Not entirely because they were forced to write more from the viewpoint of the opposite sex, women sf authors are more adept in their characterizations and portrayals. Again I cite Leigh Brackett, Lee Hoffman, Andre Norton, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and add Kate Wilhelm and Ursula K. Le Guin.
On the other hand, Robert Heinlein's women are horrors: excuseless caricatures of "females." Alexei Panshin in Rite of Passage, his novel a la Heinlein, created a most believable and likable female protagonist, thus surpassing the Master. Personally, I've always found James Schmitz's women people I would like to know. His Telzey, the teeny-bopper with a telepathic whammy, is a delightful brat, in direct contrast to the travesty of Heinlein's Podkane of Mars. One top-flight writer of sf has been chided for using only one type of heroine: the sort of earnest, if attractive, females who joined the Communist party in the '30s, the Army in the '40s, did social work in the '50s, and started communes in the '60s. A girl who would "die" for a principle. Great, but girls don't "die" for principles. Men do. A girl marries the clunk and converts him to her way of thinking later. In bed.
While I've never encountered Harlan Ellison's females—our social spheres have been vastly different— they are recognizable as members of my sex.
Not only was the female viewpoint unappreciated in most of the '20s, '30s, and '40s, but also women were generally relegated to the position of "things," window dressing, or forced to assume attitudes in the corner, out of the way. Woman as a valid character or, heaven forfend, protagonist was a rara avisf181 (in the Latin, as in modern English, "bird" was slang for "girl"). The female often existed in the story as the straight "stupid" off whom the Hero or the Good Scientist could bounce enough theory so that the dumbest male reader would understand the story's science rationale. I don't know of any woman worth her nylon tights who'd wring her hands in a corner while her boyfriend (can't use the term "lover" in sf, you know) is getting clobbered by something hideous or dangerous. I'd have been in there swinging with something helpful.
Come to think of it, most sf story heroes were pretty dull tools. Me, I'd have left them preening over the moral or scientific coups and gone off with the villains. Evil is sexually exciting. And too much nobility of spirit and high purpose leads to dissatisfied wives.
Until just recently, those writers who were also female and persisted in expressing themselves, not only found it expedient to masculinize their names but to "rephrase" their stories for "better reader response."
I came broadside against this requisite. No one had told me that women were not supposed to write sf and that few read it. After seven years of voracious reading in the field, I'd had it up to the eyeteeth with vapid women. I rebelled. I wrote Restoree as a tongue-in-cheek protest, utilizing as many of the standard "thud and blunder" cliches as possible with one new twist—the heroine was the viewpoint character and she is always Johanna-on-the-spot. The science in the yarn came from the gleeful mind of a pure research scientist in Dupont. The gentleman was an avid escapist reader of sf and used to chortle over flaws in the science of Analog stories.
Naturally the male readership didn't like Restoree. The book was reamed by fanzine critics, a blackballing which worked to my advantage because everyone had to read the book to see if it was as bad as all that. Very few male readers tumbled to the fact that I had deliberately written a space gothic.
My second notable encounter with the male-orientation problem was with "A Womanly Talent," published in Analog. The story deals with the attempts of parapsychics to get professional immunity for their registered members in the practice of their particular variety of psi (telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis, and clairvoyance). Ruth Horvath, although she has tested as "psi-positive," has an unidentifiable Talent; her husband, Lajos, works for a local insurance company, directing his precognitive faculty towards fire. I wanted Ruth to be a "liberated woman." John Campbell asked me to define Ruth in terms of a customary womanly role to cater to his readership. 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. I felt I could go along with John's request—in my inimitable fashion. Sam Lundwall, the Swedish sf expert, took me to task for this concession and chided me for espousing such anti-liberation notions. He failed to appreciate the underlying facetiousness of my treatment. Because Ruth did, during the course of the story, what the men could never have done, and she did it in the traditional role of mother-mistress-healer. Actually, I was two up on the Analog readership: the woman not only bests the men in the story but there was an explicit sex scene in Analog's virtuous pages. Not, mind you, that I snuck that in on John Campbell. Oh, no, to the contrary. As he told me later, that scene was an integral part of the plot development and could not have been omitted without destroying the story. He did indeed see no need of s.e.x. as a shock device. Nor did I.
