Jumping the shark: #TBT

Women and military scifi.

When I wrote my “more than Ripley” article, I had the feeling of Deja Vu. Not to be confused with Dejah Thoris. But I realized that this felt very much like we’ve been here and done this. And we did. On my old blog.

No, it’s not Thursday, but I’m trying to catch up.

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Just when I thought I ran out of material, someone on the internet goes and says something unbelievably stupid.

I don't know who set off one of the people at Tor books, but a recent blog focused on how women don't get a fair shake in military science fiction. Toward this end, they make a rather passing mention to David Weber's Honor Harrington, damning her with the faintest of praise.  They they follow it up with an attack on John Ringo, Tom Kratman, and David Drake, crying horror! Horror! at how women are treated in those novels.

Ahem ....

I'll start small, mostly by throwing David Drake under a bus. I've read some his stories, I found them as dry as dust. It could just be me, and my family, and my friends. Sorry friend, but it's true.

Now, onto some books I do know very well: those of Tom Kratman, John Ringo and David Weber.

While the Tor blogger does acknowledge that Weber's Honor Harrington is a good female character, an equal to the male characters around her, it immediate turns into a backhanded compliment, complaining that Honor didn't get laid for the first half-dozen novels — even though it was pointed out in book one that Honor was sexually assaulted at the naval academy (well, “nearly” assaulted … she completely trashed her attacker into next Tuesday. It was awesome).

I'm sorry, but the rape victims I’ve read of and those I know personally (15 and counting) go one of two ways, nymphomania, or chastity … would the Tor blogger have preferred nymphomania?

Not to mention that the article focuses on Honor Harrington as if she were the only woman in the entire “Honorverse” series — ignoring, for instance, that the heads of state of major governments being women. And, since Tor whined about everyone being white, the article seems to gloss over the fact that the ruling family of Honor Harrington's government is all black. One wonders if the blogger even read the Honor Harrington novels.

Anyway, after bitching about the “racism” in the Honor-verse, and Honor Harrington's lack of a sex life, they then go into how John Ringo's character Ghost treats women like sex objects.

I'm sorry, but who goes into a rant about over-sexualizing women after complaining that a woman lead isn't sexualized enough?  You know, aside from hypocrites.

Not to mention one tiny little detail ... Ghost, the novel, isn't even science fiction!

The article jumps the shark altogether at this point, in reference to Ringo and Kratman.

Their female characters tend to suffer unpleasant fates, or to be relegated to backwaters of the narrative, and the old canard of “no women in the special infantry” is once again in play 

At this point, I know from personal experience that this writer hasn't read Kratman and Ringo. At the time, John Ringo had written over 33 novels in a dozen years. The blogger focused on one.

In the category of "unpleasant fates," when people die in military science fiction, they don't die well.  Going through Ringo's Gone with the Wind-sized epic of The Posleen Wars, most of the main characters who die, die horrible, painful deaths — they are either vaporized, eaten alive, or blown to pieces.  There is no good way to die in a John Ringo novel. This guy kills off so many people per book, he has contests dedicated to being a red shirt in his novels.

In Tom Kratman's series of A Desert Called Peace, et al, the women are essential to the novels: at first, by keeping our main characters sane (which is a job in itself at the best of times) and, later, serving as front line troops. As the series progresses, there are no civilians in war zones -- culminating in The Amazon Legion, which is all about women soldiers.

And, looking at John Ringo's post-Posleen War novels, the Cally series, revolves solely around a female special forces assassin — so much for "no women in the special infantry" whine-ery.  Even before that, if one were to read the joint Kratman-Ringo venture Yellow Eyes, one of the main fronts of the Posleen war in Latin America is held by — wait for it — a female commander of an artillery unit. The other major lead: the female artificial intelligence of a battleship (artillery barrage to the tune of O Fortuna, for the win!).

Continuing through the article, the author continues to screw up by focusing exclusively on John Ringo's non-scifi work, his Ghost novel.  And, even then, she shows her ignorance of the subject by focusing on the first book — which even I criticized for having way too much sex — and the point of the first book is in the opening quote: "We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us." Ringo went out and invented the roughest person he could imagine. And, had this blogger read the rest of the Ghost novels, she would see that, not only did the main character's initial crude proclivities disappear over time, she would have also seen that women become major front-line military troopers (in particular, two helicopter pilots).

To be honest, I don't think this would bother me that much, except for that fact that she noted she hadn't even read the book. She took her impression from this novel, and all of John Ringo's work, from carefully selected excerpted lines posted on yet another blog. This is BS.

Because of this, the blogger skips over Ringo's Princess of Wands, which has a kick-ass female lead who fights demons that would make Buffy go “Aw crud.”

And there's Ringo’s Into the Looking Glass series, in which the spaceship, and most of their missions, is mostly held together by the primary female lead, Miriam … who is based off of Ringo's then girlfriend, now wife. (Whom I met. She was cute. And wry. And witty. And I can see what Ringo sees in her … though the dye-blue hair is distracting.)

And with Ringo, as in Kratman, even the women who are not front-line troopers, or major political and military tacticians, or in communications and intelligence, they become instrumental in keeping our heroes from falling to the dark side (or, in some cases, deeper into the dark side).

This article was petty, starting with “Well, there's Honor Harrington, but she didn't get laid for a long time” — if I were to judge my novels by how fast my female leads got laid, I'd go into writing erotica, thank you.

