new abhorrent trend: a rant
Jul. 6th, 2003 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyThey've started (and notice, please, that impersonal "they" *g*) revising and repackaging popular but uninspired adult sf/f as children's fiction.
When I saw Anne McCaffrey had done it with Dragonflight, I shrugged it off (I gave up on my erstwhile worship of McCaffrey a long time ago), but this weekend, I saw that now Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have gotten in on the act. Dragons of Autumn Twilight has become A Rumor of Dragons, intended for the 9-12 age bracket.
I find this offensive on several levels. One is simply that it irks me that they've found a way to spin yet more money out of the incredibly tired Dragonlance and Pern franchises. (And even at that, I don't mind this nearly as much as I mind the annotated editions of Dragonlance that have started coming out, but those are beyond abhorrent.) And it irritates me beyond belief that they're doing this instead of rereleasing McCaffrey's Harper Hall books, which are YA, and are relatively good YA to boot. But mostly what bugs me is that I was twelve when I read Dragonlance and The Dragonriders of Pern. Okay, sure, I was an annoyingly bright and over-motivated little pixie, but these were not challenging books. The prose is competent at best, the narrative structure is plebeian and straightforward, and the vocabulary is neither erudite, abstruse, nor sesquipedalian.
There's no Anglo-Saxon swearing (although this makes me realize that both sets of books would be immeasurably improved if the heroes said "Fuck!" once in a while); the violence is cartoony at best in Dragonlance, and there isn't any sex that I can remember. The Dragonriders of Pern has some rather questionable sexual politics (speaking of both sex and violence), but the answer there isn't to excise the sex: it's to change the politics. But that would require actual work, which is clearly not the point of this exercise.
There's nothing that I can think of in any of those books (all nine Dragonlance that I read--Chronicles, Legends, and Tales--and anything Anne McCaffrey's ever written, except for that very dubious marshmallow-core porn stuff) that is unsuitable for 9 to 12 year olds. Granted, I may have liberal standards, but it's not like Dragonlance and Pern have been getting banned left and right for gratuitous and offensive language or adult situations. There is no point to this, except to dumb down already stupid books and make more money off them.
And the icing on the cake is that these are not books that I would pick, personally, as books to promote for younger readers--or any readers. The Dragonriders of Pern I consider interesting as a historical artifact, but they don't wear well. And Dragonlance ... when there's so much good older sf/f to push (and so much of it is already YA), it seems stupid, pointless, and willfully destructive of the genre and its readership to make these third-rate books into travesties, both of themselves (insofar as one can argue that they had any integrity to begin with--and I did love Dragonlance when I was twelve) and of the entire category of YA fiction. It's disrespectful both to the books and to the children who read them.
I know why they're doing it--because they can--but frankly it pisses me off.
When I saw Anne McCaffrey had done it with Dragonflight, I shrugged it off (I gave up on my erstwhile worship of McCaffrey a long time ago), but this weekend, I saw that now Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have gotten in on the act. Dragons of Autumn Twilight has become A Rumor of Dragons, intended for the 9-12 age bracket.
I find this offensive on several levels. One is simply that it irks me that they've found a way to spin yet more money out of the incredibly tired Dragonlance and Pern franchises. (And even at that, I don't mind this nearly as much as I mind the annotated editions of Dragonlance that have started coming out, but those are beyond abhorrent.) And it irritates me beyond belief that they're doing this instead of rereleasing McCaffrey's Harper Hall books, which are YA, and are relatively good YA to boot. But mostly what bugs me is that I was twelve when I read Dragonlance and The Dragonriders of Pern. Okay, sure, I was an annoyingly bright and over-motivated little pixie, but these were not challenging books. The prose is competent at best, the narrative structure is plebeian and straightforward, and the vocabulary is neither erudite, abstruse, nor sesquipedalian.
There's no Anglo-Saxon swearing (although this makes me realize that both sets of books would be immeasurably improved if the heroes said "Fuck!" once in a while); the violence is cartoony at best in Dragonlance, and there isn't any sex that I can remember. The Dragonriders of Pern has some rather questionable sexual politics (speaking of both sex and violence), but the answer there isn't to excise the sex: it's to change the politics. But that would require actual work, which is clearly not the point of this exercise.
