Which Bantam novel do you think would have made a good movie?

[Christopher]

Women can be as mysoginistic as men.

Indeed. Or at least, female writers back then would've had to conform to the standards set by their editors and publishers rather than risking rejection.

Or maybe they were writing to conform to popular trends. I've never been a reader of romance novels, but I get the impression that a number of the sexy female guest stars in Bantam novels conformed to romance-character tropes, which at the time would not have been feminist -- or at least would have defined women's power in terms of their beauty and ability to make men fall for them. Romance novels have always dominated the paperback market, and science fiction paperbacks at the time were not considered much more respectable, so maybe the writers were trying for crossover appeal with the romance market. Early Trek fandom was very heavily female-dominated, contrary to modern expectations.

 

[Airin]

Part of what made Planet of Judgment so interesting was that Haldeman didn't merely imitate how TOS did things but used his experience as a military veteran to depict how landing parties should have done things instead, with body armor, more detailed emergency procedures and strategies, etc.

What tipped me off was the realistic way the redshirts talked about their superior officers when these weren't around. I thought "this seems all too familar; this guy gets it". And sure enough, when I checked the author's background, I found out he had been in the military.

Indeed. Or at least, female writers back then would've had to conform to the standards set by their editors and publishers rather than risking rejection.

Or maybe they were writing to conform to popular trends.

I agree. She was probably just imitating the way that male authors write women. Though it's still glaring, since the other Bantam books of this era (with the exception of Spock Messiah! and The Procrustean Petard) already had more positive writing of women. The heroine from Trek to Madworld is alright in my book.
Hell, the TOS "women-of-the-week" from the 60's were also much better than this. And contrary to the myth, Kirk wasn't chasing women around back then. WOMEN were chasing Kirk (with love potions, mind-altering devices, kidnappings, memory erasure... you name it). When Kirk used seduction, it was as a weapon or as part of a plan to save the ship, which is a tactic typically used by female characters in fiction, not men. I'm really saddened to see how a large part of fandom progressively projected its own bias on Kirk, to distort this narrative and turn him into your average womanizing hero.
(Okay, this was an aside and has nothing to do with the Bantam books; I just needed to take it out my chest).

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Women can be as mysoginistic as men. It's an error to think that they're somehow immune.

Yes. We need look no further than Congress to see that. Doesn't make it any less puzzling.

She was probably just imitating the way that male authors write women.

Hmm. I'm male, and the protagonist of my novel-in-progress is a young woman, with a given name chosen specifically because (for me at least) it carried connotations of hyperfemininity. She's also highly intelligent, with no question of her competency, or her ability to rise to any challenge that presents itself. She takes a positive delight in defying stereotypes. And on one occasion, she demonstrates an ability to defend herself.

It's kind of remarkable that Kathleen Sky wrote both Vulcan! and Death's Angel. Tremain and Schaeffer quite literally could not possibly be more different from each other.

 

[drt]

The Galatic Whirlpool is my favorite, and I think pretty cinematic, so that would be my choice. As an aside, I always liked that Gerrod brought some of the concepts from this novel to TNG.

 

[E-DUB]

"The Wounded Sky".

 

[FredH]

"The Wounded Sky".

Wasn’t Bantam; that was Pocket Books. (And a great novel, sure.)

 

[FredH]

Indeed. Or at least, female writers back then would've had to conform to the standards set by their editors and publishers rather than risking rejection.

Or maybe they were writing to conform to popular trends. I've never been a reader of romance novels, but I get the impression that a number of the sexy female guest stars in Bantam novels conformed to romance-character tropes, which at the time would not have been feminist -- or at least would have defined women's power in terms of their beauty and ability to make men fall for them. Romance novels have always dominated the paperback market, and science fiction paperbacks at the time were not considered much more respectable, so maybe the writers were trying for crossover appeal with the romance market. Early Trek fandom was very heavily female-dominated, contrary to modern expectations.

Interestingly, a lot of the 80s novels took the author-insert-character approach that started in fanzines for their female guest stars, often with romantic entanglements with the author’s favorite character.

 

[Airin]

Interestingly, a lot of the 80s novels took the author-insert-character approach that started in fanzines for their female guest stars, often with romantic entanglements with the author’s favorite character.

