Bonny Braes and Banks

[bibliogramma]

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

I have no idea why I waited so long to read this book. I'd heard about this great series about a woman from modern times (well, post-WWII, anyway) who is magically transported two hundred years into the past, where, despite having a nice husband in her own time, she falls in love - somewhat unwillingly - with another nice man in the past, and gets all mixed up in the events preceding the battle of Culloden.

But for some reason I just didn't get around to reading it until recently - and now I find that I must go out and buy about half-a-dozen sequels, because the first book was every bit as good as everyone has been telling me it was.

Outlander begins with one of the lead characters, Claire Randall, an English nurse, on a second honeymoon in Scotland. There's some discussion of the role her husband's ancestor, a Captain John Randall, played in the bloody hisory of the Jacobite Risings - the long attempt by the Highland Scots to return the house of Stuart to the throne of England and Scotland following deposition of James II in 1688, which was finally crushed in 1746 at the Battle of Culloden. (I should digress here to note that I myself am part Scot, part Welsh, and all Celt, and as far as the history of the time is concerned, my sympathies are all with the Scots and not the slightest with the Sassenach.)

While in Scotland, Claire discovers that there is a standing circle near where they are staying, where some of the local women still worship in the "old ways." When she explores the circle herself, she finds herself drawn back to 1745, where she finds herself caught up in the politics of the clans, the cause of the Jacobites, the invading Sassenach - one of whom is her husband's ancestor, and eventually a bold Scotsman named Jamie Fraser who wins her heart.

It's fascinating historical fiction wrapped up in a time-travelling frame, with all the complications that entails, it's a refreshing romance between two people who become friends and partners as well as lovers, and it's - most welcome of all - a story of an intelligent, resourceful, courageous and tough woman who survives and thrives despite being thrown out of her own time and all that she knows and understands.

Comments

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

A lot of the time, I don't actually notice that some SFF is actually part romance in genre, because the romance isn't foregrounded. I don't like books that are "X and Y (or more) are falling in love, and there's all this other stuff happening too," but I'm very content with "X and Y (or more) are doing all this interesting stuff, and while they're doing it, they fall in love."

Romance is a fact of life. Sometimes, who loves who can change everything (this, for instance, is a very big thing in most Arthurian literature). I think one of the reasons people are making such a big deal about romance in SFF is that when it the genre began being a popular and clearly identified genre back in the early 20th century, it was presumed to be something men wrote for other men, especially young men, and romance was deliberately excluded by a number of writers, and considered "icky" by many fans.

SFF is all grown up now as a genre, and some authors put romance in, and some don't, whatever suits their style and the kind of SFF stories they want to tell. But somehow, if a writer, especially a woman, puts a lot of emphasis on the emotional relationships in the books she writes, it gets call "romance" and that still sounds like it's trivialising the work, and the writer.

[devilwrites.livejournal.com]

Oooh, this is a fun discussion. I enjoy the hell out of romantic subplots/plots in SFF, but I'm terribly critical. For example, the upcoming Hurricane Moon's handle on romance pissed me off, cause I didn't find any of it believable. But I don't read the romance genre as a rule, so I don't know *why* I'm so critical. I guess it relates to what you said, about how emotion and romance in SFF gets trivialized, so when it's done, I want it to kick ass. :)

Then there's the fact that my own book that I'm working on is SFR...that couldn't be a reason for my critical behavior, oh no...

;)

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Believability is the key to romance plots/sub-plots for me, I think. Well, that and having it be something other than innocent and naive waif is swept off her feet by dark handsome but somewhat cruel and brooding stranger, or one of the other anti-feminist scenarios. Hell, even Jane Eyre has more backbone than a lot of other romance heroines when it comes to falling in love with men who are "mad, bad and dangerous to know."

I just remembered that when I was rather young, I read a lot of Mary Stewart's romance novels, and Some of Georgette Heyer's Recency romances, many of which had the kind of character/plot scenario mentioned above. This could have prejudiced me against the pure romance genre. ;-)

Also, I've read a fair amount of lesbian romance and slash from all sorts of fandoms, and... as a queer person myself, sometimes one tires of seeing pairings being written in an almost arbitrary fashion just so that there will be a queer love story. Which has happened more than some care to admit. It's the difference between creating two characters who suit each other, and at the same time creating them to be the same sex, and taking two characters of the same sex and writing them as falling in love even if there's no reason for them to do so. Which is a pity, because I have very strong feelings about the necessity for greater representation of honest and believable same-sex relationships in fictional works.

