The quiet power of the word

There are some SF authors I follow on Twitter who are perpetually angry about anything and everything.  Several times I've been enticed by a good headline to check out a blog post, to see what that person has to say about a subject that interests me.  This week there were several that I started reading, but didn't get past the second paragraph before I stopped reading.  Why?  Because the page was littered with 'f' and other swear words.

No, I'm not a prude.  I'm quite capable of telling someone who really annoys me to 'f' off in appropriate circumstances.  But that's usually an immediate response to an in-my-face interaction.  But writing a blog post is different.  It should be a reasoned argument for whatever view you're putting forward.  And to me, strong and controlled narratives have more persuasive power.  A text littered with angry rants and swear words dilutes the writer's message massively,

I have a similar problem with the thorny issue of representation of female characters in SF stories.  In the so-called "golden age" (aka as "dark age" for women), white male writers included female characters only as sexy bimbos, to be carried away by the aliens, screaming.  It meant the art department could produce a pornographic cover for the magazine with the woman's breasts exposed.  Real women with intelligence were pretty much absent,

Now at least real women are SFF protagonists, but I think some authors have pushed the boundaries too far the other way.  We have a clutch of books with "kick-ass heroines" (easily the term I most detest) , employed as assassins, mercenaries, and selling their wombs for money.  These books are a huge turn off for me.  I don't think you need to be in the reader's face, or angry, to make a powerful point.  I think the quiet power of gentle but persistent persuasion can often work better.  

Where a reader has been thoroughly entertained by a tale they're more likely to go back and re-read the story.  On a second or third reading the chances are that they'll notice the nuances of the book's theme, and the arguments the writer is making, far more than in the first, headlong, rush to discover the story.  When we know how the story ends but we don't want to let it go, we go back and re-immerse ourselves in the world of the story and its characters.

And, just as several viewings of a painting, or several listens to a piece of music, turn up new insights, so does several readings of a text.  I'm all in favour of the quiet power way of getting my point across.

I'd rather have my character Ren Hunter quietly despairing about why big cats are being exterminated than writing an angry rant about deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting and poaching.

Plenty of other people are using their energy to tackle those issues head-on, leaving space for me to address the things I care about sideways.  And, just as a casually overheard song can lodge itself in your mind, so can a casually absorbed idea from a favourite story have a lasting impact.  In the end, it might be the insidious insistence of the ideas planted by quiet power that really change the world.