Female of the Species

“Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.” Talbot, The Maid of Orleans. A play by Friedrich Schiller. A line used to great effect in Isaac Asimov’s superb work of science-fiction, The Gods Themselves. All too often a quotation I find unimpeachably accurate about the nature of the Internet troll condition. I almost typed human condition, but I barely rate these morons as human. Even those that attempt to cleverly disguise themselves as such.

I recently read this article on The Mary Sue. It made my blood boil. It touched a nerve about a systemic problem I faced at university, epitomised by a recent article in the fabled British bastion of liberal journalism, The Guardian. A paper I now regard with an edge of scorn because they allowed that particular troll to write such vile click-bait.

The article on The Mary Sue deals with a review on Amazon for a recent sci-fi anthology called Dark Beyond the Stars. The article on The Guardian showed an ignorant outsider labelling Sir Terry Pratchett’s brilliant works of fantasy fiction as “ordinary potboilers”. Arguing that he wasn’t a literary genius at all and people should stop regarding him as such. This kind of thinking is the systemic problem I faced at university – the brazen arrogance of those who sneer at genre fiction because they think it’s too formulaic and because of all its rules, nobody can write anything original. The review at the centre of The Mary Sue’s article went one step further. Instead of the genre being attacked by an outside force that had already made its mind up without any due consideration of the genre’s offerings, a male author has decreed that the females of the species lacks the adequate talent to write skilfully in his chosen genre.

Bull-shtak.

I must beg the readers’ forgiveness now, because I am likely to devolve from civilised discourse into childish demonising and name calling. I’ve learned to develop a thick skin over the literary snob’s disdain for science-fiction, fuelled by one simple truth – I’m good at writing it, so they can suck it. But when those within start attacking each other? That’s when it all becomes a bit ludicrous. When it’s a guy telling women to get back in the kitchen because they can’t write science-fiction? I fetch my shovel and shotgun.

I’m a firm believer that humans can do absolutely anything they put their minds to. Often that sentiment is specifically applied to women, often subjected to archaic, patriarchal limitations, epitomised in the idea that there are things, or jobs, that are “just for men”. That’s frakkin’ bull-shtak. As a result of erroneous statements such as that, I determined very early on that I wanted to write about women doing things most people might think are jobs for men. Starting in 2005, when I wrote a story about a female assassin called Angel, set in 2207 on the red planet known as Mars, not being an object of sexual desire, not a helpless damsel in need of a strong man to rescue her, but a fearsome and formidable killer.

Of course, the offending male author (who I am disgusted to learn is British, he brings shame not only to his genre but my country as well) in The Mary Sue article isn’t purporting that female characters are the problem. No, he is telling us that women can’t write decent sci-fi. To this man, I have this simple message.

Go frak yourself.

Some of the most fearsomely talented writers I know are women and a lot of them I have the privilege to call my friends. One, whom I don’t have that privilege with, but had the incredible fortune to know even for five minutes (yes, I am referring to the mysterious woman discussed in The Garden of Forking Paths and Destiny is not what it seems) wrote a science-fiction novel in her final year of university that overwhelmingly impressed her tutor, a man who doesn’t feel that much of an affinity for science-fiction. She told me that despite his general aversion to sci-fi, the excerpts of her novel she submitted really made him want to read the whole thing.

Women have incredibly important, incredibly beautiful and incredibly insightful voices. These voices should be heard, singing to the rafters, singing to our bones. That a man dares to silence them in such a blatant and condescending manner boils my blood beyond the limits of that which even a Targaryen can endure.

What’s more...it may seem like an extremely petty thing to pick on this guy for, but those who were at university with me know this was my thing. I am a stickler for the rules of punctuation. So when I saw this absolute gem...well, my already non-existent respect for this frakwit took an even deeper nosedive – “Leave the genre to those of us who know how to write scifi, being well versed in it’s many nuances...”

I tell you what, frakwit. Leave the writing to those of us who know how to use punctuation, being well versed in its many nuances.

Looking at the comments attached the review, I am elated to see that the first one picks him up on the very point I’ve just made about his punctuation. The rest proceed in similar veins of highlighting his misogyny, his complete misrepresentation of a genre that was pioneered by women (thank you, Margaret Cavendish and Mary Shelley) and his other grievous error, calling it “Star Gate” as opposed to Stargate, as it should properly be rendered. Ironically, dig into the man’s review history, he reviews the original Stargate movie. I believe, in the common vernacular, he could be called “a poser”. I still prefer to call him a frakwit. Many thanks to Chief Galen Tyrol, deck chief of Battlestar Galactica (BSG-75) for that beauitful word.

