thoughtfulHe has been since I was nine years old and first convinced my mother that I should be allowed to read him openly, not under beds and in back corners of the library. I have devoured everything I've ever been able to get my hands on, including the introductions he writes for his short stories (introductions that went a long way toward convincing me that short stories were an art form that should never be neglected). One of my favorite stories, "Home Delivery," was written for an anthology called Book of the Dead—an anthology of ZOMBIE STORIES. A whole book of nothing but ZOMBIE STORIES.
To my pre-teen mind, this was the ultimate of delicacies, the dessert to end all desserts. I already adored zombies in all their forms, and the idea of a whole book about nothing but zombies was just...well, it was staggering. But alas, for all that I had won the day on the topic of King himself, I had not yet convinced my family to buy me horror anthologies, and Book of the Dead passed outside my reach forever.
Or so I thought. I was rummaging through the books on the free book table at this most recent Boskone (and did I mention that my NESFA Press book, Letters to the Pumpkin King, is available now as both a hardcover and a gorgeous signed, slipcased edition?) when a copy of Book of the Dead literally fell into my hand. Oh happy day!
It's taken me a month to read my long-awaited treasure. Not because I was savoring it: because that was how long it took me to fight my way through. What a difference a quarter of a century makes.
The table of contents for Book of the Dead is made up entirely of male names. Some of them are unfamiliar to me; it's possible that there's a woman writing under a male pseudonym lurking somewhere in that list, camouflaged and content. But since they're all male names, and this was an invite-only anthology, I think it's reasonably safe to say that the first zombie anthology was very much a boys' club.
Most, if not all, of the stories in this book were written specifically for this book. When King talks about "Home Delivery" (I think in Nightmares and Dreamscapes), he indicates that there were questions about how much flexibility the modern zombie really had. Each of these authors really worked to find a unique take. And that unique take is so overwhelmingly straight, white, and male that it's actually jarring. Multiple stories—as in, more than one—focus on the plot of "try to rape a woman, zombies will eat you." Like, that is the core moral of the story. "Rape = zombies." It'd be sort of neat if it worked that way in the real world, but...
Of the stories in this book, two have female leads; one of the female leads is Chinese-American (she's also one of the only characters who shares POV with more than two other people). There are more rape stories than stories involving women with agency. (Interestingly, one of the two female leads, who is also one of the women with agency, was written by Stephen King.) There's one story about a little girl that made me uncomfortable in that "this book would have been taken away from me, and rightly, when I was twelve" sort of way, and I was reading Clive Barker at that age.
It may sound like I'm being overly harsh on this book, and in some ways, I am. It's a very simplistic, borderline sexist view of the zombie apocalypse, and for all the "unique takes" it contains, most of them didn't seem to work too hard to show us anything different that wasn't "oh boy oh boy I can get away with showing naked dead people." And at the same time...
This is where we started. These people weren't writing Yet Another Zombie _______ Story, they were writing, in many cases, the first story of its type. They were building a foundation. And I wonder how many people read this book, said "I could do so much better," and turned around to start constructing what would become the modern zombie obsession. I wouldn't call this a good collection now, because we've gotten so much better than most of these tales would have allowed us to be. But it's a foundational collection, and I'm glad I read it, even if I would recommend The Living Dead or The Living Dead 2 (and Zombiesque and about a dozen others) before I would recommend it.
We've shambled a long way, baby.
March 24 2014, 03:37:53 UTC 3 years ago
Heinlein published TMiaHM in 1966, so he probably started it about 1964. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had just recently been passed, while the Race Riots kicked into high gear midway through the writing (Watts, 1965). The Pill had just been introduced a few years before (1960) and the Sexual Revolution was likewise in its infancy. Interracial marriages were still against the law in some states, and certain sexual acts were likewise illegal (even between married partners in the privacy of their own home).
The Book Smugglers look to both be under 30. One says she is just out of college grad, the other is less specific but has a photo indicating a somewhat similar age. If we assume 30 for both, and assume that one gets a pretty good idea of societal values by age 10, that suggests a "Baseline" of 1994 societal values for the Smugglers. Ideas that were revolutionary in 1964-66 were often seen as commonplace (or even behind the times) 30-40 years later.
Let's also look at some general attitudes.
Thea loved the movie version of STARSHIP TROOPERS (which was her first contact with ST) and found the book version dry and boring (all that political exposition, similar to TMiaHM). On the "about" page she mentions that "With movies, I’m a sucker for true horror, anything that involves multiple explosions, and cheap humor." Well, yes, the movie version of ST was filled with multiple explosions. It was sort of like a video game in that regard. That sort of value is rather more common in those born in the 90s than it is for those born in the 50s (like me). For me, the political theory of both ST and TMiaHM were VERY interesting at the time. Movies that are all about the explosions are the ones I find boring. For me, IDEAS hold my attention much more than MINDLESS VIOLENCE.
Ana recognizes this difference in outlook. She notes that "2) I will always approach any book from a perspective that attempts to examine topics that are important to me as a reader and as a reviewer but which might be ultimately unrelated to what makes the book `important.'
I will certainly agree that there were quite a number of time when Heinlein was a shameless Male Chauvanist Pig. And his attitude towards women grew worse and worse in his later years. But for me, reading the book in 1966, the amount of groundbreaking good material was far more important that the bad gender- and cultural-stereotypes that were still present. For someone reading the book 50 years later, the groundbreaking material may be seen as old hat while we are much more sensitized these days to how bad the stereotypes are. So the good is seen as much less important today while the bad is seen as more important today.
There are also market forces to consider. If the overwhelming percentage of SF readers were male back in 1966 (maybe 80%?), writing a story about a male protagonist who winds up with a beautiful female partner makes a lot of financial sense, All those teenage-boy nerds could feel there was some hope. These days the male-female ratio of readers of SF is a lot closer to being balanced - and there are likewise a lot more female protagonists these days than there were in 1966.
So I think that Seanan's review of BOOK OF THE DEAD might serve very well as a model for reviews of Heinlein. It was how a bunch of things got started. The actual treatment wasn't the best by todays standards, but it may well have inspired some later authors to (a) work in those ideas at all, and (b) to do it better.
March 24 2014, 11:54:17 UTC 3 years ago
Many of his books were important. (And while his female characters are often pretty problematic, dismissing him as a chauvinist kind of misses the point. His female characters were much more interesting on the whole than most of the characters being written by other male SF writers of his generation. This doesn't make them less problematic.) At one time, he was an author who I enjoyed a lot, and who influenced me a great deal. And at that time, I enjoyed much of the exposition. Much of it irritates me now - less because it's exposition, and more because of the paternalistic proto-libertarian world view. Lots of good ideas in there, but also lots of self referential wish fulfilment.
And yet, I really can't recommend him, in a modern context, except for historical interest.
March 24 2014, 21:34:54 UTC 3 years ago