#29
April 6, 2003
From: c., esanudo@hotmail.com

I read solitaire in a few hours, and I must confess I couldn't stop. The book left me with a sense of deja vu.

Somehow, it reminded me—specially the shangri la appartements (and I cannot really say why this association)—of William Gibson's books, like all tomorrow parties. do you read his books? is it a known influence? I know things like earthgov and korporations are all over science fiction, asimov laid it all out in foundation, maybe even someone before I am not even aware of , but your books adds a twist to it, the korporation is chacal's home, not jus the allmighty enemy, she is part of it.

Something I really enjoyed in your book is that women have a saying. Maybe you overdo it, the male characters are all extremely weak and nearly non-existent, but what the hell! there's plenty of books, movies... where the girl is only there to show cleavage. Thanks! I work on a very machista (=male chouvinistic) field—science—and even with plenty of women my age there are very few women in positions of power and women are still treated mostly as second class. i.e., my boss gets drunk at a conference and he is great, a woman colleague does the same and she is not just as great.

Anyway, I really enjoyed solitaire and will look forward to your coming novels :)
c.

Glad you liked it. Thanks for taking the time to write.

I've read some Gibson, of which I reckon Neuromancer had the most impact. I was in my early twenties and had never read anything like it. There's a certain measure of Sprawl influence in my vision of the NNA, as well as a bit of Philip K Dick and John Brunner. EarthGov is a pretty standard SF trope, you're right. Politics as a basis for story doesn't interest me, which is why the specifics of EarthGov are left to the reader's imagination (grin).

But I really was trying to be different with Ko. The evil corporation is a tiresome story idea, and in my opinion also just plain inaccurate. Corporations aren't evil, although sometimes people are. And it seems that protagonists in SF so rarely have everyday jobs unless they are pawns of the Evil Corporation. Where are the janitors and the secretaries and the food servers and the kindergarten teachers? We have enough space pilots, already.

It's interesting that you think the male characters are all extremely weak and nearly non-existent. I disagree utterly, but that's why we have a word in the language for "opinion." I suppose it depends on what you mean by weak (what do you mean?). To me, Solitaire is a book full of people who are weak in some ways and strong in others, but not based on gender. To say that all the men or women in the book are a certain way implies some kind of agenda (conscious or unconscious) that I don't think accurately describes me as a writer or a person. But you see the book differently, and that's cool with me. It's an interesting response.

And I'm completely with you on the double standard. I used to work in television a long time ago. I was a freelance technician on remote television productions like sports events or awards ceremonies, where a 55-foot trailer full of TV equipment shows up and they do the television broadcast from the site. When we did "packages" (such as an entire season of Pac-10 college football, for example), we would travel around the country and do a different event every few days or every week. At that time there were few women on these crews, and it soon became clear to me that women weren't real in some way. I wasn't really a woman, you see—I was on the crew—so the guys used to talk in front of me about the women they would meet at the bars we went to after the shoot. A lot of steam got blown off those nights, and I saw and heard some astonishing things that I never would have if they'd remembered I was a woman. It went as far as having one of the men tell me one night after several beers that he liked me and respected me so much he wouldn't even try to fuck me. What can you say to that? (I said "thank you").

Do I think all men are like this? Nope. It's a mixed bag, it always is. There's plenty of assholes in the world. Some of them are men, some of them are women, some of them are someone's grandma. But I do think that when people group together they will look for commonalities, for a group baseline, and it's unfortunate that so often those baselines default to extreme gendered or class or cultural behavior. You'd think someone would have figured out by now that teaching little kids diversity-respect skills would be more of a passport to happiness than all the algebra in the world.

Please, no grumpy letters from math teachers. Math is Good. I'm just trying to make a point here.

#28
April 6, 2003
From: Lindsey Main, beanmain@yahoo.com

A comfort beverage today. Those little wax bottles filled with dyed, fruit flavored sugar water (what are they called anyway?). I've got plenty a napkins to go around...you have spit out the wax somewhere. I must say, I prefer to gather up a big wad of wax in my mouth then spit it into my hand—If you hold it tight for a few minutes, you can form neat shapes out of it.

Your latest response got me thinking about my mom. She, in a way, trains people to "cope with difference together" almost every day. She's a storyteller of sorts...using animals. She takes in abused, neglected and "imperfect" creatures—snakes, turtles, birds, lizards. For 27 years, she's been known as the "Snake Lady". Most of her animals are missing legs or feet, or have been scarred in some way. Through her animal stories, she teaches kids and reminds grownups that....well, she teaches them lots of things: diversity, individuality, tolerance—This is not as easy to explain as I thought it would be. I mean, I grew up with it. I should be able to put it to words. There's an article about what she does on the web. There are tons of snake ladies, so you'd have to look up Bonnie Main Snake Lady. She had no idea that she was on the internet until I told her about two months ago. Don't worry, she won't mind that I put her name here...She's all about access.

Years ago, she did a show at New England Home For Little Wanderers and ended up inviting four kids over for lunch (they thought she was cool and the animals too). She figured they'd like to meet the rest of her animals. When they told her that they were going to be split up into different foster homes (they were brother and sisters), she told them that wasn't going to happen. They lived with us for five years.

--Lindsey

Your mom is quoted as saying, "Love and work are both four-letter words." That made me smile. Love and work are where so many of us spend most of our time and energy, which is why they interest me so much to write about. My next book (which I will now get back to working on) has some things to say about this.