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THE CONSTRUCTION OF RACE AND THE REPRESENTATION OF ETHNIC

DIFFERENCE IN AMERICAN AND BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of

Philosophy In the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

by

Javier A. Martinez, B. A., M. A.

The Ohio State University

1998

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Debra Moddelmog, adviser ^ . f/

Christian Zacher Adviser

Anthony Libby Department of English UMI Number: 9834029

UMI Microform 9834029 Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arhor, MI 48103 Copyright by Javier A. Martinez 1998 ABSTRACT

This study examines how racial and ethnic difference are constructed in U. S. and British science fiction, or sf. I argue that sf has traditionally excluded the visibly ethnic Other and has often portrayed him/her as a source of genetic corruption and as a social burden. Part One of the study investigates proto-sf between 1859-1911 and is divided into two chapters. Chapter One focuses on the Future War novel, a narrative that adopts the rhetoric of social Darwinism and the visions of eugenic policy to express a notion of white supremacy through fantasies of military conflict. Chapter Two looks at the Lost World novel, a narrative that replays colonization fantasies of the West by attempting to enact an ahistoric process of exploration and exploitation.

Part Two of this study examines pulp sf from 1911-1964 and is also divided into two chapters. Chapter Three scrutinizes how early pulp sf written between 1911 and 1940 enacts a fantasy of what sf critic John Huntington refers to as "nonpolitical power," what I argue is an expression of white power. Chapter Four continues this analysis with a perusal of late pulp sf published between

1941-1964. Sf of the late pulp age has traditionally been read as more "mature" in theme and style than its predecessors. I argue that a more accurate reading is to understand this maturation process as an obfuscation of sf s continued ideology of racism. I close by discussing the current trend of white authors to include people of color in their narratives. I argue that while this strategy is well-meaning, it often uses people of color and non-Westem cultures as sites of exoticism. I contrast this development with sf written by authors of color who use sf tropes to undermine the genre's conservative and racist politics. I conclude that in order to survive the current crisis in publishing and to become a true literature of ideas and vision, sf must redevelop itself according to principles of ethnic diversity and democratic politics. VITA

June 10,1969 ...... Bom - McAllen, Texas

1990...... B. A., The University of Texas at Austin

1993...... M. A., The University of Texas--Pan American

FIELD OF STUDY

Major Field: English

Studies in literary theory, science and technology studies, twentieth- century American and British literature.

IV TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii VITA iv

PREFACE ...... 1 INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE: SOCIAL DARWINISM AND EUGENICS IN THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN ...... 9

CHAPTER

1. THE ANNIHILATION OF DIFFERENCE: THE FUTURE WAR NOVEL IN THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN ...... 27 2. THE LOST RACE NOVEL AND THE FANTASY OF RACIAL PURITY ...... 100

INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO: THE PULP AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION...... 148

CHAPTER

3. EARLY PULP SCIENCE FICTION AND THE ROMANCE OF WHITE POWER ...... 153

4. "DON'T WORRY: I'M NOT GOING POLITICAL ON YOU": IDEOLOGY, WHITE POWER, AND NARRATIVE STRATEGY IN THE LATE PULP AGE ...... 221 PART THREE; CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE FICTION AND THE RACIALIZED SUBJECT

CHAPTER 5. AUTHORS OF COLOR, PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTATION, AND SF AT THE CLOSE OF THE MILLENNIUM...... 300

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 344

VI PREFACE

This study focuses on the construction of race and the representation of

ethnic difference in American and British science fiction, or sf. Historically, the

subject of race in sf and sf criticism has been relegated to footnotes or a passing

mention to some of the few contemporary sf authors of color. As of this writing,

there has yet to appear a full-length discussion of how the subjects of race and

ethnic difference are treated in sf narratives, and only a handful of essays

addressing these issues have been published. In an attempt to redress this situation, this project takes some first steps toward developing an understanding

of sf as a political enterprise motivated and defined by racial difference. I argue

throughout this study that sf has traditionally used the rhetoric of science and the

benefits of technology to obscure or deny certain types of political realizations.

