Profanity And Science Fiction

I agree with you 100%. As a mother, I am fed up with all the profanity and sex in children's books. My complaints just didn't register with the public schools my children attended, either.

Around our house when I was growing up, "intelligent people can think of plenty of words to express themselves without cursing". I heard this a lot. And, I agreed with it. We authors need to take some social responsibility and take care with what we print. Young minds might be exposed to us. Think of the social change we might bring, if most American writers started putting less profanity, explicit sex, gore, and just plain immoral behavior into our books! I am taking a stand. So far, the three small-town libraries that saw my book today were VERY enthusiastic about a book that had higher standards. If you agree with me, go to Facebook, create an account, and join my group, Writers For Social Responsibility!

Thanks for a very thought-provoking blog.
Dannis
Author of Home Is Not Home
http://dannistories.com

Profanity in any genre of literature is poor form. It's like the hero stumbling on a decaying corpse and the person describing each festering wound in detail, right down to the pulsating maggots. It's pure indulgence for the sake of indulgence. Any respectable writer knows this. That's why you never see profanities in literature. The only one that I can think of is a single use of the word "damn" in Gone With the Wind, and I've heard that was a pretty huge deal back in the day. I agree with you that profanity is juvenile and has no place in SF.

Sex, on the other hand, can be done tastefully. When it's just the hunky hero and his buxom partner rutting like monkeys for the sake of making a few loins tingle, its just being crass. However, science fiction has a history of sex, even from its most respected authors. The "big three", Asimov, Heinlein, and Herbert, all had sex scenes somewhere in their literature. Asimov had a scene in "Foundation and Earth" where the hot Gaian had a sexual relationship with the old, wise, but quirky professor (Asimov, you dirty old man! I know what you were thinking!). Heinlein... well I'm tempted to not go there... but let's just say he wrote about his time traveling hero going back in time and having sex with his mother while she was pregnant with him... and it only gets weirder from there (yeah... he got a little spacey towards the end). Herbert had an entire military organization of women (the Fish-Speakers) who would orgasm during their religious ceremonies with the God-Emperor (they were certifiably hardcore though, so it's all good). Point being, SF is a genre of literature and like all genres, sex can be made into a beautiful display of intimacy instead of border-line pornography.

It's not just SF that's gotten racier, but entertainment in general (ever seen an episode of Nip/Tuck? And let's not even get started on HBO's "Rome"). There is a point where you have to protect the children, but there are also adults who enjoy SF (a generation ago, this would have been practically unthinkable) and sex, being a part of (most) adult's lives, can and should be talked about. I think it has less to do with SF losing its innocence and more with SF maturing into a genre that has shows for children and shows for adults. Case in point: There are plenty of Westerns that are suitable for children, but you wouldn't want your children reading Cormac MacArthur's ultra-violent, grisly, tragic westerns.

We're adults living in post-sexual revolution America. We should accept it as our nature, and realize that it has a place in our literature for the same reason that a fictional character would eat, sleep, or use the commode. Of course, as long as the golden rule of story writing is being obeyed: "Be true to the plot, be true to the characters". Sex for the sake of sex is just crude, but when it advances the plot, or advances the characters, and is not written like an IKEA manual or shot like a porno, it has its place.

Someone pointed out that technically profanity is when you cuss with religious language. And you used to get some of that in science fiction or fantasy, but it wasn't a real religion.

Also, the Flash Gordon comic strip was running for ages and you mainly looked at it for the girls. Today you could go out to dinner in dresses like those, but at the time they were very hot stuff. And Flash's antique movie serial introduced the female navel to a grateful public, just as Star Trek brought us mixed kissing - under telekinetic duress in the case I'm thinking of. (Today we know that Gene Roddenberry had gone before, or maybe I have the stardates or the actual facts wrong. Whoops!)

To actual kids, sex stuff in stories is boring, maybe frightening, if they try to imitate it hugely embarrassing. If that's your audience then you don't have that. And cussing? Fake cusswords in SF are usually fun. Recent scientific research has established that cussing is a natural analgesic. Well, it comes naturally to me. I kind of wish it didn't.

For an adult audience, on the other hand, well, we don't need that stuff, sex or bad language. Apparently enough of us do enjoy it being there so that many books and movies, certainly not only SF, do include it.

But there are a lot of other things that I appreciate and want to see in SF that are not kiddie-friendly. Advanced actual science. Politics. Moral uncertainty. And keeping kid characters away from dangerous situations. Whereas I can get enormous quantities of sexual content and verbal profanity on the free Internet. Granted, a romantic love story without physical love is not how the real modern world works, and I don't expect that to be different in the future, except with science fiction type characters that are not human and do things differently. I also expect virtual sex and robot sex, but if it isn't as dirty as the regular kind then I expect we'll just carry on with that, unless our parents or the government stop us with technology. And tie our hands behind our backs.

I agree that unnecessary profanity and explicit sex spoils any fiction. On the other hand, in modern times I don't think it is possible to shield children from either. By the time most children (in the US anyway, I don't know about Canada) are seven or eight, they have heard the "dirty" words either from their parents, contemporaries or movies. Why bother, they are only words after all. When parents hear their children using them, they should simply explain that there are appropriate and inappropriate times to use them. As far as sex goes, it's a part of life and a joyful experience. Again they are going to learn from about sex from someone. Why make it of it this mysterious to be hidden dirty thing? In fiction, if handled properly, it can show it for the beautiful wonderful thing it is.