The Nightstar Zoo

Certainly not. But common interests are always a good start, ne? I'm not a hardcore gamer, though. Frankly, a relationship with a socially apt extrovert might even be preferable to balance out my geekdom. Not that I'd complain about a geek girl, mind you.


Isn't she the one with stereotypical mannerisms, including the smoking of cigars? IINM, she's even described as acting like a man in the book. That must have been the #1 way to gain respect from men in those time...

That reminds me of that Raumpatrouille Orion episode where a woman presents herself as the mayor of a planet, and the lead character requires several minutes to grasp the concept. That predates Trek, though, so even portraying a female mayor might have been a bold step from the producers back then. This was, after all, the time where the futuristic navigation computer had to be fed with spiffy shiny metal punchcards and technobabble was restricted to Greek letters and numbers.

It's the awful legacy of endless 'problem' stories; hero is an engineer with the personality of a soggy bagel who fixes some sci fi type problem (sun exploding, etc) whilst spouting endless expositional dialogue to the pretty-yet-developmentally-disabled sicentist's daughter. I'm not sure which is worse, the Engineer stories or the pulps about cutting down trees and killing grizzlies and injuns- excuse me, aliens beasties. I was reading a bunch of Hugo anthologies this month and am quite grateful for the adnvances in literary technology.

You mean Susan Sto-Helit. Death is her maternal grandfather.

For the 1950s? A woman who acted like a man was a bitch, and progressive compared to most of the other ones wearing metal bikinis and working as space-maids or nurses or whatever. If you want another example of most of his women of the time, look at the Robot series, or many of the women in the early Foundation books, who all were relegated to secondary roles - even Dors of 'Prelude to Foundation'.

Susan Calvin doing cigars and talking robots to death was progressive in comparison.

Oh, is she the one with the telepathic robot? Misunderstanding, then. I meant the one in the Second Foundation series, who ends up performing a messy torsotomy on the guy who's about to locate the Second Foundation. Susan does have a certain cliché role as the one who falls in love and subconsciously wants to be artfully lied to rather than hear the insensitive truth.

There's also Bliss from the closure of the Foundation cycle. She still has stereotypical aspects (she's called Bliss, for dog's sake), but ends up choosing the fate of the galaxy by giving the hapless decision-maker a cue at just the right time. I guess that book was written in a more modern time than the earlier ones, though.

The main character's superior (from the First Foundation) is also a woman, IIRC.

I have to say that I find no fault in a writer who creates characters that reflect the social system of the time. I do not find the "scientist's beautiful daughter" role anything but amusing in old style science fiction. (Forbidden Planet for example) Old Science Fiction always contains things that modern science makes obsolete.

A modern novel which relegates women to being the beautiful assistant is more bothersome to me. But again it depends on the book or film, if all the characters are stereotypes I can't say the women have been treated unfairly.

I really think that there isn't much Science Fiction out there that deliberately oppresses women. I know for a fact that there is some "feminist" Sci-Fi. I've read some and for the most part I don't like it. The characters and plot tend to be distorted around the feminist agenda and the work suffers for it.

The problem is that radical neo-feminism* borders on religion. Religious fiction, unless handled carefully, gets very preachy. C. S. Lewis could do it. Stephen R. Lawhead can do it sometimes, but not always. In general, any work motivated by an ideology that has messianic or utopian aspirations will be preachy. Anti-utopianist ideologies, on the other hand can make good fiction**. I suspect the failure of utopian SF is that utopia doesn't mesh with our observations of reality. We observe cutthroat capitalism and nationalism and impotent international institutions. In the past we have observed oppresive totalitarian communism and statism***. Anythign else does not ring true to human nature.


* eg the [IIRC] U. C. Berkley proffesor who claimed Newton's Principia is a rape manual

** eg. Aldus Huxley's Brave New World

*** including traditional monarchies as statist

Scary feminist scifi? Anyone here ever read Sheri Tepper? o.O

Schlock ate the rest of my earlier post. Aww.

Anyway, what I meant by bringing up the earlier example of engineer/space frontier stories is that they seem to concentrate on physical obstacles to agendas they simply assume everyone has in common. While modern scifi does more social, political stuff where it does not just look at the gadgets that are going to get humanity to mars or wherever, but what might be happening _to_ humanity in the meantime. The old stories simply placed rayguns in the hands of a contemporary society. The more radical tales either regressed humanity to an earlier social/political stage, or, well, were Foundation (I'll stop here to avoid flaming by all of ya Foundation fans Is scifi merely limited to speculating about how a space elevator would be built? Shouldn't it also address how the building of a space elevator would affect humanity? You don't get something that big built without some serious political wrangling, for one thing.