More to the point, sf has, at least since the late nineteenth-century, enacted a fantasy of power aimed at the marginalization and/or erasure of visibly ethnic

Others. This exclusion has been rationalized time and time again by appeals to

scientific transcendence in one form or another, from the biological theories of

evolutionism and genetic research popular at the tum-of the-century, to fetishes of mathematics and logic in recent decades. This study maps those strategies

and clarifies their workings in an attempt to understand how racism has informed the genre and in hope that, by calling attention to them, they will not be repeated. My study opens with an examination of the development of social

Danwinism and the emergence of eugenic research, both of which occur in the late nineteenth-century. I argue that these racist cultural movements had a pronounced effect on what sf critics refer to as proto-science fiction, a field of literature considered a precursor to sf. While dates for the emergence of proto-sf differ between critics, I limit myself here to works published after 1859, the year

Danwin published his treatise on evolution. Darwin's theory of adaptation and change in the natural world was corrupted and recast as social Darwinism, a notion of competition between animal species and, by extension, nationalities and human races, for supremacy. In Chapter 1 ,1 examine how social

Darwinism, especially the Spencerian concept of "survival of the fittest," influenced the development of the Future War novel. These novels make a fetish of military technology and present scenarios where the West, especially the U. S. and Britain, conquers the world through superior force. In addition to nationalist fantasies of power, these narratives play out a racial fantasy where as part of their conquests, the victor nation/s destroy and/or erase the racial and cultural identities of their victims. In these novels, warfare is part of the evolutionary principle: the weakest races invariably are portrayed as non-Westemers and/or visibly ethnic Others and the strongest,or fittest humans, are Western, primarily

U. S. and British, white males.

In Chapter 1, I examine the works of such well-known authors a Jack

London, specifically his short story "The Unparalleled Invasion" (1910) and his novella "The Scarlet Plague" (1912). I also look at lesser-known but important novels, like Pierton Dooneris anti-immigration tract The Last Days of the Republic

(1880), Louis Tracy's novel of white racial supremacv The Final War 118961. and a novel by the enigmatic biracial author M. P. Shiel, The Yellow Peril (1899). My

reading investigates how the rhetorical strategies these novels employ justify

their ideology of racism.

In Chapter 2 ,1 examine the Lost Race novel. These narratives of

adventure, I argue, replay colonialist fantasies at a time when the romance and call of unknown lands are giving way to the tensions and conflicts of colonialist

legacy. The Lost Race novel is marked by a common strategy: white explorers,

usually from the U. S. or Britain, enter unknown lands and discover a lost race or tribe that is fabulously wealthy. Invariably, contact with white Westerners precipitates the destruction of the lost people, and almost always the white explorers escape with riches beyond their dreams-and, on occasion, a native princess. Along with this exploitive dimension is a racial obsession with genetic purity. Because racial ranking, a popular tum-of-the-century notion, emphasizes purity of race, the discovery of a racially pure non-white people leads to a tension of how to define racial superiority. This ideological conflict is resolved by meshing emerging eugenic theory with the older idea of Christian morality. Thus,

I argue that the Lost Race novel presents a conflicting rationalization for its racism. How this conflict is balanced and made to work defines the power of ideology and the pervasive nature of racism in tum-of-the-century U. S. and British cultures.

In order to better understand this strategy I examine two novels by the author most responsible for the Lost Race novelistic formula, H. Rider Haggard.

Montezuma's Daughter (1893) and Heart of the World (1895), I argue, provide a blueprint of the racial and racist concems of late nineteenth-century British and

American whites. I also look at the work of some lesser know writers who were nevertheless bestsellers in their day, Thomas Janvier's The Aztec Treasure

House (1890) and George Griffith's The Romance of Golden Star (1897). As with Haggard's novels, these texts demonstrate how late nineteenth-century religion and science work together to serve U. S. and British white elites' fantasies of racial purity and colonialist expansion.

Proto-sf in the form of the Future War and the Lost Race novel offered visions of a world free of people-of-color or, to a lesser extent, visions of a world overrun by people-of-color. Invariably, utopia was associated with the racial purity of white peoples while dystopia was associated with non-whiteness. Such associations were justified by citing social Darwinism as a natural method through which society advanced and evolved. Similarly, eugenics was considered a scientific mechanism for achieving social perfection. Social

Darwinism and eugenics acted as two sides of the same ideological coin: through the processes of nature society would weed out its “undesirables" and flower into a more perfect organism.

