by Rob Latham;
3. This tendency is not limited to feminist scholarship; science fiction is one of the few areas of midcentury popular culture that historians and cultural critics rarely examine. Consider, for instance, two of the most prominent anthologies published on this subject in the past fifteen years: Lary May’s Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War and Joel Foreman’s The Other Fifties: Interrogating Midcentury American Icons. Both offer essays that examine the political radicalism of midcentury art forms ranging from painting and social journalism to postmodern literature and film noir. Not once, however, do they reflect on science fiction.
4. For discussions of this omission, see Helen Merrick’s essays “Fantastic Dialogues: Critical Stories about Feminism and Science Fiction” and “The Readers Feminism Doesn’t See: Feminist Fans, Critics and Science Fiction”; Robin Roberts’s “It’s Still Science Fiction: Strategies of Feminist Science Fiction Criticism”; and Jenny Wolmark’s “Science Fiction and Feminism.”
5. Recent explorations of midcentury women’s SF have taken a variety of forms. For discussions of how individual authors mobilized midcentury beliefs about gender relations to critique Cold War politics, see Farah Mendlesohn, “Gender. Power, and Conflict Resolution: ‘Subcommittee” by Zenna Henderson” and David Seed, American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film; for an exploration of how these strategies circulated throughout a range of women’s SF texts, see my essay “Unhappy Housewife Heroines, Galactica Suburbia, and Nuclear War”. For an examination of how women revised midcentury SF conventions to present readers with female-friendly futures, see Brian Attebery’s Decoding Gender in Science Fiction. For arguments concerning the relationship between midcentury women’s SF and its relation to feminist narrative strategies, see Jane Donawerth’s Frankenstein’s Daughters. And finally, for discussion of how midcentury women’s “sweet little domestic stories” marked the emergence of a literary sensibility that would inform the feminist SF community of the 1970s, see Justine Larbalestier, Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction and her essay co-authored with Helen Merrick, “The Revolting Housewife: Women and Science Fiction in the 1950s.”
6. For an excellent discussion of how women became scientific experts in their own right during the midcentury peace movement, see Amy Swerdlow’s Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s.
7. Some readers may recognize that I have discussed these short stories elsewhere, in “Unhappy Housewife Heroines, Galactica Suburbia, and Nuclear War.” I am briefly reviewing them again in this article to show how my thinking about midcentury women’s science fiction has developed over the past year: in the first essay, I provide readers with relatively lengthy analyses of these stories in relation to science fiction history; here, I discuss them in relation to the history of women’s political and literary practice at midcentury (and in relation to other kinds of midcentury women’s SF as well). In doing so, I hope to demonstrate the complexity of these rich cultural texts.
8. This household utopia is temporary, of course, because Merril refuses romantic notions of rugged individualism. No suburban household can be magically transformed into a self-sustaining fiefdom, and the women must maintain contact with the outside world to get food and medical attention for Gladys’s daughters and Edie Crowell (all of whom have been exposed to radioactive dust and rain). Nonetheless, Merril insists that the tenor of her characters’ dealings with the outside world does change radically once the women realize that they can rely on themselves to take care of many of the problems they have traditionally delegated to their men, like fixing gas leaks and defending themselves against burglars.
9. The original ending of the novel—which Doubleday refused to publish—was even more pessimistic. In Merril’s final draft, Gladys’s husband survives the horrors of postwar New York only to be shot to death by civil defense officials in his own backyard (Merril and Pohl-Weary, 100).
10. Although men like Thurgood Marshall (who represented the NAACP in Brown v. Board of Education) and Martin Luther King, Jr., are the people most commonly associated with the midcentury civil rights movement, black women were also important leaders in efforts to secure civil rights legislation. For further discussion, see Jacqueline Jones’s essay “The Political Implications of Black and White Southern Women’s Work in the South, 1890-1965” and Eugenia Kaledin’s Mothers and More: American Women in the 1950s.
11. Susan Lynn’s essay “Gender and Progressive Politics: A Bridge to Social Activism of the 1960s” and her book-length study Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s are the definitive works in this subject. For other discussions about race relations and progressive politics, see Jacqueline Jones, “The Political Implications of Black and White Southern Women’s Work in the South, 1890-1965” and Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s.
Works cited
Alonso, Harriet Hyman. “Mayhem and Moderation: Women Peace Activists During the McCarthy Era.” Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, Ed. Joanne Meyerowitz. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1994. 128–50.
Attebery, Brian. Decoding Gender in Science Fiction. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.
Clingerman, Mildred. “Mr. Sakrison’s Halt.” 1956. Reprinted in Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction, 6th series. Ed. Anthony Boucher. New York: Doubleday, 1957. 36–44.
Clute, John, and Peter Nicholls, Eds. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995.
Donawerth, Jane. Frankenstein’s Daughters: Women Writing Science Fiction. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1997.
