Futurismic

One of my hardest jobs as editor here at Futurismic is trying to write the introductions to our new fiction pieces that actually do them justice. This month, I’m not even going to try – all I’ll say is that Eric Del Carlo’s “Fluidity” totally blew me away when Chris sent it over for me to look at, and that I’ve not read such a strong yet sensitive treatment of gender politics in science fiction for some time. See for yourself.

Fluidity

by Eric Del Carlo

Some prim Prior in Xen’s childhood had made a pulpit-pounding fact of this statement:  “To interrupt one’s Cycling is to throw oneself off a cliff!”  So often and with such spittle-spraying vehemence was this preached that it had locked in Xen’s mind.

And so when he pulled the braided sash and his burgundy robe heaped the ground around his bare ankles, he stepped forward over the ice plants with that Prior’s fervor guiding, not warning, him.  The ocean’s salt-tart wind handled his slim naked body carelessly as he came to edge of the bluff.  Cascades of ice plants turned to dark rock below, then colorful sand.  Xen paused to touch his exterior genitals.  It was a wistful gesture.

Off a cliff…

He went, making instruction of that long-ago thunderous remonstrance.  When he struck the dark rocks, he crushed numerous bones; when he bounced and tumbled out onto the beach itself, he lived only long enough for a group of startled concerned bathers to huddle over him. Continue reading “NEW FICTION: FLUIDITY by Eric Del Carlo”

Via GalleyCat comes an article by one Tom Matlack, who thinks that the publishing business has given up on trying to attract male readers. The core of this theory seems to be based on his failure to find a publisher for a proposed anthology of what GalleyCat describes as “first-person stories about manhood”:

We hired the best agent in the business, wrote a detailed book proposal, and went shopping for a publisher. Fifty (that’s 5-0, including a who’s who list of the literary world) turned us down. They told us guys don’t read, would never read any kind of anthology, and most certainly wouldn’t read an anthology about men. Apparently we are all mindless fools. The publishers also said they were focused exclusively on the “sure-thing” celebrity books in the wake of deteriorating economics. Just about that time we noticed a well-received anthology in the New York Times Review of Books written by women during menstruation.

Well, I’m a male reader… and the prospect of a fifty-story anthology of first-person tales about defining moments of manhood is not one that has me enthusiatically opening a search tab on Amazon. My immediate instinctive response is that Matlack has perhaps mistaken lack of interest in a particular book proposal for a lack of interest in reaching male readers in general.

I’m willing to believe that men as a demographic may read less fiction, but if that’s the case then surely pitching predominantly for a female audience is actually a sound market-driven move by publishers? It’s a chicken and egg argument, really; are there less manly books for men because men don’t read so much, or do men not read so much due to the lack of manly books for men? The massive hype around the forthcoming Dan Brown book would seem to suggest that publishers have no problem with putting out male-orientated books if they think people are going to buy them.

Overall, I think the notion that publishing has “given up” on male readers is utter balls, even beyond the notably male-centric domain of science fiction; it sounds like a domain-specific re-run of those “OMG male white Anglo-Saxons are an oppressed minority!!1″ whinges that get trotted out from time to time, and Matlack’s exasperated mention of a successful anthology about menstruation as somehow proving his point does little to dispel the whiff of affronted yet passive misogyny.

So, male Futurismic readers – do you feel that publishers aren’t putting out the sort of books that appeal to you as a man (as opposed to as a reader in general)?

This little bit of neurological research is all over the news outlets at the moment. Here in the UK, The Guardian leads their piece with the headline “Women appreciate beauty better than men, says study“.

Brain scans of people looking at paintings and photographs have revealed that beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder. When men and women see something they think is beautiful, their brains react differently, with the female brain showing more activity than the male, according to new research.

[snip]

The researchers believe the different responses are linked to the ways in which men and women process spatial information, but suggest that men may tend to look only at the picture as a whole, while women also pay attention to the smaller details.

We never seem to tire of these gender difference studies, do we? It’s as if we thought we were having something we’d always known proved to us, no matter what the actual meaning may be at a scientific level.

But it’s always interesting to watch how they’re reported by different media channels. So, for extra points, here’s Big Blog of Cheese running the comparisons – why not play along with headlines from your own country?

BBC: Art appreciation ‘a gender issue’

Science journal: Sex-related similarities and differences in the neural correlates of beauty

Daily Telegraph: Why women cannot read maps and men lose their keys

Headlines and links in the comments, please!

The headlines about the global economic situation aren’t getting any more cheerful right now, are they? While there are many many contributing factors to a complex economic system, a group of UK researchers have suggested that there is a link between the stability of the stock market and the hormonal levels of stock market traders. [image by Petrick]

“But which is the cause and which is the effect? A further analysis showed that traders who started their days with elevated testosterone made more money than those who didn’t. One trader went on a six-day winning streak, making twice as much money each day as the previous one. Over that period, his testosterone levels rose steadily, some 74 per cent.”

The cause and effect question remains open (and probably always will do), but the article suggests that elevated hormonal levels may be very bad for the traders themselves … and that a stock market with more women trading on it might be more stable.

Amen to that.

Here’s another bioethics question that’s probably no less contentious than the deaf baby issue. Thomas Beattie is legally married to a woman called Nancy. Nothing unusual there; what’s unusual is that Thomas is transgender – he’s now legally counted as a man, but was previously female. So far, so good.

Now the tricky bit – Thomas is pregnant.

“Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights. Wanting to have a biological child is neither a male nor female desire, but a human desire.”

In this instance, I find my own attitudes very clear cut – I have no problems with this at all. But I imagine the anti-gay-marriage crowd will be pretty upset about it, which brings us to a question familiar to transhumanist thinkers and readers of feminist science fiction alike – is “gender” a function of genetics, of psychology or of society? [via BoingBoing]