Nor do I apologize for the fact that all my sf stories are basically love-oriented. Helva in "The Ship Who Sang" is a surgically stunted woman, her body encased in a titanium shell, her brain synapses connected to her ship body's control so that she is the ship. She loves, deeply, humanly, and the title story evoked tears from many readers—or so I've been told. Helva loves, loses her lover, and finds another.
Then I hitched my dragon to a star, won two awards, and no one has complained about sex, love, or the emotional content in my stories. A basic theme in Dragonflight and Dragonquest is the symbiotic love relationship between humans and their dragon companions. Love in several facets is the main theme of both novels. Emotional content and personal involvement are expected in stories written by me. In fact, I've had stories returned to me by editors because they lacked these elements: a case of "I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't."
Prior to the '60s, stories with any sort of a love interest were very rare. True, it was implied in many stories of the '30s and '40s that the guy married the girl whom he had rescued /encountered /discovered during the course of his adventure. But no real pulse-pounding, tender, gut-reacting scenes. The girl was still a "thing," to be "used" to perpetuate the hero's magnificent chromosomes.
Or perhaps, to prove that the guy wasn't "queer." I mean, all those men locked away on a spaceship for months/years at a time. I mean. and you know what I mean even if I couldn't mention it in the sf of the '30s and '40s. Did you ever see Flash Gordon kiss Dale Arden or hold her hand loverly-like? And Tarzan only admits that Jane is his woman.
Love did occasionally get a chance to rear its lovely head in the antiseptic atmosphere of sf. The most extraordinary example of love dominating an sf story will be dealt with at length later. The examples which I personally remember with a sigh are: Alfred Bester's hero, Lincoln Powell, falls in love with Barbara in The Demolished Man. James Schmitz wrote a real good love story in "Space Fear," one of his Lanni, Agent of Vega yarns; Lanni is very feminine despite square eyeballs and silver hair. There were three very moving love stories, appearing in Fantastic Universe in the mid-fifties, about telepaths on Mars: the author's name is beyond my research facilities in Ireland and I suspect that it was a pseudonym for there were never any other stories under that author's name. In Mars Child, Cyril M. Judd (Judith Merril and Cyril Kornbluth) wove a tender love story about Anna who blew glass because the "noise" from other people's thoughts distressed her too much. I fondly recall the love interest in J. T. Macintosh's Born Leader and Wilson Tucker's "Wild Talent."
On the odd side of the blanket, Theodore Sturgeon was the first author daring enough to tackle the question of homosexual love in a short story, "Affair with a Green Monkey," (Venture, May 1957). Ursula K. Le Guin deservedly won both 1970 Hugo and Nebula Awards for her magnificent novel The Left Hand of Darkness. Her understatement of the attraction-love-empathy between a member of her one-sexed species and the hetero-sexually inclined protagonist makes it more powerful!
Not all science fiction was dryly written or sterile as far as imagery was concerned, or humanness. To
cut the aridness, there was Avram Davidson's gentle charm, Grendel Briarton's outrageous punster, Ferdinard Feghoot, the oft times unnerving whimsy of Doris Pitkin Buck and H. Beam Piper, or Miriam Allen de Ford, Damon Knight's incisive satire—to name a few of the grace notes around the sterner melodies played (unheard) in outer space. What was basically lacking in the general story menu was any intense emotional involvement. You couldn't care less about the characters in the stories after you'd closed the book. The "adventure" had been fun, or the scientific twist made you murmur, "Well, I'd never have thought of doing that with this," or the gimmick amused you. I remember a story from Analog in which Mr. A (or was it General A?) has to get the scientists off their unthinking rumps and develop an anti-grav unit. He provokes them by showing a film of a man actually defying gravity,[191 a clumsy power pack strapped to his shoulders. Unfortunately, the film ends as the inventor comes crashing to the earth. Mr. (or General) A says that the man is dead, his secret died with him, but if he could develop an anti-grav unit, so could they. They do. Then Mr. (or General) A presents them to the "actor" who confesses that he had "died" to shake up their inflexible notion that gravity couldn't be neutralized simply because it hadn't yet been done. It's years since that story came out but all I can remember is the scientific gimmick and the philosophy.
