You never read the same book twice

I read Shikasta by Doris Lessing this summer. Or re-read it, as it happened. I went through a phase as a teenager where I read as many classics as possible in order to appear ‘cultured’ – like you do when you’re sixteen; Dostoyevsky and other Russian authors, sci-fi and large historical novels among them. I’m sure that the books served a purpose in my upbringing and I would most likely view the world differently if I hadn’t read them when I did, their influence on me profound. However, I’m not entirely sure I understood what most of them were about. I definitely don't remember many of them.

It felt like I was reading Shikasta (Re: Colonised planet 5) for the first time, the familiarity of the Canopus Empire the only indication that I had, in fact, read it. Therefore, I didn’t have the same sense of return and recollection I often have when I read a book again, or the sense of discovery when I realise I’ve remembered some things wrong or misunderstood them in the first place.

It’s not entirely surprising that I don’t remember reading it. Nothing much happens in the book for the most of it, the narrative consists of bureaucratic reports, diary entries and rambling letters, and the protagonist disappears for the last third of the book, existing only on other people’s accounts of him. Nevertheless, it’s a classic for a reason, a book that earned Lessing a Nobel price. It’s not a small or forgettable book, as I discovered on my second reading.

There are two great themes in the book that I’m sure I’ve read differently the first time. There is the spiritual aspect, the idea of reincarnation of souls until they have fulfilled their purpose that must have intrigued the younger me more than it did now. I read a lot about different religions then and the idea of rebirth appealed to me greatly at some point. On the re-read, the idea fell somewhat flat, the romantic in me upset for the souls of Rachel and Benjamin who had to be born over and over again. What must one do to be free of it?

The other great theme, social injustice – gender and economic inequality and racism – probably didn’t interest me as much back then; I had a tendency to find such accounts preaching. Reading the book again, I found Lessing’s ideas noteworthy. I also had the advantage of over thirty years to when the book was written in 1979 to see how the world has changed since. The damage done by colonialism hasn’t gone away, racist and religious intolerance is still ripe, and women aren’t that much better off than they were in the 1970s. The only thing that has improved, at least a little, is the environmental issues and the world isn’t quite as close to ecological disaster as the book predicts.

I have most likely completely missed the idea of the Chinese taking over the world. I read the book around the time the communism fell, so a book predicting a takeover of another communist system has either felt old-fashioned or I haven’t understood it at all. In hindsight, it could be said that Lessing was right. China has taken over the world, little by little, only not through communism but capitalism. The idea in Lessing’s book of Chinese exploiting cheap and starving European labour isn’t all that far from the reality of the modern China either.

The imminent destruction of the world, on the other hand, must have been a familiar notion for a child of the Cold War. It wouldn’t have mattered that the world had changed by the time I read the book, or that in Shikasta it takes place already in the 1970s; the fear of it was a constant companion when I was growing up.

Most importantly, however, I would have considered the premise of the book differently. The idea of an alien race influencing the evolution of human race – and everything else on earth – must have felt intriguing for the teenage me who was binge-reading sci-fi. For the grown-up me, the idea felt fatalistic. Humans are seen only as puppets, unable to make the most of themselves. Worse yet, the idea of the planet Shammat influencing evil in humans takes away our responsibility for everything that is wrong with us, all the things Lessing takes such pains to bring up. Why bother changing when all we need to do is wait for the stars to realign themselves and everything will be well again?

All in all, I’m sure I enjoyed the book far more than the teenager me did. However, I remember reading the second book in the Canopus in Argos: Archives series, of which Shikasta is the first book, so I must have liked it. I find it slightly sad that I can’t remember how I found the book the first time. And I can’t help wondering how many of the books I read then would be different if I read them now. All of them, I’m sure. But would they be better, or worse?

Gender and genre, part two: the strong women of urban fantasy

No woman writer wants to be overlooked and undervalued for being a woman; but few, it seems, wish to be defined solely by gender, or constrained by loyalties to it alone.

Margaret Atwood

There is one genre that seems to be mostly written by women, for women and about women. That is urban fantasy with its ‘tough chick’ heroines. The genre emerged in the early 1990s to fill a void in literature: heroines who are strong, capable operators in their own right. Women who face monsters – real or imaginary – head on and win simply didn’t exist before. The genre soon became popular and remains so today, an indication that it answered a genuine need among readers.

There have always been strong women in literature, those who keep up the home front and the life going when the men are at war. Everyday heroines with inner strength or women who have no choice but to be strong. My favourite has always been Scarlett O’Hara from the Gone with the Wind. She did what she had to in order to survive, no matter what it cost her.

Another type of a strong woman is that in crime fiction, the detectives and PIs who have to battle not only the criminals but gender prejudice from their male colleagues too. They come in different types, angry loners and professionals so good they have to be noticed. 

What all these women have in common, regardless of the time they live in or the country of their origin, is that they are operating in the men’s world, dealing with the conventions of a society ruled and defined by men. They are not free to define themselves. It’s this issue that the ‘tough chick’ heroines try to address.

The heroines of urban fantasy aren’t free from the expectations of the society either. What makes them so great is that they don’t conform to them. In a way, their resistance to society’s expectations is more remarkable than the existence of monsters in their parallel universe. Working as detectives or PIs like their regular universe counterparts, they don’t wait for the men to tell them how the world is saved from the monsters. They go out there and save it themselves. They create their own rules. It’s never easy for them, however, and so – more often than not – they find the people who understand them best are the monsters they hunt.

