Burden of honesty, p.2
More Women of Wonder (SSC), page 2
There were exceptions; writers Katherine Mac-Lean, C. L. Moore, Pauline Ashwell, and later Anne McCaffrey appeared in the pages of Astounding or Analog (Astounding s later title). Moore’s fine short novel “No Woman Born” was published by Campbell in 1944. Its heroine, a dancer named Deirdre, has her brain transplanted into a metal body after she is nearly killed in a fire. The problems of Deirdre’s adjustment to this body are sensitively portrayed; at the story’s conclusion, we realize that Deirdre will have many difficulties and that there is a possibility she may become estranged from other humans. But Deirdre is aware of these problems and may, the reader can hope, overcome them; Moore leaves this possibility open.
Other memorable stories by women published in Astounding include Judith Merril’s first science fiction piece, “That Only a Mother,” and Wilmar
Shiras’
“In Hiding,” both appearing in 1948. Some memorable female characters were portrayed in stories by Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and others? But the emphasis on realism, ironically, did little to enhance the status of women in science fiction.*
*McCaffrey, in her essay “Hitch Your Dragon to a Star: Romance and Glamour in Science
Fiction” (which appeared in Science Fiction: Today and TomorrowReginald Bretnor, ed.
[New York, Harper & Row, 1974J), discusses what Campbell told her about a character in
one of her stories: “I wanted Ruth [her character] to be a ‘liberated woman.’ John Campbell
asked me to define her in terms of a customary womanly role…Essentially, he told me,
man still explores new territory and guards the hearth; woman minds that hearth whether
or not she programs a computer to dust, cook, and rock the cradle.” (p. 282)
During the 1950s, more science fiction stories by women began to appear. Several of these writers, such as Katherine MacLean, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and others, were adept at writing solid science fiction involving male and female characters, good plotting, and interesting ideas. Others specialized in stories involving women in traditional roles as heroines.
The underlying assumptions of many such stories were that women are instinctual, emotional, concerned mainly with their households and children, and uninterested in science and technology except for their most trivial applications. Alfred Bester, a gifted writer of science fiction, made the following ambivalent observation in a review of a collection of short stories published in 1960:
It’s been suggested that most women fail to write significantly because the female mind is viserotonic, and occupied almost exclusively with the moment-to-moment reality of emotions. If this is true, literature’s loss is science fiction’s gain, for Out of Bounds, Judith Merril’s collection of short stories, is a warm and colorful rendering of the minutiae of the future.*
Bester, of course, was not making a statement of fact but offering a hypothesis; his only assertion is that the story collection is a good one. Others looked at the matter somewhat differently. Sf author and editor Damon Knight, in a review of a novel by a woman he found particularly saccharine, wrote: “Is this the womans viewpoint? I don’t believe it; I think it is the woman s-magazine viewpoint, from which God preserve us.”**
*Alfred Bester, in Fantasy & Science Fiction; reprinted in Judith Merril, Out of Bounds
(New York, Pyramid Books, 1960).
**Damon Knight, In Search of Wonder, 2nd ed. (Chicago, Advent Publishers, 1967), p. 105.
The 1960s saw the development of stylistic innovations in science fiction. There was also a growing concern with the psychological effects of technology on people. Some authors wished to reject .certain “genre” features of sf, such as adventure plots, mighty and triumphant heroes, “pulpy” writing, or a concentration on strange gadgets. Others wished to concentrate on themes that the genre had not emphasized. There was talk at this time of exploring “inner space” rather than “outer space.”
Many important female writers of science fiction, among them Ursula K. Le Guin, Carol Emshwiller, Joanna Russ, and Josephine Saxton, began to publish fiction. This was not the result of a willingness to publish stories reflecting “womens concerns,” nor of a conscious desire on the part of editors to publish more stories and novels by women. Some writers, however, women as well as men, may have felt that the field was more receptive to the kinds of stories that they wished to write. It should also be noted that many of these writers began by writing more traditional science fiction. But perhaps the emphasis on innovation encouraged more women to enter the field and to write stories that were neither traditional nor limited to the “housewife” genre of sf.
Present-day writers, both male and female, have certain advantages over those of the past. They can deal with feminism, having had it brought to their attention by the women s movement In addition, more women are writing science fiction now; among the writers whose first published works appeared during the 1970s are Vonda N. McIntyre, Suzy McKee Chamas, Joan D. Vinge, Marta Randall, Eleanor Amason, Lisa Tuttle, Brenda Pierce, and Joan Bernott
This, of course, does not ensure that the genre will become more progressive. Action-adventure stories with strong male protagonists are still popular; characters in traditional roles are still present in many sf stories. But one cannot expect people to shrug off ingrained attitudes overnight, nor to abandon forms that may have served them well in the past.
