Stephen Baxter
Discussion
A big fan of Stephen Baxter but there's an irritating pattern to his characters in the last few books.
The women are generally very bright and capable, but the men tend to be hopeless or worse. Sometimes flawed and weak but basically sympathetic. Sometimes worthy of grudging respect but madly egotistical and you certainly wouldn't trust them. But about 50% are violent psychos.
We take it for granted in sitcoms than the men are always badly flawed in some way but the women aren't. This is presumably because most are written by men. An exception being Ab Fab which is written by women and where the women are disasters.
.
But not so much in books except for SBs. Is there a feminist literary agent putting pressure on him?
The women are generally very bright and capable, but the men tend to be hopeless or worse. Sometimes flawed and weak but basically sympathetic. Sometimes worthy of grudging respect but madly egotistical and you certainly wouldn't trust them. But about 50% are violent psychos.
We take it for granted in sitcoms than the men are always badly flawed in some way but the women aren't. This is presumably because most are written by men. An exception being Ab Fab which is written by women and where the women are disasters.
.
But not so much in books except for SBs. Is there a feminist literary agent putting pressure on him?
Maybe...
What Sensitivity Readers Actually Do
The good old Huff n Puff tries to put a nice spin on it, but I always try and ask myself 'what would Orwell say?'
I have no idea of course, but I think I can safely imagine that it wouldn't be terribly polite
I know nothing of Baxter myself.
What Sensitivity Readers Actually Do
The good old Huff n Puff tries to put a nice spin on it, but I always try and ask myself 'what would Orwell say?'
I have no idea of course, but I think I can safely imagine that it wouldn't be terribly polite
I know nothing of Baxter myself.
Goaty Bill 2 said:
The good old Huff n Puff tries to put a nice spin on it, but I always try and ask myself 'what would Orwell say?'
I have no idea of course, but I think I can safely imagine that it wouldn't be terribly polite
I have no idea of course, but I think I can safely imagine that it wouldn't be terribly polite
I won't disagree.I don't mind SB's 'bias' (I think you're right though OP, particularly recent stuff like The Long (drawn out) Series) - it's not that offensive.
As for the article and bias - y'know what, the vast majority of people in (anglic) society are straight caucasians. So why SHOULD we include 20 different minorities in every novel. If it was proportionate representation then in a US-based novel you'd have equal #s of men and women, a couple of black/african people, a hispanic and MAYBE one LGBT person. Unless the novel was centred around one of those communities. The UK would be similar, substituting Indian/near-Asian for black and black for hispanic.
TL/DR - novels are there for entertainment, not good-think brainwashing.
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