Caitlin Mulryan is able to use sex for love, friendship, pleasure or therapy and is able to handle a number of men who, without her help, would have been jealous, possessive, judgmental, conflicted, in general negative. Is this just how she is, what I call her "karma," or is it because she is an avatar of the Others who, we gather, have a positive attitude to all life? Caitlin achieves remarkable results with a young man who is initially hostile because she is his brother-in-law's mistress and who then becomes infatuated with her. I have read as far as Chapter XXXIX of L and so far nothing has gone wrong. (Roman numerals are tiresome.)
Caitlin also helps other women. Susanne does not want to marry because it would be wrong to have children in a lost spaceship with limited supplies and there is no contraception available but maybe Caitlin as the ship's doctor and with access to its database can do something about that?
As with Poul Anderson's Tau Zero, a novel about a long space journey has to address both the universe outside the spaceship and the people inside it. But the people can be very different.
4 comments:
Caitlin is one of Poul's least convincing characters. And jealousy is inherent in human beings -- if there's no inclination to jealousy, there's no real romantic attachment.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree with Stirling, Caitlin is the chief reason why THE AVATAR does not entirely please me. Admitted in one of his letters to me that he was a gynolator, loving women maybe too much to be as objective as he could have been.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: I like women too -- like them more than men, frankly. ("They're more like human beings", is how I thought of it when I finally. made my escape from boy's boarding schools.). But I don't think I idealize them the way Poul did.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Exactly, and your stories are realistic enough to have nasty female villains in them.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment