That Hugo Time of Year; Rape as a Fictional Device
It's that time again. As BoingBoing announced, the Hugos are up and nominated. Naomi Novik and Neil Gaiman are among the nominees (in two different categories).
The last time I truly paid attention to the Hugos was in 2003. I was running the Science Fiction and Fantasy book group for the Barnes and Noble in West Bloomfield, Michigan. That year, we read something like two thirds of the novels, which included winning title Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer, with whom I was working on an autobiographical essay at the time, and Kiln People by David Brin. That was the book that made me fall in love with cross-genre private eye noir.
I may try to follow them again this year (as much as I can) and see how many I can read before the voting happens. Not that I'll make it to WorldCon in Japan... but it will be fun to follow.
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Funny that I should mention Sawyer this morning, as I was just thinking about him last night. I started reading King's Peace, by Jo Walton, which begins, in the first chapter, with the main character's rape. One of the problems I had with Hominids, which Sawyer actually dealt with very well and with great sympathy, is that the main female character is raped very early on in the novel. Rape generally bothers me as a fictional device, and I'm astonished how much both rape and attempted rape come up in manga and anime designed for the young female audience.
My friend Lydia Laurenson (whose newest title, The Books of Sorcery: The White and Black Treatises came out in January) has written several very good short essays about the dangers of using rape as a storytelling device in roleplaying games. Sometimes in storytelling, rape is used as a short-hand for how evil the villain is In Hominids or King's Peace, from what I've read of the second so far, as the rapists are mostly nameless and faceless, I suspect that the rape is designed to give the heroine an internal struggle to overcome.
I tend to find almost all uses of rape as a fictional device off-putting at best. In the case of King's Peace, where I had yet to invest in the character, I seriously questioned whether I wanted to continue a book that started with this kind of event. So here's my question: why rape? Is the intention to make the audience uncomfortable (I suspect this is the case in Hominids)? Or have readers in general become desensitized to this type of violence?
The last time I truly paid attention to the Hugos was in 2003. I was running the Science Fiction and Fantasy book group for the Barnes and Noble in West Bloomfield, Michigan. That year, we read something like two thirds of the novels, which included winning title Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer, with whom I was working on an autobiographical essay at the time, and Kiln People by David Brin. That was the book that made me fall in love with cross-genre private eye noir.
I may try to follow them again this year (as much as I can) and see how many I can read before the voting happens. Not that I'll make it to WorldCon in Japan... but it will be fun to follow.
--
Funny that I should mention Sawyer this morning, as I was just thinking about him last night. I started reading King's Peace, by Jo Walton, which begins, in the first chapter, with the main character's rape. One of the problems I had with Hominids, which Sawyer actually dealt with very well and with great sympathy, is that the main female character is raped very early on in the novel. Rape generally bothers me as a fictional device, and I'm astonished how much both rape and attempted rape come up in manga and anime designed for the young female audience.
My friend Lydia Laurenson (whose newest title, The Books of Sorcery: The White and Black Treatises came out in January) has written several very good short essays about the dangers of using rape as a storytelling device in roleplaying games. Sometimes in storytelling, rape is used as a short-hand for how evil the villain is In Hominids or King's Peace, from what I've read of the second so far, as the rapists are mostly nameless and faceless, I suspect that the rape is designed to give the heroine an internal struggle to overcome.
I tend to find almost all uses of rape as a fictional device off-putting at best. In the case of King's Peace, where I had yet to invest in the character, I seriously questioned whether I wanted to continue a book that started with this kind of event. So here's my question: why rape? Is the intention to make the audience uncomfortable (I suspect this is the case in Hominids)? Or have readers in general become desensitized to this type of violence?