Emshwiller, Carol. “Day at the Beach.” 1959. Reprinted in SF: The Best of the Best. Ed. Judith Merril. New York: Delacourt, 1967. 274–284.
Foreman, Joel. The Other Fifties: Interrogating Midcentury American Icons. Urbana and Chicago: U Chicago P, 1997.
Garrison, Dec. “‘Our Skirts Gave Them Courage’: The Civil Defense Protest Movement in New York City, 1955–1961.” Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, Ed. Joanne Meyerowitz. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1994. 201–26.
Hafemeister, D.W. “A Chronology of the Nuclear Arms Race.” Nuclear Arms Technologies in the 1990s. Eds. Dietrich Schroeer and David Hafemeister. New York: American Institute of Physics, 1988. 435–43.
James, Edward. Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.
Jones, Alice Eleanor. “Created He Them.” 1955. Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction, 5th series. Ed. Anthony Boucher. New York: Doubleday, 1956. 125–136.
Jones, Jacqueline. “The Political Implications of Black and White Southern Women’s Work in the South, 1890–1965.” Women and Political Change. Eds. Louise A. Tilley and Patricia Gurin. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992. 108–29.
Kaledin, Eugenia. Mothers and More: American Women in the 1950s. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.
Larbalestier, Justine. The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction. Middletown, CN: Wesleyan UP, 2002.
Larbalestier, Justine and Helen Merrick. “The Revolting Housewife: Women and Science Fiction in the 1950s.” Paradoxa 18 (2003): 136–156.
Lynn, Susan. “Gender and Progressive Politics: A Bridge to the Social Activism of the 1960s. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960. Ed. Joanne Meyerowitz. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. 103–27.
—. Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1992.
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988.
May, Lary. Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War. Chicago and London: U Chicago P, 1989.
Mendlesohn, Farah. “Gender, Power, and Conflict Resolution: ‘Subcommittee’ by Zenna Henderson.” Extrapolation 35.2 (1994): 120–129.
&nbs
p; Merrick, Helen. “Fantastic Dialogues: Critical Stories about Feminism and Science Fiction.” Speaking Science Fiction: Dialogues and Intepretations. Eds. Andy Walker and David Seed. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000. 52–68.
—. “The Readers Feminism Doesn’t See: Feminist Fans, Critics and Science Fiction.” Trash Aesthetics: Popular Culture and Its Audience. Ed. Deborah Cartmell et al. London and Chicago: Pluto Press, 1997. 48–65.
Merril, Judith. Shadow on the Hearth. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1950.
—. “That Only a Mother.” 1948. Reprinted in Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Ed. Robert Silverberg. New York: Avon, 1970. 344–354.
—. “What Do You Mean: Science? Fiction?” SF: The Other Side of Realism. Ed. Thomas D. Clarenson. Bowling Green: Bowling Green U Popular P, 1971. 53–95.
Merril, Judith, and Emily Pohl–Weary. Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002.
Meyerowitz, Joanne. “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946–1958. Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960. Ed. Joanne Meyerowitz. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994. 229–262.
Roberts, Robin. “It’s Still Science Fiction: Strategies of Feminist Science Fiction Criticism.” Extrapolation 36.3 (1995): 184–197.
Rogers, Kay. “Experiment.” 1953. Reprinted in Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction, 3rd series. Ed. Anthony Boucher. New York: Doubleday, 1954. 96–99.
Rupp, Leila J., and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement, 1945 to the 1960s. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987.
Russ, Joanna. “The Image of Women in Science Fiction.” 1971. Reprinted in Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives. Ed. Susan Koppleman Cornillion. Bowling Green: Bowling Green U Popular P, 1972. 79–94.
St. Clair, Margaret. “Brightness Falls from the Air.” 1951. The Science Fiction Century. Ed. David G. Hartwell. New York: Tor, 1997. 161–165.
Stone, Albert E. Literary Aftershocks: American Writers, Readers, and the Bomb, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994.
Swerdlow, Amy. Women Strike For Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s. Chicago and London: U Chicago P, 1993.
Trachtenberg, Mark. “American Thinking on Nuclear War.” Strategic Power: USA/USSR. Ed. Carl G. Jacobsen. New York: St. Martin’s, 1990. 355–369.
Wolmark, Jenny. “Science Fiction and Feminism.” Foundation 37 (1986): 48–51.
Yaszek, Lisa. “Unhappy Housewife Heroines, Galactic Suburbia, and Nuclear War: A History of Midcentury Women’s Science Fiction.” Extrapolation 44.1 (2003): 97–111.
Recommended further reading
Attebery, Brian. Decoding Gender in Science Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Compellingly analyzes a range of pulp-era and contemporary SF in terms of its depictions of gender difference; includes excellent chapters on masculinity and androgyny in SF.
Bould, Mark, and China Miéville, eds. Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2009.
A collection gathering essays that consider the ways in which SF mobilizes or actuates the perspectives of Marxist critical theory, including issues of class stratification, bourgeois scientism, and activist struggle.
