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Unread 03-06-2020, 11:09 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Default Depictions of Women and Christianity in Sci Fi

This is a side conversation that Allen Tice and I started having in Susan McLean's thread on the Metrical Board, for a sci-fi themed sonnet. Others are welcome to join the conversation here.

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(Susan, it's possible you would enjoy (to a degree) this by the author of "The Martian". It has a female narrator though it's written by Andrew Weir. I just finished it. I was able to suspend disbelief for the first 2/3 of the volume, and then again until near the end. Here: Artemis. It's very "hard science". The human factors are what caused my personal belief dropouts. Do I recommend it? A definite maybe, for at least 2/3 of the trip. Of course, I'm a testosterone biped, with a respectable hard science tilt. It's not for everybody, of course.)
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[Allen, for what it's worth, I didn't care for Artemis all that much, although I loved The Martian.]
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Julie, I think we would agree on many or most points about Artemis, or perhaps absolutely all points. I can’t say, not being a Julie! I was and am profoundly dubious of the narrator’s “voice”. No woman I’ve known ever resonated with that voice. Teenage boys in high school or in other fiction, yes. Such women might exist, but we wouldn’t click for even ten minutes. It’s still a “boy” story. The protagonist’s purported monstrous IQ also seemed to dip and blip. As I said, people like “her” may exist, but “she” is not credible really. I might be culture bound. If so, that’s me.

I read it because one of my sons-in-law gave it to me. I enjoyed the tech part until it became overloaded with TMI. The people parts got more and more unreal. That said, it has points of tech interest.
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My thoughts exactly about Artemis, Allen. Weir took a story with a boilerplate "brilliant young man who is spunky enough to get away with anything" protagonist, and decided at the last minute that it would be trendy to make him female instead. Throw in some references to birth control and a Muslim father's unfair expectations and how convenient is is sometimes to be physically small, and Mission Accomplished. (NOT.)

In her Off Camera interview last year with Sam Jones--the full version for $1.49, not the free seven-minute snippet here (which is also interesting, just off-topic)--Brit Marling discussed how deeply unsatisfying such hastily re-baptized "female" characters are in the world of film. Allen and I can testify that they are equally unsatisfying in novels.
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Sorry to have accidentally hijacked your thread, Susan, with this "Artemis" thingo! I will stop right now, after this::: I missed any refs to the actual culture that gave the world refrigeration etc., that is, proper European-American-Anglosphere-Francosphere-Swissosphere culture; I missed even a tiny chapel or any Christian "padre" (East or West) -- even in passing. Two characters blurted out "Jesus" at a moment of stress, but hey, that was it. The planned market for "Artemis" may be "post Christian," but there are those round about who aren't there yet. Even that monster pagan Heinlein had a "Pope in Exile" on another planet. Back to your poem, Susan!
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Originally Posted by Julie Steiner View Post
I wrote quite a lot of blather in response to Allen, but it doesn't belong in Susan's thread. I'll take it to General Talk.
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Unread 03-06-2020, 11:10 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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The aforementioned blather:

Allen, I see your overall point, but I am more hesitant than you to give entire "cultures" credit for the scientific advances of individuals and small research teams. After all, Galileo's Christian culture did its best to hinder and suppress his work on planetary motion, didn't it? It therefore seems unfair to give Christian culture credit for it.

Since you mention refrigeration, Allen, you might be interested in Frederick McKinley Jones. He had to teach himself mechanical and electrical engineering because at the time, European-American "culture" often went out of its way to prevent African Americans from accessing educational opportunities.

It does not detract from the achievements of white scientists to give credit where credit is (over)due to non-white scientists. But if we're going to take pride in the historical accomplishments of Euro-American "culture," we've got to acknowledge that same "culture"'s historical failings, too.

I realize that this is taking your comment on the lack of a Christian presence in the society on the moon in Artemis someplace you had not intended, and if you'd like to offer some pushback on where I've taken it, I think that's appropriate.

Susan and Allen, if you're not familiar with Walter M. Miller Jr.'s 1959 "science in the post-apocalyptic Dark Ages" classic, A Canticle for Leibowitz, you both might enjoy it. Then again, maybe not, as it has almost no female characters (as is unsurprising in a book about a monastic system, but still). It has a surprising amount (for a sci-fi novel) of untranslated Latin, but that won't faze you two. I found the theological problems fascinating, particularly the final one. And I found the context throughout to be both respectful of traditional Catholic/Christian beliefs and sincere in its open-ended questioning of those beliefs. There is occasional ironic absurdity, such as the amount of effort that goes into the production of an elaborate illuminated manuscript that has a surprising twist, but even then, the motive behind that artistic expression of faith is treated with dignity, not ridicule.

Quite different from the depiction of the rather terrifyingly fanatical Orange Catholic Church in Frank Herbert's Dune.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 03-06-2020 at 11:15 PM.
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Unread 03-07-2020, 01:21 AM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is offline
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Julie, I've read Miller's book. In fact, I've even taught it, back when I taught science fiction classes.

Susan
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Unread 03-07-2020, 09:06 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Ah! I thought it likely that you knew it. What is your overall assessment?

I couldn't decide if the overall depiction of scientific/technological endeavor as an all-male brotherhood was satirical or not. I'm leaning toward thinking it wasn't.

(Also, the unrealistic longevity of one of the characters bugged me. A lot.)
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Unread 03-07-2020, 09:31 AM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is offline
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Unfortunately, Julie, when I said that I had read it and even taught it, I did not mean recently, so my memory of it is not specific enough for me to be able to answer your questions. I thought it was well done and piqued my interest. I also thought it would go over fine with undergrads. But I was just a grad student myself at the time, and I have not read it since.