So the golden age stuff seems to me to be a stage between the fantastic voyage type stuff of the *gasp* 1900's and modern scifi, with modern scifi (since the 70's or so) being the only era with a large amount of female writers in it. So, does that mean that the social and political stuff is a female influence? The male writers do it as much as the females, more since there are still more male scifi authours than female. It would be interesting to have a panel talking about that, though.

*runs from Anon as the Political Opinions warning klaxon blares*

Kerlyssa, good observations, on what older vs. nowadays sci-fi tends to theme on.

Pick up Donald Kingsbury's "Psychohistorical Crisis". Not very focused on the technology (which makes sense; we couldn't really imagine exactly what kind of tech we'll have in the early 80,000's A.D.), very about the characters, society, and government. An excellent and enjoyable book, on top of that. Caution, it's also a very thick one, both pagewise and densitywise.

Pick up anything by Robert J. Sawyer, a very good Canadian writer, who also does very society-centric science fiction. "Frameshift", "The Terminal Experiment", and "Flashforward" are my favourites of his (in no specific order). To truly enjoy his work, you need to be able to either accept or ignore the mild religious undercurrent which is noticable in some of his stories.

Not really, actually. I've seen one estimate of the cost of a space elevator that put it in the $10-20 billion range. Microsoft or Disney could build that by themselves. And whoever builds the first one is going to making MS and Disney look like very, very small fish indeed.

Cost is far from the only potential political wrangling point. Whose country are you going to put the thing in? Will the countries who are in the potential disaster zone should the thing ever fall be upset about it? It is too big to build in secret, so whoever wants to attempt it needs to get permission from EVERYBODY and I think we're a long way from that being likely.


Kerlyssa: Sheri Tepper was exactly the author I had in mind.

Most of my gamer friends were a cross of male and female. That's for both table top and LARP. The only problem I've had is that the guys seemed to take longer to make decisions than the females. Oh, and they repeatedly violated my Pikachu during one game. Played Magic:TG in olympia not long after it came out. used to love all night games of The Great Dalmuti.

In my opinion, the last decade or two has come so much farther with the female characters in Sci-Fi books. And TV shows/Movies.

I work in the IT field.

Hope this scares you, because I'll be joining Chani and Sandra for this panel.

Why would you need to get permission from everybody? The Soviet's did not with Sputnik - they just did it.

Location could be difficult - not very many 'stable' places on the equator. And the idea of having the socket on a ship has it's own problems - how to you get the masses of stuff you want to send up and down to the cable in the first place?

Kim Stanley Robinson's 'Mars' series has some good info on Space Elevators, on the author theme.

Libwolf

I'd argue that the best sci-fi focuses less on the technology and more on the human themes, as I stated before. They look at how the technology affects humanity (look at the 'Playing God' series, where people are uploaded into computers) or how humanity uses technology... or even ignores the technology in favor of the people in the setting, a la Dune.

And even if Modesitt gets lost in terms of his characterization, he does hit the human and socio-political aspects of sci-fi pretty well. One example of this is in Adiamante, where you've got two different groups of people, shaped in rather unique ways by the technology both use... and ultimately, they're all quite human. There's also an interesting commentary on the 'past' (our present) in another novel, and one interesting statement on radical feminism that I found particularly intriguing in said book:



Interesting little comment, isn't it? Especially when you look at the writings of some of the radical feminists that still publish.

Because Sputnik wasn't likely to crash and kill millions of people should it fell to Earth. The classic 'Beanstalk' concept for space elevators means that, should the beanstalk get cut, that you've got a long and presumably fairly thick string falling to Earth with a fantastic amount of KE at the 'loose' end. That's quite a bit to hit an area with, and such damage would indeed be international. Any company which tried to do this privately would probably get raided by the forces of their own country, and have its assets seized and its personnel held hostage, should any government feel that a private space elevator threatened its status as a major power... or even allowed for the possibility of enemy or rogue states to launch things into orbit that they didn't approve of.

Heh... I remember reading some of Robert J. Sawyer in Analog, especially his novel Starplex, way back in the day. And I've been meaning to ask a question about that for a while as well. One of these days...

Take care!