Four recent science fiction novels are of particular interest. They reveal some of the ways in which the role of women is being explored within the genre. Ursula K. Le Gums The Dispossessed (Harper & Row, 1974) is a critical utopian novel which explores the differences and the conflicts between two human societies in another planetary system. One planet, Urras, is dominated by a capitalistic, wealthy, and technologically advanced society. Anarres, the moon of Urras, has been settled by members of an anarchistic revolutionary movement. Both societies, and the problems that result from the political philosophies of each, are seen through the eyes of a physicist, Shevek. He has grown up on Anarres and is the first member of his society to visit Urras in two hundred years. Among other things, the novel contrasts the role of women in both worlds. On Urras, women are wives, mothers, and sex objects. On Anarres, no distinction is made between the sexes; as a result, women and men are equally represented in every area of life. The reader also learns that the political philosophy which resulted in the society of Anarres was that of a woman, Odo.
Joe Haldemans The Forever War (St. Martins, 1974) is modeled on traditional science fiction works. The plot is also traditional. We see a future interstellar war through the eyes of one soldier, William Mandella. Unlike many science fiction novels about the future of warfare, this book does not glorify an ultimately purposeless venture, although bravery on the part of individual soldiers exists. The combat troops depicted are draftees, not volunteers. Both men and women are seen in combat, and homosexuals of both sexes are present as characters, though Mandella himself is heterosexual. The even-handedness of the author’s treatment of both sexes is remarkable, and a poignant element is added to the war story as Mandella falls in love with a fellow soldier, Marygay Potter. Regardless of one’s attitudes toward war, the realistic portrayal of female combat troops and the psychological acceptance of such a future possibility by readers will no doubt alter the image of women.
Le Guin’s novel shows us men and women becoming more like one another, each gender having characteristics of both sexes, while Haldeman’s depicts women who have become as tough as any male soldier. Joanna Russ The Female Man (Bantam, 1975) is an explicitly feminist novel which utilizes innovative writing techniques in telling of four women, each a version of the same character, from four alternate worlds. Here science-fictional elements are used in order to show various female-oriented power fantasies: a woman from a world in which there are no men calmly disarms a boorish man at a cocktail party in our world; another character, genetically altered (she has, among other characteristics, retractable claws), kills a man of her world, where the sexes are openly at war. There is an undercurrent of rage throughout the novel.
One of the most interesting of the many elements in The Female Man is the following description of an all-female world and the type of society it might develop:
On Whileaway they have a saying: When the mother and child are separated, they both howl, the child because she is separated from the mother, the mother because she has to go back to work…At the age of four or five these independent, blooming, pampered, extremely intelligent little girls are torn weeping and arguing from their thirty relatives and sent to the regional school, where they scheme and fight for weeks before giving in… ‘
Whileawayan psychology locates the basis of Whileawayan character in the early indulgence, pleasure, and flowering which is drastically curtailed by the separation from the mothers. This (it says) gives Whileawayan life its characteristic independence, its dissatisfaction, its suspicion, and its tendency toward a rather irritable solipsism.*
*“Joanna Russ, The Female Man (New York, Bantam Books, 1975), pp. 49-52.
Thomas M. Disch’s 334 (Avon, 1974) takes place in the decaying New York City of the early twenty-first century. It could be called a futuristic novel of manners; the story concerns itself with the day-to-day problems and lives of several citizens in a drab welfare state which seems to be breaking down, yet somehow goes on. Among the women characters in this novel are Shrimp, a Lesbian whose sexual fantasies focus on bearing children by artificial insemination, and Milly, a high school sex demonstrator whose husband Boz desperately wants a child. He finally has one, brought to term in an artificial womb, and has an operation giving him breasts so that he can nurse the infant.
All these very different works have one thing in common; they are serious works which attempt to deal intelligently with women. The Female Man is the most explicitly feminist, although The Dispossessed also touches on some feminist concerns. Neither 334 nor The Forever War can be called “femenist,” but both novels, because of their attempt to write about the future seriously, take some care with their female (and male) characters.
Although it is likely to be in serious sf works that we will find a concern with women, the role of the adventure novel or story should not be overlooked. An adventure story set in an exotic or fantastic setting with larger-than-life characters can provide interesting characterizations of women. Such a story often concerns itself with an ideal; a character stronger or braver than most of us is facing problems that would, in the real world, be too great for most of us to handle. Strong, idealized women figures can be presented in such works. In fact, “realistic” science fiction works of the past, which often extrapolated their futures from the world contemporaneous with the author, restricted their female characters more severely than some of the works of A. E. van Vogt (who could show an empress, Innelda, ruling an interstellar empire), Stanley G. Weinbaum (who created the Red Peri, a female space pirate), C. L. Moore (in her Jirel of Joiry tales), or comics which featured the exploits of characters such as Wonder Woman or Supergirl.
