(no subject)

[james_davis_nicoll]

If someone was trying to entice their new girlfriend to read SFF, what horrifyingly dated works whose flaws you don't notice because you grew up with them would you recommend?

Comments

[estrevan]

Skipping the obvious suggestions (Dune, anything by Heinlein) - Prostho Plus, which is surprisingly okay for Piers Anthony but still a Piers Anthony, or the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, which I’m scared to go back to at this point.

Or more realistically, James Schmitz’s Agent of Vega stories, which are great fun and have action heroines but also a good dose of John W Campbell eugenics

[dewline]

If you're looking for a thread title, how about "Fiction Gone Sour"?

[cathrowan]

Callaghan's Crosstime Saloon.

[machiavellijr]

Second this - I loved them at 15, can't bear to re-read now, there are odd stories which have managed to age well but the average is very, very sad.

[melannen]

Pern.

[estrevan]

Good call

[jessie_c]

Stardance
The Forever War
Foundation trilogy

[dewline]

Seeing that last one now being converted for television...

[wild_patience]

When I was in high school, I bought an anthology called "Science Fiction for People Who Don't Like Science Fiction" or something like that. I did like SF, and I bought it anyway. It contained major stories like Arthur C. Clarke's (?) "The Star." Maybe some of MZB's Darkover books? (Yes, she's another problematic author, but when I was a teenager and read them, none of that had come out yet.)

[james_davis_nicoll]

Introduction (Science Fiction for People Who Hate Science Fiction) • (1966) • essay by Terry Carr
The Star • (1955) • short story by Arthur C. Clarke
A Sound of Thunder • (1952) • short story by Ray Bradbury
The Year of the Jackpot • (1952) • novelette by Robert A. Heinlein
The Man with English • (1953) • short story by H. L. Gold
In Hiding • [Children of the Atom] • (1948) • novelette by Wilmar H. Shiras
Not with a Bang • (1950) • short story by Damon Knight
Love Called This Thing • (1959) • short story by Avram Davidson and Laura Goforth
The Weapon • (1951) • short story by Fredric Brown
What's It Like Out There? • (1952) • novelette by Edmond Hamilton

[theresawright]

Other people have made great suggestions, and by "great" I mean "ouch yyyyeeah not going to read that beloved classic again". I'd like to add The Martian Chronicles, anything by Larry Noven, and A Wrinkle In Time.

[elusis]

Wait, what's "horrifyingly dated" about A Wrinkle in Time?

[adrian_turtle]

Sherri Tepper.

[sara]

Those were terrible at the time, tho.

[naomikritzer]

I'll note that as a teenage girl (in the 1980s, so Anne McCaffery was still AMAZING, FTR) I had a boyfriend who attempted to introduce me to Heinlein by lending me his absolute favorite Heinlein book, "To Sail Beyond the Sunset."

The upside of this: it's a fantastic anecdote to tell to aging Heinlein fans at SF cons because they are always so horrified!

[melita66]

I'm sorry to say that in the 80s when I read McCaffrey, a BFF had to point out the problematic bits which I hadn't noticed in Dragonflight and Dragonquest. I still like the books overall, but I grit my teeth through those scenes, and haven't reread them in years and years.

[jreynolds197]

Rendezvous With Rama
"A Martian Odyssey" (Stanley G. Weinbaum)
The Narnia series

[ba_munronoe]

As far as my admittedly flawed memory goes, AMO is pretty clunky by todays standards, lacks women, and uses a model for Mars only slightly less outdated than Burroughs' Barsoom, but I'm not sure what makes it "horrifyingly dated" rather than just "extremely" dated. Is it the Nazi?

[conuly]

Probably Xanth. I mean, I *do* recognize those flaws, but you'd be amazed at the apparently positive commentary that first book still receives when people search for it at /r/whatsthatbook

[melita66]

Ho-ho, let's throw in Bio of a Space Tyrant too!

[dsrtao]

Let's do it chronologically by decade, avoiding the authors already mentioned.

1940s: First Lensman
1950s: Atlas Shrugged
1960s: Nova
1970s: Man Plus
1980s: Ender's Game
1990s: The Reality Dysfunction

[agharta75]

I'll be That Fan and say Nova doesn't belong on the list, and arguably not Man Plus too.

[(Anonymous)]

A long time ago I read an essay by Somerset Maugham on those novels which were in his opinion the greatest ever written.

He pointed out flaws, sometimes serious ones, in all of them.

It's a null question. Any GF who liked only books without flaws would not be my GF. I've been told by reliable sources that I have flaws myself. Of course, that is nonsense, but somehow it is a commonly held opinion.

William Hyde

[graydon]

There's a substantial difference between has flaws and presents as a feature.

Art has to answer "did you feel the feels?"; artists have to answer for the frame around the feels, because they picked it, out of an inherently broad range of choices.

[(Anonymous)]

Rendezvous With Rama
"Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibration set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take."