 

The greatest feminist tough chick urban fantasy heroine is, of course, Anita Blake who pretty much defines the genre. She first appeared in Guilty Pleasures in 1993 as a response to the gender inequality in crime novels, as her creator Laurell K. Hamilton has told. Somewhat supernatural herself, Anita has the ability to raise the dead, but her greatest skill is killing vampires and other monsters better than anyone else. Her supernatural abilities have multiplied over the course of the books, changing the balance between her and the monsters she hunts. But one thing has remained constant and that’s her feminism, her absolute refusal to bow to the expectations of the male led society. More often than not, her greatest adversary in any book is a human man instead of a vampire or a were.

Anita Blake was my first introduction to urban fantasy in any form. The experience was mind-blowing and caused me to order all the books in the series back to back. Luckily, I was over a decade late to the party so there were fifteen books out already; even a wait of a couple of weeks for the books to arrive felt too long sometimes. I was taken with her character, her resilience and even her skills with weapons, even though I’m against firearms; what counts is that she’s better than any man with them. The monsters seemed frightening and it was never certain that she would come out alive from her encounters with them. All this enthusiasm despite the fact that I’ve never really liked Anita as a person. She’s inflexible and rather selfish, and over the course of twenty-two books hasn’t grown at all as a human being.

After the first introduction to the genre, I read it voraciously. There are some wonderful heroines out there. They’re wittier, more flexible when dealing with the society – often without giving in to it – and generally happier people than Anita. And each in their turn carries the torch for strong women in literature. In addition, Anita Blake series have grown steadily worse over the years. Still, none of those other heroines have made the same impact than she did. The feeling remains with me, all these years later.

It can be said that urban fantasy is a marginalised genre and at any rate, 'tough chicks’ isn’t the only thing the genre is about. What’s remarkable, however, is that similar strong women haven’t emerged in other genres. Perhaps it truly takes a parallel universe before women can be as strong and independent as they are in urban fantasy.

Gender and genre, part one

There has been a lot of talk about gender recently in the social media that I follow. On Twitter, it’s mostly been about sci-fi and its lack of women writers, and those few that there are being ignored for awards and by critics. On G+ urban fantasy community, it was about the lack of male heroes in UF. This has landed me with a list of women writers in sci-fi and caused me to write a feminist rant about women in UF.

Gender is a longstanding issue in literature and not something I can cover in one short post. The conversation surrounding the Clarke list shows also that it isn’t easily solved issue either. Should women writers be commended simply because of their gender? One of the judges, Liz Williams, thought that they shouldn’t. Quality must come first. Others disagreed.

One argument for women being ignored is that there aren’t as many women who write sci-fi as there are men. But that isn’t true either. As Liz Williams points out in her article, “genre workshops are full of women writing all forms of the genre.” She lays the blame on publishing industry that, according to her, only gives room for one woman sci-fi writer at the time. So should there be quotas for women? It has been tried in other areas of life. In business and politics, the (best) man for the job attitude is being balanced out with quotas for women. Women have been lured in to studying engineering by giving them extra points for their gender in entrance applications. None of that has had a notable effect, however. But if there actually are more women out there who write sci-fi than it appears, a systematic showcasing of their work would go a long way to helping them.

What doesn’t help, however, is that the definition of sci-fi tends to be very narrow. As it puts emphasis on science, it often overlooks the kind of sci-fi that women like to write. So it’s not that there aren’t as many women sci-fi writers as there are men; their work just isn’t recognised as science fiction. Liz Williams found most of the books submitted for Clarke Awards to be more fantasy than sci-fi, and one comment I read on Twitter today said that they weren’t science enough. The definition of sci-fi is rather arbitrary, but it’s decisive enough when it’s time to give writers credit for their work. Women aren’t being overlooked for their gender; they simply don’t meet the requirements of the genre. Or so the argument goes.

But that isn’t always the case.

After a rant like this, the only book I can bring up, really, is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. Published in 1969, it’s definitely feminist in its stance. Gender is very much at its core and it has no science to speak of. Yet it is considered a very important book in the sci-fi canon.

The book is set on a remote planet that is always cold, called Winter, in a distant future. The inhabitants of the planet are genderless for most of the time, but they assume a gender in monthly cycles; the gender may be the same every time or change, depending on their partner. The main character, Genly Ai, is a human man who is on a diplomatic mission on the planet. At first, the inhabitants’ lack of gender is repugnant to him, but as he stays longer on the planet, it’s the gender based system he hails from that he begins to question. In the end, people who show off their gender all the time – humans – start to look indecent to him.

Le Guin draws many conclusions from a society that doesn’t have genders. One of them is that the planet has never had any wars because of it. While modern sci-fi is more diverse than it was when the book came out, non-conflict as the driving force of a sci-fi book is still a rather unique idea. It definitely impressed me when I first read it and the impact it made remains with me twenty years later.

The Left Hand of Darkness had a good reception when it first came out; on the heyday of feminism, it was bound to make an impact. What’s more, I’m sure it would make an impact if it were published for the first time now. Gender is very much an issue in sci-fi today, as witnessed by the conversation surrounding the Clarke awards, but it’s not exclusive of that genre. It’s an issue in all literature. And as long as we label some authors as women writers, the issue remains.