Proto-sf began to change in the early part of the twentieth-century. This change was initiated by the emergence of the sf pulp magazines and the sf short stories which found a home there from 1911-40. These narratives are characterized by the presence of super-science and technological wonders, of space travel and extraterrestrials. Early pulp sf posits a fantasy that all political tensions can be solved by recourse to reason and technological development. Scientism thus becomes a dominant feature of this literature. While early pulp sf is genuinely concerned with the creation of a social utopia through scientific and technological progress, it enacts a similar, if not as overtly violent, marginalization and erasure of the visibly ethnic Other at work in proto-sf. In early pulp sf we find the authority of scientific rhetoric and appeals to universal scientific constants used as means to avoid political conflict and political responsibility. Sf critic John Huntington refers to this strategy as the genre's attempt to create nonpolitical power. We find this approach in Hugo Gemsback influential novel, Ralph 1240 41+ (1911); in the first U. S. space opera, E. E.

"Doc" Smith's The Skylark of Space (1928); and in Jack Williamson's classic serial, The Legion of Space (1935). I conclude the chapter with a reading of A.

E. van Vogt's convoluted novel, Sian (1940), a work that hints at the more complex rhetorical strategy in the sf to follow. In Chapter 4 I examine the late pulp sf published from 1941-64. Many sf critics believe that beginning in the early 40s, sf becomes stylistically more sophisticated. I, however, argue that these narratives remain steeped in notions of scientism and continue to enact fantasies of nonpolitical power. Because the ideological conventions remain for the most part the same, I believe that sf does not mature so much as it develops more complex rhetorical strategies to mask what is at its heart a political problematic-that it is a racist practice that has, time and time again, generated fantasies of white power which are marked by the marginalization and/or erasure of visibly ethnic Others. By the late pulp age, this change is prompted by new historical conditions. In the days of proto-sf, racism was justified by social Darwinism and eugenic policies. After WWII, eugenics is revealed as a horrific practice with devastating consequences and social

Darwinism is better understood as a bogus science which has more to do with the proliferation of capitalism than with the adaptation of animals in the natural world. Furthermore, whereas early pulp sf had the luxury of faith in super­ science to find or create the solution to social tensions, late pulp sf emerges when scientific advancements create as many problems as they solve, i. e. the

atom bomb and subsequent weapons of mass destruction. Consequently, an

uncritical acceptance of science and technology is no longer possible. The rationalizations present in proto-sf and early pulp sf are at the very least rendered extremely problematic for late pulp sf. However, late pulp sf cannot simply move beyond its ideology of racism and scientific transcendence; it has to find a way of balancing political reality with its fantasies of nonpolitical power. The genre's solution is to enact a series of rationalizations which repress the political knowledge these increasingly sophisticated narratives are constantly in the process of realizing. Late pulp sf is marked by this denial of white power even as it seeks to celebrate it. We find this process at work in the fiction of C. M.

Kornbluth, specifically his story of genocide, "The Marching Morons" (1951), Poul

Anderson's romance of colonialism, "Call Me Joe" (1957), Ray Bradbury's liberal humanist justification for colonization, "Way in the Middle of the Air" (1946) and

"The Other Foot" (1951 ), and Tom Godwin's denial of social responsibility for scientific disinterestedness, "The Cold Equations" (1954). In addition to these readings, I also provide an extended discussion of arguably the most influential sf writer of the twentieth-century, Robert A. Heinlein. His attempt at defining a conservative political agenda as nonpolitical through the use of scientific rhetoric, and the problems initiated by such an attempt, defines the ideological strategy of late pulp sf.

In the fifth chapter of my study I examine the small but growing body of sf writers-of-color and their impact in the field from the mid-sixties to the present.