III
Although most science fiction has been written by men, and most sf writers today are male as well, it would be incorrect to assume that a woman trying to publish sf would always run into insurmountable difficulties. C. L. Moore writes about the sale of her first story, “Shambleau”:
This story was not rejected by every magazine in the field before it crept humbly to the doorstep of Weird Tales. My own perfectly clear memory tells me that I sent it first to WT because that was the only magazine of the type I knew well, and that an answering acceptance and a check…arrived almost by return mail.*
*“C. L. Moore, “Afterword: Footnote to ‘Shambleau’…and Others,” in The Best of C. L. Moore.
There also seems to be little evidence that Leigh . Brackett, E. Mayne Hull, and Marion Zimmer Bradley have suffered unduly for being female writers. Of course, a reader might assume that the stories under these bylines were written by men; there was nothing overtly feminine about the names. But most readers did eventually learn that Brackett, Moore, and Bradley are women.
It is, however, necessary to point out some of the problems female writers did encounter. Andre Norton, the writer of many books primarily for young readers, has said:
When I entered the field I was writing for boys,* and since women were not welcomed, I chose a pen name which could be either masculine or feminine. This is not true today, of course.
But I still find vestiges of disparagement—mainly, oddly enough, among other writers. Most of them, however, do accept one on an equal basis.
I find more prejudice against me as the writer of “young people’s” stories now than against the fact that I am a woman.*
*“An Interview with Andre Norton,” in Luna Monthly, No. 40 (September 1972), p. 4.
The interview was conducted by Paul Walker.
This last line is indicative of the way in which children are regarded by many. Some consider it more important to write for adults, in spite of the fact that a young person may be more affected or influenced by a work than an adult could be. It is too bad that sf writers, many of whom have written good books for younger readers, should sometimes be ashamed of this. Some writers, of course, resent the fact that in many circles, all sf is considered “children s literature/’
A look at Norton’s long list of works, which includes more than forty novels, will show that in most of them she has used male protagonists, although recently she has written books with heroines. She was no doubt discouraged from using heroines by publishers who believed, accurately, that most young readers of sf were boys. Young girls were thus discouraged from reading science fiction,, which seemed to have little of interest to them, and the situation was perpetuated.
Other women, particularly those writing during the 1950s, solved the difficulties of publishing sf in a different way. Those who wished to write stories about women found themselves, with few exceptions, limiting their characters to the “socially acceptable” female roles. Judith Merril, whose first story was published in 1948, became prominent during the 1950s. Later, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, she became even more important as an editor; her collections of science fiction remain classic anthologies.
Merril, who wrote an overtly feminist story, “Survival Ship,” an experiment in writing a story with no gender pronouns, became much better known during the 1950s for works which disparaging critics called “wet-diaper” science fiction. Many of them emphasized the roles of childbearing and child rearing, or the love of the heroine for her man. Some were well-written, compassionate tales; others lapsed into sentimentality. Other writers, among them Margaret St Clair, Mildred Clingerman, and Rosel George Brown, also wrote some stories with “traditional” heroines. One wonders if some of these writers sensed that they were in a paradoxical position; sneered at when they published stories with traditional heroines, replete with all the old assumptions about the abilities of women, but turned down when they tried to publish stories with more innovational heroines.
One should look at such stories within the context of the times in which they were written. Judith Merril, in an afterword to one of her stories, wrote:
I grew up in the radical ‘thirties. My mother had been a suffragette. It never occurred to me that the Bad Old Days of Double Standard had anything to do with me.
The first strong intimation, actually, was when the editors of the mystery, western, and sports “pulp” magazines, where I did my apprentice writing, demanded masculine pen-names. But of course they were pulps, oriented to a masculine readership, and the whole thing was only an irritation: as soon as I turned to S-F, the problem disappeared.
At the end of World War II, the wonderful working-mothers’ day-care centres all closed down, and from every side the news was shouted that Woman’s Place was after all In The Home.
Newspapers, magazines, counseling services told us firmly that children who had less than constant attention from their very own mothers were doomed to misery and delinquency; the greatest joy available to the “natural woman” was the pleasure of Building Her Man’s Ego. (There were not enough jobs for returning veterans till the ladies went home.)
There was a lot of pressure; one couldn’t help wondering. Could it be true? I didn’t think so; neither did my returning husband. We were ’thirties radicals, after all, so what if it was the ‘forties? But I was beginning to get a little bit of attention as a writer: and even he—and even I—found the resultant situation a bit embarrassing, a little uncomfortable.
Ten years later, I had a growing “name” as a writer, a lot of good colleague/friends, and two divorces. Complicated. One worried, and kept trying to figure things out*
*“Judith Merril, Survival Ship and Other Stories (Toronto, Kakabeka Publishing Co., 1973), p. 32.
Male sf writers have been know to defend their past lapses on the grounds of societal assumptions and influences. I too am willing to assert that these ingrained attitudes, rather than a conscious intent to bar women from the field, were the cause of science fiction’s predominantly male orientation. One only hopes that some of these people might show the same understanding of the lapses of their female colleagues.