I wouldn't say "a lot" of 80's novels, though I see what you mean. From that time period, the only ones I can think of that have that kind of self-insert/Mary Sue character are "Demons" and "Mindshadow" by Dillard (both possibly as a screen for Spock/McCoy), "Triangle" by Marshak & Culbreath (clearly a screen for Kirk/Spock) and "Dreams of the Raven". "Pawns and Symbols" had the female guest in a relationship with Kang, but it was abusive and hardly idealized, so I'm not sure if it counts. "Uhura's Song" also had a Mary Sue, but no romance at all.

 

[Christopher]

Interestingly, a lot of the 80s novels took the author-insert-character approach that started in fanzines for their female guest stars, often with romantic entanglements with the author’s favorite character.

And the '70s. Vulcan! and Death's Angel have two of the most blatant Mary Sues in the professional literature, along with Triangle.

I wouldn't say "a lot" of 80's novels, though I see what you mean. From that time period, the only ones I can think of that have that kind of self-insert/Mary Sue character are "Demons" and "Mindshadow" by Dillard (both possibly as a screen for Spock/McCoy), "Triangle" by Marshak & Culbreath (clearly a screen for Kirk/Spock) and "Dreams of the Raven". "Pawns and Symbols" had the female guest in a relationship with Kang, but it was abusive and hardly idealized, so I'm not sure if it counts. "Uhura's Song" also had a Mary Sue, but no romance at all.

I didn't see Dreams of the Raven's Dr. Dyson as an insert character or Mary Sue, just an episodic love interest. The protagonist of Pawns and Symbols was just that, a protagonist. We mustn't fall into the trap of equating all prominent female guest characters with Mary Sues. Episodic TV in TOS's era was heavily centered on guest stars (since they could have complete transformative character arcs while the regulars had to stay unchanged from week to week), so there's nothing wrong with that in itself, and it's only natural that the overwhelmingly female authors of early Trek fandom would've tried to balance out TOS's male-dominated cast with prominent female guests, so there's nothing wrong with that either. The term "Mary Sue" was coined to refer to badly done examples of that trope, ones that prioritized fannish self-indulgence over good storytelling, or that asserted a character to be brilliant, lovable, and amazing without the skill to actually make them live up to the hype, or that nerfed the regular characters' abilities to allow the mediocre guest character to outperform them (like Vulcan! having Spock be illogically stubborn about the wrong theory so that the guest heroine can prove him wrong).

Evan Wilson in Uhura's Song was absolutely not a Mary Sue. For one thing, she was based on Janet Kagan's mother, so she was not a self-insert character. For another thing, Evan actually was an interesting and fun character, rather than just asserted to be one. And unlike the classic Mary Sue, she didn't overshadow or outperform the regulars; rather, she was a catalyst for exploring and challenging them, a gadfly who brought out the best in them.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Evan Wilson in Uhura's Song was absolutely not a Mary Sue. For one thing, she was based on Janet Kagan's mother, so she was not a self-insert character. For another thing, Evan actually was an interesting and fun character, rather than just asserted to be one. And unlike the classic Mary Sue, she didn't overshadow or outperform the regulars; rather, she was a catalyst for exploring and challenging them, a gadfly who brought out the best in them.

Quite. I wouldn't mind seeing her again. Although I believe that now that the real Dr. Evan Wilson has been revealed, she prefers to be addressed as "Tail-Kinker to Ennien."

 

[Airin]

I didn't see Dreams of the Raven's Dr. Dyson as an insert character or Mary Sue, just an episodic love interest. The protagonist of Pawns and Symbols was just that, a protagonist. We mustn't fall into the trap of equating all prominent female guest characters with Mary Sues.

I'm not entirely sure about Dr. Dyson, but the way the narrative uses McCoy's amnesia to push him away from the regular characters (mainly Kirk and Spock) so Dr. Dyson can have all his attention, reminded me of the typical fanfiction technique of "eliminating the competition", so the author's preferred couple can happen. Also I think the romance was forced and gratuitous (not to say unethical and hardly consensual), so it still comes close to "shipping for the sake of shipping".

I agree that the protagonist of Pawns and Symbols is just a protagonist, and a fairly realistic one. I mentioned it because maybe, maaaaybe, there could be some wish-fulfillment with Kang. But in general I found the romance plot-relevant and well integrated.
And it's true that the term Mary Sue has been abused, and personally, I can't stand when people refer to Piper from the Diane Carey's novels as one, because she's nothing of the sort.

