He Was Trapped in a World of Women....

[bibliogramma]

The Last Hawk, by Catherine Asaro, is one the one hand firmly a part of her Skolian Empire space opera/romance series, and at the same time, an interesting entry into the body of science fiction and fantasy works that address, from various perspectives, "the battle of the sexes."

It follows one of the classic plotlines of the "battle of the sexes" novel: a man from a society where male and female roles are much as we see them in our own 21st century North American society is somehow transported, alone and in need of help, to a land where women rule, and what our society thinks of as the "natural order" of gender roles, abilities, characteristics and interests are reversed.

In this case, the lost man is Kelricson, brother to the Skolian Imperator and one of the most powerful psis among his people; he is also a cybernetically enhanced soldier. with ship and cybernetics damaged in battle, Kelricson crash-lands on Coba, a Restricted planet - one which has requested to have no contact whatsoever with the Skolian Empire. With his cybernetics damaged, his psi powers malfunctioning, and his ship destroyed (by the inhabitants of the planet, to prevent him from escaping and bringing word of their civilisation to the empire) there's little Kelricson can do to get word out of his whereabouts.

Kelricson's personal beauty, and his unusual gift for playing the game of Quis (although as it turns out, it is far more than a game, but an information network and a way of thinking, formulating and exploring new ideas, and negotiating conflicts and debates), make him both interesting and valuable to some of the most powerful women on the planet - the Estate Managers, hereditary rulers of the various city-state - and over the course of 18 years in captivity, he moves from the estate of one woman to another, by gift, trade, theft and conquest, fathering two children along the way.

Where the novel departs from the classic scenario is that Kelricson does not, of his own, spark a rebellion among the downtrodden men of Coba, nor does he convince one of the women who own him along the way to give up everything to either change her world, or follow him into exile from her people. There are signs that a desire for a more egalitarian relationship between men and women was already beginning to surface even before his arrival, and while he does influence some men further in this direction, there's still no sign of revolution at the end. And it is true that his last wife - who ends up the overall ruler of the planet - has some doubts about many of the ways that life on Coba is organised, and is likely to spend her reign engaged in significant social reforms, when Kelricson finally escapes, he does so alone, and whatever changes will come to Coba, will come as a result of the actions and choices of the people of Coba.

I enjoyed reading this more than I expected to. I'd been getting a little tired of Asaro's brand of space opera/romance, but this book came at me quite out of the blue, and was in some ways like reading a strange combination of Herland, The Odyssey and The Glass Bead Game. An interesting book indeed.

Comments

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

You seemed to enjoy this book far more than I did. I found the story became very predictable, which annoyed me, and I also felt that if the gender of the protagonist and the rulers were reversed, it'd have women crying foul. Granted, you bring up an interesting take on the battle of sexes reversal, but it wasn't enough for me while reading. I did learn that this happened to the first book that Asaro wrote in this series, though it was the third published, which suddenly made sense to me, because I felt this book was weaker than the other Asaro I'd read (PRIMARY INVERSION and CATCH THE LIGHTNING). My feelings might change whenever I get to the rest of the series though, so we'll see. :)

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Everything is relative. It was more interesting than many of the other books in the series, which I must admit I'm still reading only because I have this perverse desire to complete series and find out what happens to all the characters. Would I recommend this book as a general good read? No.

Would I include it as something to read if one was interested in SFnal explorations of gender issues, or in books that use gaming of various kinds as either metaphors or mechanisms for political or social communication? Definitely.

I would say that I found it interesting because I do have an interest in both of those topics, Without them, it would have been a weak and boring read.

"...if the gender of the protagonist and the rulers were reversed, it'd have women crying foul."

That's part of what is interesting about this particular species of gender role reversal stories. In modern books of this type, if one wrote the book with roles reversed, readers would quite likely be comparing it to stuff like the Gor novels or right-wing fundamentalist ideas about gender roles.

As a role reversal/battle of the sexes novel, I think there's some interesting material to consider. Certainly it plays on a lot historical analogues, including the way that nominally high-status women who hold property but cannot control it themselves have been used as ways of shifting political and economic power among houses, tribes, nations, etc. all over the world.

I think that there's a generational thing here - women my age (I think) would tend to see more parallels to how women have been treated even in North American society in our lifetimes. I think that women who have matured during a time of greater gender equality tend to see some of the examples of this literature as inappropriate precisely because they treat men in profoundly unequal ways. Women of my generation are, I think, more likely to still be looking at representations of unequal gender roles and remembering personal experience, which profoundly influences how we see such narratives. I know it influences me.

Sometimes I look at the whole breadth of science fiction portrayals of women today and think to myself "when I was young, almost everyone laughed at the notion that there would even be a role for women in space as anything other than secretaries, receptionists, nurses, sex/love objects or mothers once you get around to colonising something." The cultural change has been enormous, and that creates a gap that needs to be acknowledged in discussions of feminist analysis.

[calico-reaction.livejournal.com]

Well said. Now if only we could get women writers had a more equal footing in terms of marketing (especially SF women writers) and awards, I think we'd be in good shape. Oh, and short story publications too...

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Again, there's the historical perspective thing. Certainly, women have a long. long way to go to get rid of all of the sexism built into the publishing business. And personally, I think it won't get to be anything near equality until the current generation of senior editors and publishers, many of whom are men who grew up in a time when there wasn't much going on in the way of gender equality, are replaced by the men and women who are now in their 20s, who have grown up in a time where there was a lot more gender equality.

But at the same time...

When I began reading SF in the early 60s, there weren't many women getting published in sf and fantasy. Most casual SFF readers would maybe have thought of Andre Norton - those who knew she was a woman, that is - and stopped there. Hard core fans would also have known of C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett (but again, might not have realised these writers were women), Marion Zimmer Bradley, Judith Merril, and maybe Suzette Haden Elgin, Zenna Henderson, Katherine McLean or Margaret St. Clair.

Then came the late 60s and early 70s, and it seemed as though women exploded into the SFF world - although in reality, it was probably only that the list doubled, or maybe tripled in size, which meant that now 15 or 20 women were getting published regularly rather than five or six.

And for someone who grew up hearing only five or six women's names in SF, the current list of women writing SFF is dazzling. I read a lot, and if I chose, I could easily read only SFF written by women and never run out of books to read - and that's an enormous change.

Egad, why do I suddenly feel like one of those horrid old people who sit on porches waving their canes in the air, cackling about how young people today don't know how good they have it?

There's a long way to go - but at the same time, we've already come so far, and that should fill us with hope for the rest of the journey.