Re: What kind of sf do you write?
- From: David Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2011 09:16:03 -0800
In article
<71910028-afbe-4960-be2a-25e8388ac09d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
pat bowne <pat.bowne@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I write academic fantasy, about faculty life in the Demonology
Department of a modern university.
Much of _Salamander_ takes place in the College, which is a (so far as I
know, the only) college of magic. Faculty interaction and politics is
part of the background, but not a central element in the story.
It occurs to me that one characteristic of that book is that it touches
on modern issues from a not-modern point of view.
The male protagonist has been a major influence in getting the college
to start accepting women as students and towards the end is talking
about trying to get them to hire a woman as a faculty member. But it
would never occur to him to see it in terms of equal rights or anything
along those lines; he takes inequality, in that context and others, for
granted. His view is that not admitting women amounts to ignoring the
findings of modern science, one of which is that women's magic and men's
magic are not, as generally believed, different things, but the same
things with a different distribution of talents. And he wants to hire
women teachers because there are important sorts of magic, in particular
healing, usable by both women and men (although more likely to be usable
by women), that they are unlikely to be able to find a man competent to
teach.
I try to hint at the lack of modern ideals of equality by showing Mari,
who is the daughter of a powerful and wealthy noble, being treated
better than the other students--she has at least a two room suite at the
College, my female protagonist has one room--and nobody complaining
about or even commenting on the fact.
....
I'm also writing a classic 'gate between worlds' fantasy about a
retired nurse - hoping there is an
untapped market out there of people who grew up with fantasy and will
like something aimed at the 60+ crowd.
The protagonist of _Harald_ is in his fifties, still active but
beginning to feel the effects of age. I don't know if that makes the
book more interesting to older readers or not.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_
.
- References:
- What kind of sf do you write?
- From: Dan Goodman
- Re: What kind of sf do you write?
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- Re: What kind of sf do you write?
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- What kind of sf do you write?
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