There's nothing that I can think of in any of those books (all nine Dragonlance that I read--Chronicles, Legends, and Tales--and anything Anne McCaffrey's ever written, except for that very dubious marshmallow-core porn stuff) that is unsuitable for 9 to 12 year olds. Granted, I may have liberal standards, but it's not like Dragonlance and Pern have been getting banned left and right for gratuitous and offensive language or adult situations. There is no point to this, except to dumb down already stupid books and make more money off them.
And the icing on the cake is that these are not books that I would pick, personally, as books to promote for younger readers--or any readers. The Dragonriders of Pern I consider interesting as a historical artifact, but they don't wear well. And Dragonlance ... when there's so much good older sf/f to push (and so much of it is already YA), it seems stupid, pointless, and willfully destructive of the genre and its readership to make these third-rate books into travesties, both of themselves (insofar as one can argue that they had any integrity to begin with--and I did love Dragonlance when I was twelve) and of the entire category of YA fiction. It's disrespectful both to the books and to the children who read them.
I know why they're doing it--because they can--but frankly it pisses me off.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Sing it, Sister!
Date: 2003-07-06 12:59 pm (UTC)...what would you revise out for kids?
(Man, I was reading all that stuff in the YA age bracket, although I gave up on the Dragonlance books after the first three. They were just too awful, even when I was 14....)
SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-06 02:26 pm (UTC)The rapes. Lessa and Brekke enjoying the dragon-mediated rapes, and henceforth being sexually fulfilled wives to the rapists.
I have to say I found that -- the F'lar/Lessa one anyway -- erotic when I was 12. Thirteen. And I think it's a somewhat sick thing to read about in those romantic terms, as if it's all right, as if it's erotic and romantic and blissful, when actually there was no consent!
Zorinth has the three Menolly books, which are YA, as Truepenny said, but not the others. (Fortunately I found old editions in which they were packaged as straight fantasy, because Z will not read anything packaged as YA -- children's or adult is OK, but YA packaging turns him straight off.)
Dumbing down books for children, as opposed to saying "Maybe you should wait to read that when you're older" (or "There's icky sex stuff in this" or "Many people find some of Mirror Dance disturbing, we should talk about it...") is so wrong I find it hard to find words to talk about it. I outright censored what Zorinth read when he was younger, by not letting him read stuff I thought was too old for him, but I didn't diminish any books thereby.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-06 03:05 pm (UTC)But, like I said, I don't find simply excising those repellent bits to be an adequate solution, because it's dishonest. I'd much rather (and okay, I know I'm wandering off into Cloud-Cuckoo-Land here, but, hell, it's a nice idea) see her do an Ursula K. Le Guin and go back and deal with the system she set up. The Devil will be buying ice-skates the day that happens, but it's interesting to imagine.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 08:00 am (UTC)As you say below, there's nothing wrong with that as fantasy, but showing it as how the world axiomatically works is sick.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 09:59 am (UTC)As usual, Jo, you've nailed down the essence of the argument in a sentence where it would have taken me a monograph. *g*
Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-06 03:08 pm (UTC)Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-06 04:34 pm (UTC)Yeah.
We were separated at birth! *g*
Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 08:06 am (UTC)I think the hatching/bonding thing between Lessa and Ramoth in particular, but also with the other characters, really appealed to something in the teenage psyche in the same way as horses, only more so.
Also, they had to fight Thread and it was really important and dangerous and cool -- and now I want to, if not re-read them, read them the way I wish they had been.
Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 08:29 am (UTC)I lost those lists years ago, which I'm inclined to feel okay about.
