Fantasy authors Brennan, Kowal on sexism in sci-fi
Fans of magic, dragons and 19th-century romance and adventure can get a double dose this weekend when fantasy authors Marie Brennan and Mary Robinette Kowal visit the Poisoned Pen. The pair will meet fans and sign copies of their respective new novels, “The Voyage of the Basilisk” and “Of Noble Family.”
Brennan’s novel is the third entry in her series “Lady Isabella Trent’s Memoirs,” following the adventures of the titular naturalist and explorer as she documents the various breeds of dragons in an alternate world analogous to Victorian England.
The Hugo award-winning Kowal dubs her work “Regency fantasy,” injecting Jane Austen-esque comedy of manners with magical glamour, a form of illusion that all true ladies of quality practice. “Of Noble Family” is the fifth and final volume of her “Glamourist Histories” series.
We spoke with both of the authors about the upcoming event, as well as their thoughts on each other’s work. Question: This is the second time that you have toured together. Were you friends before your tour last year?
Brennan: We had met briefly at another con. I had also read the first three books of the “Glamourist Histories” before we set off. But we’d never spent that much time in each other’s company, let alone10 days on the road. ... We travel together very well.
Kowal: I know. There’s always this fear that someone whose books you’ve loved will turn out to be a really obnoxious person.
Brennan: There are plenty of non-obnoxious people I would still ax-murder if I had to navigate travel stress with them. I have no idea what the people at Tor (Books) have planned after this, but I certainly hope that we get to work together again in the future.
Kowal: Me, too. And I think our books are complimentary without being at all the same. Q: Mary, you are also a professional puppeteer and recently did some work on “Sesame Street.” Will you be showing off your other talents at the signing?
Kowal: I spent years and years working in theater, so the notion of turning up and not putting on a show ... well, it just feels weird. I’m bringing a puppet show again and wearing a Regency dress. But I’m also encouraging the audience to come in costume. I’ll have prizes for people who turn up cos-playing characters from either Marie’s books or mine.
Brennan: Oh, man, it would make my day to see people show up in costume. I’ll be in Victorian clothing, since Isabella’s period is a bit later than Jane’s, and I’ll have dragon bones to pass around. Q: What do you like about each other’s work?
Kowal: Marie has absolutely nailed the prose style of a 19th-century memoir, while delivering a book full of adventure. I love watching Isabella struggle with gender issues in ways that really resonate with the world today. Also, there are dragons. I love how integrated and part of the natural world they are.
Brennan: The “Glamourist Histories” have grown and changed over the course of the series, not just on a character level, but also that of plot. Each book is different from the one before: the first (“Shades of Milk and Honey”) is very personal, very “Pride and Prejudice,” while the second (“Glamour and Glass”) gets into espionage, the third (“Without a Summer”) looks at politics, and the fourth (“Valour and Vanity”), as Mary has so memorably described it, is “Ocean’s Eleven” in Regency Venice.
Kowal: I write all over the map in my short fiction, so I would have wound up getting bored if I kept doing the same plot, you know?
Brennan: It’s also a pleasure to read a story where the romantic leads getting together isn’t the end of the story; it’s the beginning. We don’t see that very much in fiction, I think, and it’s a neat coincidence that Mary and I both took a nontraditional approach to that topic.
Kowal: I think that’s part of why I fell in love with the “Lady Trent Memoirs.” I remember picking up “A Natural History of Dragons” and feeling like it was a book specifically for me. Q: What attracted you to writing in a 19th-century setting?
Kowal: It was a time of great social change, which always makes for interesting conflicts. Because of the Napoleonic Wars, there were fewer eligible men for young women to marry, which meant that you wound up with slightly reduced social strictures. In addition, it allowed more class mobility even though people were still very rank conscious. It was also the period during which England was abolishing slavery. With all of that, a lot of the conversations about race, gender and class inequalities are really resonant with the world today. Plus I like the dresses.
Brennan: Yes, the 19th century is so full of change, both good and bad. And I don’t know if it’s the upheaval, or something in the water or what, but I swear it produced more larger-than-life personalities per capita than any era before or since. Q: Both of your novels feature strong, independent female characters in a time when women weren’t often seen as strong or independent. Have you gotten any pushback over your portrayals?
Brennan: I know a number of readers are critical of Isabella for her shortcomings, especially where her dealings with foreigners or people of the lower classes are concerned — but to me that’s a feature, not a bug. My aim is to write her as someone who is not wholly prejudiced, but not wholly enlightened, either. Her younger self had a lot of issues, some of which her older self admits to and repents of; I fully intend for there to be a gap in there where the reader can consider what else she hasn’t noticed.
Kowal: That’s part of what I love about Isabella. Especially the moments where she realizes what she’s doing. There are so many little baked-in prejudices that we don’t notice in our own selves, so it feels very real.
Brennan: But in terms of her having agency, no, I haven’t noticed pushback. The truth is, there were women just like her in real history — a surprising number of them, if you go looking. The most unrealistic thing about Isabella isn’t what she does; it’s the recognition and credit she gets for it. Q: There just always seems to be this perception that characters like Jane and Isabella didn’t exist in “real” history.
Kowal: The more research you do into actual history, the more you become aware of how much media has erased. I have a ship with a Black captain in “Of Noble Family,” and I’m fully expecting people to complain about it, even though the captain is an actual, historical per- son.
Brennan: History is so much more complicated and interesting than we learned in school. I’ve found that a lot of people in sci-fi/fantasy, readers and writers both, have this very narrow mental image of “realism,” and there’s so much it doesn’t include. Yes, there was oppression in the past — there still is — but that doesn’t mean people didn’t look for ways around i. Q: Women writers in science fiction and fantasy have been a hot topic on the Internet lately, especially since K. Tempest Bradford’s challenge to read works by authors other than straight, White men. What challenges do you face as female fantasy authors?
Brennan: Well, interviewers are still asking female writers about what obstacles they’ve faced, but male writers don’t get asked the same question. That tells us something.
Kowal: I’ve been trying this experiment when I travel. I stop in the airport bookstore and look at the sci-fi/fantasy shelf. Then I count the books by women. They are heavily outnumbered by men every time — with the exception, so far, of Powell’s in the Portland airport — and once, there was only one book by a woman. The ones that are there are usually older “classics” like Ursula Le Guin or Margaret Atwood, while the other books have new works mixed in.
Internally, I think the industry is doing better in that roughly equal numbers of men and women authors publish scifi/fantasy. Externally, the gateway to the readers is still an obstacle. That’s where I think the value of Tempest’s challenge comes in. The idea isn’t to never read White male authors ever again, it’s to find a way to break out of habits that you don’t even realize you have.
Brennan: Of course there’s all this backlash against the idea that somebody might say “I won’t read books by men” — yet we still have men saying they won’t read books by women. Or books with female main characters. Even now, women are socialized to identify with male characters as well as female, but men aren’t socialized to do the same. I think the point of a challenge like Tempest’s is to be conscious of the choices you’re making and to test whether they’re really the choices you want to be making.
Kowal: It’s funny. Sexism is so engrained in our society that we don’t even realize it. I caught myself telling a guy that he might not like my book because “It was sort of girly.” Me. And I selfidentify as a feminist. Likewise, I hear a lot of guys saying that they have to take the dust jacket off my book to avoid people thinking that they are reading a romance. All of which is to say... why is reading romance shameful? Why is being girly a weakness? It shouldn’t be and it drives me nuts that I have that wired into myself.
Brennan: Why would you want to miss out on awesome books, just because you’re stuck in your default habits?