Authors like Samuel Delany, S. P. Somtow, and Jewel Gomez, I argue, disrupt sf's ideological spectrum that until the mid-sixties had been devoid of any significant diversity of opinion. Contemporary sf has become the home for a new generation of writers of color who are actively exploring the intersections of race and futurism, of the ethnic in the postmodern world. These writers, I posit, are forcing sf into new directions and providing new landscapes for other writers, readers, and critics to explore. To better understand how authors of color subvert traditional sf tropes, I examine Octavia Butler's recent novel. Parable of the Sower (1993). In addition, I investigate the growing trend among white sf authors to write from the perspective of the ethnic Other, or to envision future worlds and Other cultures where non-white/non-Westem paradigms are the norm. Works by such authors such as Maureen McHugh are provocative in that they attempt to engage new ideas and visions, but they often fall back onto older and established racist and exploitive portraitures. While contemporary sf is slowly beginning to explore the subjects of race, multiculturalism and interculturalism, I conclude that the genre must make more of an effort to redress its racist paradigms if it is to flourish as a true literature of ideas in the next millennium. PART ONE

PROTO-SCIENCE FICTION:

THE FUTURE WAR AND LOST RACE NOVEL

1859-1911

8 INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE:

SOCIAL DARWINISM IN THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN

The Origin and Impact of Social Darwinism

In November of 1859, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published his monumental work on adaptation and change in the natural world, The Origin of

Species. Perhaps no other study in modem times has had such a profound effect on world culture than Darwin's treatise on evolution. Darwin's ideas affected not only the scientific community, but had far reaching ramifications in the fields of economics and the social sciences. "The concept of evolution," writes Stephen J. Gould in The Mismeasure of Man. "transformed human thought during the nineteenth century. Nearly every question in the life sciences was reformulated in its light. No idea was ever more widely used, or misused" (142).

One such misuse was the emergence social Darwinism.^ "Social

Danwinism," writes William H. Tucker in his The Science and Politics of Racial

Research, is "a mixture of oversimplified biology and opportunistic politics that arose as the dominant sociological thought of the late nineteenth century" (26).

More specifically, "social Darwinism is the thesis that social evolution and social history are governed by the same principles that govern the evolution of species in Nature, so that conflict between and within cultures constitutes a struggle for

existence which is the motor of progress" (Clute and Nicholls 1128). Because

this conflict was thought to guarantee the best stock for future generations in the

natural world, social Darwinists believed that the best human stock would always

survive, while the lesser stock would eventually perish. While pretending to be

an objective analysis of human nature, this view was nothing more than a

pseudo-scientific explanation for the striking class and ethnic divisions in

American and British society. If someone was powerful and wealthy, there had

to be some quality inherent in that person's nature to explain his or her position of

privilege. Thus the rich and powerful enjoyed their upper-class status because

they were naturally predisposed to that position, while the

poor and the working classes, who lived in squalor and misery, suffered because they were made of inferior stuff; their struggles were simply the manifestation of Nature's plan, of natural selection, and to interfere was to doom the society, the race, or even the species as a whole. Society and the economy would be led by those most fit to lead—those who had been selected over long generations of superior performance-and it was folly to contemplate any rapid or profound changes. (Shipman 108)

Social Darwinism took hold in an America where an "ongoing industrial revolution.. .overhauled industrial production, urbanized the populace, and created ever-more-marked divisions among social and economic classes"

(Shipman 108). The already wealthy were joined by a new group of entrepreneurs. In effect, these privileged peoples were asking: "We're rich, why aren't you?" This attitude, however, did not take into consideration the social events of the time. After the Civil War, the rural South was decimated by a

10 ruined economy and its struggles with reconstruction. Entire generations of

Americans from diverse ethnic backgrounds were left destitute and broken; but rather than trace the social and political reasons for this condition, social

Darwinists explained it by appealing to scientific objectivism and natural law.

Social Danwinism provided a rationale for the free reign of exploitation and expansionism: "[l[n an era of robber barons and the beginning of imperialist interest, here was a law of science that positively sanctified rapaciousness"

(Tucker 27).

Those among the upper classes were quick to adopt the theory of social

Danwinism, interpreting economic inequality as proof of their own superiority.

Andrew Camegie's biography describes "how his discovery of social Darwinism brought him round from theology and the supernatural to the truth of evolution"

(qtd. in Tucker 28). John D. Rockefeller drew this parallel between business and nature:

The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest.. . The American beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God. (qtd. in Tucker 28)

Other social Darwinists belonged to, if not the upper caste of society, certainly a favored and well to do section of American and British social circles. Herbert

Spencer (1820-1903) is a good example of a social Darwinist's "evolution" up the social ladder.

