In-Body Experiences: Alex Beecroft's LIONESS OF CYGNUS FIVE

When I taught a class on Science Fiction and Fantasy for children and young adults (during my days as a professor at Simmons College), I spent a lot more time reading SF than I do today. In part because my interests now have shifted to romance, but also because so often hard SF does not focus on interpersonal relationships, while most SF romance does not satisfy my desire, grounded in years of fantasy and SF reading, to dwell in a thoughtfully created secondary world where ideas, not just personal relationships, matter. Which explains my delight when I heard that Alex Beecroft, one of my favorite contemporary and historical romance writers, had jumped on the SF ship.

The versatile Beecroft's latest, Lioness of Cygnus Five, is set in a space-faring future, after humans on Earth have spread far and wide throughout the galaxies. Spreading along with them is the human penchant for fighting between different cultural groups, groups that base their identities on opposite sets of beliefs. One of Lioness's protagonists is a member of the "The Kingdom," a low tech-Luddite religious force determined to colonize all other human planets for their own good. Aurora Campos was once the most gifted and revered "holy warrior" among The Kingdom's soldiers, touted by many as a new Joan of Arc, but a very public moral mistake has left her dishonored and disgraced. Shunted off to the hinterlands, she now only rates command of a lowly transport ship, staffed by other Kingdom "freaks and rejects," with a cargo of convicts bound for the prison planet Cygnus Five.

The da Vinci surgical system: a precursor to
Bryant Jones' technology?

One of those prisoners is wily Bryant Jones, who has suffered his own fall from grace. After his planet, part of the "Source," a godless, secular, and technologically advanced culture, is conquered by The Kingdom, his work as a highly reputable persona surgeon (a kind of super high tech plastic surgeon) is regarded as criminal. When one of his underground surgeries is interrupted and his patient dies because of it, Bryant is convicted of murder, and bound over to be exiled to the prison colony of Cygnus Five. But Bryant is determined to use his superior technological knowledge to take control over Captain Campos's ship before they reach the planet.

At the start of the novel, neither Jones nor Campos has much respect for the other. Jones thinks of Campos, "She was an odd-looking woman, somewhere between olive-skinned beauty and prize-fighting troll"; "it was kind of pathetic seeing a woman so butch make any gestures at all in the direction of femininity" (114, 223). For her part, while Campos finds Jones a bit more physically appealing, she still regards him as a distasteful threat:

A beanpole of a man. Black, like Mboge [her 2nd in command] but a paler shade, his oval face freckled all over like a plover's egg and his shaggy hair, which curled naturally into tight spiraled ringlets, worn like a bouncy cloud.... Yet when she looked at him, fragility was the last thing she saw. No that was a snake. A little brown vine snake of the kind that had been harmless when it left Earth, but had developed potent venom in its new home. (409)

Nor does either have much respect for the other's culture or beliefs, assuming that their own is of course far superior:

Jones on Campos:

Her planet must have been under Kingdom rule so long they'd forgotten they weren't free. She must have been born under it and raised by parents, grandparents who were born under it. It must feel like nature to her, thinking the way that she thought. He'd often said before that he felt sorry for the dupes who actually believed it all, but this was the first time he'd actually meant it" (797).

Campos to Jones, when Jones exclaims his disgusted that the escape launch has to be flown manually:

"What planet are you from that doesn't appreciate human skill, Jones?.... God gave some of us speed and reflexes because he meant us to use them, and didn't give them to others because they were meant to do something else. That's basic orthodoxy" (577).

