*sigh* When authors should know better.

[roseembolism]

I won't really go into the latest racefail controversy, AKA "Mammothfail". I just want to point out that it's really a distressing feeling to read the comments of an author you respect, and find yourself muttering "No, No, no! Just, stop. You're NOT helping. I know you're trying to support your friend, but you're making things worse. No see, you're still typing. That's bad. Aw, no, not with the metaphors, just back. Away. Slowly."

A part of my mind is trying to adapt the Tom Leher song "Who's Next" to Racefail, as I wonder who the next author I respect is going to make the mistake of explaining their way deeper into a mess.

Comments

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

Book in question: The Thirteenth Child, which posits a Little House on the Prairie with no pesky Native Americans to do away with all the megafauna. Because Ma Ingalls needs to cook an entire freaking mammoth like Wilma Flintstone to feed her growing pioneer family.

[sakon76.livejournal.com]

...I'm trying to picture Ma Ingalls cooking a mammoth (which Pa Ingalls hunted and killed and hauled back, of course), and it's a very amusing mental exercise.

you can't eat just ONE bison...

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

Paleontologists believe that mammoths averaged about Indian elephant size, on the main. That's RIDICULOUS amounts of meat for one family. Remember the pig slaughtering scene in Little House? Food all winter for four people? Well, if a pig is about 100 pounds, less waste (which they didn't), try 2 tons on for size! Might as well scoop out a hole in the side of the damn thing and live in Chez Dead Tauntaun for the whole of the North Dakotan winter.
And that's just the plains mammoths. The Californian mammoths could get to 16 feet at the shoulder. Ol' Pa Ingalls would need a grenade launcher just to singe the hair off its butt.
(I love mammoths. I especially love our Channel Islands mammoths, which were only 3-4 feet at the shoulder. Mimmoths!)

[seawasp]

I once wrote Little Gundam on the Prairie (because someone said there were some things you COULDN'T do a crossover with, such as Mobile Suit Gundam Wing and Little House on the Prairie), and a Mobile Suit and a Mammoth are about the same size...

never mind, nothing to see here.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

In my WiP, I'm going to have mammoths, certainly. Maybe even hyperintelligent psychic mammoths. Or ground sloths. Maybe even saber tooth tigers. Psychic ninja saber toothed tigers. Given a past culture that created entire species for aesthetic reasons, the possibilities are wide open.

But I'm not going to erase a race in order to have them. That would be all kinds of idiotic.

[seawasp]

Well, as a writer, I reserve the right to erase any race, continent, civilization, individual person, planet, or whatever from my work if I don't think it plays a part in my work, and to add, modify, or otherwise change anything else in any way, shape, or form that amuses me. It's MY universe, written for ME, and I am writing exactly and only the story I want, the way I want. As I've often said to people in discussions of books and reading: "I'm not writing for 'the reader'; I'm writing for ME. If the reader wants to come along and enjoy my story, that's fine, but what I'm doing is writing the stuff no one else will write for me."

Also, if you have hyperintelligent psychic mammoths and ninja sabretoothed tigers, you have just erased the race in question anyway, unless they're a chattel species to the HPMs or NSTs.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that it's not so much the premise, but the way it was handled that angered people. Also, Ms. Wrede's own comments back on rec.arts.sf.composition when she was planning the book indicate that she Just. Doesn't. Get. It.