SF has always had a problem. As the article points out, there's a certain irony in going to Harlan Ellison to ask about Asimov being a harasser. I think the list is pretty long. But the "communal aspects of fan culture" of SF - almost groupies in the fandom - has led to some very tight networks protecting all sorts of people.
A particularly horrifying axis is that between Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband, Walter Breen. Bradley is merely accused (to be clear: I believe the accuser) but Breen was a convicted molester who was known to be problematic for years - with people in fandom just trying to manage the situation.
If this doesn't sound familiar from tech, you haven't been paying attention.
idk what to do about all this; it's pretty easy for me to pass on rereading Asimov or MZB anyhow. But the obvious lesson, still unlearned in many quarters, is "don't keep protecting harassers". To quote a better, or at least IMO more interesting author (please don't let him be a harasser too):
"Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view." - Stand on Zanibar, John Brunner
They do. His female characters might as well have been written by an adolescent.
He's hardly unique in that. MZB's Mists of Avalon has similar issues from a different gender perspective.
Asimov looks especially crude now, with the distance of a few decades. I wouldn't be surprised if more recent fiction suffers a similar reassessment in time.
SF is rarely character-led and it may be optimistic to expect depth or nuance from it. Character design is more likely to be an aspect of fan service - give the readers a fantasy they can identify with, maybe add some flaws for spice - and not so much an opportunity for self-reflection.
> His female characters might as well have been written by an adolescent.
I'm not sure his male characters are that much better.
Luckily, I don't feel that his books stand or fall by the characters in them. They are just vehicles used to explore the consequences of the technologies that Asimov presupposes.
> SF is rarely character-led and it may be optimistic to expect depth or nuance from it
I don't agree with this assessment at all.
The best SF I've read has believable characters with real motivations.
Off the top of my head:
* Paul McAuley's Quiet War series
* Ken McLeod's Fall Revolution series, "The Execution Channel"
* Bester's "The Stars My Destination" - a recent read, and the character arc is cribbed from The Count of Monte Cristo, but the SF parafernalia is a backdrop for the character.
Mate, everything throughout history has been people-oriented. Almost every famous story throughout history has had a main character, because that's what humans find easiest to identify with: other people.
You are confusing 'character-led' with 'includes characters.' Plenty of stories are primarily about an abstract idea, place, or ethical lesson and the characters only exist to explain the ideas or move the plot along. This is in contrast to 'character-led' fiction, in which the primary focus is the character themselves and their development.
Quite a few early SF stories were gimmick-oriented.
As an example, one old short story - I've forgotten the name - involves a space race from Earth to Jupiter and back (or something like that). The participants usually go full blast 1/2-way there, invert to slow down, then repeat to get back.
The main character starts with an engine problem or something, can't catch up, then in a burst of inspiration realizes he can use Jupiter's gravity to swing around, at speed.
Everyone at first wonders if there's a problem, then when it happens they realize the brilliance of what happened.
My interpretation is the author had just learned about gravity assist ("first used in 1959 when the Soviet probe Luna 3 photographed the far side of Earth's Moon" says Wikipedia) and structured the entire story around that concept.
The people were secondary to the orientation.
While it's true what you said about almost every famous story, most SF is not made of famous stories.
(I would be grateful if anyone can tell me the name of the story I just summarized.)
> His female characters might as well have been written by an adolescent.
All of Asimov’s characters are broadly drawn embodiments of simple concepts; to the extent his stories have depth it comes from the interaction of those simple characters with each other an the constructed environment, but from subtly drawn, realistic characterization.
This is very much not limited to female characters.
Yeah, but his female characters like Bliss and Dors are especially embarrassing examples of authorial wish-fulfillment. He might as well have given Pelorat and Seldon his own name.
If the voice of an author can be heard through their writing, the act of reading can be affected by one's understanding of the author. "Death of the author" may be a useful critical technique but it's not the way most people emotionally or intellectually connect with art.