Campos is a naïve but ruthless do-gooder, bent on self-sacrifice, or so Jones believes, while Campos is certain that Jones is a sneaky weasel, always looking out for number one. But after the prison transport is attacked, and the two crash-land together on the detention planet, they are forced to interact in order to survive. And their opinions of each other, and of each other's values, slowly begin to change:

Enhancements, he'd said. He had enhancements to tell when food was poisoned, and presumably enhancements to heal himself fast. How many of my people over the years would have lived if they'd had the same? It was an unsettling thought. Why would God disapprove of healing anyway? (1061)

"Mind rape" she'd called it [his culture's use of nanites to influence others' feelings], which was disturbing because he hadn't thought of it that way before, and having thought of it made all the times he'd done it sound kind of sordid. You certainly didn't defend people from one sort of rape by carrying out another. (1567)


Jones and Campos begin to discover the value in difference, and the value of working with someone who appears to be your total opposite.

Medical nanites

Before Jones has fully embraced this new insight, however, he transfers medical nanites to Campos (after promising her not to), as a defensive move. But when Campos decides to singlehandedly try and rescue her crew, captured by rebellious prisoners, he decides to use the nanites for her protection—by changing her body into a man's.

Without, of course, asking her first.

Beecroft has penned an adventure-filled utopian science fiction romance, an opposites-attract love story that also interrogates issues of gender and bodies, all with intelligence and a healthy dollop of humor. While Lioness of Cygnus Five will never be mistaken for hard SF, it does gift its readers with an engaging balance of extrapolative thought-experiment and unexpected romance.


What have been your favorite feminist SF romances of 2016?



Photo credits:
da Vinci Surgical System: Londonist
Medical nanites: Softpedia

Alex Beecroft

Lioness of Cygnus Five

indie published, 2016

Friday Miscellany: Reviewers and Nebulas and Dads, oh my

A few brief thoughts for your Friday feminist romance consideration:

First, a link to Noah Berlansky's Salon post from earlier this week, "Highbrow Media's Sexist Blind Spot: Romance." Berlansky's not the first to point out the sexism behind major review journals' lack of coverage of the romance genre. But he's one of the first men to do so in a national publication. Do you think editors will start listening?


At least one appears to have done so: here's a link to the Washington Post's new romance review column, written by novelist Sarah MacLean. While mysteries get reviewed every Monday in the Post, both romance and science fiction have to settle for once a month attention (see explanation here). Still, a step in the right direction....

Also making news this week, the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) announced the nominees for the 2013 Nebula Awards, given to the best science fiction and fantasy books published in the United States. In a post last year, I had promised to spend a chunk of my summer reading science fiction romance, as it was a sub-genre with which I didn't have much familiarity. That reading (such that it was :-( ) did not inspire me to write any RNFF reviews or posts, so I'm hoping that some of the books on the Nebula list will prove worth discussing in feminist/romance terms. I've read two on the Young Adult list (Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy): Alaya Dawn Johnson's dystopian fantasy The Summer Prince, about which I blogged here, and Jaclyn Moriarty's A Corner of White, which I enjoyed immensely but which didn't really deal with feminist issues. I'm looking forward to reading several others on the Norton/Nebula list which look as if they might have romance connections. Haven't read any of the nominated novels for adults, though, perhaps because they seem far less romance-inclined than the YA books. Any fantasy/SF readers out there who can give the list a look and let us know which (if any) on the list might interest romance readers?

And one last note: this weekend is my Dad's birthday, and that, combined with thinking about the father in Robin York's New Adult romance Deeper, about which I blogged earlier this week, has me wondering—who are your favorite fathers in romance? In particular, can you think of fathers who actively support their daughters in ways that you would consider feminist?






Photo credits:
SFWA: SFWA.org
Feminist Father shirt: Feminist Philosophers

1980s Feminism in Lois McMaster Bujold's SHARDS OF HONOR

After the recent fracas over sexism in the science fiction writing community earlier this month (see this post), I promised myself to spend this summer spending more time tracking down and reading science fiction romance. But where to start? I decided to begin with one of the most acclaimed writers in the field, the multi-award-winning Lois McMaster Bujold. Before I began writing this blog, I had read two books in her The Sharing Knife fantasy series, enjoying the first but finding the second a bit frustrating, romance-wise. But I'd never tackled her science fiction, worried that the 1986 publication date of the first book in the Vorkosigan series might indicate a rather dated presentation of sexual politics, a datedness that would seem all the more awkward in a genre meant to depict the future, not the past. But jumping in mid-series seemed wrong, too, so off I went to the library, to pick up a copy of Shards of Honor.

