Book Reviews What’s a Bright Feminist Like You Doing in a Genre Like This? Reading Women’s Science Fiction

by Helen Merrick

Justine Larbalestier, ed., DAUGHTERS OF EARTH: FEMINIST SCIENCE FICTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2006. 424p. bibl. pap., $27.95, ISBN 978-0819566768.

Judith A. Little, ed., FEMINIST PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE FICTION: UTOPIAS AND DYSTOPIAS. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007. 411p. bibl. index. pap., $27.98, ISBN 978-1591024149.

Joanna Russ, THE COUNTRY YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2007. 288p. bibl. index. pap., $35.00, ISBN 978-0853238690.

Lisa Yaszek, GALACTIC SUBURBIA: RECOVERING WOMEN’S SCIENCE FICTION. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2008. 256p. bibl. pap., $22.95, ISBN 978-0814251645.

Marleen S. Barr, ed., AFRO-FUTURE FEMALES: BLACK WRITERS CHART SCIENCE FICTION’S NEWEST NEW- WAVE TRAJECTORY. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2008. 304p. bibl. $44.95, ISBN 978-0814210789.

I want to let you in on a little So why the roundabout Hilary Rose and Teresa de Lauretis secret. There is a hidden history introduction? Mainly because for most — have valued feminist SF as a unique of feminist activism, writing, feminists, SF is not seen as a likely and innovative forum for feminist consciousness-raising, and community. home for feminism. Recalling her time theorizing. The books under review Some claim Mary Shelley started it, working in a feminist bookshop in here give voice to the rich history of others that the foundations were laid the 1970s, writer and editor Susanna feminist experiment, revisioning, and in the nineteenth-century utopias Sturgis describes the reaction she activism that distinguishes feminist of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and received when encouraging feminists to engagement with SF. And for those of Mary Lane Bradley. Many date its read SF: you who have never read SF — and beginnings to escapees from 1930s even if you never will — don’t turn to and 1940s women’s magazines who Astonishing! Some people the next review just yet! Enjoyment wrote for garish pulp publications stared at me bewildered, as or knowledge of SF is not necessarily under ambiguous monikers such as if my English had become required in order to appreciate what C.L. Moore. Contemporaneous with incomprehensible. Others these books offer: a glimpse into a the women’s movement, it produced gazed with a complex mixture fascinating chapter of feminist history radical feminist visions that inspired of pity and contempt, or they that may well expand your view of intense political debate. Marge Piercy, murmured, “Oh, I don’t read feminist fiction, writing, and culture Angela Carter, and Margaret Atwood fantasy or science fiction.”1 more generally. have all flirted with it, although they This collection of texts signals haven’t always admitted it. I am talking Before you assume that readers somewhat of a renewal of academic about science fiction (SF) or, to be of feminist SF are indeed a rarity, if study of feminism and SF. With precise, feminist SF, the topic of the not an anachronism, let me assure scattered beginnings in the SF and books under review and a particular you that Sturgis and I are not alone. women’s movement magazines of the passion of mine. Other, more redoubtable critics than early seventies, a uniquely feminist I — including Donna Haraway, branch of SF criticism emerged in

