I’ve been on a vacation from reading science fiction but yesterday I read two SF stories to see if I wanted to come home. The first was “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer published online at Uncanny Magazine. The second was “Detonation Boulevard” by Alastair Reynolds published online at Tor.com now called Reactor. The Kritzer story has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and the Reynolds story has the pole position in Best of British Science Fiction 2023 edited by Donna Scott.
What struck me about both were the gender generalizations I could make about each. I know it’s sexist make generalizations about gender but how do you explain the differences I sense in post-apocalyptic books written by women and those by men?
“The Year Without Sunshine” is about a neighborhood that experiences a small, maybe temporary, apocalypse. The story is very readable, uplifting, moving, positive, and suggests people will cooperate to survive. It made me tear up many times. However, it ignores the common tropes of post-apocalyptic fiction that American men use in related stories where civilization collapses. In those stories it’s time to whip out the guns and go full auto on being Darwinian.
I felt “The Year Without Sunshine” leaned towards the feminine side of things because I enjoy the sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction, and the examples I can recall written by women are different than the ones I can recall by American men. I also sense a difference between American and British post-apocalyptic novels. Most American post-apocalyptic novels written by guys bring back the Wild West, usually with a Mad Max tone. Whereas many British post-apocalyptic novels could be called cozy catastrophes.
Examples of post-apocalyptic novels written by women that pop into my mind are Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing, Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. A couple recent British post-apocalyptic novels that come to mind are The Hopkins Manuscript by R. C. Sherriff and Survivors by Terry Nation (the basis of a BBC TV show back in the 1970s).
Naomi Kritzer presents a view in her story that I feel is both feminine and more mature than most typical science fiction. She presents a realistic future with what I consider unrealistic hope. Alaistair Reynolds presents a completely fantasy future that’s squarely aimed at the stereotype story for boys.
While reading “The Year Without Sunshine,” which I loved, Kritzer’s male characters were too nice, even the ones that were supposed to be bad. I can’t but believe that they were how Kritzer hoped guys would act in her fictionalized situation. Unfortunately, tough times are when the true nature of males will come through. I’d say the 2023 film Leave the World Behind is more like how I predict things will happen, especially the scene when the characters played by Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke confront the Kevin Bacon character hoping to barter for medicine. That’s how men will be when they are still somewhat civilized and rational, but I also expect the real reality will be like The Road by Cormac McCarthy. In “The Year Without Sunshine” too many people readily want to help Susan, who has COPD, and either give or trade her canisters of propane to keep her oxygen generator going. I don’t think that would happen. But it is the way mature people should wish it will be.
I’m not criticizing Kritzer’s story when I claim some of her males act unrealistic in that situation. I have my fantasies and my speculations, and they are different from the kinds of science fiction I’ve read, and I believe because I’m male. I could be wrong, and people, all people will act more like Kritzer’s characters in such a real-life situation.
“A Year Without Sunshine” is immensely popular and loved. It’s the kind of story that readers of The New Yorker would have enjoyed too because it’s SF that’s relevant to today and to literary readers.
In “Detonation Boulevard” Alastair Reynolds gives us the boys fantasy of space travel. It’s a visually exciting story that would make an eye-popping science fiction film. Just study the above artwork for it from Reactor. Imagine a race under a sky full of Jupiter! When I was twelve, I would have loved this story and considered it thrilling. Cyborgs on Io, a moon of Jupiter, race gigantic moon buggies completely around its circumference. At 72, that seemed silly. Like Kritzer’s hopeful fantasy for how people should act when civilization collapses, Reynolds is a hopeful fantasy for the future when we can have car races all over the solar system. But it is also an unrealistic fantasy that ignores the reality of space exploration and ignores all the scientific extrapolations about the future of Earth. It’s what boys want, of all ages.
Without giving too much of a spoiler, I did like the mature insight of the older cyborg and how it tried to pass it on to the younger one. Reynolds offers us a twist near the end, but I thought it contrived for modern audiences.
I remember back in the 1970s there were several articles in mainstream magazines by major literary writers attacking science fiction for being immature, claiming the genre offered power fantasies for adolescent boys. Readers and writers in the genre were outraged and insulted, but there is a certain amount of truth in those attacks. It’s interesting at the same time those criticisms were being made Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ were publishing works that began to mutate the genre towards more maturity.
Back in the late 1950s, my sister Becky and I formed two clubs. She called hers the Please and Thank You Club for the girls on our street, and I called my club The Eagles club for us boys. “The Year Without Sunshine” would fit nicely in a Please and Thank You Club, while Detonation Boulevard” would fit in with the Eagles.
I’m currently reading My Brilliant Friend by Elene Ferrante and Rabbit, Run by John Updike while on vacation from science fiction. It’s interesting to compare the gender perspectives of their characters to those in science fiction. Ferrante begins her book with two eight-year-old girls whose perceptions of the world were far more mature than I was at that age. I know it’s sexist to observe differences in males and females, but whenever I read literary work by women writers, I’m described powers of observations regarding other people’s emotions that I’ve never had. I saw that in Kritzer’s story too, but not Reynold’s.