Evan Wilson in Uhura's Song was absolutely not a Mary Sue. For one thing, she was based on Janet Kagan's mother, so she was not a self-insert character. For another thing, Evan actually was an interesting and fun character, rather than just asserted to be one. And unlike the classic Mary Sue, she didn't overshadow or outperform the regulars; rather, she was a catalyst for exploring and challenging them, a gadfly who brought out the best in them.

I still feel that Evan Wilson is a blatant Mary Sue, though your mileage may vary, of course. I didn't find her fun at all, but rather annoying, and don't think her presence was justified in the story. Everyone seemed to like her immediately, including the cat people, and she was better than everyone else at basically everything. Even Kirk, who at first isn't amused by her antics, makes a sudden 180º turn, and the next thing you know he's reflecting about how much he likes her, and repressing the urge to hug her. And this came absolutely from nowhere.
She may not be an author self-insert, but is still an insert for a person much loved by the author (her mother in this case), so it comes close. The unusual eye color, and the super-special, super-mysterious background story are also classic staples of the Mary Sue trope. She even fills another stereotypical trait: the very uncommon name, since it's later revealed that "Evan Wilson" isn't her real name.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not entirely sure about Dr. Dyson, but the way the narrative uses McCoy's amnesia to push him away from the regular characters (mainly Kirk and Spock) so Dr. Dyson can have all his attention, reminded me of the typical fanfiction technique of "eliminating the competition", so the author's preferred couple can happen. Also I think the romance was forced and gratuitous (not to say unethical and hardly consensual), so it still comes close to "shipping for the sake of shipping".

Is it really any different from the amnesiac Kirk being separated from the crew and falling in love with Miramanee? Or Spock being flung back in time, losing his mental control, and falling in love with Zarabeth? As I said, "Mary Sue" does not refer to every iteration of the trope, but specifically to the bad ones. It is not intrinsically a bad thing to focus a story on a guest star, or on a relationship between a lead and a guest star. That was a common practice in the more anthology-like series television of the 1960s-80s, so it's perfectly natural that a lot of Trek prose writers went there. Condemning every example just because of the infamy attached to the bad examples is spreading the net too widely.

And it's true that the term Mary Sue has been abused, and personally, I can't stand when people refer to Piper from the Diane Carey's novels as one, because she's nothing of the sort.

Glad to hear that, because you're right. The Piper novels aren't Mary Sue, they're Lower Decks. They were the first attempt to tell professional Trek prose stories centered on characters other than Kirk's command crew, shifting the focus to the junior officers and having the command crew be supporting characters (as well as being the first Trek novels narrated in first person). The books didn't just focus on Piper, but on her whole core foursome -- Piper, Sarda, Merete, Scanner -- paralleling Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scott. And whereas a Mary Sue tends to overshadow and outperform the series leads, Piper was always five steps behind Kirk and needing to learn from his greater experience and insight. If anything, Kirk was the Mary Sue in Piper's novels.

Although I'll grant that Battlestations! was a bit Mary-Sue in having Piper graduate to Kirk's inner circle of friends after just one month, not to mention becoming instrumental in uncovering two high-level conspiracies within Starfleet in consecutive months.

The unusual eye color, and the super-special, super-mysterious background story are also classic staples of the Mary Sue trope. She even fills another stereotypical trait: the very uncommon name, since it's later revealed that "Evan Wilson" isn't her real name.

I have no sympathy for the argument "This thing has traits that remind me of that thing, therefore it is that thing." A leopard has four legs and spots, but that doesn't make it a giraffe. Again, "Mary Sue" refers to badly done examples of a trope, not to the entire trope itself, so a character can have many attributes in common with Mary Sues without actually being one. It's not some checklist authors fill out, it's the unintended result of the authors not being as good as they think they are and using the tropes poorly.

Someone once accused my novel character T'Ryssa Chen of being a Mary Sue because she had a name ending in "-yssa," which supposedly was a common trait of Mary Sues. I'd never heard of any such thing in my life. I don't follow fanfiction, so how could I? I just picked a name I liked. I may have been influenced by a couple of old friends of mine named Theresa.

 

[Airin]

Is it really any different from the amnesiac Kirk being separated from the crew and falling in love with Miramanee? Or Spock being flung back in time, losing his mental control, and falling in love with Zarabeth? As I said, "Mary Sue" does not refer to every iteration of the trope, but specifically to the bad ones.