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specialized SF journals of the 1980s, every decade from the twenties through first woman to publish a story in the with the first monograph appearing in to the present, except the 1940s. pulp magazines, Clare Winger Harris 1989, Sarah Lefanu’s In the Chinks of Larbalestier explains her desire “to find (1927), is included, as is “one of the the World Machine. There followed a a balance...between introducing people genre’s first female stars” (p.50), Leslie series of other studies and collections to long-out-of-print stories they would G. Stone (1931). Stone’s work often through the 1990s, peaking with never otherwise read and reprinting explored gender roles, no mean feat Jenny Wolmark’s Aliens and Others in for SF of the time, and also proof that 1996. Emerging somewhat later, and issues of gender and sex have in fact for the most part in isolation from been central in SF since the 1920s. academic literary criticism, feminist This collection also brings many SF criticism has been marked by its of the genre’s best critics together, particular (and peculiar) cultural including Veronica Hollinger, Wendy location. In addition to the familiar Pearson, Brian Attebery, and Jane challenges of developing within a male- Donawerth. Although it might be dominated tradition, feminist SF is over-reaching to claim it as a “complete doubly marginalized by its location in introduction to twentieth-century the culturally stigmatized arena of SF feminist science fiction” (p.xv), and its subjection to internal sexism this volume certainly does indicate and androcentrism arising from the the breadth of feminist concerns genre’s centralizing of technoscientific represented by feminist SF and its narratives. As in other areas, feminist criticism. The critical interplay between writers and fans were often berated for fiction and essay clearly shows why bringing didacticism and “politics” into SF has been attractive to writers and the boys’ playground, challenging their critics, as the works range over issues of visions of the future and their right to sex, gender, race, sexuality, successful control the narratives of science and matriarchies, critiques of domesticity, technology. and countless other feminist themes. better-known works that have never A key role of feminist SF been the subject of study” (p.xv). Highlights for me include criticism has been recovering herstory: Indeed, many of the stories here have Hollinger’s discussion of Gwyneth documenting the place of women had little, if any, scholarly attention to Jones (one of my favorite feminist writers in the field prior to the date, thus fulfilling her dual purpose. authors inside or outside the field, and influence of the women’s movement. As Larbalestier points out, not an insightful and deadly critic). Jones’s Because of the ephemeral nature every writer one would expect is story, “Balinese Dancer” (a companion and rarity of many of the early SF represented here — some central story to her 2004 novel, Life), is a magazine publications, stories by authors in the feminist SF canon thought experiment about sex and early women writers are difficult to are absent, including Joanna Russ, gender that also “directly addresses the find.2 Thus, short story collections Ursula le Guin, and Suzy McKee conflicted situation of contemporary have been vital in documenting and Charnas, although Russ and le Guin feminist politics” (p.333) as well as the preserving the history of feminist SF. have attracted significant critical “tangled complexities of the sex/gender Justine Larbalestier’s Daughters of Earth attention within the field. Other system” (pp.334–335). Pearson draws continues the tradition of anthologies central and key writers are present, on feminist and queer theory to read such as those by Pamela Sargent,3 with however, including James Tiptree, Jr. Tiptree’s “And I Awoke and Found the addition of critical essays reflecting (pseudonym of Alice Sheldon), Pamela Me Here on the Cold Hill Side” as on the fiction. Larbalestier invited Zoline (famous almost solely for the an analogy in which “the presumptive critics to choose one feminist SF story story in this collection, “The Heat male reader of science fiction” is put to write about; the result is eleven Death of the Universe”), Gwyneth “in the position of the abject, the alien paired stories and articles, covering Jones, and Octavia Butler, the pioneer dark; it makes him feel, in every iota of African American women’s SF.4 The of his being, what it is like to be on the other side of the gender divide”

