--- In [email protected], "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@...> wrote: > --- In [email protected], turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote: > --- In [email protected], "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: >> --- In [email protected], turquoiseb <no_reply@> wrote: >>>> --- In [email protected], "salyavin808" <fintlewoodlewix@> >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> It's interesting why there are so few female philosophers, >>>>> same reason there are so few top women chess players perhaps. >>>>> A simplistic view would be the old Mars/Venus thing. But I >>>>> think it's less a "women are more touchy-feely" than that >>>>> men are more prone to excessive nerdiness, and sometimes >>>>> to the exclusion of successful relationships or career. >>>>> >>>>> Women are maybe more likely to be responsible about their >>>>> future and more successfully goal directed because of the >>>>> possibility of having children, there is a nerve in the >>>>> female brain that judges everything for long term value, >>>>> whereas a lot of guys can wander about completely clueless >>>>> except for a top degree in physics or philosophy. I know >>>>> quite a few of them and a lot of *very* focussed >>>>> women. >>>> >>>> Did you notice the lack of women on the list of >>>> The Materworks Of Science Fiction list you sent >>>> yetsterday? I did, so I counted. There were more >>>> citations for works by Philip K. Dick than there >>>> were for all women writers combined. >>> >>> Oh yes, when I meet a woman into sci-fi I always say Wow! >>> Most just hate it no matter how much I try and extol >>> it's virtues. The only girl I currently know into SF >>> has a physics degree. >>> >>> What is it that turns women off it generally? I leant the >>> hitchhikers guide to the galaxy to a girl I knew who was top >>> at English literature at uni and she said it was great until >>> they left Earth, and then she lost interest. Dislike of >>> abstraction? >> >> Back in the day, I used to hang at the A Change Of >> Hobbit bookstore in L.A., which specialized in SF >> and fantasy. Over the years I got to meet many of >> the best writers of these niche works, and also >> met a lot of SF groupies. As you say, most of them >> were men, but NOT so much so that women writers >> should be so underrepresented on this list. There >> are a LOT of women SF and fantasy freaks. >> >> Then again, a lot of SF is not limited to the cold, >> stainless steel environments of space. Much of the >> best of it is easier to identify and empathize with, >> in ways that appeal to women as much as men. >> >> IMO, if I were to dash out a personal Top Ten List >> of my favorite SF/fantasy writers, at least a few >> of them would be women. Certainly two that made the >> list would be Mary Shelley and Ursula K. Le Guin. >> Some of Doris Lessing's work verged into the realms >> of SF/fantasy, so I think she deserves to be on >> that list. As does Margaret Atwood. Madeleine >> L'Engle, a shoe-in. I would include Anne Rice, >> who more or less single-handedly reinvented >> vampire lore. And of course Marion Zimmer >> Bradley. > > > Mary Shelley should definitely be on the list but that > would cause uproar from literary types who hate SF. > Frankenstein is a great book by any standard but it's > the basis of most SF because it's about man's scientific > creations running out of control. > > This fear that we are unleashing something we can't > control when we manipulate nature or give our power to > our creations must be the biggest theme in the genre. > > I might go through that list and tick off the ones that > fit. > Mary Shelley does indeed get the credit for "Frankenstein, or, the Modern Promethus" which implies that not only that God can create humans, but Man himself can also, something very much a possibility these days. Her husband made many comments and suggestions for the book. But Mary's imagination certainly is much in evidence as the driving force of the book.
In the first edition (1818), there is no mention of details of apparatus, only a rather vague mention of the 'instruments of life' whereas in the third edition (1831, after her husband had been in the grave for some seven years), we find mention of electrical experiments and other revised passages. Her husband must have had some influence though, on the character of the work - it seems a reasonable speculation that Mary and Percy discussed these things at length, she was only 21 when her novel was published, and they were young and very curious indeed. One of Percy's comments about creation was 'That which is incapable of proof itself is no proof of anything else.... We must prove design before we can infer a designer.' This some thirty years before Darwin published his seminal work. When he was 19 he wrote: 'There Is No God. This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the universe remains unshaken. She wrote this in her journal in 1824 (her husband died in 1822 at the age of 29): 'At the age of twenty six I am in the condition of an aged person all my old friends are gone... & my heart fails when I think by how few ties I hold to the world....' She lived until 1851 at age 53. About her husband she wrote: 'The comparative solitude in which Mr. Shelley lived was the occasion that he was personally known to few; and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause which he considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement of the moral and physical state of mankind, was the chief reason why he, like other illustrious reformers, was pursued by hatred and calumny. No man was ever more devoted than he to the endeavour of making those around him happy; no man ever possessed friends more unfeignedly attached to him. The ungrateful world did not feel his loss, and the gap it made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as the murderous sea above his living frame. Hereafter men will lament that his transcendent powers of intellect were extinguished before they had bestowed on them their choicest treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable: the wise, the brave, the gentle, is gone for ever! He is to them as a bright vision, whose radiant track, left behind in the memory, is worth all the realities that society can afford. Before the critics contradict me, let them appeal to any one who had ever known him. To see him was to love him: and his presence, like Ithuriel's spear, was alone sufficient to disclose the falsehood of the tale which his enemies whispered in the ear of the ignorant world.'
