Estrogen and two fiction books

[rivkat]

Fascinating article on estrogen and its under-studied relationship to psychosis.  In fact, estrogen seems comprehensively under-studied and under-explained. I am a conventionally well-educated Western woman and I had no idea what perimenopause was until my periods changed into the prom scene from Carrie (not the more discreet locker room scene, as previously had been the case).

William Alexander, Nomad: Gabe’s adventures as Earth’s ambassador to the universe continue: he connects to the previous ambassador, whose attempt to figure out how the genocidal Outlast are spreading has left her visually impaired, as well as the Kaen ambassador, who turns out to be descended from the Maya people who left thousands of years ago (in a neat reversal of the “aliens built the pyramids” canard). Struggling with ICE as well as the Outlast, he tries to make a fragile peace. (Alexander was writing about warehouses full of kids separated by chain link fences and mylar blankets a few years before Trump, because they existed before Trump.)
 
Omar El Akkad, American War: In the future, America descends into civil war after climate change and other disasters lead the national government to (try to) ban fossil fuels. Sarat, a refugee girl, becomes a terrorist after a massacre at her refugee camp, recruited by a man funded by a foreign empire that wants the civil war to keep going. I did not like it for the same reason that I did not like Naomi Alderman’s The Power: it’s a straight up role reversal (which can also read as revenge fantasy) that doesn’t illuminate anything in the way I like speculative fiction to do; to me it’s just non-sf literary fiction with a search/replace. Also, apparently this future South has anti-Catholic bias but not anti-black bias; I’m not saying that’s impossible, because people are strange, but I have questions about the worldbuilding.

Comments

[malkingrey]

Also, apparently this future South has anti-Catholic bias but not anti-black bias; I’m not saying that’s impossible, because people are strange, but I have questions about the worldbuilding.

I can't speak to the future disappearance of anti-black bias (except to note that, as you say, people are strange, and also that Southerners are sometimes stranger than most), but the anti-Catholic bias is entirely believable. The KKK in its heyday was anti-Catholic as well as anti-black (with a side order of anti-Semitism thrown in); even as recently as the late sixties, when my mother switched from being Southern Baptist to high-church Episcopalian (if you're a hard-shell Baptist, all of those bells-and-incense liturgy-centric denominations look alike), one of her relatives said to her, "Mildred, I never did see why you had to go and join that foreign church."

[rivkat]

Oh, I'm definitely not suggesting it's a new development! It's just that I find it hard to project the situation in which anti-black bias disappears as a factor in a US Southern black girl's life but anti-Catholicism remains.

[cofax7]

Yeah, that was a big sticking point for me with the novel as well. I thought some of it was interesting, particularly the climate change issue as a dividing point, but in the aftermath of the 2016 election, the failure to engage with actual racism (rather than generalized xenophobia) seemed faulty.