I mostly read (hard) sci-fi written by straight white dudes, so the tweet on the screenshot made me feel a bit defensive. In the replies and qrts people are patting themselves on the back for reading marginalized fantasy writers exclusively and this "consumption as activism" seems rad-libby to me, but maybe I'm wrong.

  • Commander_Data [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Butler yes, LeGuin no. And I say that as someone who counts Ursula LeGuin as my favorite writer. I don't think someone who reads mainly "hard" sci-fi would enjoy LeGuin, personally. Her writing can be pretty abstract, which I love, but might seem annoying to a hard sci-fi person. But definitely the Xenogenesis trilogy from Butler. Really good stuff.

    • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
      ·
      3 years ago

      i think the point of the whole exercise is to expand one's reading horizons. LeGuin might not fill her writing to the brim with mind-bending imaginary future tech (the only real exception i can think of is the ansible which ironically was used by name by Orson Scott Card), but her social science and anthropology are much harder than the majority of the SF canon.

    • theother2020 [comrade/them, she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Thoughts on Kate Wilhelm? I was a big reader of hers back in the day but don’t know if she would appeal to the hard sci-fi audience either.

      • Commander_Data [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I've never read anything of hers. Someone gave me a collection of her SF short stories called The Mile Long Spaceship around the same time I started reading Marxist theory, lol. My mom loves Wilhelm's mystery stuff, though, and I trust her taste in literature since my mom was the one who put me on to Vonnegut.