11 The son of a schoolteacher, Herbert Spencer was a self-taught man who

never attended college. That he never received formal schooling is odd

considering a hefty inheritance from his uncle that allowed him not to work and left him free to pursue his interests, including sociology, morality, and the new

science of evolution. While Spencer was mainly influenced by Danwin's ideas of

biological change, he had been publishing works on society since 1851, several

years before Darwin's book saw print. Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of evolution

was for Spencer the perfect model for social institutions, one he was quick to

adopt. Evolutionary theory was for Spencer a "universal principle" that

permeated and governed all life on Earth, human and animal and plant alike

(Shipman 108). As such, Spencer advocated a governmental hands-off

approach to social problems, believing that in a laissez-faire type govemment

"[s]ome might suffer along the way-indeed it was inevitable that they would

suffer-but the outcome was for the greater social good, the overall improvement

of mankind and society" (Shipman 108). Spencer, along with his fellow nouveau

rich and the more established upper classes created a

solid conservative block deeply opposed to state interference in what were seen to be natural processes. This group argued that poverty laws, state-supported education, sanitary supervision, regulation of housing, tariffs, banking regulations, and even the postal system would impede the progressive improvements of society. (Shipman 108-09)

Such an extreme social conservatism benefited those few individuals who enjoyed positions of luxury and power and provided them with a rationale to avoid any type of social responsibility. This ideology had a fail-safe device in its dictate that any attempt to help the poor and/or visibly ethnic Other was damaging to society since those who suffered were naturally weak and their

12 presence would only damage the integrity of the race. Any type of interference with the social order was, in essence, interference with the natural order, an order governed by principles that lay beyond the ability of humanity, primarily rich humanity, to control. Social Darwinism acted as a salve on the conscience of its proponents: since social Darwinism revealed the natural order of things, there was no point in either working for social change or feeling pity for those who suffered. By our standards social Darwinism certainly lacked a moral center, and its emergence marked a point in Western civilization when "Subsequent arguments for slavery, colonialism, racial differences, class structures, and sex roles would go forth primarily under the banner of science" (Gould 104). For many social elites, the belief in scientific objectivism replaced the need for a moral conscience. Charity, for example, was thought to interfere with social evolution because it allowed the weaker of the species to continue. Spencer justified this position by claiming God, or the great Unknowable, established a world that functioned under the principles of social Darwinism. As Pat Shipman explains,

Spencer believed in a

mysterious force, the Unknowable, that was continuously at work in the world producing variation, individualization, and specialization or elaboration. This Inscrutable Power, as [Spencer] sometimes called it, was a shrewd concession to religion, for the Unknowable could be (and was often) readily identified with God. Spencer's was a sort of God the Watchmaker notion, a God who devised an amazing intricate world, with built-in rules and movements of its own, who wound it up and allowed it to run without further intervention. The great Unknowable simply generated the initial diversity which natural selection would act mechanically. (109)

By claiming God to be a non-active force in the universe, Spencer erased the notion of a Christian deity along with the Christian value of caring for one's

13 brother or sister. It was everyone for themselves in Spencer's scientific religion,

the nutshell version being his phrase "sun/ival of the fittest." Much has been made of this famous phrase, all too often attributed to

Darwin. Yet Darwin's evolutionary theory never necessarily implied such a

condition. Spencer's "fittest" has overtones of strength, size, power, and thus

has more in common with turn of the century capitalism and expansionism than

with any biological processes as seen in nature. "Survival of the fittest,"

everyone's first introduction to the process of evolution, is a simplistic notion of the complex process of adaptation and mutation that occurs in the natural world.

Species survive not by being fit or powerful, but by being adaptive, by being able to change. Spencer's theory reflected society's political and economic

hierarchies, and did not refer to the evolutionary process as envisioned by

Darwin. Survival of the fittest is an economic construction, not a biological truism. Spencer himself enjoyed the luxury of money because it was left to him by a family member. One cannot help but wonder if social Darwinism would ever have reached its height in popularity if Spencer had been too busy working to support himself and had never had the time to promote his own biases.