Fortunately for the maturity of sf, newcomers wiggled into the pages of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, Galaxy, and If. Keyes published a quiet story entitled "Flowers for Algernon" which was later screened as Charley. In 1952, in F. andS.F., Zenna Henderson introduced the People: tender stories with a high emotional content about a race of parapsychic people who are forced to flee their world (the sun went nova), and their problems blending into the multitude on Earth. Her two books, The Anything Box and The People, No Different Flesh (Doubleday), compel the reader to share the tremendous sadness of the People for the loss of their beautiful homeworld; one appreciates the gallantry of their exodus and the sacrifice of the ones too old to make the terrible journey. The aura projected by Miss Henderson stays with the reader like a benediction.
New lyrical writers started publishing and were acclaimed by the fans: Roger Zelazny and Samuel R. Delany were notable among the men. Carol Emshwiller paints her canvases with a delicate brush and an economy of word, delineating some portion of intensely experienced personal conflict: i.e., "Pelt." Sonya Dorman's wry sense of humor and the macabre lends her writing unusual color. The late Rosel George Brown humorously depicted Future Woman's domestic problems with aliens to baby-sit and she created the inimitable Sybil Sue Blue, galactic policewoman.
Not all emotional "shouts" came from the distaff side. The incredible Harlan Ellison writes as if an inner fuse is about to blow before he can get all the words on his pages. ("Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes." "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." "Try It with a Dull Knife" can be cited as particular examples of high emotional content.) I've never been more terrified than I was scurrying through Norman Spinrad's "The Big Flash" because it was so awfully possible.[201 Keith Laumer's simple statement of courage in the "Last Command" has no equal in the field. And Poul Anderson's poignant timeless love story "Kyrie" is another subtle masterpiece.
On the other hand, real humor in sf is at the highest premium. Humor is as much an emotional involvement as tragedy—but rarer. Jack Wodhams is a very funny man; so is Harry Harrison. And Avram Davidson, Randall Garrett, dear Grendel Briarton, and Damon Knight. But not often enough. Keith Laumer pokes fun at diplomacy in all of his Retief yarns, and David Gerrold in combination with Larry Niven is a good gag team. Theodore Cogswell once did an elaborate story, caricaturing (all in good fun) sf writers and editors. Personally, I think Carol Carr outdid them all in her absurd story —"Look, You Think You Got Problems?"—a Jewish (would you believe?) sf story. Feh!
In passing I note that two of the most powerfully emotional scripts written for Star Trek were "Journey to Babel" by D (orothy) C. Fontana and "The Empath" by Joyce Muskat. First-rate seat-clutching panic-watching was provided by Norman Spinrad's "The Doomsday Machine," and David Gerrold's "The Trouble with Tribbles" bags the honors for the funniest episode of that much lamented series.
These writers are modern, as far as sf goes. The oldest fans may beat their breasts for the good ol' days of thud blunder and real science in Astounding, Fantastic, and Amazing magazines, but if sf were still driving the star trails with sawdust heroes and cardboard villains—more translated from westerns than integrated in the space age—sf would have been trapped in a Mobius Strip.
With the injection of emotional involvement, a sexual jolt to the Romance and Glamour, science fiction rose out of pulp and into literature.
Notwithstanding the facts (1) that originally science fiction was predominately male-authored and written for a specifically science-trained male readership, (2) that the women writers of sf had to go along with that prerequisite until the '50s, (3) that Love was the unmentionable and emotional involvement unwanted, there is more Romance and Glamour in science fiction than in any other form of literature, classic or contemporary.
Mr. Webster is the first witness for the defense of that statement.
Romance: (1) formerly a long narrative in verse or prose, originally written in one of the Romance dialects, about the adventures of knights and other chivalric heroes.1211 (2) later, a fictitious tale of wonderful and extraordinary events, characterized by much imagination and idealization. [221
Glamour: to cast the glamour, an enchantment, seemingly mysterious; elusive fascination or allure.
