Today I post a Q/A session with the talented Jessica Reisman, author of many excellent short stories appearing in the likes of Interzone, Scifiction, and Realms of Fantasy, and author of the fabulous SF novel, The Z Radiant.


Q - Jessica, you're a big fan of some of the prominent modern space westerns (thank you now and always for making me go back and watch BSG and Firefly after I'd initially dismissed them).  What draws you to space westerns?

 

A - Partly it's what draws me to any speculative fiction narrative--a group of disparate and interesting characters drawn close in a struggle for justice/safety/dignity/the rights of others and themselves against big, bullying forces and a universe of odds stacked chaotically against them. In fantasy, those forces and odds are supernatural; in SF, you get spaceships, starfields, and cosmic phenomena. Adding in westerns and moving the frontier to the stars and planets that only barely support life gives you endless permutations on culture and civilization, and interesting developments when high tech meets scarcity and invention.

Q - What about the women characters in these (and any others you can name) space westerns do you find particularly appealing?  Anything off-putting?  What & why?

A - Competence without fanfare, kick-assitude, and that they're humans and heroes and women without one of those things having to adversely affect the others. Fully fledged characters in imagined universes that have shed a lot of the stereotypes of what women are or can be--which is one of the great things that any social SF can do, envision such worlds--combining this with the heroic adventurer characterization of the western, which is the intense cathexis of individual, internal moral and ethical construction set against a place and time without civilized ethical constraints--presents great opportunities for women characters.

 

Especially in Firefly, Farscape, and BSG, characters like Zoe, Kaylee, Aeryn, Starbuck, Roslyn, and other fighter pilots who happen to be women--this is satisfying stuff. Rough and tumble, talented, regular women who try, fail, try again, fuck up, and sometimes pull it spectacularly out of the fire.

 

One predecessor to shows like Firefly, Farscape, and BSG, in terms of women characters in space western settings and what that makes possible is C.J. Cherryh. Her Alliance-Union universe books really explored that territory long before these shows appeared. Certainly, her books, and Ursula Le Guin's, which were formative for me, suggesting the possibilities long before the shows came along, had a lot to do with the settings and women characters in my first novel, The Z Radiant.

 

The shows are just a very swell development along the way, in my view--satisfying in a way that so much pervious SF adventure failed to be, because of a smallness of vision where it concerned women. 

Q - Anything you'd like to add from a writer's perspective?  A woman writer's perspective?  A woman SF writer's perspective?

A - I think I might have covered that above--in redux: the character of the western hero, where hero is not a pre-gendered concept, crossed with the socially opened up far future worlds of space opera SF equals great SF that's engaging, entertaining, and wicked fun to write and read.

 

Also, and somewhat tangentially, space westerns are fun because it's adventure, and, getting back to my first point, about the group of interesting characters--of varying genders--against interesting and daunting odds, I love that in a space western that can be your raison d'être. I get tired of the idea that SF has to be one thing or another now, that certain kinds of SF aren't possible anymore--having real, kick-ass, women characters is every bit as revolutionary and relevant to SF--yes, still--as any post-singularity concern about what the human/technological interface looks and feels like.

 

Q - Thanks, Jessica, for your thoughtful and (dare I say it?) scholarly analysis!  I in particular love your attention to the idea of a group dynamic -- a posse, if you will -- that forms more naturally in a space western context than in some others.  I also appreciate your mention of fantastic women SF greats like Cherryh and LeGuin.  U R awesome.