Spencer was primarily responsible for the popularization of social

Darwinism in Britain and especially the U. S. where he was even more popular

(Shipman 108). His books "sold over 300,000 volumes in the United States, a phenomenal total for works in technical fields like philosophy and sociology" (Tucker 27). With such widespread dissemination of Spencer's ideas, it is no wonder that during "the late nineteenth century social Darwinist theory exerted tremendous influence on both academic and popular thought" (Tucker 27). It was through a curious meshing of scientific truth with religious transcendence

14 that Herbert Spencer justified and rationalized the privileged position of the upper-class citizenry. Under the tenets of social Darwinism, social and economic privilege became cultural and racial superiority, a theory, as I have already stated, that many powerful and influential members of society were quick to believe. By using science and his notion of an "Inscrutable Power" as twin anchors, Spencer's ideas seemed to reflect a natural human condition that few dared argue against and that many were overjoyed to adopt.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that social Danwinism was never a static concept. Like any (anti) intellectual movement, social Darwinism went through modifications. Richard Hofstadter points towards two significant phases which hold special importance for the development of the theory in the U. S.; 1) an "initial stage when defenders of laissez faire attached Darwinism to descriptions of economic competition" (as the above quotes by Camegie and

Rockefeller illustrate) and 2) a "stage when group struggles among races or nations were portrayed in Dan/vinian terms" (qtd. in Clark 1). This latter development was especially popular in the literature of the day, specifically in the proto-science fiction novels of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth- century. Furthermore, it is precisely when social Danwinism begins to provide a conceptual framework through which the visibly ethnic Other is examined and judged that the door is opened for a new and equally insidious idea-eugenics:

By the late 1880 and 1890s the necessitarian optimism that had been the hallmark of early social Danwinism began to dissipate, leaving a form that emphasized not the necessity but only the possibility of social progress. Instead of resting comfortably in the assurance that evolution would in the long run perfect humankind's physical, mental, and moral faculties, many late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social Darwinists . . . denied the inevitability of such progress in the absence of some kind of conscious control

15 over the reproductive capabilities of the "fit" and the "unfit." (Weiss 35)

The Origin and impact of Eugenics

Pat Shipman points out that by "the early years of the twentieth century, the main point of Darwin's theory had been completely transformed from origin of species into the principles of eugenics. The central tenet of eugenics was that humans could and should ensure the survival of the fittest humans, for the good of society" (122). The term eugenics (from the Greek roots meaning well bom) was first coined in 1883 by Francis Galton (1882-1911), the movement's originator and first cousin to Charles Dan/vin. Galton defined eugenics as

a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognizance of all influences that tend in however remote degree to give the more suitable races or stains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. (qtd. in Tucker 45-46)

But Galton was not the first to entertain the idea of "improving stock" and breeding "more suitable races." The Westem tradition is replete with such examples. In The Republic. Socrates argues that civilization can

produce the best hunting dogs and most noble cocks. .. .It is also the same with the human species... .There is a need for the best men to have intercourse as often with the best women, and the reverse for the most ordinary men with the most ordinary women; and the offspring of the former must be reared but not that of the others, if the flock is going to be of the most eminent quality, (qtd. in Tucker 46)

16 Galton worked In a tradition that stretched from Socrates to Thomas Jefferson, who once commented on creating "a race of veritable aristocrats" through specialized breeding (qtd. In Tucker 46), to Carolus Linnaeus, who was the first to group “human beings Into four varletles--red, yellow, white, and black" and who was the first to distinguish between these races "by personal characteristics specific to each" (Tucker 9). Galton was not the first person to contemplate the selected breeding of human beings, but he was the first person to actively pursue the possibility. Galton, like his father the scientist Erasmus Galton, took a degree In

Medicine from King's College Medical School, but plagued by headaches and unsatisfied with his topic of studies he enrolled In Cambridge and studied toward a degree In mathematics. He managed to obtain his degree despite a nervous breakdown (the first of many to follow), then re-enrolled In medical school under pressure from his father. Upon the elder Galton's death, Francis, much like his

British countryman Edmund Spencer, was left a hefty Inheritance, freeing him from work. Such a position suited Galton, for he believed himself descended from royalty and claimed to "trace his ancestry back through twelve centuries of

Norman dukes and French and Anglo-Saxon kings." As a result, "Galton felt contempt for the masses of ordinary people that he took no pains to hide"

(Tucker 39).