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(p.185). Professor of Afro American animated by the trope of the “galactic one might like) to show how these Studies Andrea Hairston celebrates suburbia,” a term used by Joanna Russ women writers used SF to subvert the work of Octavia Butler and her to mock the kinds of social situations normative expectations about, for place in the history of black women’s imagined by many SF writers: “set in example, women’s domestic roles or high-tech, far futures where gender their combining of family and scientific relations still look suspiciously like work. those of ‘present-day, white middle- In one of its most fascinating class suburbia’” (pp.3–4; citing Russ).5 sections, Galactic Suburbia goes Russ argued that most women in the beyond the fiction writers to explore field at the time (1970) wrote this kind how women writing for the “science of fiction, or what she disparagingly fact” sections of SF magazines also referred to as “ladies’ magazine fiction.” used that venue to protest and subvert Yaszek rightly observes that Russ’s expectations about women’s ability purpose in distinguishing between (and — and desire — to claim a scientific judging) “different types of women’s role and voice for themselves. As Yaszek speculative fiction was key to the argues, such women were part of a project of defining feminist SF as an “centuries-old tradition of Anglophone emergent narrative tradition in its own women’s science popularization” right. But as artists and scholars turned who used this particular venue and their attention to this new narrative narrative “to authoritatively comment tradition, earlier women SF authors on a diverse range of scientific and were relegated to the margins of social topics” (pp.161, 165). Yaszek literary and cultural history” (p.4). demonstrates not just how the social Yaszek sets out to redress the history of the time informs and neglect of women writers such as contextualises the writings, but also writing and criticism; a champion of Judith Merril, , and how women’s SF might throw light both feminism and SF writing in and Mildred Clingerman, who have to date on this period of women’s history — for the black community, Butler is, in received very little critical attention. In particularly around women’s perceived Hairston’s terms, a “prophetic artist… re-evaluating their work, she not only and actual relation to science and Rehearsing the possible in the face of “recovers women’s history” but also technology and the kinds of unique catastrophe, she calls us all to action” seeks to demonstrate the important authorial positions afforded by SF. (p.302). work these writers did in paving the way for later feminist work, in their Even as feminist SF criticism has If the scope of feminist SF’s provision of a “potent critical voice operated largely outside the purview history is signalled in Larbalestier’s about the relations of science, society of its more respectable literary sister, collection, its richness is detailed in and gender” (p.5). both reflect the particular biases of Lisa Yaszek’s Galactic Suburbia. Yaszek’s Yaszek’s readings are organized the Anglo-American critical tradition study of post-war women’s SF points around a number of themes, and she in their focus on white experience to an important new trajectory in includes chapters on “homemakers,” and writing. Afro-Future Females sets feminist SF criticism — the move “activists,” and “scientists,” each of out to redress the balance in SF by toward broader cultural examinations which begins with an overview of highlighting the writings of African cognizant of, for example, the histories the relevant broader history: the American women, in the process of science and technology as important development of homemaking in the also demonstrating how such writing contexts for studies of SF. In particular, Cold War era; women’s involvement challenges our notions of genre and Yaszek’s book does invaluable work in in peace activism and the Civil Rights literature. This collection is the third focusing on the decades of the forties movement; and, finally, women’s role in a sort of series by Marleen S. Barr, and fifties — an era often underplayed in science and technology in the post- who has been one of the pioneers and undervalued in SF criticism as war era. Yaszek draws on these histories well as in histories of feminism and the (which of necessity are slighter than women’s movement. Yaszek’s work is

Page  Feminist Collections (v.30, no.1, Winter 2009) Book Reviews and staunchest advocates of feminist the book, and leaving me wondering SF criticism. Barr warns in her what kind of reader Little was aiming introduction that her approach and at. style may be challenging for some. For me, it is not the attempt to find a more One writer who never accessible critical voice that unnerves, underestimates her readers is Joanna but Barr’s strange juxtaposition of Russ. Even feminists who might texts (for example, where she uses Italo shudder at the very thought of SF are Calvino to illustrate the development likely to have at least heard of Russ — of black women’s SF) and her desire to if not for her revolutionary novel The claim a privileged space as midwife to Female Man, then at least for some of black women’s SF criticism. her groundbreaking literary criticism, Nevertheless, this collection such as “How to Suppress Women’s does invaluable work in showcasing Writing” and “What Can a Heroine the fictional and critical writings of Do? Or Why Women Can’t Write.” black women in SF and challenging The Country You Have Never Seen offers our understandings of the divisions a wide-ranging selection of Russ’s non- among SF, fantasy, magic realism, and fiction writing covering three decades. mainstream fiction in this writing. Much of the collection consists of book The regrettably short section of fiction reviews written from 1966 to 1981, nevertheless includes stories from and revising feminist SF’s history. In primarily for The Magazine of Fantasy black SF’s matriarch, Butler, as well contrast, Judith A. Little’s Feminist and Science Fiction, but also for other as some of the newer writers lighting Philosophy and Science Fiction presents publications such as The Village Voice up the genre: , a strangely static and stilted picture and The Washington Post. There are , Hairston, and Sheree R. of the genre. Intended as a textbook, also critical articles that have not been Thomas (editor of the pathbreaking Little’s volume includes many excellent anthologised elsewhere, including one Dark Matter collections of black SF). examples of classic and contemporary of the key documents in feminist SF Also vital are the critical articles that feminist SF, intended as exemplars that criticism, “The Image of Women in examine such newer writers in relation demonstrate some of the key questions Science Fiction.” Concluding the book to black women’s history and writing, occupying feminist philosophy. The are letters to a variety of publications rather than the usual concentration stories deliver in this regard, but the that represent a historical catalogue on the work of Butler and black SF commentaries do not. Framed by of feminist periodicals, from lesbian author and critic Samuel R. Delany. too many introductions to various and feminist journals such as Sinister Other pieces include author reflections, sections, Little’s editorial material Wisdom, Frontiers, and Chrysalis to responses, memorials to Butler, and spends too much time on Philosophy the more academic Signs and The a fabulous interview with Delany on 101, with a rather dated overview of Women’s Review of Books. These listings race, sex, sexuality, and power in SF. feminist philosophy (liberal, Marxist, alone indicate the variety of roles and I may quibble with Barr about her socialist, radical) appearing almost activities Russ has pursued throughout framing of this material, but I cannot as an afterthought. The fiction alone her career; only a closer reading, help but agree with her that black might be worth purchasing the book however, reveals the extent to which women’s SF challenges the ways “we for, although many of the stories her feminist politics are as evident read and define science fiction itself” are anthologised in other collections in reviewing for SF magazines as in (p.xv), and even that it is “the most that would provide a better sampling the more obvious sphere of feminist exciting literature of the twenty-first- of feminist SF, while the brief publications. century present” (p.xxi). extracts from novels are likely be Unlike most of the other books Afro-Future Females looks to the frustrating rather than revealing for reviewed here, the Russ collection future, as well as joining Larbalestier’s readers unaware of the originals. The provides a glimpse of the unique and Yaszek’s work in challenging discussion questions following each community around SF that made reading are often trite, adding little to possible the emergence and even nurturing of feminist writing and