Shards tells the story of the romance between thirty three-year-old Commander Cordelia Naismith, head of a scientific survey team from Beta Colony, and forty-something Captain Aral Vorkosigan, a former admiral in the militaristic Barrayar fleet. Stranded together on a partially-explored planet after Vorkosigan's enemies foment a mutiny and attack Naismith's party, Cordelia and Vorkosigan must work together while they navigate unfamiliar territory to meet up with and retake Vorkosigan's ship. Several back-and-forth tussles between Vorkosigan and his betrayers follow their days-long trek, days during which the two shared stories as well as stores. After Vorkosigan regains his command, and his ship, he proposes marriage to his prisoner, Cordelia, but acknowledges that a plan to invade Escobar, an ally of Beta, that factions in Barrayan are pushing but which he opposes, might make such a relationship problematic. Before Cordelia gives him her answer, her own crew, with the aid of Vorkosigan's betrayers, sneaks in to rescue her. Knowing that their rescue has once again put Vorkosigan in danger, Cordelia takes out the plotters before departing with her team to inform her home planet of the impending invasion.

The two meet again in the book's second act, under even more highly charged circumstances: The proposed Barrayan invasion of Escobar now underway, Cornelia has been sent (rather improbably, but since this is Bujold's first book, we can cut her some slack) on a mission to distract the Barrayan fleet while another team delivers a war-changing weapon to Escobar. Lives, governments, even entire societies are at stake as both Cornelia and Vorkosigan fight to keep war-changing secrets from each other, even while maintaining their own personal sense of honor in the face of their growing respect and love.

The novel's depiction of the star-crossed romance is understated, but satisfying. Both Cordelia and Vorkosigan are mature, sensible adults, not given to histrionics despite the difficult situations in which they find themselves. Each feels compelled by his or her own sense of duty and honor, and respects the same desire in the other, even when it conflicts with his or her own. Brief, but heartfelt moments of connection make their feelings for one another believable, even after being together for such a short time. Can their romance, or the book in which it appears, though, be read as feminist?

Sylvia Kelso terms Bujold a "covert feminist," one whose feminism lies in incorporating (heterosexual) "femalestuff" into the predominantly "malestuff" world of SF rather than in openly espousing feminist ideas or themes. In Shards, much of this covert feminism lies in demonstrating Cordelia's competence in a male-oriented world of political intrigue and battle. Cordelia weathers the difficult multi-day hike without complaint, as physically tough if not quite as strong as Vorkosigan. She can tie up and threaten to drown a psychiatrist who endangers Vorkosigan, can outwit and defeat a group of mutineers, and can command male subordinates with aplomb. She proves herself over and over to be as competent as any male SF hero.

Yet even while proving Cordelia's competence, Bujold must simultaneously code her as distinctly and reassuringly "feminine." Cordelia is an astrocartographer, not a fighter. She mourns her subordinate killed by the attacking Barrayans, and insists that she will not leave another injured man behind while she and Vokosigan make their cross-country journey, even though Vorkosigan argues that it would be kinder to slit the mentally-incapacitated boy's throat. She serves as caretaker for the injured man throughout their journey, comforting, guiding, even feeding him just like a baby. Even as she comes to admire and care for the bitingly honest Vorkosigan, she still regards his culture as barbaric in its militaristic focus and disregard for human life.

Such qualities can be seen as a feminist assertion of the importance of typically denigrated feminine qualities of caretaking and life-giving. But they serve to reassure both Vorkosigan and male readers that allowing women to serve in the military will not lead to their inevitable emasculation: As Vorkosigan notes, Cordelia is as "professional as any officer I've ever served with, without once trying to be an imitation man."

