[LMB] Why LMB just doesn't count

[Beth Mitcham]

On 4/9/07, gpw at uniserve.com <gpw at uniserve.com> wrote:
>
> Quoting Beth Mitcham <mitcham.beth at gmail.com>:
>
> > While wandering around panels at Norwescon this weekend I was told
> > repeatedly that Lois McMaster Bujold just doesn't count.  And by
> > different people each time!
>
> An interesting case of moving goal posts.  Were any other authors
> being dismissed for being too good to be worth discussing?


Elizabeth Moon was disqualified for writing realistic men better than the
average man, let alone woman (I'm not as sure of that; she has some very
flat characters, especially villains, especially when the main characters
are female).  I then tossed in Asaro, which was accepted as a woman whose
men aren't entirely believable.

But the tone wasn't rude or dismissive -- it was more like "well, we are
trying to talk about what mortals can be expected to achieve, so although
you should run out and buy and read every word of what LMB has written, she
isn't really a good sense of what the majority of books are doing."   A lot
of the audience at norwescon are aspiring writers, so there is some slant
towards giving hints as to what people can probably do.

Beth Mitcham