Well, there really isn't a potential disaster zone...the modern designs for space elevators all use cables constructed like ribbon. If the cable ever did break, the high end would fly away from earth (pulled outward by the centripetal acceleration of the counterweight), and the lower end would mostly burn up in atmosphere. The segment that was too low to the ground to burn up wouldn't weigh enough to cause significant damage.

As to where to build it...one plan that I've seen proposed is to put the Earth-based end on a platform floating in international waters. Not only does this get around most political/legal problems, but it also gives the possibility to maneuver slightly, thereby avoiding storms or inbound space junk.

*carefully tiptoes around the topic drift*

Women in gaming definately makes a difference, though as always, it depends entirely on the woman. In our group, it's actually a little bit sad - while her presence is treated as just another roleplayer (having been there since the start, etc etc) I have noticed a definate tendancy towards the not playing of female characters in her presence, as AFAICanTell, people seem a little bit uncomfortable playing a female when there's actually one right *there* to snigger when you do things "women wouldn't do", as it were. Granted, she doesn't dare play a male character, but it's an interesting effect, certainly. I guess it's just her not cutting a bunch of males slack for acting properly in a female-female interaction (c'mon, us not knowing how women act when there aren't men around is kinda hard to fix...), but even so,it's affected party makeups somewhat.

I'm not saying that females in the group ruin things at all, I just kinda got offtrack, methinks. Then again, part of the "discouragement" of playing females is possibly exxagerated in that when she runs, the game suddenly gets a whole lot more social interaction going on... which again, makes playing certain characters kinda tricky.

*carefully tiptoes back to the topic*

On two separate occasions, I have accidentally ended up in a position to hear women talking amongst themselves when there were no men there and they didn't realize I could hear them. (In neither case was I deliberately eavesdropping.)

Believe me, men are probably much happier not knowing how women act when the men aren't around. I don't think of myself as easily shocked or suffering overmuch from shame but...I wouldn't talk like that in a locker room!

[center]8O [/center]

Oh and, to all the ladies who are reading this: thank you for going easy on us most of the time. Really.

Hmm. When I'm with other women I don't talk any dirtier than I do with men around. But then I tend to hang out with other mommies. I must admit though that some conversations do get into things like the nitty-gritty TMI of labor and delivery or pregnancy which you men might prefer not to know. Maybe that's exactly what you're referring to.

It would be interesting to run a female gamers only campaign to see if there were any major differences in the way the game was played. I wouldn't be surprised if there were.

Interesting point about men possibly being less likely to play female characters with a woman in the group. I've been in groups where guys have played women, even knowing I'd be there, so I guess it's not true for everyone.

But I admit I am often skeptical about people playing characters of the opposite sex, although I wouldn't criticize another player unless they asked for advice about playing a woman. I just find that in many cases people don't play characters of the opposite sex well. Either they go for stereotypes, or their character is played so that their gender doesn't matter and isn't at all reflected...so the group always thinks of them as the player's gender anyways.

One funny thing that I noticed with a certain group of players. One of our players/GMs really was into playing female characters, or bringing female NPCs into the game that were his former characters. They'd pretty much always be incredibly beautiful. But for some reason he'd get almost upset and jealous if a male player had a female character that was also attractive and got attention in game....but he wouldn't mind if a female character played by a woman got the same reactions. It was odd.



I know a local gaming convention has an all women's D&D game every year, and it's quite popular. I'd love to try it sometime. I've never gamed at a convention.

I've been in groups where the female players have outnumbered the male ones, but not one that was all women.

I've been thinking about it a little and I've changed my mind. I'm not sure there would be much difference in a women only game.

I realized that with women who are introduced to role playing there is a winnowing process that takes place and, in general, only the ones who really love gaming are willing to put with the baggage that comes along with it. Gaming carries stigma and baggage for men too, but I don't think it is as heavy.

That might be the source of the phenomenon that several people have mentioned where the addition of a female gamer caused more actual roleplaying and less fantasized goofing around. The female gamer who sticks with the game has already waded through piles of crap, and she's learned how to cut through it pretty effectively.

Kudos to all you men out there who have gamed with women without giving them more crap to deal with.

Okay, I'm gonna hop on the bandwagon without really knowing where it's headed and throw in my $.02.

As far as reading scifi, I've dealt with quite a few members of the fairer sex who are just as gung-ho about it as any guy I've ever met. They know the science from the fiction, and know a good story when they see one withoput getting hung up on details.

