Totality of Opinion
Tonight I finished Gibbon's Decline and Fall, which turned out to be a pretty good book, although with a little too much overt mysticism for my tastes. (There are passages which could be easily interpreted as SF or fantasy, but there are other passages which are clearly not grounded in reality, and which therefore weakened the book somewhat for me.) The book also presents its protagonist with a choice at the end, and although she makes a choice we're not told what she decided, which is frustrating. Even worse than a story which sets up an impossible situation and doesn't adequately resolve it is one which doesn't resolve it at all. But it should make some interesting discussion tomorrow night.
This is the only Tepper book I've read (we'll be reading her latest, The Family Tree, next spring), but I understand her work generally is very female-centered. I sometimes catch myself, when reading something like this or the comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, thinking, "Ya know, she should present a more balanced, more intricate male view, here." Which is ridiculous, really; how often does most male-centered fiction present a balanced, intricate female point of view?
And really, no single story should try to be all things, or present points of view from both genders, just as no single government program should meet the needs of all citizens (which is the basic flaw with the argument of the yahoos who scream "I don't want my tax dollars spent on yadda-yadda-yadda!"). That a single work presents an extreme or unbalanced point of view is hardly a bad thing. Now if the entire body of SF presented such a point of view, then I'd be worried...
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