I’ve just read the blog titled ‘That’s Racist!’ where James Sutter stated that in pulp stories “"advanced" races were always white”.
That's not always the case, in Burroughs’ Barsoom series the red men are the dominant race (and advanced enough to make atmosphere factories), the black men have powerful fleets of airships, and the white men lurk at the South Pole and lure people to their death (though there was a very advanced race of whites in ‘Thuvia, Maid of Mars’).
That strikes me as being quite the opposite from “"advanced" races were always white”.
Some people (by this I don’t mean James Sutter) will yell ‘racist’ over any mention of skin color. I haven’t read Kline yet, but I just want to say that Burroughs’ Barsoom series is NOT racist.
And thank you James Sutter for giving us the unabridged versions of the stories, whatever the politically correct people say.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 8
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I'm attentive to issues of race (in fact, I get paid to be) but I also thank Mr. Sutter for the unabridged versions. Eliminating evidence of racism does not contribute to anti-racist education but works against it.
Aside:
I once heard that a student employed at a history archive used a search and replace function to change all the texts that contained the word "indian" to read "native people's". Things like that make it impossible for anyone to now use those archives to research, say, changes in language.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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It could be worse...
though I wonder how he handled 'native people's cusine' in his menues ;-)
As to the original text, reading Tarzan and John Carter as a kid, the race part never occured to me. Plus Tarzan's Warizi always seemed to be Lord Greystoke's intellectual equals to me.
It's true that not EVERY pulp writer did it, but when you've got somebody like Erik buying up every pulp he can find (the man's an addict), you quickly come to notice certain trends....
Anyway, the point stands that, if you go back far enough, basically ALL literature is going to seem backward in its thinking, because it reflects the beliefs of the time. Rather than dismissing it wholesale, we should view it through the lens of historical context and see if - as with the Planet Stories books - there's still something timeless and desirable in its stories and ideas.
Bravo to all of you at Paizo!
As someone who actively despises the politically correct language (I'm an English Major, and a female, and have never had a problem using "He/Him" as the generic!) I am thrilled that you are printing the works as they were written.
I was aghast some years ago when I picked up an edited version of Huckleberry Finn, where they had changed all the references to the "N" words ... because it was "wrong" for kids to read it that way.
All literature is a species of its times, and burying how language was used is to me a crime. Yes, there are many works that deserve to languish and die, as they were written to support a racist ideal, but they still serve an historical purpose, no matter how much they might be despised.
So I say bravo, and bravo again. Many kudos to you all!
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Kudos to Planet Stories/Paizo for not falling prey to the wish to sanitize texts. I'm currently reading through a collection of Rudyard Kipling's horror/fantasy stories and unsurprisingly it is replete with many of the same attitudes (white race is god's chosen, specifically the English). Neil Gaiman's introduction to the collection was quite interesting as he talks about enjoying authors you may disagree with (in fact he goes further to say it would be awfully boring if you could only read authors you do agree with). Jack London and Robert E. Howard fall into much the same category as Kipling though with a healthy dose of American Social Darwinisim circa 1930s. The point being is the past however uncomfortable happened and it far more sensible to openly acknowledge this instead of sweeping such sentiments under the carpet of abridgment.
Again well done.
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I've noticed this trend of abridgement starting with my sister's Nancy Drew collection. The original editions that she has, compared to the reprintings she bought (the ones with the yellow covers) changed language and some characterization. I believe these things were done to assure (and reassure) a market of adolescent girls, but I think kids deserve to see how things were, if only to help them appreciate how much better attitudes have become. Too many preteens think feminism is the f-word because they aren't exposed to what women's lives were like before there was a feminist movement. They would be shocked if they knew that Nancy Drew was considered a radical in the '30s because she drove a car. (My granny never learned to drive because it wasn't "ladylike nor neccesary" - she's 90 yrs old this year and always told me "get your driver's license and go to college" because those are the things she most regrets not doing because of the prejudice against "women drivers" and "overeducated coeds" at the time).
Edit: My point is: kudos to Paizo.
(My granny never learned to drive because it wasn't "ladylike nor neccesary" - she's 90 yrs old this year and always told me "get your driver's license and go to college" because those are the things she most regrets not doing because of the prejudice against "women drivers" and "overeducated coeds" at the time).
Yeah, I used to have a friend whose grandmother regularly sent her clippings from various religious publications about how she was going to ruin her chances of marriage if she kept educating herself... after all, "it'll make you too picky, and men won't want a wife smarter than they are."
Ah, the good ol' days....
Ah, the good ol' days....
Good riddance. :P
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Yeah, I haven't read any Kline yet, but that snippet posted in the blog alone puts him miles ahead of Lovecraft.
While this might be thread necromancy, I feel I must thank you deeply for taking that particular stand, Paizo. We are force-fed daily with sanitized publications, either because of active censorship, or because of self-censoring behaviour with authors today. The result is a vague feeling of unease in reading, where it seems the idea that reading should challenge your thinking has been utterly excised. And while I certainly don't see all literature as worthy of showing for posterity on its own merits, it's absolutely vital that we are allowed to see yesterday's society (and our own) through differently coloured lenses from time to time.
This can only be done by allowing certain distasteful things to stand unsanitized. We must never fall into the trap that our current time, with our own foibles, is the definition of a good society, because in fifty years' time, people will look back on us and say "really, it can be fun to read their stuff, but you have to be aware that those books are children of their time, of course they didn't know better back then."
Many things that happen in society today, will be seen as dangerous, horrible, or moronic by the standards of our grandchildren. And all we can be certain of is that it won't be the things we think.
So, my heartfelt thanks for adopting this policy, Paizo. You rock!
"He was a liberal in politics,and a bitter foe of civic injustice in any form"
(from H.P.Lovecraft's memoriam of Robert E. Howard,who was a friend,in 'Skull-face And Others')