...political goals mentioned in the blog post. The Puppies *just happened* to want to go back to pulpy style when a story about a gay romance got awards? Uh-huh. (7/7)

And I think the conflation of all of these dynamics happening at once provides cover to any one of them--'it's not that the Puppies are sexist, they just like the pulps!' 'The Puppies aren't racist, they just want to put the science back in sf!' Not a coincidence that this aligns with the...(6/7)

...to the acknowledgement of works by women and authors of color. History of SF isn't my specialty but that's the armchair history I tend to hear - manly pulps with rayguns, then sociology, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Chip Delany happened and things got soft. Flaccid, one might say. (5/7)

The other lens is masculinity, because more abstract prose is seen as feminine and girly and presumably has cooties. I've also seen it called "flowery" which feels...pretty unsubtle. I don't think it's a coincidence that histories of sf frequently tie the emergence of soft sf and its prose...(4/7)

I've connected this in the past to the idea that scientific writing for scientists (i.e. journal articles, reports, etc.) aims to make experiments repeatable or at least describe them in ways as if the reader was there (virtual witnessing, h/t Shapin and Shaffer's Leviathan and the Air Pump). (3/7)

...I don't think the politics of realism can be disconnected from the politics of science and masculinity Prose that's journalistic or workmanlike is, stylistically, one of the hallmarks of scientific writing, so that prose in pulps ends up feeling more scientific by being more transparent. (2/7)

youtu.be/AXR2h_ZjOgU?...

Things are getting downright UNHINGED over here*

* brewed a cup of tea and started another YouTube documentary about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Delighted and honored to be in such esteemed company! The Scientist Does Not Look Back can be found here: escapepod.org/2024/07/25/e...