Scan barcode
A review by rednikki
The Stardance Trilogy by Spider Robinson, Jeanne Robinson
1.0
I'm really shocked at how positively this is reviewed. I was stunned by the racism in the second book (Starseed) and am surprised no one else has commented on it.
A Japanese character dies in the novel...because she's too polite to tell anyone that she's running out of oxygen. "They say lifeguards in Japan have to be terribly alert, because most drowners there are too self effacing to disturb everyone's wa by calling for help." What? WHAT? WHAT? Our only other named Japanese character drops out because he just can't hack EVA.
Let's not get into Kirra, who falls into the Magical Negro cliche. (The Magical Negro, for those who aren't familiar with the term, is the black person with mystical abilities, patient and wise and closer to the earth, though not as educated as other characters, who is the sidekick to the white hero and whose magic is directed at enlightening the main white character.) And every line of dialogue she has is an Australian cliche! She's the only character who is written in dialect.
And then, THEN we have the evil guy. Who is, of course, Chinese. Couldn't have the WHITE guy in the book be the treasonous, tricksy betrayer. (And the other terrorists in the book? Muslim. Because WHITE PEOPLE don't have terrorists like the IRA.)
Really, at the end, when the main character hallucinates "a tiny Negro in a clown suit" (I kid you not, that is the line, and this book was written in 1991!), it was just the capper.
A Japanese character dies in the novel...because she's too polite to tell anyone that she's running out of oxygen. "They say lifeguards in Japan have to be terribly alert, because most drowners there are too self effacing to disturb everyone's wa by calling for help." What? WHAT? WHAT? Our only other named Japanese character drops out because he just can't hack EVA.
Let's not get into Kirra, who falls into the Magical Negro cliche. (The Magical Negro, for those who aren't familiar with the term, is the black person with mystical abilities, patient and wise and closer to the earth, though not as educated as other characters, who is the sidekick to the white hero and whose magic is directed at enlightening the main white character.) And every line of dialogue she has is an Australian cliche! She's the only character who is written in dialect.
And then, THEN we have the evil guy. Who is, of course, Chinese. Couldn't have the WHITE guy in the book be the treasonous, tricksy betrayer. (And the other terrorists in the book? Muslim. Because WHITE PEOPLE don't have terrorists like the IRA.)
Really, at the end, when the main character hallucinates "a tiny Negro in a clown suit" (I kid you not, that is the line, and this book was written in 1991!), it was just the capper.