With RPGs, I regret, my experiences have been less stellar. In fact, not a month ago, I was accosted by a FOAF (freind of a friend) on a Friday night just before our Shadowrun game was about to begin. "Why," she asked, sticking her chest out in a manner that I'm sure she thought was assertive, but I found merely irritating, "can't girls play this game?"
I paused for a moment, trying to come up with a plausible answer. I've met several ladies who enjoy Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2020, and Rifts. Why has there never been a girl in my Shadowrun game?
"None has ever asked to join," I replied, truthfully.
"Why not?" she countered, somewhat deflated at this revelation that it was mere circumstance, and not some male chauvinistic plot that kept our game estrogen-free.
"Okay, you seem like a nice enough person. How do you feel about killing people and breaking things?" I continued.
"That's awful!" she exclaimed.
"That's Shadowrun," I replied. "General defiance of the law and disrespect for human life are par for course in this game. If you want to play, I'm willing to teach you, but you have to be willing to play. And in this game, that means having a character who's bound to do some pretty awful things. Yeah, it's all pretend, but the implications are pretty harsh."
She conceded that it didn't sound like her way to spend an evening, and we left each other on mutually friendly terms.
I've played with chatty attention whores of both genders. I've played with munchkins of both genders. I've sat in on a session of 15-year old girls who decided that their characters' first priority, collectively, was to get pregnant. I have nothing against women into sci-fi or RPGs, but allow me to say I take it on a case-by-case basis.

If you read all that drivel, I commend you.

Go ahead and commend me. Thanks for the insights.

I find it fascinating that the 15 year old girls wanted to get pregnant. They're fantasizing doing something they don't dare do in real life which is a primary purpose for role playing games. Interesting that they'd pick that particular fantasy though.

Is this bandwagon headed somewhere? I thought it was just a scenic drive to help me and Chani and Kreely collect material. It's worked for me at least. Now I feel like I can take on this panel thing.

Commendations all around! Back to base for tea and medals!


We found it interesting too, and never got a plausable explanation from any of them. This topic even prompted a Q&A in Palladium's Rifter magazine.
The dialogue when my character entered was certainly interesting:
GM: Your friend is being held in a fairly painful lock-grip by a large stranger, clad entirely in black mil-spec gear. He has a REALLY big pistol pointed at her head.
Player 1: Is he cute? Does he look like he'd make a good dad?
GM: Uh, he's wearing a balaclava and threatening your friend. What do you think?
Player 2: It's just a misunderstanding. Hey, stranger, why don't you let our friend go and take off that mask? I bet you're really handsome.
Me: Try anything and I'll paint the wall with her brains, chummer.
Player 3 (being used as human shield): Um, guys, could you hold off on the flirting until I'm safe?
Player 1: OK, look, let our friend go and we'll give you the wildest sex you've ever had, deal?
Me: (blink, blink) I dunno what you're trying to pull, but it ain't funny. Put your weapons down and put your hands on your heads, NOW!
(They comply. My character restrians them.)
Me: OK, now explain to me why you're suggesting we have a wild orgy, here, in the middle of a corporate compound crawling with security, when we're trying to do a basic B&E?
Them: Ummm...


Go get 'em, Sandra!

Another online perspective, from the female players of Everquest...

http://p066.ezboard.com/fwtfcomicsfrm2. ... ic&index=1

In my experiences with gaming, I've played both male and female characters. Trust me, trying to play a male dwarf named Baub, and then having an accident happen and the next thing I know, I'm Baubette, it's a bit bothersome. Especially since my throws were much better as Baub than Baubette.

I think it takes a certain type of female to be a good gamer. For one thing, she's really got to have an excellent imagination. Without that, there's no point to gaming.

I think it's worth pointing out that a good deal of geeks an' gamers are actually intimidated by "real" women. I have a friend who's favourite stratagy at the regular MTG torneys that my friends all regularly attend (and indeed run) is to merely lean forward- never under estimate the advantage of a well timed distraction...

Az

That goes for anybody, Kreel. And trust me, I've had unimaginitive people who THINK they're imaginative try.

I know people so unimaginative it borders on a complex. Unimaginitive to the point where they honestly do have trouble separating themselves and their IRL lives from their IRC/Ayenee-style roleplaying characters and their going-ons.

Y'know... the kind who don't role-play amongst friends, but go on chat services and "roleplay" amongst thousands of people who all have different ideas about what roleplaying is about. When all they're really doing is chatting colorfully.