And, yes, I think there's something about the telepathic bond between rider and dragon that pushes all kinds of buttons--at least for certain people. I know women who never went through the horse-mad phase, and men seem not to do that as much anyway, but I also know a number of women who did. Pern gets endless mileage out of that--from Menolly as much as from Lessa (I wanted a dragon, but I would have taken fire-lizards)--and that's what Mercedes Lackey was capitalizing on with the Valdemar books. It's the same relationship, only with horses with big blue eyes and human intelligence. I wish I could figure out what's at the bottom of that, once you strip away all the sentimentality and Cinderella-esque wish-fulfillment. Because there's SOMETHING, and I can't quite articulate it.
... now I want to, if not re-read them, read them the way I wish they had been.
Yes. Me, too.
Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 09:25 am (UTC)I wish I could figure out what's at the bottom of that, once you strip away all the sentimentality and Cinderella-esque wish-fulfillment.
Actually, I think I know the answer to that one. The desperate teenage (hell, adult) need to be understood and accepted. Dragons and Companions don't give you shit. They don't try to change you. They love you and accept you and forgive you just as you are, no matter how critically you screw up, no matter how many mistakes you've made or who you've hurt or how thoughtless you are. They're always there, and they know you perfectly, and they never betray you or sleep with your boyfriend or decide they'd rather not go out on a Friday night. And they're powerful. Total wish-fulfillment: if I was a dragonrider, I could do what I wanted, go where I wanted, and not have to worry.
You get it in Alan Dean Foster's Flinx books, too (also wildly popular with teenagers) and probably dozens of other places that it's way too early for me to think of.
Come to think of it, there's a character in the story I sold to Ideomancer who gets the same reaction, and he's kind of a horsy thing, too (The Tangent reviewer *loved* him, and he gets more screen time in the novel that grew out of that short, where he was far and away my beta-reader's favourite character.) Although it wasn't a calculated choice on my part to create such a character; he just showed up in my juvenilia and had such a good gee whiz factor that I had to give him a job once I grew up.
C'mon, stop rolling your eyes. I bet you guys all have one of these too. *g*
Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 12:14 pm (UTC)Gosh I do like being grown up.
Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2004-10-30 08:00 pm (UTC)Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 12:06 pm (UTC)Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 12:43 pm (UTC)Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 01:11 pm (UTC)Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 01:19 pm (UTC)Ah, here's the one I was thinking of:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0886772540/ref=lib_dp_TFCV/002-6504070-6161661?v=glance&s=books&vi=reader#reader-link
Still love that cover.
Re: Pern-based fantasy life
Date: 2003-07-07 02:44 pm (UTC)I love those books. They're brilliantly nasty.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-06 03:16 pm (UTC)But then, I grew up around show dogs, and the whole concept of biology driven mating seems pretty normal to me.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-06 03:26 pm (UTC)And if she TREATED them that way, I would totally agree with you. The problem for me (and I think for Papersky, although I don't know) is that the human side of the equation is definitely woman-falls-in-love-with-rapist. She doesn't ever suggest that Lessa and F'lar could fuck like crazed weasels and STILL not like each other very much. He takes her by force and she loves it. And him. And that's repellent.
Humans, not being heat-driven and having this pesky sentience thing, need a better basis for a long-term, loving relationship. That's what I object to: the conflation of a violent and not voluntary sexual experience with romantic and erotic love. Also the undertones of, All Lessa needed was a good rape to get her sorted out. Bleah.
But I totally agree with you: using a male green-rider as a protagonist would have led to some MUCH more interesting story-telling.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-06 03:40 pm (UTC)But then again, McCaffery mostly writes thinly disguised romance novels, and the rape (or ravishment--I suppose you can't really call it a rape if they like it, because to me that cheapens the brutality of the word, rape, and I'd prefer not to see its impact/violence/utility lessened) scene is a staple of the genre--or was at the time period in which she was writing, because good girls still didn't back then.
Not that that makes it valid characterization, or even less icky.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-06 04:03 pm (UTC)So there's no good word. What a surprise.
Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-06 04:26 pm (UTC)And actually--and aside--I'm not sure if it *still* pertains, but up until very recently, I know that a rapist in Italy could not be charged if he could force/coerce/blackmail his victim into agreeing to marry him.