While Spencer concerned himself with the abstract values that govemed society and human culture, Francis Galton obsessed over details, especially numbers. As a trained mathematician, Galton approached his surroundings with a desire to attach a numerical value to all he saw. Women, for example, presented an especially tempting mathematical challenge for Galton, who

17 actually "scored women he passed on the street for their attractiveness,

compiling a beauty map of England.. (Shipman 113). With such a penchant

for numerical value it was not surprising that Galton approached Spencer's theories of social evolution from a mathematical perspective. Whereas Spencer assigned principles of heredity to a God-like being, Galton charted the process of those hereditary principles. Here we find a main difference in approach between two "scientists" who shared many of the same views. Spencer was the abstract thinker intelligent enough to re-envision a God who would lend credence to his theory. Galton was meticulous enough to attempt to map the very specifics of human heredity and evolution. Spencer revealed the mind of God, Galton tried to read it.

Galton first laid out his ideas in his book Hereditary Genius, published in

1869, a work heavily influenced by its author's perusal of The Origin of Species.

Reading Darwin's treatise "marked a turning point in [Galton's] life," aspiring him

"to raise 'the present miserably low standard of the human race' by guiding the evolutionary process" (Tucker 41). Galton believed the stock of humankind could be improved by exploiting certain humans' "natural ability," as demonstrated in this passage from Hereditarv Genius: "[It is] quite practical to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations" (qtd. in Shipman 114). Galton never defined his concept of natural ability, although the preface to the 1892 edition clarifies who has it and who does not: "[natural ability is a trait that] a modem European possesses in a much greater average share than men of the lower races" (qtd. in Tucker 42). Much like Spencer, Galton argued that wealth and social position were proofs of one person's genetic superiority over another. The wealthy person was naturally

18 predisposed toward excellence, while the lesser person was Impoverished because of a biological Inferiority that was demonstrated by their non-whiteness and/or their Inability to ascend the social and economic ladder. The argument comes full circle: Galton attempted to prove the validity of pre-existing social conditions by appealing to the fact that they existed because of genetic reasons. In effect, Galton

was convinced that the differences In human success simply reflected the quality of the breeding materials. He proposed that the British government ought to foster felicitous unions, by examining the populace for hereditary merit and sponsoring public, celebratory marriages In Westminster Abbey for the genetically elite. Eugenics, whether utterly voluntary or state-regulated, was the obvious, scientific, and appropriate, means of Improving the nation. Galton was the prophet of a new religion. (Shipman 114)

Galton's book was a precursor for what was to be a widespread and well- adopted movement. In 1950, the American Eugenics Society was founded, an organization that promoted the sterilization of the lower classes and undesirables, a euphemism for people of color (Kevles 223; Shipman 126-27;

Tucker 54). In Britain In 1904, a grant from Galton helped found the Eugenics Record Office, which later became the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics

(Shipman 119-20). Galton was even knighted by Edward VII In 1909 (Tucker

37). Eugenic principles were not only believed In, they were Institutionalized.

While Galton and others may have offered tempting arguments for the validity of eugenics, It was not solely a matter of seemingly well-reasoned dialogue and discussion that sold the American and British people on the Idea of predetermined genetic value. Galton wrote during a time of great scientific and social upheaval, and a variety of pressures were disrupting the once-comfortable waters of the political ocean:

19 Eugenics was rooted in the nineteenth-century confusion of national identities with race and nourished by the unease provoked by the bewildering array of social and economic changes that occurred at the turn of the century. Rapid industrialization gave rise to teeming cities; poor, ill-educated migrants and immigrants threatened to swamp respectable society; the calm, ordered comfortable rule that had for generations separated class from class threatened to come apart at the seams. As World War I loomed nearer, morality, civilization, and security seemed ever more precariously perched on a trembling branch. (Shipman 116)

The combination of these pressures allowed eugenics and social Darwinism to

spread and become accepted with little resistance. Furthermore, if social

pressure could not convince the general population of the truth revealed by eugenics and social Darwinism, then fear could. Karl Pearson, a disciple of

Galton, statistically "proved" that the lower and disreputable classes were out- breeding the upper and superior classes (Shipman 116-121). This idea caught on so quickly that even President Theodore Roosevelt criticized the middle and upper classes for limiting the size of their families, an action that he described as

"race suicide" (qtd. in Shipman 120).

