What they ought to have been called

[cahn]

Perhaps y'all have seen these (and here and here, though I think the first is the best) before, but I hadn't. Hysterically funny especially if you, like me, grew up reading bad 80's SF/fantasy novels (Dragonlance! Xanth! Valdemar! ...hey, why are you running away? Wait, did I actually admit to reading those?)

I'll add
Katherine Kerr: People Make the Same Dumb Mistakes When Reincarnated
Patricia McKillip: Riddles in the Welsh Tradition Kinda Suck
Diane Duane: The Door Into Alternative Lifestyles
Rosemary Kirstein: Wouldn't It Be Cool If People Revered Their Scientists?
Susan Cooper: The Search for Plot Coupons (okay, that one was not original)

(and yes, I adore McKillip and Cooper, and have a certain fondness for the others; I mock because I love!)

Any other suggestions? Especially for 80's stuff? (Most of the really bad 80's stuff I read has completely escaped my memory...)

Comments

[ase.livejournal.com]

Rosemary Kirstein: Wouldn't It Be Cool If People Revered Their Scientists?

YES IT WOULD BE. And then I'd be some lay alcolyte, in addition to the rest of the awesome in my life. [/silly]

I'll come up with cooler comments when I sober up. (Ha.)

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Ha!

The flip side of the coin, too, is, Wouldn't It Be Cool If All Scientists Were Selflessly Devoted to Scientific Ideals?

And yes, it would be very cool if both those were true. Which Kirstein trades on fairly aggressively, I think :)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Quite a lot of McCaffrey, esp. later books: Strong, Independent Women Find True Happiness in Love and Family

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Good point. Hmm, in general, are there good books where the strong independent woman doesn't get a man? It is depressingly hard for me to think of one... though at least I guess it took two books for Jo to get one, in Little Women.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Ellie Quinn.

Scarlett gets several men, but can't keep one, and doesn't fine happiness in marriage and family.

But it's not so much the "gets a man" part as the "I only thought I was fulfilled before, but now I know Twue Happiness, and will abandon (or drastically scale back) my former life in service of my man". Nimisha's Ship was the worst offender, as I recall, and the one that made me stop reading her, at least for a while[1]. There are many where the strong independent woman gets a man without it being Twue Happiness and Ever So Much More Fulfilling than whatever she was doing before.


[1] I will probably eventually go back and catch up to where Todd started taking over Pern, and see if I like what he's doing any better. Cause he's a nice guy and all.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Ah, how could I forget Ellie!

Yeah, no, I totally get what you're saying - tons of writers have romantic couplings where the woman still gets to be awesome afterwards (and some, like Alanna, where the guy is perfectly happy with not being as awesome as the girl, which I think is great). But yeah -- I haven't read Nimisha's Ship, but one of McCaffrey's books that always bothered me that way was Damia (and possibly Rowan, though I don't remember that one as well), which in addition has the ick factor where she finds Twu Luv with the guy who's basically been a parental figure her whole life. Who can take care of her. Ick.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

To get off the subject, because that's what I like to do, one book where I actually don't mind the woman becoming a mother and helping out her man is Meg Murry O'Keefe, because a) it's clear that she has a partnership with Calvin, b) it's her conscious choice, of which she has weighed the pros and cons (this distinguishes it from McCaffrey), c) it's not really clear she was particularly career-oriented before, d) it's not Twue Happiness but rather a decision that has tradeoffs, and e) it is so evidently NOT what L'Engle did herself, in her own happy marriage, that I feel like she can point out that people can make whatever choices they want.