Page  Feminist Collections (v.30, no.1, Winter 2009) Book Reviews activity. Although none of her letters the intelligence of their readers. actually start looking human. to fan publications are here, you Concluding a review of a particularly And for extra-terrestrials, do get glimpses of the committed poor first novel by John Boyd, Russ is invent. (p.149) communicator who attempted to clear about where the blame should lie: educate fellow (male) SF writers as And if this particular battle seems 6 much as feminist critics and readers. I forgive Mr Boyd the anguish quaintly dated, never fear, there are Russ was always ready to discomfit this novel caused me and hope unfortunately plenty of other cavils her (mostly male) readers, happily he will eventually forgive me here that remain all too pertinent announcing in a review for Fantasy and the anguish this review may today. Science Fiction, for example, that cause him, but for Berkley All who can in good conscience [the publisher] there is no call themselves feminist should really [t]he most exciting social forgiveness. Only reform. be familiar with Russ. If you haven’t extrapolation around Don’t do it again. (p.32) read The Female Man, then begin to nowadays can be found in The atone by reading The Country You Have Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith The novelist’s care for and Never Seen. (You’ll be safe — there is Firestone. You will have a attention to language shines no actual science fiction in it). But hard time with this book if through every critical judgement be warned: You may find yourself you believe that Capitalism and observation. To give just a brief wondering whether, if a writer so is God’s Way or that Manly sampling, here is Russ on SF in brilliant, radical, and complex is this Competition is the Law of the academe: “Science fiction is receiving passionate about SF, there is perhaps Universe — but then you can more academic attention than it used something more to it after all than go back to reading The Skylark to, a species of kindness that may geeky boys with ray guns. There’s only of Valeron or whatever and turn out to be the equivalent of being one way to find out … forget about the real future. nibbled to death by ducks” (p.68). On (pp.62–63) early Star Trek fan fiction: “a ten-year- Notes old’s toy rabbit made very carefully Russ’s talent as writer, critic, and with love and effort but a lot of the 1. Susanna J. Sturgis, “Notes of a Bor- activist is evident in every piece in this little wheels and things got left on der Crosser,” in Women of Other Worlds: book. Anyone who writes book reviews the kitchen table and when you try to Excursions through Science Fiction and or is interested in feminist history and make it stand up it collapses” (p.127). Feminism, eds. Helen Merrick & Tess politics will find something to delight, Behind the deadly humor is serious Williams (Perth, Western Australia: instruct, and amuse in Russ’s works intent and a passionate commitment University of Western Australia Press, — whether she is reviewing terrible, to feminist and queer politics and 1999), pp.103–114 (quotation is from unknown SF novels or writing letters activism. A recurring theme in Russ p.104). See also her article from which calling feminist critics to task for their is the need to challenge the gendered my title is borrowed: “Editorial Memo- (mis)understanding of the “Lesbian/ and heteronormative order that results ries and Visions, or Why Does a Bright Feminist Sex Wars” (p.297). The wit in the anomaly of the “female man.” Feminist Like You Read That Stuff and clarity with which she dissects In one review she rails against the use Anyway?” in Memories and Visions: the literary and ideological operations of male pronouns by authors such as Women’s Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. of texts means that even reading le Guin in their attempts to depict Susana J. Sturgis (Freedom, CA: The thirty-year-old book reviews is both societies with different gendered Crossing Press, 1989), pp.1–9. pleasurable and instructive. (And what norms: other collection of book reviews would 2. Short stories are central to the make you laugh out loud?) Praise [S]urely science fiction genre’s history, as the short story and from Russ is hard-earned, although writers, of all people, ought novella forms were the mainstay of the dazzling when it is conferred: “The not to submit tamely to this genre before the advent of mass-market less I say about this story the less I will wholesale theft of pronominal paperback and book club publications. slobber over the page and make a nut normativeness. Bite your of myself” (p.8). She has no patience, tongue and write “she”; if you 3. Sargent edited a number of pioneer- however, with lazy writing or editing, look at it long enough, it will ing collections of women’s and femi- nor with books that underestimate