Even better. A delightful caper novel with an SF twist "The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything" - nothing could be wrong with that!

[agharta75]

"Some men should not be allowed aboard ship; they are obsessed with breasts to such an extent that they cannot function as professionals."

[(Anonymous)]

Emergence by David R. Palmer - female super-genius protagonist, so nothing can be wrong there!

[(Anonymous)]

And now there's a sequel!

[sturgeonslawyer]

Really?

Really?

None of y'all have mentioned The Left Hand of Darkness -- or any Le Guin at all?

Well at least there's no Philip K. Dick, tengs gawd. (Not that I don't love Dick, but he is not what I would give a potential girlfriend, were I in the market for such.)

[kore]

Samuel R. Delany made some interesting criticisms of The Dispossessed, but not a lot of people have read his essay in my experience -- it was in Jewel-Hinged Jaw and I think just got reprinted in Occasional Views Vol 1, which just came out, and I know that's on Kindle. But it's gigantic.

[kartoffeltorte]

First off wtf is SFF? And second of all, I would recommend just showing your faves?

[leecetheartist]

Science Fiction and Fantasy.

[oh6]

The Well World series by Jack L. Chalker. Flux and Anchor might be a better bet, but I didn't actually like that one.

Pern, naturally, although I lost interest around The White Dragon and could never get into the Harper Hall series.

[chrysostom]

Most anything by Chalker just pretty much seems to be "here are my kinks."

[jsburbidge]

I see two different piles here: books whose assumptions reflect the general pattern of the times (but the times have moved on) and books which had distinct flaws even at the time which it was easier to pass over then but not so easy now.

Almost any book pre-1960 which assumes that inherent sex-based differences sideline women in certain ways goes in the first pile (First Lensman, mentioned above, is an obvious example, though it's not as extreme as books which are entirely dominated by males with the occasional woman as wallpaper). Any book which presents skeevy relationships as something positive is in the second (Anthony, Bradley, Chalker, Hamilton (Laurell K.), Heinlein, McCaffrey).

The former ones might go to a friend with clear historical sense. The latter ones generally go down the oubliette.

(It's open to argument that there is only a difference of degree, given the fact that there were lots of books without either kind of flaw (Pride and Prejudice and Mrs Galloway are neither male-centred nor promoting questionable relationships) but that's open to the response that they have different variant standards from today (notably a belief in the positive effects of class stratification). At some point a book being good enough covers a multitude of sins. Very few SFF books from the 20th Century are nearly good enough to reach that level.)

[kore]

Haha, you mean My Problematic Faves When I Was Young? Let's see -

The Ship Who Sang
Fahrenheit 451
The Door Into Summer
Strange Wine
Callahan Chronicles, definitely (WOW those just got the Muhammad Ali treatment from the Suck Fairy)
Slaughterhouse-Five
Baby Is Three
I, Robot (second scifi book I ever read!)
Flowers for Algernon
The Forever War


I think Dune actually may hold up, altho the writing now strikes me as very clunky (and as someone who grew up in the desert, stillsuits would not work, you'd turn into one of those boil inna bag Lean Cuisine dinners). Not any of the sequels, tho.

[conuly]

Suck Fairy I'm familiar with but "Muhammad Ali treatment"?

Fahrenheit 451

Seriously, Guy Montag, why so gross?

[graydon]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned Varley's Nine Worlds.

[dsrtao]

I was going to nominate the Titan trilogy but thought it was too obvious.

[vatine]

Friday?

[(Anonymous)]

Van Rijn, Falkayn, Flandry

[ndrosen]

Please keep in mind that Anderson doesn’t present Flandry’s treatment of various women as being fine and unobjectionable. His use of women for his sexual pleasure is less than honorable, as is clear from some memorable lines and scenes in the stories; his use of women to help save the Terran Empire and prevent the Merseians from conquering the galaxy may be justified as the lesser evil, but I still wouldn’t want my niece to grow up to be Dominic Flandry’s girlfriend of the month.

[(Anonymous)]

Retief.

Riderius

[varidog]

Tanith Lee, Silver Metal Lover. I only got around to this one a few years ago.

I've been into Tanith Lee recently. She's absolutely bugnuts and I'm often besotted with her. Her Flat Earth stuff is beyond brilliant, essentially comprising its own sub-genre.

I'd love to say that her books were even, but that's rarely the case. The only real warning is that she writes about women who feel trapped in their own circumstances.

The Stepford Wives is still brilliant, and the most feminist novel that I ever read. The whole horror of it is predicated on accepting the lead woman as a full human with great potential and significant human value, who should be able to chase her own dreams.

I wonder about Gene Wolfe. I haven't reread Urth of the New Sun for years.

[(Anonymous)]

All I've ever picked up from New Sun is "this universe has some definite Catholic inflections to it, among others".

On the other hands, I've read interviews with Wolfe that made me want to puke.