Having known this about Asimov for quite some time, it hasn't kept me from enjoying that of his work I really like, but it has somewhat dulled my enjoyment of him overall as an author. In particular, although it's never been a favorite of mine anyway, I can't see myself being able to avoid noticing that _Foundation's Edge_ has a plotline that pairs off a middle-aged professor with a young, pretty, sexually open-minded woman who is "bottom heavy".
I really enjoy the concepts in H.P. Lovecraft's mythos, particularly where horror intersects with science fiction, but I also enjoy it a lot less after learning about his rabid antisemitic and racist views[0], which were extreme even for the time.
I also used to like Piers Anthony's books when I was young, and too naive to pick up on how much the author seemed to like writing about little girls panties and fetishizing pedophilia[1].
Some people can ignore the problematic elements, and some can't. You don't have to read The Shadow Over Innsmouth as metaphor for race mixing, but once you know it's there, you can't unknow it.
But more importantly, his behaviour kept others out of the field. It stopped them having their voice heard. His fame came at the cost of many other's. And there is no reason why we should allow that to continue. Don't read those who stole the voice others. They did not earn your attention, and you can give it to those who were less fortunate instead.
Many of the golden age authors rage from "just" problematic like Asimov to a lot worse (see for more: http://www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2018/2/golden-age-sf-not-go...). I still read these authors but I for one cannot help see the author in their books, and knowledge of their actions certainly influences how I interpret these books. I therefore don't believe in Death of the Author.
I think they're separate issues. "Death of the author" is a principle in criticism: do we care about the author's intention in creating the text? The older version of this was the "New Criticism", which tried to read the text in a vacuum, not paying attention to the historical and biographical context of its composition. But Barthes took this further by saying that the author had no control over the interpretation, even if s/he explicitly tells us what the text means. (A related idea is "reader-response theory", which begins the criticism with the unique response of the individual reader at the time). A simplified litmus test would be if you think a writer has the right to claim that one of their characters is homosexual, when the text doesn't indicate either way.
What you're talking about is a moral judgment, not a critical one. So not saying "this book isn't good because the author was bad", but saying "regardless of the book's qualities, we shouldn't read it because the author was a bad person".
>I for one cannot help see the author in their books, and knowledge of their actions certainly influences how I interpret these books.
This is part of the reason why I avoid reading about authors. Like the practice of symphonies doing auditions blind in order to avoid bias, I don't want my personal opinions of an author's life to taint my evaluation of their work.
Plato was a racist, had ~50 slaves and was a convicted public masturbator. Should we throw away his phylosophy work too?
How many historical works will we be left with after we've gone through all historical figures up to emancipation? We probably will have to give up even the theory of evolution.
We should not throw it away, but we should keep it in mind when learning from him. Cause if we don't, adopting his values and thinking can slowly lead us toward slave owning and so on. It is related.
In that case, I would think that reading books by a particular author could become "less fun" once you know about their behaviour. In the same way, I used to have some Rolf Harris novelty songs on my iPod playlist for the kids - and sone Gary Glitter. Listening to those songs once they were convicted, certainly became "less fun".
I didn't care to read any of the Ender novels before or after I learned about the author's personal life. What does that mean about my enjoyment of Asimov books before and after reading this article?
It means you're an adult, capable of simultaneously recognizing the merits of artistic works and complex ethical realities.
Are Caravaggio's paintings less beautiful because he killed someone? I think to suggest so is absurd. It doesn't mean you have to like the artist as a person, but to directly tie the value of a work of art to its creator is dangerously reductive.
Serious question, though - how do you feel about performance art? Would you go to a concert by an excellent singer who beat up his wife, or was a convicted paedophile? Would you feel quite comfortable standing in the crowd and singing along with them? I'd suggest quite possibly not, even though the quality of their singing voice was undiminished.
I suspect that there is a spectrum here where some forms of art or expression are more directly tied to the nature of the creator than others.
Both of your examples are about social / public acceptability of the artist as a person, not the evaluation of their artwork itself. Of course most people would be uncomfortable associating with such a person, but I don’t think that’s inherently relevant to their work.
Nowadays we are in a marketing-focused era where serious aesthetic thought is basically unknown to everyone but academics, so the natural result is that the identity of an artist is often more important than their work.