< retreat into feminist theory > It's all about controlling women through controlling their reproductive freedom. < / End of retreat into feminist theory. >
Oddly enough, I've got maybe, hurm, four things in my work that could be called "rape" scenes. Two are psychic rapes, and they're unequivocal rapes--and the fact that the raper makes the rapee like it is part of the rape, and treated as such. (There's no intercourse: it's strictly mind control). There's a rape of a man by a woman that's in my mind definitely a rape: he gives consent, but it's because he's been blackmailed into it.
And then there's an extremely violent male/male sex scene that one of my readers called a rape, although consent is clearly and repeatedly given throughout it. I don't think that's rape. I think it's violent, nasty, uncomfortable, cathartic train-wreck sex.
On the other hand, I can see how that first sex scene in my current WiP--the one you've seen, truepenny--could be called a rape. Because the possibility of an uncoerced consent has been utterly removed. It's meant to be a little uncomfortable.
For some reason, this theme is really interesting to me, and it's something I find myself coming back to from different angles. Probably a squid in my mouth. Watch out for the ink droplets. *g*
Re: Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-06 05:25 pm (UTC)Actual rape is about losing the right to consent.
Fantasies of rape are about relinquishing responsibility.
I agree with you that the two things are NOT the same. The problem comes (and here I am glaring straight at Freud) when someone--rapist or authority figure or whoever--says that the two are the same. The basis of Freud's double-bind is that women can't lose the right to consent because they never use it anyway. Even when they say they don't want it, they don't mean it. Even if they don't KNOW they don't mean it (i.e., they think they mean "no.") I guess the problem I have with the ravishment scenes (aside from the inherent squickiness of them) is that the narrator is in Freud's position, telling us that Lessa "really wanted" sex with F'lar when it's not at all clear, speaking as a skeptical reader, that she did.
The pebble that starts the avalanche that is the four-book Project is a rape (male/male)--and sex in these books IS power, pretty much universally. So it's a theme I use, too. And, come to think of it, the standalone features a completely unambiguous mind-rape. Power and disempowerment, power games ... sex isn't the only arena those can play out, but it's one of the most interesting ones to write.
Re: Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-06 06:08 pm (UTC)(I'm impressed you managed to read through my stream of consciousness there. Been practicing on Joyce? *g*)
Bingo, and total agreement. **glares too**
And yeah, sex as power--and the interplay of sex and power--is a very interesting dynamic, and one that really fascinates me. My emotional reaction to the various relationships in the Pern books is more, I think, that they're bad not just because they're abrogations of female personhood (looking at when they were written and who was writing them, and how naive the characterizations in those books are as a whole) but also because they're oversimplified and disingenuous.
On the other hand, when I started reading SFF (as a wee bairn) Lessa was one of the stronger female characters out there. The other things I was reading at the same time--what, 1977, 1978 or so? must have been, because I clearly remember when White Dragon came out, my mom bought it in hardcover (something she never did), and I was disappointed because I couldn't get into it, having devoured the then-extant four books--my other options were Heinlein, Asimov, Piers Anthony, ROger Zelazny (Amber novels) Andre Norton (who had mostly male protags, iirc), and so on.
Remember: Downbelow Station was still three years away. Titan was a year in the future. (to name two books with better female characters) Dragonflight, by contrast, was already ten years old, having been published in 1968. Good girls *really* didn't, back in the day, and if they did they promptly fell in love and got married.
This was the bad old days, the era of the Gor series, God help us, and in my childish estimation Lessa and Menolly were up there with Jirel of Joiry. *g* So I think as a certain type of period piece, it's still got validity: I'm not sure you can judge it by today's standards. (Not that I've read them since I turned 12 or 13, I think)
Anyway, all that history aside, what bothers me more is that that she-really-wanted-it still shows up in fiction today. And a lot. More often in my slush than in published whaddevah, but in the published whaddevah, too.
Re: Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-06 06:31 pm (UTC)Actually, my clearest memory of reading Freud is of being INFURIATED when he trots that out in Dora. It's stuck with me so well that it no longer requires thought.
Freud could be brilliant, but never about women.
