Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men: No Plans for the Future by Sara Martin is an academic study of several male authors and their relatively recent work.
The book, in their own words:
“Exploring a broad selection of writers and works, the fourteen chapters present a panoramic overview of men’s contributions to current SF and explore their slow but noticeable progress in the representation of gender. The impact of feminism and gender studies, and the demands of readers, have profoundly transformed men’s SF, which now presents far more caring and vulnerable male characters. The old stereotypes are being replaced by a collective reflection on how men and masculinity are changing, though the lack of a common agenda results in novels that, while exciting and often challenging, sometimes miss the chance to imagine a better, anti-patriarchal, pro-feminist future for men and for all human beings…”
Masculinity here focuses on male authors exclusively in the exploration of masculinity and male characters in recent science fiction. The authors explored are Robert Charles Wilson, Geoff Ryman, Samuel R. Delany, Richard K. Morgan, John Scalzi, Iain M. Banks, Ernest Cline, James S.A. Corey, Colson Whitehead, Andy Weir, Daniel H. Wilson, Ian McDonald, Yoon Ha Lee¹, Tade Thompson, Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson.
Most of the chapters focus on one author, and sometimes only a couple of works by that author. A couple of chapters of the book try to pair a couple of authors together. Geoff Ryman’s novel Lust is paired with Samuel R. Delany’s Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One is contrasted with Andy Weir’s The Martian. I think that these chapters are less effective than their singular counterparts, the arguments and thesis diluted by having two smaller pieces in the same chapter that try to make the same point. The author tries to have sub-divisions of her thesis tied to the individual works and thus we get some doubling up; I think this technique does not quite work as well as the author hoped. The book would be stronger, I think, in removing the duplicative works, or discussing other aspects of them instead.
While the criticism and analysis is overall interesting in many cases, I perceived, rightly or wrongly, a strong and sometimes overwhelming bias in the direction of the author’s thesis, that the novels aren’t, in fact, imagining a better anti-patriarchal, pro-feminist future for men. That in a nutshell is the heart of the book’s thesis: These books, and thus the science fiction field in general might be somewhat better than earlier science fiction by men, but progress is at best minimal.
To get to brass tacks on this, the author’s choice of Delany and Ryman was a rather uncomfortable choice for me, since both books have a strong theme and central axis around a topic that I as a reader would not care to read: incest. Like all of the chapters in the book, the author holds back no “spoilers” and freely discusses deep details of the book. I did not care to linger on this chapter of the book at all. Other chapters are much more palatable and interesting, as the author explores, for example, The Culture in Iain Banks novels, the missed opportunities in the Richard K. Morgan Takeshi Kovacs books, and more. Her opening chapter on The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson might be the best work in the entire book; it has gotten me to want to re-read the book at some point, in the light of her analysis. The book is thought-provoking in other works studied as well. Her analysis of Holden in the Expanse series bears some thinking about.
But there is, in my view, a weakness in the book in that there are clearly some axes, and even one personal one that the author seems intent on grinding. The Scalzi Old Man’s War books are criticized for moving away from a character and their story, which doesn’t feel in line with discussing the thesis of the book at all. Her analysis of Cline’s Ready Player One and Ready Player Two is practically gleeful in tearing them apart; her disdain and dislike of the books and her analysis of the world is something that any fan of the books is going to react strongly, and negatively, toward. Far from being objective, she seems *disappointed* in a lot of the books cited here, such as Tade Thompson’s work, and even Kim Stanley Robinson.
The chapter on Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse novels seems to have a rather uncomfortable thesis that since Wilson is an Indigenous writer, his works have gotten positive criticism but “should be re-appraised from a less lenient point of view”. Her view of the books is scarcely less scathing than her look at Cline, and finds them “quite problematic”, partly because they focus on the main male characters.
And then there is Ian McDonald’s Luna series. It’s not a curious choice, since it is a wide-scale space opera that does imagine a corporate-feudal future on the moon, but at the surface, there isn’t that much to that series that speaks to masculinity and patriarchy that stands out from anything else to really discuss. Unfortunately, the second paragraph reveals to me why she decided to include McDonald’s series in this volume:
“The problem is that McDonald’s tendency to set his fiction in exotic locations often results in blatant cultural appropriations…”
The author goes on at length about this, and when she steers away from that, focuses on the economic politics of the novel at length much more than the topic of her book, Masculinity. When we get to the conclusion portion of this chapter, once again, the author goes right back on the cultural appropriation hammer on McDonald’s work. A look at the footnotes reveals that the author had an interview with McDonald about cultural appropriation some years ago, and the author was clearly dissatisfied with the answers that he gave in response. So, I read this as the author including McDonald’s work at least partly based on her dissatisfaction with a completely different aspect of McDonald’s work. There is no connective tissue in the chapter between cultural appropriation and her topic of masculinity whatsoever, and its inclusion does not provide any support for her thesis. It’s not just the weakest chapter in the book, the chapter left me upset at the author’s approach. It made me start to question the author’s approach throughout the book. Again, note above, her chapter on Cline’s books and Wilson’s books seems to be inclusions for the purposes of drawing blood.
The frustrating thing is that the book’s topic for exploration is a fertile and interesting basis for an academic work such as this. The author’s choice of authors (even leaving aside McDonald, and skipping over Ryman and Delany) aligns with her thesis that change and growth in this area has been disappointingly small. My read, based on my own reading of the genre, and granted that I am not an academic, is that the author’s choices are deliberate to her thesis. I think that there has been more progress than the author’s thesis admits to. Is there a lot of work to be done to have male authors “imagine a better, anti-patriarchal, pro-feminist future for men and for all human beings.” Yes. But I think the situation is not quite as dire as the author says.
Is the book worth reading for the non-academic? I am on the knife edge about that. There is some interesting analysis of the works here, interleaved with the problems noted above. But this is no 101 level book; in fact if you have not read the book of a particular chapter in question, you may lose some of the impact of the arguments she makes. And in the case of some books, if you have read and enjoyed the work, the axes she grinds are even sharper, and to this critic’s mind, unfair.
Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men: No Plans for the Future could have done less with personal disagreements with other aspects of a certain author’s work, and substituted those with other authors to explore what is an interesting thesis…but one undercut by the execution of the arguments.
One last bit, pointed out to me by a colleague: The cover of this book is a “tribute” to covers that sexualize and objectify women. The naked back, and the coy turning of the head of the man on the cover, echo a hell of a lot of covers of women in that role. Is the tattoo on the back meant to be a male version of a “tramp stamp?” Clearly, the cover artist, as the kids like to say, understood the assignment.
¹ Yoon Ha Lee is a trans man. The author thus defends the inclusion in the book and goes to some length defending that choice.
Thanks for the review. It sounds like the book has some odd picks, tangents, and biases, even if some of the analysis may be interesting.