The Miramanee and Zarabeth situations were important for the plot and the drama. Kirk's character often regrets that his life as a starship captain doesn't let him enjoy a simpler, domestic life. He found that kind of paradise thanks to his amnesia, a paradise that didn't just include a wife, but also a more simple lifestyle in general. And then lost this paradise. Spock having to choose between Zarabeth and McCoy at the end of All Our Yesterdays has also more impact if Zarabeth wasn't just a person who happened to be there, with no special significance for Spock.
On the other hand, I don't think that the romance with Dr. Dyson added anything to the plot. It was simply inserted there for the sake of having a romance; it was a distraction. And it made little sense. Dyson was tasked with treating McCoy's amnesia, and she was fully aware that McCoy would never consent to such a relationship if he was in his right mind. One moment they had a purely professional relationship, and the next they were dating. So yeah, I read author's wish-fulfillment in there.

Also, I don't understand this idea that the Mary Sue concept only includes the bad examples. A Mary Sue is just a trope, good or bad, pretty much like the trope of the "damsel in distress". Both tropes are generally disliked nowadays because they've been overused for female characters, but they say nothing about the quality of the writing otherwise.

Although I'll grant that Battlestations! was a bit Mary-Sue in having Piper graduate to Kirk's inner circle of friends after just one month, not to mention becoming instrumental in uncovering two high-level conspiracies within Starfleet in consecutive months.

This is no more unrealistic than Kirk having all those adventures and solving so many problems while he's still so young. Piper is just a surrogate for Kirk, so of course she's gonna be a bit larger-than-life.

I have no sympathy for the argument "This thing has traits that remind me of that thing, therefore it is that thing." A leopard has four legs and spots, but that doesn't make it a giraffe.

Yeah, but if the thing has four legs, and spots, and fangs, and is a dangerous feline... Chances are the thing is in fact a leopard and not a giraffe. I didn't bring the eye color or mysterious background as sole indicators for Wilson being a Mary Sue, but as traits that come on top of everything else. Evan Wilson may not check the complete list of "typical Mary Sue" traits, but she sure as hell checks an awful lot of them.
Of course, considering that a character is a Mary Sue just because she has a specific name is plain silly.

 

[Christopher]

Also, I don't understand this idea that the Mary Sue concept only includes the bad examples.

I already explained that. In classic TV, which was designed to be more anthology-like because there was no guarantee of seeing every episode in the days before home video, it was commonplace to center episodic plots on guests of the week, often to make them more central to the story than the leads, since the guests could change in ways the leads could not, and thus the leads were often simply catalysts for the guests' stories. (You can see this in early TOS episodes like "Where No Man Has Gone Before," "Mudd's Women," and "Charlie X," before Spock became the breakout star and the writers shifted the focus more to him and Kirk.) So fans in the '70s would not have seen guest-focused storytelling in itself as something unusual enough to warrant being assigned a specific trope name.

The term "Mary Sue" was introduced in a fanfiction story that was a parody of the bad habits of other fanfiction writers who approached their guest characters in specific problematical ways. Not just a guest character that the story focuses on, but an author-insertion or wish-fulfillment character who's portrayed as absurdly perfect without actually being interesting or impressive, whom the series leads fall madly in love with, and who outperforms the lead characters in their own fields, especially if the lead characters are written out of character or diminished in order to make the mediocre guest heroine seem superior to them.

I didn't bring the eye color or mysterious background as sole indicators for Wilson being a Mary Sue, but as traits that come on top of everything else. Evan Wilson may not check the complete list of "typical Mary Sue" traits, but she sure as hell checks an awful lot of them.

I just don't see how a checklist is useful. I dislike making a conscious effort to find excuses to stick the label on characters. Labels are not the end goal of understanding, theyr'e just a crude beginning, and all too often a petty distraction from meaningful analysis. And far too many people these days have broadened "Mary Sue" to the point of uselessness by using it to mean "any female character I dislike." It's never been a formal, legally defined term; it's just a slang nickname. It's absurd to treat it as something that can be codified down to the level of superficial traits, or that needs to be "proven" like a criminal indictment.