Susan
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Unread 03-07-2020, 02:04 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Well, science, as an organized mode of studying nature that relies on close observation, testing, confirmation, challenging, blind studies, and eventually peer review and publication, has really developed only once. It got on its hind legs about the time of Galileo, and began walking and running. There were impressive isolated incidents elsewhere and earlier: Aristotle, Hieron in Alexandria, Hypatia, a type of seismometer in China, and others. And I’m not whitewashing efforts at suppression of minorities, or by people of prejudice. But it really, really, got effective just once. (Others may disagree!) But that’s my summary. Darwin was not an elf. Edison was not a dwarf. Salk was not an orc. Pasteur and Mendelev were not homing pigeons. Noether, a mathematician, was not an elf either.

Now of course, everybody is aware of how to do science. The world practices science.

Enough on the history of science.
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Unread 03-07-2020, 05:25 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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I don't see your point, Allen. Alhazen, was not a pixie. Lewis Latimer was not a poltergeist, and Thomas Edison didn't invent everything he is credited with all by himself, even if his PR machine saw advantages to claiming that he had. And it would have been very difficult for scientific and technological advances to have been made in recent centuries without Hindu-Arabic numerals, not to mention algebra, which are not...I don't know, magic beans or something.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 03-07-2020 at 11:58 PM.
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Unread 03-07-2020, 05:34 PM
Aaron Novick Aaron Novick is offline
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Curious, Allen, about your views on what "science" says about inferring causality from a sample size of one, with no controls and about a bajillion confounds.
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Unread 03-07-2020, 07:04 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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O.K. you two. I'm with Ramanujan, Omar Khayyam (stunning Iranian mathematician and "poetaster") and all the other careful, observant, helpful and useful (whether recognized right away or not at all) people female and male, of all shades, ancestries, sizes, and sexual preferences. How many "unknown 'soldiers' of moderate or great genius" have there been? Hundreds of thousands. Millions. Handsome is as handsome does! O.K.? Who invented bags with straps that go over the shoulder? I guess some completely unsung woman. Who, exactly, discovered the magnetic compass? We know that one. Probably a Chinese. I could go on. The point is that the scientific method as we know it needed to be invented only once, and it has been fantastically successful. (Like the wheel.)

Aaron, now for the challenge you raise. For me it comes down to explanation from experience. Cogito ergo sum. Awareness presupposes a spatial substrate capable of awareness. Thus, this universe is capable of self awareness in small volumes for limited times at least. This presupposes that awareness is a fundamental potential constituent of the universe (and not merely an epiphenomenon as Stalin wrote). That said, the universe as we know it began some 13.8 billion years ago. Poof, a gargantuan amount of energy (hugely low entropy) unfolded. [Its space is not "empty," but full of virtual particles that come and go, and that under the right conditions can exert measurable pressure on ordinary matter. Casimir effect] Where did this stupefying quantum instability come from? In what frame of reference? Inhale and relax now. There's more out there (and in there) than is in your philosophy, Horatio. That frame of reference is some sort of Existence or Being. It is probably not "unitary" since if it possesses awareness even slightly like what we as humans have, it must at least from time to time possess an "observer" function, a "figure" function, a "background" function, and so on, and other things I don't need to discuss now. We as humans are most likely in the "figure" function, and are likely observed (by that frame of reference) from time to time as well. The observer will prefer to have things to be observed. If one set of figures implodes, another will be summoned into "view". A (by our standards) reasonable observer will tend somewhat to want to preserve what it observes. A corollary is that the observer will often "feel" empathy toward what it observes. If those it observes are persuaded that (because of their own lesser capabilities) their own selves are meaningless and essentially absurd, the observer will make efforts to reduce the absurdity to a manageable level. There is a way to do that.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 03-08-2020 at 10:18 PM.
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Unread 03-07-2020, 11:34 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Allen, I think we agree that just because Team European Men is a more exclusive club than Team Try to Leave the World Better Than You Found It (a club which happens to include a lot of admirable European men, but also lots of other admirable people), that doesn't mean that being born onto Team European Men through no effort of one's own is a more brag-worthy feat than working hard to make it onto Team Try to Leave the World Better Than You Found It.

I disagree that the scientific method only needed to be discovered once and for all, though. Since all human beings have personal and political agendas and self-interest and biases of various sorts, it is very, very easy for apparently-scientific stuff to get separated from the scientific method. So, both individually and as a society, we all need to rediscover the scientific method over and over again.

The main tenet of the scientific method is to listen to the data objectively, no matter what it says, rather than trying to cherrypick data to support a desired conclusion. But many, many people--even those in scientific fields!--seem unclear about that concept. I often hear people who should know better start talking about their scientific work by using the phrase, "We're trying to prove that...," which gives me zero confidence that they really understand the scientific method. Particularly if their research is funded by an industry that stands to make more money from some outcomes than from others.

(I love the fact that the Belgian priest who first proposed what later came to be known as "the Big Bang theory" always insisted, when pressured by either the Vatican or by fellow scientists to comment on the theological implications of his work, that science and faith need to remain completely separate, in order to remain science and faith, respectively. I wholeheartedly agree.)

The scientific method was promoted in Europe by Roger Bacon after he studied, in Arabic, Alhazen's experimental methodology for studying optics. But textbook authors more interested in cheering for Team European Men than for Team Try to Leave the World Better Than You Found It have altered our perceptions of who did what.

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 03-08-2020 at 12:11 AM.
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