AKICODW/LJ

[oyceter]

Gah, I just realized FOGcon is only a week or so away!

And since I have profited greatly from posts like this in the past, help me think about what to say at my panel!

Gray is the New Purple

Aging isn’t for the weak of heart. What sf/f works deal with the topic of aging, either positively or negatively? Who gets it right and who should do some homework?

Moderator: Madeleine Robins
Panelists: Phyllis Holliday, Oyceter, Erin Hoffman

I can think of Tehanu off the top of my head, and I remember someone asking for representations of older women in SF/F, not counting immortals, people who do not physically age, and etc., and the list was fairly scanty.

I love DWJ's Howl's Moving Castle, but I've always thought it was odd how Sophie suddenly begins to think like an old woman and how there is no disparity between her own self image and her changed physical image. Maybe this is particularly interesting because I feel we see more of the opposite situation in SF/F: old people in young bodies, thanks to magic/science/alien technology/plot point/etc.

I really like how A:TLA includes multiple kickass old men, but I really wish there were awesome old women as well. The only few we see tend to be on the creepy side, and there's definitely no equivalent of Uncle Iroh.

I wonder how much of A:TLA's old people kicking ass has to do with its martial arts heritage? I think several of the older women I've seen in wuxia movies tend to be the villains, but they have a much greater presence than what I've read in English-language SF/F. Possibly this has to do with the greater number of female martial artists and the whole cameo thing?

Thoughts? Ideas? Anyone?

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

UKLe Guin's short story, The Day Before the Revolution, makes me weep every time I reread it. The anarchist matriarch who has worked her whole long life builing the possibility of Anarres (as told in The Dispossessed) wakes up on an ordinary day, stretches, interacts with some of her revolutionary pals, and dies in her sleep.

Suzette Haden Elgin's "Native Tongue" series also features the post-menopausal women who run the women's houses, create the decoy women's languages, and plan for a better future over several generations.

[veejane]

"The Day Before the Revolution" was the one I was going to suggest as well.

[oyceter]

Yay, thanks! Those sound awesome (also, yay short story, which is probably doable for con prep, heh).