it -- I prefer plot -- but it's no skin off my back.)
But original published fiction is not a pure response to something else. It's an attempt to create a new thing, a whole thing. Therefore, I pay more attention to the implicit aspects of the stories and worlds... at least in part because those hidden, half-thought-out pieces of worlds are what I often respond to when I write fanfiction. When I think about what McCaffrey's books imply about sex in particular, and human relationships in general, I get really ticked off. People exist within social networks -- people cannot be human without other people -- and McCaffrey so rarely acknowledges the need for compassion beyond a narrow circle of blessed Special people. She so rarely acknowledges that social systems exist for a reason, even when they're frustrating or seem to keep Special people from achieving their goals. She so rarely acknowledges that people can disagree with her Special people without being wrong, stupid, or outright evil.
I dislike those implicit attitudes immensely.
---------------------------------------------
Your mileage may, of course, vary. Please feel free to point out any factors I may be ignoring or misinterpreting.