Huntington, John. Rationalizing Genius: Ideological Strategies in the Classic American Science Fiction Short Story. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1989.
A trenchant study of the social ideologies informing pulp-era SF, including technology worship and the cult of the (masculine) genius.
Larbalestier, Justine. The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP, 2002.
A searching historical study of how pulp-era SF dealt with gender ideologies, restoring the centrality of the contribution of female authors and fans to proto-feminist criticism of the genre.
Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. New York: Metheun, 1986.
An influential study of the “critical utopias” of modern SF, especially the work of Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, Marge Piercy, and Joanna Russ, focusing on their critiques of social ideologies.
Parrinder, Patrick, ed. Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000.
A festschrift for Darko Suvin that offers reassessments, revisions, and extensions of his model of “cognitive estrangement,” especially as the concept defines the genre as a mechanism for the critique of sociopolitical ideologies.
Pearson, Wendy, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon, eds. Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2008.
A collection of essays on the representation of sexuality in SF, exploring the ways the genre reinforces heteronormative ideologies and offers the resources to “queer” them at the same time.
Ross, Andrew. Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits. New York: Verso, 1991.
Examines a range of technological subcultures—including Gernsbackian pulp SF and cyberpunk—in terms of their engagement with left-wing causes and populist values, especially the critique of the technocratic domination of nature.
Seed, David. American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999.
The first in a series of studies by Seed—also including Brainwashing: The Fictions of Mind Control (Kent State UP, 2004) and Under the Shadow: The Atomic Bomb and Cold War Narratives (Kent State UP, 2013)—that focus on how the ideologies of the Cold War (e.g., nuclear paranoia) have been expressed in postwar SF.
Wolmark, Jenny. Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1994.
Carefully examines the links among the terms in the book’s subtitle, using the figure of the alien as a way to interrogate “gendered subjectivity” in SF.
Part 4
The nonhuman
This section opens with Mary Shelley’s introduction to the 1831 edition of her classic novel Frankenstein (1818), often claimed to be the first ever work of science fiction.1 It is certainly one of the most sophisticated attempts in the early history of the genre to imagine the creation of artificial life using the methods of modern science. Shelley outlines the sensational circumstances for her initial conception of the novel during sessions of reading ghost stories with Lord Byron and her late husband, Percy Shelley—thus linking her depiction of the Creature with the fantastic reveries of the Gothic tradition. She admits that she sought a subject that would “speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror,” but she also acknowledges that discussions of contemporary scientific discoveries such as galvanism exerted a significant influence. Striking a moral tone that would forever haunt subsequent stories of artificial beings, such as H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (1897), Shelley identifies the theme of her work as blasphemous and overreaching, with Victor Frankenstein “endeavor[ing] to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world” by endowing lifeless matter with animation and sentience. Of course, critics and readers over the past two centuries have found in her novel a much more complex and ambivalent portrait of the “monster” than this negative verdict suggests.
Almost 150 years later, another SF writer celebrated for his depictions of humanoid creatures, Philip K. Dick, meditated on his own interest in the topic of “androids”—mechanically produced entities eerily indistinguishable, on the surface, from human beings. Building on the insights of Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, Dick argues that “machines are becoming more human,” mimicking functions traditionally assumed to be beyond their capacities and, in the process, laying claims to autonomy and personhood usually reserved for their creators. Meanwhile, as machines seem to be attaining human sentience, human beings themselves have begun to appear increasingly machinelike, driven by programmed reflexes rather than conscious volition—a situation reinforced by powerful conte
mporary discourses of persuasion and manipulation, especially those emanating from the mass media. While we might assume that androids are mere simulacra of humanity, Dick asserts that they are fundamentally no different than “schizoid” human beings, whose affectless literal-mindedness has “a mechanical, reflex quality.” For Shelley, the distinction between humans and their replicas was categorically precise, but Dick has much less confidence that such a distinction can hold any longer.
This assumption of the growing convergence between humans and machines governs the next two readings in this section; influential academic essays on the implications of cybernetics discourse for definitions of personhood. Donna Haraway’s widely cited and hugely influential “Cyborg Manifesto” takes a position at least as extreme as Dick’s: categorical divisions between humans and machines have collapsed in the figure of the “cyborg,” which has emerged as a powerful ethical-political agent. For Haraway, the challenge is not to recover some essential core of humanity—or even to mourn its loss—but rather to embrace and celebrate the cyborg as a social vector for critique and liberation. Liberal-humanist conceptions of the self can no longer provide a basis for self-understanding or political praxis in a world where biology can be recoded by genetic engineers and subjectivity can be extended and reconfigured by computer networks. In such a world, “forms of political organization and participation”—in particular, Haraway asserts, the politics of gender and race—have to be radically rethought based on technosocial affiliations rather than essential identities. While the cyborg historically emerges within discourses of power and domination, the concept contains the seeds of a protean, subversive agency, the implications of which are visible in the writings of SF authors, especially the work of women and people of color.