It’s like trying to imagine how dogs perceive the world through smells when their sense of smell is thousands of times more powerful than ours. I can’t help but believe I am blind to things that women can perceive. Sure, it could just be me. And sure, it’s possible that plenty of males have this skill too, or plenty of females don’t. There are people who have theorized that Elena Ferrante could be a male. She has kept her identity secret. However, most of her fans hate that idea because they consider Ferrante such a perfect example of female perception. I guess it’s theoretically possible for a male writer to perfectly imitate the best female writer – but I doubt it. Reynolds tries to portray a female character in his story, but I don’t think he even came close.
I have heard, in person, and online, many males criticize the state of modern science fiction bellyaching that women writers have taken over and changed the genre. The genre is constantly evolving, and improving, and I think it’s possible that some of those improvements are due to female insight. But what has gone missing that the males want back?
Unfortantely, I think it’s what was bad about science fiction, something I once loved, and something that only a few girls admired at the time. Part of it is illustrated by “Detonation Boulevard.” And that is the immature childhood dreams of science fiction. We just don’t want to grow up, and that’s the old style science fiction that guys mostly loved, and some girls did too, both now and then. That quality is irrisistable fun and make believe. It’s why Transformers were so popular. It’s why the comic book culture has gained appeal with all ages and genders. It’s why we don’t want to grow up and adolescence now extends for decades. It’s why people are addicted to video games and crave virtual reality. Science fiction was always the 12-year-old boy’s daydreaming come true. It’s also why young wives want to divorce their immature husbands. However, that immaturity of story action is widely popular, even with girls and women.
But it ain’t helpful for growing up in a the real world. It doesn’t matters in a story like “Detonation Boulevard,” but it does in stories like “A Year Without Sunshine.” That story has no alpha males, no assholes that demand or take what they want. And those kind of guys will show up with things fall apart. It had a couple of teens that lamely tried to take what they wanted, but that made the story somewhat less realistic. There’s also a different between vicarious violence for fun, and fictional violence that portrays the real world.
I guess I’m making a case for more realism in science fiction. I think young people, of either gender, want less realism. But isn’t it the realistic details of “A Year Without Sunshine” that made it worthy of a Hugo and Nebula? To make his story somewhat realistic, Reynolds had to have cyborgs rather than humans. But wouldn’t two AI robots competing on Io been even more realistic, more gritty, hard, and believable, especially if we were shown how their knowledge and ability to perceive reality was hundreds of time more powerful than human beings? Robots are perfect for Io, we’re not. We still want to be the heroes of space exploration, but I don’t think we will.
I’m also listening to the audiobook of A City On Mars by Kelly and Zack Weinersmith. It’s subtitle is: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? Kelly Weinersmith is a professor of biosciences and she takes a long hard look at the final frontier dream. Her husband Zack illustrates the book. On the dedication page she writes:
The book brings realism to the dreams of science fiction and space enthusiasts. Even pointing out some harsh truths, I think the Weinersmiths are still overly optimistic. I’ve been reading widely on the possibilities of space exploration and the limitations of what we have to work with leave little room for what science fiction has dreamed. But even if technology could give us the colonization of Mars, only delusional people will want to live there.
I know it’s sexist to say women writers have something to offer that is unique to them, but I think we need their gender’s perspective. But I also think even more, we need more maturity of the kind they have. Maybe I’m too old to be reading a children’s literature. Maybe it’s unfair to be inside stories for children expecting more grownup’s perspectives.
When I read these two stories this weekend I felt I was reading the fantasies from two different genders of young people, stories for girls and boys. Two stories that imagined a positive future, although one was more realistic and mature than the other.
Sure, my sample size is two, but they’re consistent with many other science fiction stories I’ve read. Personally I think the genders are no closer in understanding each other than the Democrats and Republicans, and that all youth, and most adults have a grasp of reality that’s only slightly superior to reality TV. We just aren’t a rational species. Most people accept that fantasy and science fiction are merely ways to pretend, especially for children, but I believe what we pretend, especially as children, says something about how we will think when we grow up.
Both “A Year Without Sunshine” and “Detonation Boulevard” are good stories. I just enjoyed “A Year Without Sunshine” a great deal more. Is it sexist of me to say I like it more because it offers a female perspective I don’t get in post-apocalyptic tales written by males?
If you disagree that there is a difference go read “A Boy and His Dog” by Harlan Ellison, and then read “A Year Without Sunshine.” I can’t find an online copy, but here’s an audio reading at YouTube. It also won a Nebula award, and was nominated for a Hugo. I can’t believe Ellison hasn’t been canceled because of this story. You might have it in one of these anthologies. I can’t believe I once admired this story – it’s truly repellant.
JWH