I agree, too, that historical context makes a world of difference. For its time, Dragonflight is ground-breaking (although my god her characterization sucks). Now it's ugly and embarrassing. People should not be doing that in their fiction now, and if they are, they should have lemon juice poured in their paper-cuts.
Which, to loop this neatly back around to the original topic, is another reason they shouldn't be repackaging those books as YA fiction now. Because they're dated, and because the ways in which they are dated are not merely quaint, but actually pernicious.
Re: Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-06 06:37 pm (UTC)Embarassing is a good word, I think.
Re: Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-07 08:30 am (UTC)I also suffered from a severe lack of girl's parts in fiction when growing up, and I read the McCaffrey about the same time you did, in fact I specifically remember reading the novella "Weyr Search" in a Year's Best from the library in the summer of 1977 when I read the entire library in alphabetical order, and then borrowing the first two from my step-mother when I met her in the autumn of 1978, and reading Dragonquest first because I thought I'd read Dragonflight, only I hadn't. So yes.
Re: Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-07 08:42 am (UTC)F'lar had tumbled every man in the Weyr, efficiently and easily.
This is apropos of nothing in particular, but makes me smirk.
Re: Rape vs. Ravishment vs. Smut
Date: 2003-07-07 09:12 am (UTC)They may not understand all of it, but they will learn.
It seems like most of us turned out all right. Er. More or less. *g*
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 08:20 am (UTC)I'd call it rape even if they enjoy it, enjoying it is biological, it isn't consent, it's entirely orthogonal. I've had consensual sex I didn't enjoy.
And TMI WARNING working on a rape helpline (briefly, because I found couldn't take it) one of the most agonising calls I had to deal with was a girl who had been out and out raped by a stranger at knifepoint and whose body had responded somewhat, just like in a fantasy, and who was feeling horribly guilty about that, and I'm sure she was more screwed up about it than she needed to be because of the Rhett/Scarlett thing and the awful messages about female sexuality around. I mean bad enough being raped but worse to hate yourself because you lubricated!
Consent is a really clear line. Yes means yes, everything else means no.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 09:58 am (UTC)I was a domestic violence counselor for a while, and had some similar experiences. Which may be why I find myself presenting so many power dynamics through sexuality, come to think of it: writing is, after all, a way to get the goblins out as much as it is anything else.
I think what's objectionable about McCaffery's work in this case is not what she shows (because I don't think there's any topic that should be offlimits for art: that's what art is for), but how she makes the act seem wholesome. I still argue that in the context of this particular story, (like those stupid romance novels cited in another post) the author's intent is that (at least retroactive) consent be implicit in the storyline. IE, the author doesn't see it as a rape, but as a ravishment. (Come to think of it, this puts it into the category of "uptight heroine has sex and Gets All Better." *finds another reason to throw book across the room*)
I don't think it has any bearing on real life, because I frankly don't think these situations *arise* in real life (she says no but means yes), except in the heads of poorly socialized men with borderline personality disorders who do not understand that no means no, or who invent rationalizations to explain away their own criminal, antisocial and damaging behaviours.
On the other hand, I'm fascinated by the mechanics of seduction (both in sexual and nonsexual senses) which are, essentially, the techniques of bringing an unwilling individual *into* consent, no matter how unhappy they are to be consenting. And I think there lies a danger as well, because if all you can show are positive, healthy relationships I am *so* out of a job! (Not that I think this is what anyone here is saying: if anything, I've been converted to the kill-F'Lar camp by this erudite crew.)
Nor am I arguing the point that the book provides a terrible (and dated) message (it does).
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 04:31 pm (UTC)But then Anne McCaffrey also wrote mainstream romances at a time when the bodice ripper was queen.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 04:33 pm (UTC)Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 04:42 pm (UTC)I hadn't thought about Kylara in this context, because the last time I read Dragonquest, I was so totally invested in Wirenth (who I knew was going to die, because I'd already read Dragonsinger), that I hated Kylara before she was even introduced. But you're absolutely right. Our estimation of her as a bad person is very much bound up with her sexuality.
