shel

The Transsexual Chofetz Chaim

Mutant, librarian, poet, union rabble rouser, dog, Ashkenazi Jewish. Neuroweird, bodyweird, mostly sleepy.


I write about transformative justice, community, love, Judaism, Neurodivergence, mental health, Disability, geography, rivers, labor, and libraries; through poetry, opinionated essays, and short fiction.


I review Schoolhouse Rock! songs at @PropagandaRock


Website (RSS + Newsletter)
shelraphen.com/

I'm reading the graphic novel adaptation of the 1970 classic Ringworld and while I'm sure that the quality of the original novel is much greater, it's still fascinating how a book that was so influential just has... such bad character writing. In particular the protagonist is such a Cool Guy Party Dad who is always smarter and more reasonable than everyone else, stronger, cooler, tells everyone what to do and is always correct, has no real personality beyond being gary stu wish fulfillment fantasy for the presumably male reader. It really does feel like the parody of a pulp sci-fi novel as portrayed in a later story about a nerd who escapes into fantasies and imagines himself as a Cool Guy who Gets All the Babes. In terms of world-building, this book invented so many of the sci-fi tropes we take for granted now. So that certainly takes a lot of creativity. But a lot of it is just so stupid, like humans being bred for luck through eugenics simply through making it so you have to win a lottery to have children. Therefore, all humans became very lucky. That's... so dumb... IDK I guess it just really makes me appreciate how far we've come with science fiction. I'm really grateful that of the influential 1970s sci-fi authors, it is LeGuin and Butler whose work is most influential on today's Hugo winners, and not Ringworld.


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in reply to @shel's post:

i read the original for the first time and it’s absolute dreck. horrible misogynist writing, totally unsympathetic characters. an artifact of a very white and very male and very colonial era of sci-fi