By these definitions, any science fiction or fantasy tale abounds with Romance and Glamour: The Romance of man with the products of his agile and inventive mind, with his mechanical miracles. The Glamour of the glittering possibilities of the Future, or of Better Planets under Other Stars, has cast an enchantment over the dogmatic reader. It strikes me as utterly romantic that a reader, otherwise pragmatic to the point of boredom, could be carried by another man's or woman's whimsical flight of imagination through the tallest possible tales, based on some minor, if valid, scientific hypothesis. Or in the realm of fantasy, William Hope Hodgson, James Branch Cabell, Robert S. Howard, L. Sprague deCamp, Poul Anderson, Avram Davidson, Andre Norton, and Thomas Burnett Swann (to name a few personal favorites) can so "cast the glamour" that the otherwise sanguine reader is compelled to suspend belief while the book remains open.
What could be more romantic even to world-weary modern readers than Rostand's seven ways to get to the Moon as expounded by Cyrano de Bergerac? Or more glamorous than Captain Nemo's incredible Nautilus? Even the harsh satire of Zamyatin's We, Huxley's Brave New World, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451°, and Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar has a fascination that is inescapable.
Ultimately, however, the standard of Romance and Glamour —even using Webster as a basic redefinition—is set by the individual's concept of romance and glamour. "Everyone to his own taste," said the old lady as she kissed her cow. And Damon Knight once joshingly suggested that the clever sf writer could make his reader "queer for skunks"—at least for the purpose and duration of his story. 1231
Since we are dealing with science fiction, it would be nice if we could reduce Webster's definitions to equations. However, most "hard" science fiction aficionados would probably quarrel with our algebra, so we can content ourselves with simply trying the notion of such equations on those stories which, in our own estimation, don't quite come off, each of us formulating his or her own. Of course, Reader 1 will disagree with Reader 2. The possibilities for satisfying any individual requirements are all the science fiction, thus far written and to be written to the cube. Within science fiction, you will — eventually—find exactly what suits you. For the war buffs, read Gordon Dickson's Soldier Ask Not, or The Tactics of Mistake; for political strategy and intrigue, John Brunner's The Squares of the City; historical reinterpretations in Keith Roberts's Pavane; the amusing diplomatic shenanigans of Keith Laumer's Retief; the panoramic historical canvas of Isaac Asimov's Foun
dation or Frank Herbert's Dune; the metaphysics of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris; religious conscience in James Blish's trilogy (A Case of Conscience, Dr. Mirabilis, and Black Easter); pure alien viewpoint in Hal Clement's Ice World and Mission of Gravity; enigma in Brian Aldiss's recent novels and Joanna Russ's And Chaos Died; mystery in Alfred Bester's Demolished Man and Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel. Robert Silverberg speaks to today's young adults in Tower of Glass and Son of Man. The list should include most of the sf written. Which is why the casual reader of sf should not abandon the genre if his first few ventures do not satisfy him.
Sometimes the glamour is cast so compellingly that the writer is embroiled in the magic he imagined. Robert Heinlein keeps his whereabouts secret to prevent himself from being inundated by those wishing to "share water" with the author of Stranger in a Strange Land. L. Ron Hubbard became so involved in his own theory of Dianetics that he gave up writing science fiction and became the major exponent of this philosophy. Arthur C. Clarke is constantly being buttonholed and told what he "actually meant" by 2001: A Space Odyssey. On a much more minor scale, I have a small problem with the supply of dragons. The line forms—in back of me!
Some authors—E. E. Smith and Edgar Rice Burroughs—were incredibly bad writers as style goes but the formula was so potent that the books are constantly reprinted because of the demand. Plotting and action overcame such minor considerations.
Consider, too, the tremendous fascination cast by J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings trilogy which was "honored" by a Harvard Lampoon "Bored of the Rings." Middle Earth exists for its devoted adherents. You might say that Tolkein is hobbit-forming. My particular neighborhood in Ireland boasts two "Samwise" hounds, a "Bilbo Baggins" half-breed, two "Frodo" cats, and a very small child who is known to his family as "Hobbit."
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