[anti-rec] ...

[kaberett]

Dear everyone who has ever recommended Sheri S Tepper to me: please don't ever do so again.

I have been pointed at a pretty damning review [SO MANY TRIGGER WARNING, see below], of which the best part is:

On top of all this, the sea level is rising rapidly - oh , not because of the icecaps melting for anthropogenic reasons, that happened already and wasn't so serious. This time, it's because ice comets which were trapped deep inside the Earth when it was still forming are melting and the water is seeping upwards, raising the sea levels to a point where only tall mountains will survive.

When I say "the best part", I mean the rest of it discusses paedophilia, cultural appropriation, ~fantasy-Asia~ and talking. rapist. horses. If you can face wading through that, though, then the (well-written!) review is very much worth a read if only for the squawks of horror you will undoubtedly emit. Seriously, people, we are talking OH JOHN RINGO NO levels of dire, here.

... as someone who's been repeatedly recced stuff by Tepper on the grounds of "trans* stuff" and "queer stuff", er. Well. Yeah. Put it this way, the only book of hers I've read was kind of gross about genderfluidity and three quarters of the queer characters died, never mind the fact that it was the kind of fantasy novel that The Colour Of Magic was written to spork, in which EVERYONE IS ALREADY CARRYING EVERYONE ELSE'S QUEST ITEMS.

edit: holy shit someone in comments at that posting points out that this person seriously advocates sterilising mentally ill people and sending them to concentration camps walled cities. WOW.

Comments

[amethystfirefly]

.... My brain hurts. ;____;

[azurelunatic]

I have read both Tepper's Beauty and something by John Ringo (not the OH JOHN RINGO NO one though) and Beauty tried to be progressive but wound up ... okay.

Imagine getting into a rollercoaster ride carriage painted in dainty Disney-Sleeping-Beauty colors. For a while it is charming and scenic.

Midway down what you think is the Big Hill, the scenery abruptly and with no warning changes from Sleeping Beauty's Fantasy Europe to industrial-apocalypse-dystopia as written by Harlan Ellison after Heinlein forgot to turn on the fan after taking a dump in there. It then ricochets through bleak wartime newsreels and other random selections, with bonus creepy fetishization dressed up in an anti-ablism costume, in a not-sure-if-stockholm-syndrome-or-real way. And then there's the rape and reproductive horror. The total effect is entirely nauseating -- but difficult to tell whether the worst part is the imagery or the sudden jerks.

The exit is American McGee's Sleeping Beauty, which is restful after the previous bits.



The Ringo was better because it was coherent.


Now, if you actually want a complete brainbender of a novel that leaves you going "... the hell did I just read?!!?" without the vertigo, try Matt Ruff's Sewer, Gas, and Electric, although I cannot vouch for anything other than the existence of a mentally disabled woman of color as an excellent protagonist for one section, having read it over 16 years ago while not looking out for various sorts of aaaaaaaaa.

[azurelunatic]

Oh wait, there is the Racist Plague, which kills basically all the black people.

[kaberett]

Oh good.

[azurelunatic]

(It is presented as a Bad Inexplicable Thing That Happened, and then explained later on. Bad voice recognition and a psychotic computer are involved. Likely to have been visited by the Suck Fairy.)

[glass_icarus]

Oh god yeah, Sheri S. Tepper is a mess. A MESSSSSSSS. I'm sorry you didn't have proper warning D:

(I remember actually enjoying Singer from the Sea as an adolescent! Then I grew up and reread and uh, wow, talk about fucked up formative-years reading (which characterizes so much of my earlier reading, sadly; fucking SF/F).)

[kaberett]

IDEK. IDEKKKKKKK. I now feel kind of gross that one of her books is in the LGBT+ library I run. Just. Ew.

[inoru_no_hoshi]

.... I now have zero desire to read her works. /o\

Have some pretty butterflies instead. *points at icon*

[hairyears]

I read Margarets, found it readable, but felt no further desire to read her work.

.…That interview. Oh dear.

Rational and compelling until you hit the 'equality' court and her division of humanity into incurables and, er, human beings. It has the ring of a child's "If I were ruler of the World", and serves as a warning that simplistic views of right and wrong are dangerous; especially so, when combined with a naive political theory that 'they' are unfit rulers and 'we' would reign with wise and rational justice. Destructive dictatorships and theocracies grow in that manure.

[elialshadowpine]

I want to say I read something by Sheri Tepper when I was a teen. I don't actually remember what book it was, as it's been a really long time ago now, but I do remember the visceral "what the fuck no" reaction that I have since associated with her name. And mind I was reading some problematic-as-fuck stuff as a teen (Piers Anthony anyone?) so for that to have stuck with me this long... yeah, I am glad that I have not gone back to pick up any of her other work no matter how many times I have seen it recc'd.

[merryway]

I was passed a copy of beauty, in a kind of 'this is a beautiful thing and means a lot to me'. I think we still have it somewhere, unless it was charity shopped during the Anne bishop and friends purge. The one good thing it did was introduce me to a piece of Swinburne I rather like.

I am ... not sure how to feel about her having topped that one so dramatically with this, wow O.o

[steorra]

... Whoa.

I know someone who really likes Tepper but didn't think I should read it because it wouldn't be in line with my reading tastes.

But ... especially that link you add in the edit ... wow.

The idea that someone's actions could qualify them as "not actually human" is of course appalling. I am linguistically surprised at her use of "human" for the behavioural traits and "person", apparently, for biological traits: "Persons who look human but who are uncontrollable or who habitually hurt other people will no longer be defined as human. Every person born of human parents is not necessarily human." I would have expected the distinction to be drawn the other way round, with "human" standing for the biological properties and "person" standing for the other stuff, cf. those who argue that dolphins should be considered non-human persons. (Not that changing the terminology would have any effect on how appalling the idea is.)

[noldo]

More cheerful things she says in the Strange Horizons review you link:

Mother Teresa would have done more for humanity by convincing the poor of India to use birth control than she did by being sainted.

And for extra super mega racist fun:

Tribal religions, languages, and cultures are bad news. No one with any sense would ever start a war with a tribal country because you would never have any way of knowing who the enemy is at any given time. It took Bill Clinton a few short weeks to figure this out. Bush will never figure it out if he lives to be a hundred. You can conquer and dominate a tribal country, as "the Raj" did in India, but you cannot "work with it" to instill democracy or any other "-cracy." And if you turn over a country to a tribal people, it turns overnight into a tyranny with one tribe dominant.

I have no words whatsoever.