If the book had continued in this vein, I would have found its engagement with feminism typical of its era, a time when pushback against the gains of 1970s feminism required a difficult balancing act between depicting strong women and assuaging male fears of newly-empowered female protagonists. The book's third section, which depicts Cordelia's second separation from Vorkosigan and her ultimate decision to return to him, leaving her own society to become a part of his, mirrors the sexual politics of this opening section, depicting a competent, independent woman whose most important role ultimately becomes that of caretaker: this time, of a drunken, despondent Vorkosigan.

But Shards' middle section introduces a sexual predator antagonist who fashions himself the current-day embodiment of the Marquis de Sade. An old boyhood friend of Vorkosigan's, Admiral Vorrutyer purportedly serves as the embodiment of the wider corruption of the Barrayan political structure that Vorkosigan must sacrifice himself to defeat. Even though Vorrutyer appears in only ten pages of the book, the ghost of his decidedly non-consensual female-directed sadism hangs like a pall over the balance of the book. The pall takes on ghastly physical presence in the form of seventeen "uterine replicators" sent to Vorkosigan, containing fetuses apparently extracted from women who were raped by Barrayaran soldiers during the invasion, several on orders from Vorrutyer. The perverted Admiral, who almost but not quite succeeds in raping Cordelia, can be read not only as the cancer at the heart of Barrayan society, but also more disturbingly, as the threat of punishment against the competent SF woman heroine that always lurks in the wings.

I'm looking forward to reading more of the Vorkosigan series, to see if and how Bujold's feminism changes as the books' publication dates grow closer in time to the present. And if the whiff of sexual violence against competent women continues to linger, a sexist smog, in the Barrayaran air...

Photo/Illustration Credits:

What Can I Do?: Real Life. Woman Talk.

Uterine Replicator: TV Tropes

Lois McMaster Bujold,

Shards of Honor.

Baen Books, 1986.

Next time on RNFF:

What's new about "New Adult"?

Sexism in the SF community

This past week, discussions of what and what does not constitute sexism have roiled the Science Fiction writing community. The controversy initially began as a response to a two-part column on women in SF by Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg, which appeared in the Winter and Spring 2013 editions of the Bulletin of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. Many SFWA members objected to the first column's condescending title, "Literary Ladies," as well as to the second column's discussion of a now-deceased female SF editor's looks. Even more objected to the art used on the cover of SFWA #200, in which the second column appeared. When Resnick and Malzberg wrote a follow-up column in their own defense (issue #202), said defense—that anonymous critics who deemed their writing, or the cover of #200, sexist were simply "liberal fascists" advocating censorship—sprayed lighter fluid on an already sky-high fire.

The offending Bulletin cover

Hundreds of SF writers, many of them women, blogged expressing their frustration and outrage (see a partial list here), including author Ann Aguirre, who detailed the many sexist attitudes and acts she's encountered in the SF community during her career as a female SF writer. A handful of hateful, obscene comments in response to Aguirre's post clearly demonstrate that a belittling, denigrating attitude toward women writers is still alive and squirming in small pockets of the SF world.

What's encouraging, though, is that the silent majority of SF-writing men, those who do not agree with sexism but who, by not calling their sexist brethren on their egregious behavior, indirectly benefit from it, seem to finally realize that they need to speak out. Including SFWA President John Scalzi, who offered a letter of apology to the membership on June 2. And on June 5, SFWA Bulletin editor Jean Rabe (a woman, ironically) tendered her resignation.

At its best, Science Fiction celebrates the possibilities of the future, the wonders of technology, how we as human beings can create progress, both social and political. It doesn't seem too much to expect that some of that progress be in the realm of gender relations.

I've not reviewed very much SF romance on this blog. But this controversy has made me eager to read more, written by either women or men, to see what their visions of gender relations in the future might be like. Surely Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness isn't the only SF title to tackle this issue. Any recommendations of new (or classic) feminist SF romances are more than welcome.

Next time on RNFF

When adolescent male fantasy and

slut shaming collide:

Tom Leveen's manicpixiedreamgirl