Sex generally isn't a very good idea in McCaffrey books, is it? The happiest romantic couple I can think of is Helva and Niall, and that's very specifically because HE CAN'T TOUCH HER. They can do that funky mind-meld thing so she can taste the coffee he drinks, but that's a weird-ass sublimation for the Forbidden Sex that nearly destroys everyone.
Oh dear, how very fucked up.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 04:14 am (UTC)I have trouble naming a McCaffrey romance that *isn't* about a strong woman finding love with a stronger man who overmasters her [unless it's one where adult man meets thirteen-year-old girl and has to wait for her to grow up before pressing his suit. Ick.] I've only read one of her dragon books, but I used to like the Tower and the Brainship books (yes I *was* thirteen) and I found it sexist in those, although not actually rape.
I took that view to a friend who'd recommended the dragon book to me (I think it was Red Star Rising) and she suggested it was a form of BDSM with a male Dom and a female sub. That'd reassure me if I believed it, but I'm afraid it's more likely McCaffrey's view of how Things Should Be between men and women.
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 05:37 am (UTC)Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 09:35 am (UTC)I think those are just as depersonizing to women--and in fact related to--the she-really-wanted-it thing, because they totally externalize a female character and rob her of her strength/ability to choose her own path.
I think I need to run off and deconstruct those now, because they piss me off so badly. *g*
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 12:24 pm (UTC)I had great fun doing damage to that one in my dragon book, where the heroine gets significantly less beautiful
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 12:39 pm (UTC)Come to think of it, isn't the scene in Dragonflight also "uptight heroine has sex and Gets All Better?" Oh, bounce that book one more time....
I have a story where the protag starts off scarred and loses those scars--and she's unhappy to see them go: they're very much part of her identity. Oh, drat. I just realized many of my characters have scars of one sort or another. Uh oh, sandbox. *Gets the shovel*
Re: SPOILERS FOR PERN
Date: 2003-07-07 01:34 pm (UTC)My first published novel, The King's Peace has a rape in the first chapter which puts her off sex long term but without traumatizing her the way that people in fiction are traumatized by rape. She's also, just naturally, romance-deaf, which enabled me to write a a whole thing in her POV not only without any sex, but without her ever recognising any romantic stuff as anything other than something to roll her eyes at. This let me do a whole lot of stuff I wouldn't have been able to otherwise. She does, however, have a deep emotional relationship with her horse!
no subject
Date: 2003-07-06 01:43 pm (UTC)Regardless of whether or not Dragonlance and Pern are good fiction (something that I've got a very different opinion on now that when I was twelve) it seems insulting to have to wrap them in a YA package to make kids read them. I read them in the adult-book form when I was twelve. Any kid who wants to read them ought to be able to do the same thing.
All in all, it just seems stupid. The word "why" came to mind every time I noticed another one. It's so pointless.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-06 01:58 pm (UTC)I was actually thinking, as I typed this post, well, at least they haven't done it with Terry Brooks yet.
Which just goes to show that you can never be too cynical. :/
Marketing and shelving
Date: 2003-07-06 07:15 pm (UTC)Re: Marketing and shelving
Date: 2003-07-07 08:39 am (UTC)But these books Truepenny has seen have been simplified for younger readers or, as they used to put it "abridged". I loathe that word, and always have since before I properly understood what it meant.
Re: Marketing and shelving
Date: 2003-07-07 11:38 am (UTC)Pardon me while I squick, now.
(How the hell do you abridge Pern? It's not like it's particularly long to begin with.)
no subject
Date: 2003-07-06 03:12 pm (UTC)I can't imagine why they have to be altered for YAs
no subject
Date: 2003-07-06 05:32 pm (UTC)My only objection to things being *reprinted* as YA is that I have to surreptitiously move copies into the SF section so that people can find them (like _Sorcery and Cecelia_).
(Apropos McCaffrey, I didn't realize that the Pern books romanticize rape when I was twelve, but I do know, and that makes them prime candidates for the closet treatment when we need space on the bookshelves.)