Rhubarb Meme
Dec. 17th, 2020 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dunmurderin2. Make a post in your journal or comment here and talk about the words or phrases I picked!
oldtoadwoman selected were: post-cyberpunk, tom corbett space cadet, walter emersonPOST-CYBERPUNK: To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what 'post-cyberpunk' means. According to TVTropes.org, Post-Cyberpunk "picks up where Cyberpunk left off. Whereas cyberpunk is/was a Darker and Edgier riposte to older Science Fiction, intended to portray what might happen if we don't all destroy ourselves, Post-Cyberpunk is intended to present a less pessimistic, more realistic vision. Where Cyberpunk is anti-corporate and anti-government, Post-Cyberpunk is willing to give both parties redeeming features. Where Cyberpunk portrays the future as a Crapsack World, Post-Cyberpunk posits society will probably be about the same, just with cooler gadgets and crapsaccharine World aspects. Where Cyberpunk is futuristic, forward-thinking and on the cutting edge...so is Post-Cyberpunk." An example would be Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash -- which I remember reading and enjoying back in the day when I was going through my Cyberpunk phase (which mostly involved playing Shadowrun with some friends). Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is another example -- which I've also read and thought was ok. Apparently, some of Charles Stross's books are also post-cyberpunk as well. I haven't read any of those but I do like Stross's Laundry Files books.
TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET: I love old science fiction. I don't think I read Tom Corbett when I was a kid, but I did love Edmond Hamilton's Starwolf series and Asimov's Lucky Starr books when I was young. Also H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy books (Scalzi's rewrite is a good take on the world and definitely worth checking out, in my opinion). And Heinlein's juveniles are still among some of my favorite science fiction stories. Even Podkayne of Mars. OH! And Alan E. Nourse's Raiders from the Rings.
Last year, I went to Duluth for a wedding (I was the Best Maid, which is a job that allows you to create whatever duties you want to be part of it) and since we were flying up, I decided to start reading the Tom Corbett Space Caded megapack of books I had on my Kindle. And, to my surprise, the books themselves were not terrible. They're definitely a thinly veiled take on Heinlein's superior book Space Cadet and they're even more definitely products of a mindset that assumes science fiction is a genre for boys in general and white, middle-class, American boys in particular. There is ONE female character in these books who gets anything like screen time. She's a scientist who is part of the space patrol and is beautiful and responsible for many of the advanced pieces of technology that the Space Patrol uses -- but she's also the only woman in the Space Patrol. Despite these books taking place 500 years or so in the future.
The characters are cardboard, the plots are as deep as a drying puddle, the writing is as cheesy as a fondue pot but the stories are entertaining -- they were written to grip their readers and pull them along. The worldbuilding is entirely scientifically inaccurate but if you're reading old science fiction for scientific accuracy -- don't do that. You're going to hurt yourself.
WALTER EMERSON: This took some Googling to figure out who this was but I did it. Thanks again to TV Tropes. Walter Emerson is a character in the Amelia Peabody novels by Elizabeth Peters. These are historical novels that involve the adventures of Amelia Peabody, an opinionated well-to-do woman of the late 19th/early 20th century who meets and marries archaeologist Radcliffe Emerson while she's travelling in Egypt after the death of her father. Walter is Radcliffe's less misanthropist brother. The series is funny and unlike a lot of relatively cozy historical mystery series, time passes. Amelia and Radcliffe (who refer to each other as Peabody and Emerson) marry and have a child who grows up over the course of the books. Each book takes place during a season of archaeological research in Egypt -- and since Elizabeth Peters is an actual archaeologist, the details are historically and professionally accurate.
The first book in the series is Crocodile on the Sandbank and the series ran to something like twenty or so books -- all of which are worth checking out. They're also delightful audiobooks and I personally recommend the ones read by Barbara Rosenblatt who Does All The Voices so well that sometimes I forget that the books she's doing aren't being performed by several people. When a voice actor, particularly a female voice actor, can do a range of voices that includes young children to old men, that's a talent worth enjoying.
interest meme
Date: 2020-12-18 05:30 am (UTC)I have borrowed the ebook of Crocodile on the Sandbank from the library. (Sadly they did not offer the audiobook version.)
I can imagine the white American boys books. A few years back, my roommate had a job reading books aimed at kids and then writing multiple choice questions about the stories. To avoid tracking down licensing, all the books assigned were old public domain stories. It was so boring that she offered to secretly subcontract me to do a few so she didn't have to read so many of them. It was really mind-boggling how sexist and racist so many of these old "children's" books were. I started slanting the questions to underscore the point of how racist they were. There was even one (I've forgotten which or what about it crossed the line) where I just stopped and said no and told my roommate to tell her boss that this book should NOT be given to children to read except in the context of a history class where a teacher could discuss how awful it was. (This project was for educational software where kids would be reading stories and answering the questions without adult supervision.) It's so wild to think that this was once considered normal.
Re: interest meme
Date: 2021-01-06 05:10 pm (UTC)If you can find the audiobook versions of the Amelia Peabody books, I highly recommend them but reading the books is still *chef's kiss*
As for the racism and sexism in those old books -- yeah, it's just...gahhh...
Re: interest meme
Date: 2021-01-06 05:26 pm (UTC)Everyone gets a pass on brain scramble these days. (I had to renew my library ebook because it was about to expire and I still haven't started reading it. Every single day I tell myself that I will have more brain power tomorrow.)
Those old books... there were like three in a row that casually used the N-word and I remember wailing, "I just want to read one story without the N-word in it!" There was a dwindling list of books left and I snagged a non-fiction account of the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica (genuinely interesting read). And I remember thinking how nice it was to read a book without any overt sexism or racism (even if it was achieved by every person in the book being a white male so it never came up)... ::sigh:: They named one of the sled dogs the N-word.
Re: interest meme
Date: 2021-01-06 05:49 pm (UTC)Yeeeesh, that's...yeah...
I remember in the 5th grade my teacher had a series of biographies of famous people that we could read when we were between lessons and such. I don't rememember any racial slurs, but since the books themselves had been written in the 1950s or so, I'm sure they were chock full of covert racism and sexism. I do remember learning that Custer was a little brat, though...
(no subject)
Date: 2020-12-19 03:53 am (UTC)I'm guessing the "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" books (didn't know they existed), were tie-in novels to the TV series of the same name? The "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet" TV series was based on Heinlein's Space Cadet and I think he got licensing monies for it.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-06 05:41 pm (UTC)I did not know that about the Peabody books - I'll keep an eye out for that travelogue.
Speaking of racism, one thing I liked about the books was that Peabody was progressive for her time but still had underlying racist attitudes that were actually addressed in the books. If I remember right, around the time David wanted to marry her niece, she ended up confronting her own attitudes and coming to grips with them.
The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet books were tie-ins to the TV show, which I haven't seen.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-07 04:50 am (UTC)I believe I converted it to EPUB at some point; oddly enough, Project Gutenberg has an audiobook version of it, but not the print version. If I can find the EPUB in my Calibre library, do you want me to send you a copy?
I haven't seen the TV show either--all I know is that it was in black & white, having seen stills from it, and probably had almost as big a budget as early Dr. Who.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-07 06:30 pm (UTC)Wow, that big? Like...they could afford TWO rolls of aluminum foil!? :D
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-08 01:42 am (UTC)And some duct tape.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-01-09 02:29 am (UTC)