But when the romance is part of a good story that has other goals than to lust tell a standard love story, and when the romance develops in a believable fashion out of the characters and the experiences they have together, then it can be very enjoyable.

[devilwrites.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, that's good. And I couldn't agree more. And I really, really want to show this comment to a friend of mine working on a same-sex romance/erotica fantasy novel, cause she's been having trouble if her crits are anything to go by. Which is odd, because I think she's also a queer person...maybe it's because she's writing boy/boy? Bah! Who knows.

But romance is a delicate subplot/plot, and should be handled with care, no matter what the pairing.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

I hope I'm making myself clear enough that your friend will find the comment helpful.

Aside from getting the sexual mechanics working more or less effectively, I really don't think there's much difference writing the essence of boy/boy, girl/boy, or girl/girl romances. Contexts can influence a lot, of course - boy/boy in ancient Sparta is way different from girl/girl in a medieval monastery, which is again different from girl/girl in suburban North America in the 1950s, which could be very similar to girl/boy in an alien SF society where the exchange of genetic material required for sexual reproduction occurs in some manner totally unrelated to love and sex, and while there is a physical distinction between people who are equipped to bear children and people who are not, everyone is expected to have have romantic relationships only with members of the same sex, and all other relationships are illegal, furtive, or confined to the "shocking classes" such as artists and the very rich.

But I think, based on my own experience, that once you sort of screen out the overtones of societal proscription and prescription and what that does to your head, there is more difference in relationship dynamics based on personality than there is on whether your partner is male or female.

But then, I'm more of a social constructionist than an essentialist when it comes to gender, so I'd be more likely to interpret my experiences that way anyway. ;-)

[devilwrites.livejournal.com]

Well, it makes perfect sense to me, so maybe I'm a social constructionist too. :)

[sausconys-books.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what I like too, which is why I tend to like romantic SFF much more than the romance genre itself. I like a romantic sub-plot, but I also like a relationship between equals and I don't find that much in romance. Also, SFF is much more open to "unconventional" relationships. I'm also sick of the alpha jerk hero, the too stupid to live heroine, and so many other romance cliches. Most of the romance novels I love feature beta heroes, scarred or disabled heroes, smart heroines, and even sexually inexperience heroes because I'm also sick of the "Duke of Slut."

I think there's still a lot of the icky reaction and girl cooties. A lot of the criticism I've read of authors like Asaro and Bujold stems from their romantic elements. People are embarrassed that a "romance novel" won the Nebula, even though it was written by a Harvard educated chemical physicist. And there's a lot of prudish reaction to Bujold's new book precisely because it features a female character discovering a healthy sexuality with her husband! I've even seen arguments online that science fiction belongs to men and women should stop reading and writing it, especially since they are polluting the waters with their sappy romance elements. There was also a blog post somewhere about why science fiction sales have fallen. The theory was that since more women read and buy books and there's so little SF out there that appeals to women, they are instead flocking to paranormal romance because that gives them what they want.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

There was also a blog post somewhere about why science fiction sales have fallen. The theory was that since more women read and buy books and there's so little SF out there that appeals to women, they are instead flocking to paranormal romance because that gives them what they want.

I think I read that post, or one of its siblings. ;-)

There has always been a core of little boy geeks (of all ages) who don't want girl cooties anywhere near their slide rules and spaceships, especially if the girl who's dripping those cooties can use the slide rule and fly the space ship just as well as the little geek boy. Look up Justine Larbalestier's great feminist history of SF, Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction - there's some wonderful stuff from the early days where all the boy geeks are writing letters to the editor about keeping SF pure and manly.

If science fiction book sales are falling because a significant proportion of women readers would rather read material that has the characters having relationships that are written in interesting, smart and sexy ways - which is happening in a lot of fantasy and paranormal romance texts - then maybe the answer is to write science fiction that includes the characters having relationships that are written in interesting, smart and sexy ways.