I mean, eye color? Seriously? How is that any less silly as a determinant than a character's name? And what's so unusual about characters having mysterious backgrounds? Guinan had a mysterious background. So did Garak. Odo's background was mysterious to himself for the first couple of seasons. Besides, I don't see how it's specifically a "Mary Sue" trait. Of the clearest Mary Sues in '70s-'80s Trek novels -- Katalya Tremain in Vulcan!, Elizabeth Schaeffer in Death's Angel, Sola Thane in Triangle, arguably Anitra Vance in Demons -- I can't recall any of them having mysterious backgrounds. Yes, a couple of them did secretive security work, but Mary Sues are usually the viewpoint characters, so the audience would tend to be clued in on their backgrounds through their own internal monologues. And there's a difference between "secretive" and "mysterious." If a character is fully understood to be a member of a secretive organization, then there's no mystery about their identity and role.

Evan, by contrast, was a mystery viewed through the eyes of the regulars, a trickster figure in the classic vein. It's pretty clear that Kagan conceived her as a potentially recurring character, and it makes sense for a recurring character to have layers of secrets to unfold. If there's a trope she falls into, I'd say it's more like Manic Pixie Dream Girl than Mary Sue.

 

[Airin]

I just don't see how a checklist is useful. I dislike making a conscious effort to find excuses to stick the label on characters. Labels are not the end goal of understanding, theyr'e just a crude beginning, and all too often a petty distraction from meaningful analysis.

If character traits aren't useful at all to classify a character, then why do you consider, for example, Elizabeth Schaeffer a Mary Sue, and not Evans? Why is Elizabeth one? She's said to be very beautiful, so what? Everyone likes her, but there's an explanation for it, and it's a tactic she uses to make her job easier. If anything, she's closer to the concept of a "guest turned protagonist", since she drives the plot and has a lot of things to do with the case. There would be no story without Elizabeth.
On the other hand, I never had the impression that Evans had much business in the story to begin with. She took an inordinate amount of page space, just for characters to fawn over her, obsess about her (like Spock) or talk about her whenever she's not present. Evans was there just to be the center of attention, but the story could have worked the same without her. She was much more of a gratuitous insert than Schaeffer.

 

[Christopher]

If character traits aren't useful at all to classify a character, then why do you consider, for example, Elizabeth Schaeffer a Mary Sue, and not Evans? Why is Elizabeth one?

As I've been saying, "Mary Sue" was coined to refer to a certain character type done badly, not just a certain character type. More than that, it refers to the practice of writing the main characters badly or out of character in response to the Mary Sue. Schaeffer is a classic example of that. Kirk is out of character in the way he falls for her and romances her. Sure, he had a lot of romances, but the way he expresses it in Death's Angel is quite bad. Not only that, but Schaeffer herself is written inconsistently, because she's supposed to be this super-tough badass secret agent, but when Kirk seduces her in the most disgustingly condescending, infantilizing way I've ever seen in print, she melts into his arms rather than kicking his teeth in as he deserves. It's just bad, unbelievable writing, and that, above all else, is what defines a Mary Sue. It's not about what the character is, it's about the poor quality of how they and the people around them are written. (As I mentioned, that's why Tremain in Vulcan! also fits, because Spock is forced to be out of character and stupidly wrong about something obvious so that Tremain can be portrayed as smarter than he is.)

On the other hand, I never had the impression that Evans had much business in the story to begin with. She took an inordinate amount of page space, just for characters to fawn over her, obsess about her (like Spock) or talk about her whenever she's not present. Evans was there just to be the center of attention, but the story could have worked the same without her. She was much more of a gratuitous insert than Schaeffer.

Once more, there is absolutely nothing wrong per se with a story where the guest star is the center of attention rather than the leads. That was a commonplace norm in the era when TOS and the Bantam novels came out. It's exactly what Roddenberry intended Star Trek to be when he pitched it as "Wagon Train to the stars," a reference to a long-running TV series known for its pseudo-anthology format centering on guest stars of the week, so much so that nearly all of its episodes were titled "The [Guest Character Name] Story" or otherwise referred to the guest character. Naturally a story written to highlight a guest character is going to center on the guest character and have the main characters mostly talking about them. Heck, look at The Fugitive or The Incredible Hulk. Only the occasional episode of those shows actually centered on the main characters' own goals and relationships; usually, the plots of the week revolved around the guest stars, with the main character being there to support or catalyze the guests' storyline.

I also cannot agree that a mischievous, cute, enigmatic trickster figure is out of place in a novel about cat people. More seriously, though, Uhura's Song is a book about people having to challenge their expectations and learn to see things from new perspectives, and a trickster like Evan is a good catalyst for that.