At the end of the day, the most interesting part of the entire article is this: most of the books attacked have something interesting in common.  Ringo and Kratman work for Baen books.

The Honor Harrington novels? Published by Baen books.

The David Drake series mentioned in the article? Baen books.

The books praised in the article? All Tor books ...

I'm shocked, shocked I say.

Not to mention one other tiny detail .... if this were a fair, open and honest look at military science fiction as a genre, there is one, gigantic, glaring omission.  A tv show called Babylon 5, where the fate of the galaxy hinges on at least two women (for fans -- would the series have ended well for anyone if Delenn or Lyta Alexander taken a bullet?).

But J. Michael Straczynski has never worked for Baen, so I guess it's too unimportant to examine.  So are the dozens of other genre writers out there.  But if they don't work for Baen, I suppose it doesn't matter.

This was a hatchet job from start to finish; at the time, the blogger wan't even listed as a Tor employee, but a graduate student in Ireland, and a sometimes reviewer. Which is depressing — if the blogger is going to pretend to know about what is being written, you'd assume that reading the books would be a requirement.

But now, her profile reads as follows:

Oh look, I’m shocked. Are you shocked? Because I’m shocked. Just, so shocked.

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Now, let’s compare and contrast versions of how to treat women in novels

Unfortunately, it's a hard to find a good beginning.  Seriously, where does one start?  With the fact that one of my favorite stories of the Judges (biblical warlords) is a woman, Judith, walking into the tent of an enemy of Israel, and taking his head off, literally? Or, that when growing up, I found that the best part of Xena, Warrior Princess was not her leather outfit, but the glint in her eye right before she beat the hell out of everyone?

Do I start with Fr. Andrew Greeley, and his novels where the female and male leads have this tendency to save each other?

Maybe I could cover J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5, where the female leads practically dominate the series, and they have some of the best, strongest, most kick ass sequences -- usually without throwing a single punch, wearing clothing that's as revealing as your average monk's robes.

Perhaps I should start with the Irish mythology I grew up with, that had the belief that a woman was required for spirituality — as in “a man could only go onto the afterlife after his woman drags him there, because otherwise the poor daft fool would probably just get himself lost along the way.”

Or, perhaps I should just give my opinion in general, cite some specific examples, and move on.

Let's start with examples from the Tor article -- John Ringo's Ghost.  The premise is that a former SEAL, code-named “Ghost,” finds himself in the middle of a terrorist plot, and literally gets dragged along for the ride. The blogger at Tor uses Ghost's internal struggle between his instincts and his ethics (Ghost believes himself a rapist by nature, while on the other hand, he hasn't actually raped anybody, and he knows it's wrong), and the blogger uses that to paint all of John Ringo's work with one brushstroke — even though she had not read Ghost, any of John Ringo or anything more than a blog post excerpting small parts of the novel.

However, looking in Ghost, the FIRST novel, we see multiple instances of women coming to the rescue. During a firefight with the terrorists in question, Ghost only has a room filled with female college coeds for support. Over the course of one mission, he's saved by a gunship piloted by a female pilot (said pilot makes a comeback and also saves his butt a time or two in later novels).  Sure, Ghost has issues, and the character knows that he has issues, and most of the character moments involve how he sublimates his own violent desires into something more socially acceptable … which, alas, leads into sequences of more bondage porn than I ever wanted to read … but the problem the character has is not a problem that John Ringo shares, and it's quite evident in practically every book Ringo has ever written — even in later volumes starring Ghost.

And, of course, there is always Princess of Wands — Ringo's novel where the hero is a tough, physically and spiritually fit, very beautiful and sexy .... suburban housewife who goes to church every Sunday, and married to the same man for years, with several children.

Like I said, Ghost's problem is not John Ringo's problem.

My point? In John Ringo's novels, no one is a passive participant. Even his civilian female protagonists make for strong characters, and are just as likely to pick up a gun and return fire, or throw grenades as needed.

With David Weber, another victim of the Tor hatchet job, his Honor Harrington character was criticized for not having a sex life for multiple books.  Leaving out Honor's personal reasons for that (covered in the last blog), what the hell is a sex life supposed to add to a character, man or woman?

For the record: I don't write sex scenes. Period. My characters don't necessarily need to have a sex life in the books. They're usually too busy being shot at.

In my novels, women are people, that they are women isn't all that special to me.  Of the main cast of A Pius Man, I have four women — a secret service agent, a spy, an Interpol cop, and a forensic scientist.  Three out of four of them handle themselves in combat.

But, in my books, I don't really have a weak characters. Man or woman, my characters can always find some sort of inner strength, even if it's pure, unadulterated stubbornness.

Are all of my female characters beautiful? They are in my head, though I don't know if they are on the page. For me, I find that there are few truly ugly women, and it usually takes effort.  I very often find that personality does make an appearance, and mar or improve the features. I'm told that none of the women I've dated have been beautiful, but, apparently, I've always managed to find something special in them. Give me time, I can usually find something in them that is lovely. No matter how many of them were insane.

On the other hand, there have been more occasions than I can think of where I have looked at a woman who is, superficially, quite attractive, but I can never really pass judgement if they're "beautiful" until they smile, or get excited about something — even then, I concentrate more on the eyes. That's where I find the real beauty more often than not…

And I starting to sound like a romantic sap, I apologize.  But that's pretty much how my brain works ... or doesn't. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? You decide.