Outcrufting Books: Sphereland And Beyond

[woodwardiocom]

Since I certainly have too many books for our shelves, and quite arguably have a lot of bad ones, I'm getting a little more diligent about outcrufting the ones I don't need. (They typically go into our giveaway bin in the foyer, thence into a Goodwill donations box at some point.) I'm going to document some of them here, mostly just so I can snark about them.

• Starswarm and Starship by Brian Aldiss. Why would I reread Starship when I have Orphans Of The Sky four shelves to the right?
• Nemesis by Asimov. One of his lesser novels, where the protagonists are unhappy women, with repeated descriptions of how plain they are.
• The Coming Race by Bulwer-Lytton. Interesting for its place in the genre, but not much good in itself.
• Wonder Boys by Chabon. The movie is so much better!
• Sphereland by Burger. I'm going to skim this one to see if it has any merit, but I'm pretty sure I don't need to keep Flatland fanfic.
• The Timeline Wars by Barnes. An omnibus trilogy of minor alt-universe novels, that is probably taking up more space on my shelf than it deserves.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Sphereland was actually quite good. At least, I enjoyed it.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

On your recommendation, I tried re-reading the first chapter today. In Flatland, the sexism (and classisim) is so extreme, that it in no way resembles sanity. (It looks like either satire or the actual beliefs of a Victorian, though I understand it was intended to be the former. Poe's Law is in full force here.) Sphereland opens with a discussion of how women's position in that world has improved over the past two generations, but it is still sexist, and it's much harder to tell if it's still intended to be satire, or if it's the actual beliefs of Mr. Burger. Or, possibly worse, not his actual beliefs, but rather an attempt to remove some of the sexism, without removing all of it, because removing all of it would have been "unbelievable", in a book about sentient geometry. One of the fundamental problems of 20th century SF is authors who can believe in any crazy idea, except that women will ever be equals with men.

Anyhoo, I envisioned my daughter reading that bit, and decided I didn't need to keep the book. She can learn about Einsteinian geometry and the expanding universe in a book that doesn't open with insults to her gender.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

The sexism in Flatland was meant to be satirical from everything I've read and heard. I'm not sure what Burger's own beliefs were, but my guess is that he was attempting to remove the sexism and bring the book up-to-date. Of course, Burger was a product of his time, and what he might have seen as more enlightened we would see as backward.

That's just a guess, of course.

You might want to see if later parts of the book hold up better. I do understand not wanting to give the book to your daughter, though. Recently, I re-read a few Xanth novels, and realized that there was no way I was going to give these to my daughters.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Another book that I loved as a kid was George Gamow's "One Two Three Infinity." However, that book includes some casual racism that makes it hard for me to recommend today, at least not without a warning.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I remember the bit about the Hottentots from 1-2-3-Infinity. When I read it as a kid, I was under the vague impression that the Hottentots were some kind of Austrian Hapsburgs, which was probably for the best. Given the complete and utter irrelevance of the word "Hottentot" to modern society, I think that's the impression I'll give my daughter, too...

At this point, any book that I wouldn't hand to my daughter (prior to her going to college) has already got a strike against it, and my copy of Sphereland isn't pretty, nor does it have sentimental value, nor have I ever felt the need to re-read it in the past 25 years. I'll re-read one more chapter from later in the book, but it had better wow me.