To anyone who doesn’t think women can write science-fiction, to anyone who has problems with science-fiction being used a prism through which to examine the social and psychology issues affecting society – including those of sexual identity and gender identity (mentioned in The Mary Sue article, being lamented by a different frakwit) – I say this. Please feel free to vacate this planet at your earliest convenience. You want mindless violence and spaceships? Build some spaceships, fly them to the opposite end of the galaxy and keep out of the frakkin’ way. Ideally, destroy yourselves through mindless violence. Science-fiction is for everyone. To read and to write.

The Wisdom of the Noir Prophet

My affection for sci-fi has infected nearly every aspect of my life. In the space of a few days, maybe weeks, of conversations with my regular customers at work, they will discover how obsessed I am. Some share my affinity, others are bemused by it, and others share my kinship with the genre in certain mediums. One such case is one of my die-hard regulars, who I’ve been serving for as long as I’ve been working at Boston Tea Party Bath. He’s a recently retired English teacher. Naturally, we’ve bonded over a shared love of books.

The other day, he came in and presented me with an article from The Guardian – a short piece about William Gibson’s seminal work of sci-fi literature, Neuromancer. That was published thirty years. To my shame, I had failed to remember that it was thirty years since. Ask me what great things happened in 1984, I can say that Ghostbusters was released and Neuromancer was published. I’ll rave about Ghostbusters being an awesome movie, then I will go on about how much of a game-changer Neuromancer was.

Four years ago, the halcyon days of 2010, I was in my final year of my creative writing degree. My final deadline was an essay for a module called “Reading as a Writer”. In this module we picked a writer we loved, someone who inspired us, then using academic sources and their own text, argue for why they are significant and should be included in the literary canon. Naturally, I chose William Gibson. I re-read all his books, piling through the Sprawl and Bridge trilogies in a matter of weeks. I had my core argument ready and waiting to go – William Gibson created cyberpunk and gave voice to a generation of science-fiction authors, television shows and movies.

I was around fifteen when I truly found my calling, settled into a genre and wrote with confidence and bravado that only a fifteen year old boy can muster when he has decided his life’s dream. I was a cyberpunk, though I would not realise it until years later. My defining piece of writing was a fifteen page short story about an assassin who was double-crossed and sought revenge on her employers. Hardly an original tale, one that has been examined in many forms from many angles. My angle – the story was set on a terraformed Mars in 2207.

In 2007, prior to escaping my home in Wales to live in Bath, I realised that I needed to expand my reading and most importantly, read some frakkin’ sci-fi! I settled on I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (I had watched the Will Smith movie and loved it. Yes, yes, I know, book is INFINITELY different and I love and respect that about it) and this curious novel Neuromancer. I had heard that it and its author were quite important in sci-fi circles. Upon reading this book, being mesmerised and disorientated by the world cannibalised by war and cybernetic augmentation, I realised that the sci-fi I truly loved and that felt most at home writing was this. Cyberpunk. To coin a theological analogy, I was a pilgrim who had just discovered his god.

Tracking back to 2010 and tying in the title of this blog. The essay I wrote was entitled “The Wisdom of the Noir Prophet: Arguing for the Inclusion of William Gibson in the Literary Canon”. I am damn proud of this essay. My last piece of academic work and it netted me a mark of 72. Sure, it didn’t push my overall grade from a 2:1 to a First, but by gods I was mighty happy with that. My last official piece of coursework and one of my favourite authors helped me to get a First for it.

Now, I should probably tell you all why Neuromancer is so important and how it changed the landscape. I’ve skirted the idea briefly earlier, but here’s some big red letters on the side of Mount Everest exposition. In 1984, Neuromancer introduced the world to the very concept of cyberpunk. It had been slowly building, fragments of the code drifting together and forming the ghost in the machine (to borrow and paraphrase from James Cromwell’s portrayal of Doctor Alfred Lanning in the aforementioned Will Smith movie), in the form of short stories written by Gibson and his cohorts Bruce Sterling and Tom Maddox (to name but a few).

But it was Neuromancer that came crashing through sci-fi’s bubble, trashing the place, then piling it all up into a corner of the genre and saying “This is our spot. We’re here to stay.” From the early movie example of RoboCop (a defining piece of cyberpunk cinema in my opinion) and the later TV example of James Cameron’s short-lived Dark Angel, cyberpunk’s mark was made, it stayed and people have taken up its mantle. It has even become a sub-culture, characterised by lots of shiny metal (be it implanted or just studded upon one’s clothing) and bright neon tubes in your hair, just to name the most obvious traits.