(Side note: performance art refers to a separate art field, e.g. Marina Abramović. Performing arts is the right term to use for music, singing, etc.)
But yes, of course there are various approaches to aesthetics and certainly some would say that the artist as individual plays more of a role in some genres than others.
SF is still a reflection of the world in general. From business to politics, to religion, to the entertainment industry, the "important" people have and still do get away with doing things they shouldn't, and that community will often cover for them as long as possible.
What may make things worse is that the SF community does still attract a larger percentage of socially awkward young people, mostly men, who are also extremely passionate, so seeing that type of behavior normalized can have a larger impression on them.
This behavior needs to be stopped, but it needs to continue to be addressed in all communities.
I agree with all you said, but I may put it in the past tense.
I only started visiting Worldcon in the few years, but from what I see, there is huge awareness for it there, and these phenomenons do not exist there nowadays.
They probably exist in other sff events, the sad/rabid puppies didn't disappear yet sadly, however, since Worldcon is the face of the field, I wouldn't define it as a "problem of contemporary SF"
If you go to a gaming convention and see someone literally shoot people, yeah, I guess you should stop that too. There's a difference between fiction and reality, and this sexual harassment is taking place within the scene in reality.
it's not just people protecting bad behavior, omerta within a social circle is often a failure of the state/society to safely protect people in the circle from being outed when they speak up while the problematic person gets away scot-free. you need to reach a critical cultural mass before people are confident in speaking up, because the fear of retaliation is often the motivation before the need to protect the circle, see i.e. the harvey weinstein case.
> If this doesn't sound familiar from tech, you haven't been paying attention.
this is an overly broad generalization, there's plenty of techies outside the big flashy companies built on top of the silicon valley hero cult pattern.
> idk what to do about all this; it's pretty easy for me to pass on rereading Asimov or MZB anyhow.
Then you probably can't read any great books, look at any great art, watch any great movie, listen to any great music, laugh with any great comedian, admire any great leader/politician, etc.
I hate to break this to you but there really aren't any saints in this world. And if you do find a saint, it just means he was just better at hiding his true self from the world.
Can you study physics after learning that Einstein was a racist bigot just like hitler?
"It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary."
Einstein worried about the "chinese" ( and by chinese he most likely meant asians ) taking over the world like hitler worried about jews taking over the world. Granted Einstein never did anything about it, though he indirectly helped in the nuking of the "automaton spiritless and obtuse 'chinese' children" in hiroshima and nagasaki.
If you were wondering, Newton wasn't any better.
Can you enjoy the Christmas Carol knowing that Dickens was a racist bigot?
Or maybe you should do what we are all taught in philosophy and the arts and learn to separate the art from the artist. They are not one and the same. You can appreciate the art and despise the artist.
> Can you study physics after learning that Einstein was a racist bigot just like hitler?
Thankfully to us, Einstein was not just like Hitler. Einstein was an asshole to his wife and had few personal flaws, but he very conclusively did not displayed same behavior nor same opinions as Hitler. Einstein had also some good redeeming qualities like pretty strong anti-racism.
> What, exactly, are you talking about? I happen to have done a double major (computer science and philosophy) and don't recall any "separate the art from the artist" unit there.
You never took a "philosophy of art" or aesthetics course? You never learned about "art qua art"? I distinctly remember discussing whether artists from tupac to roman polanski should be appreciated, whether their art should be banned, whether they should even be credited, etc.
> In any case, your sophomore-level tirade is moot
Thanks for the ad hominem. I hope your philosophy course taught you about that.
A particularly horrifying axis is that between Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband, Walter Breen. Bradley is merely accused (to be clear: I believe the accuser) but Breen was a convicted molester who was known to be problematic for years - with people in fandom just trying to manage the situation.
If this doesn't sound familiar from tech, you haven't been paying attention.
idk what to do about all this; it's pretty easy for me to pass on rereading Asimov or MZB anyhow. But the obvious lesson, still unlearned in many quarters, is "don't keep protecting harassers". To quote a better, or at least IMO more interesting author (please don't let him be a harasser too):
"Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view." - Stand on Zanibar, John Brunner