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nist SF in the 1970s, as well as two is never questioned…In short, Russ often contributed to feminist later collections in the 1990s; see her the American middle class fanzines and also spent considerable Women of Wonder (1975); More Women with a little window dressing. time trying to teach “Feminism 101” of Wonder (1976); The New Women through letters to non-feminist, of Wonder (1978); Women of Wonder: From “The Image of Women” in even sexist, fanzines. For more on The Classic Years (1996); and Women The Country You Have Never Seen Russ’s activities in these fields, as well of Wonder: The Contemporary Years (pp.206–207). This essay was origi- as studies of her fiction, see Farah (1996). nally published in 1970 in the feminist Mendlesohn, ed., On Joanna Russ journal The Red Clay Reader (not, as (Wesleyan University Press, 2009). 4. The black and feminist SF Yaszek states, in 1971). The essay was [Editors’ note: Madison, communities were shaken by Butler’s reprinted in Susan Koppelman Cornil- Wisconsin, where Feminist Collections untimely death in 2006; see http:// lon, ed., Images of Women in Fiction: is published, is home to the “world’s www.sfwa.org/members/butler/ Feminist Perspectives (Bowling Green, leading feminist science fiction OH: Bowling Green State University convention,” WisCon, each year. This 5. Strangely, nowhere does Yaszek Popular Press, 1972), and then in the year’s dates are May 22-25, at the quote the whole statement from which SF magazine Vertex in 1974. Concourse Hotel. See http://www. this term is taken, which I find as wiscon.info.] amusing as it is revealing: 6. The SF community is primarily animated by its “fans,” or committed [Helen Merrick teaches at Curtin [T]he authors who write rea- readers, who since the 1930s have University (Western Australia) and sonably sophisticated and corresponded through amateur is the author of The Secret Feminist literature science fiction…see publications called fanzines and get Cabal: A History of Science Fiction the relations between the sexes together at conventions along with Feminisms (forthcoming from Aqueduct as those of present-day, white, the writers, editors, publishers, and Press, 2009). Recent publications middleclass suburbia. Mum- even SF academics. This unusually include contributions to The Routledge my and Daddy may live inside interactive relation is one of the things Companion to Science Fiction (2009), a huge amoeba and Daddy’s that distinguishes the genre from On Joanna Russ (2009), and Queer job may be to test psychedelic other forms of literature. The 1970s Universes: Sexualities and Science drugs or cultivate yeast-vats, saw a growing group of feminist fans Fiction (2008). She is currently working but the world inside their producing feminist SF fanzines and on a co-authored book about Donna heads is the world of Westport fighting for women-only spaces and Haraway, to be published by Columbia and Rahway and that world feminist programming at conventions. University Press.]

Miriam Greenwald

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