One of the most important aspects of Neuromancer and its wider cultural impact is the cultural imagery Gibson helped to define. Tron, admittedly pre-dating Neuromancer by two years in 1982, can be seen as one of the progenitors of this too – the perception of the Internet as this ethereal plane, vast flows of neon data pulsing up and down grid-lines, huge blocks of colour, geometric shapes, representing locations, websites, the targets of the hacker. While you can argue Tron created the visual, it was Neuromancer that gave it the name that has infiltrated its way into our common vernacular – cyberspace.

There is further significance to my raving about the brilliance of William Gibson. In honour of the publication of his new book, The Peripheral, he’s doing that funny odd thing that authors do – a book tour. And on November 25th, 2014, he is going to be in Bath. I am going to get to meet one of my literary heroes. I must struggle to contain the urge to squeal like a giddy little fan-boy.

Now my perfect Sunday...

We're breaking out the Hot Fuzz quotations this time (sorry Joss), as the most prominent subject in my mind is my perfect Sunday. The perfect Sunday that I just had.

So. My perfect Sunday. It kicked off with, as most Sundays do now, with being at work. It was a beautiful, sunny day and anyone familiar with the English weather's current behavioural patterns will know that it just hasn't been sunny for a long while. The typical English response to this - mass exodus from their houses, descend on their town centres and then harass poor, innocent cafe workers with their relentless tide of tedious requests.

I assure you I am not in the least bit bitter about any of this. Honestly.

Anyway, back to my perfect Sunday. So far, you might think it had been a bit pants. I'd been stuck inside all day, serving the general population who were enjoying the sunshine. But strangely enough, that didn't manage to detract from how nice my day became. If anything, it provided a much needed contrast, thus balance, enabling my day to be perfect.

Could I say "perfect" any more? I'll let you keep the running score.

Eventually, work finished, I managed to run away. Now, a bit of context here. My laptop died after three years of noble service (this post is being crafted on my housemate's Mac. The switch around of the @ and " keys is still a little disconcerting). Due to this, when I arrived home on Sunday, I did not automatically switch on said deceased laptop and check my emails. Instead, I made myself a pot of tea (Moroccan mint. Finest kind), stretched myself out on a sofa in our now clean and tidy living room and proceeded to blitz my way through The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov.

About half an hour into these extremely pleasant and relaxed proceedings, I had my epiphany. I was in the middle of my perfect Sunday. Everything was calm and peaceful, I had a good book and some damn good tea (thank you Teahouse Emporium!). All was well. The Universe was in balance. Could it get any better?

Apparently so.

You see, I am a man of infinitely useless knowledge. And that knowledge occasionally finds a convenient outlet in a pub quiz setting. So when my friend Phoenix text me and asked if I wanted to go to the quiz, my evening was pretty much set.

Quick aside: my close friends all have call signs. This is a result of extreme Battlestar Galactica geekdom, which manifested in August 2010. My wingman, Starbuck (so named for the obvious reason of being my wingman...or really wingwoman), was elsewhere while I was at a club, where I was hoping to run into a girl I had met (/Starbuck had made sure I talked to). In a moment of nervous geekdom, I text Starbuck for advice and called her the aforementioned call sign. It stuck. Since then, many people have call signs. I received mine (from Starbuck) in November 2010: Achilles. Why? Because girls are my Achilles' Heel.

They really, really are.

So anyway, pub quiz with Phoenix, Starbuck's boyfriend Wench and two other mutual friends who have yet to receive call signs, rounded off my perfect Sunday. We may have only placed 5th, but it was still an extremely enjoyable evening.

There you have it. My perfect Sunday. Tea, a good book, followed by a damn good quiz. Tradition to continue next week, with different tea, different book, but same quiz and more than likely the same team. But who knows? The future holds many wonderful possibilities. Assassin Girl could come into the cafe and I could finally pluck the courage to ask her out. Kindle Girl might impress me first. A rampaging mob of respectable feminists may murder me for the previous two comments. The editor of SFX could come back in, I would recognise him this time (not just his Mass Effect N7 hoodie) and the resulting conversation could land me my dream job.

If only.

Alternatively, I settle for him noticing the Twitter post linking to this blog, reading it, putting two and two together and then offering me a job...

I get the feeling I'll see Assassin Girl before then...