Bring back the sensawunda

I've made the mistake of reading a lot of reviews of SF books and stories recently.  I innocently thought I'd read them to get me back up to speed in the genre, not having followed it for several years.  I needed to do my market research and see what was selling, and what books people were talking about.  I read some of the awards-nominated stuff, and found a couple of authors and issues I could identify with.

Then I turned to reviews.  Bad mistake.  I found so little positivity there.  Comments on books seemed to be thinly-veiled rants complaining that the book's author hadn't taken the same political stance as the critic.  Books were getting slammed from a personal political viewpoint, sometimes without any discussion of the merits of the book itself.  That's not a review, it's a diatribe.

All of which has left me with a nasty taste in the mouth,  I'm still naive enough to think that 'speculative fiction' is the place where writers can, well, speculate about the future.  The places where we can dream, and present cultures that have moved on from our current unsatisfactory ones.  But I didn't see any acknowledgement of the sensawunda in any of these reviews.  Maybe reviewers are just too cool these days to admit that they love something.

This lack of emotional engagement with the text drives me mad,   I've always needed to fall I love with the books I'm writing.  They embody themes and people I care about.  I'm not an impartial observer of my own stories.  I'm their cheerleader, the person who knows my characters will win through in the end.  And I'm crazy enough to be optimistic about the future.

For me, sensawunda contains the dazzling possibility that women might some day be equally treated in society, that their talents night be properly valued.  Yes, it's good that more women are being published in SF, and that some of them are gaining awards, but we still have a long way to go.  For me to regain that sensawunda I want to see women scientists unlocking the secrets of the universe.  And I want to see women working through the social and cultural implications of radical new technologies too.  And sometimes deciding that the social cost of adoption of these technologies is too high, and abandoning the research.  

Societies where women are independent, make free choices about their lives and careers, are not prevented from reaching the tops of their chosen careers, are respected there and listened to.  And where greed isn't the primary driver of technological change. 

Now those kind of stories might well bring back my sensawunda.