Social Darwinism. Eugenics, and the Construction of Racial Categories

In addition to influencing economic policies, social programs, and immigration policies, social Darwinism and eugenics refashioned racism from a culturally acceptable belief system into a scientific system of knowledge. Racism had long been a part of U. S. and British culture, but social Darwinism and eugenics helped narrow that racism into a coherent dialogue marked by the

20 authority of scientific discourse. Thus did the umbrella of science help unify formally disparate ideologies into what appeared to be a logical whole. For example, in the nineteenth-century, social Darwinism

contributed to the beginning of an alliance between the anti­ immigrant parochialism of New England and the racial ideology of the South. As the great waves of so-called less desirable immigrants began to pour over the Northeast. . . some scientists viewed the newcomers through the social Danwinist prism and found them not far removed from blacks on the evolutionary ladder. (Tucker 34)

Social Darwinism acted as a homogenizing force which allowed white elites to construct the Other as an alien mass, with little appreciation for the overwhelming diversity and complexity within non-white communities. Furthermore, the transformation of diverse cultural bodies into a single group created a false image against which white elites constructed their own racially pure identity.

Eugenics served as a means of preserving this construct, a racial survival of the fittest: “To ensure that the evolutionary struggle had a happy ending, laws had to be passed, social plans were made, and policies enacted, and between 1905 and 1930 they certainly were made.. .The most oppressive policies would be justified with a moral arrogance, born of scientific truth” (Tucker 53). The end result of social Danwinism and eugenic theory was the stratification of whites and Others. These pseudo-sciences help cement in our collective imagination race as a category that refers to a natural human condition. As Sandra Harding points out, "it has been forty years since some biologists and physical anthropologists began to point out that the concept of race is incompatible with evolutionary theory" (Harding, "Introduction" 8). Nevertheless, while race is a social construct it is nevertheless "lived in; it is manufactured yet also material" (Harding,

21 "Introduction" 9). Race is a fiction that determines how we see ourselves and others.

We cannot criticize earlier tum-of the century American and British cultures for not understanding race the way we know it today, especially when racial categories are still fixed in our collective imagination so that we often replay those same errors of a century ago. What we can do, however, is seek to understand what these categories of racial difference reveal about the culture which produces them so as to leam not only about our past, but about ourselves.

In the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century race was simultaneously a category that was always stable yet always in danger of being disrupted and refashioned. Elite whites believed themselves superior to non­ whites, but they saw this position of authority as tenuous and always in danger of being stripped from them. One of the spaces where late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century U. S. and British white cultures express the anxiety generated by this position is the proto-science fiction novel.

Proto-Science Fiction: Towards a Working Definition

Attempting a singular definition of proto-sf is an impossible task. In Part Two of this study I will examine sf and its emergence as a specified vein of literature with the publication of Hugo Gemsback's Ralph 124C 41-t- in 1911. But to say that anything before those dates can qualify as proto-sf is to render the term meaningless.2 For example, Brain Aidiss argues in Trillion Year Spree that contemporary sf is the child of gothic fiction; but according to this argument, all

22 gothic romance is a kind of proto-sf. This blanket definition seems somewhat oven/vhelming if only because there is no specific quality of gothicism that can be pointed to as prefiguring sf. In Scientific Romance in Britain. Brian Stableford makes a necessary qualification of Aidiss' argument when he points out that a proto-sf narrative can only be "a story which is built around something glimpsed through a window of possibility from which scientific discovery has drawn back the curtain " (8). The key to Stableford's definition is the emphasis a given narrative places on science, particularly on the authority of scientific discourse. It is this notion of value-free knowledge that Stableford points to when he differentiates between proto-sf, what he calls scientific romances, and "other kinds of imaginative fiction, variously describable as supematural fiction or fantasy. The distinguishing characteristic is not that scientific romances are scientific, but that they pretend to be, and that they pretend to be in order to serve some rhetorical purpose" (Romance 8).

We may also say that these narratives serve an ideological purpose as well. Proto-sf, regardless of when it begins to emerge-whether, as Darko Suvin argues, with the publication of Lord Lytton's The Coming Race in 1871, or with

Mary Shelly's Frankenstein in 1818, as Brian Aidiss suggests, or with Homer's

Odyssey as Peter Nicholls points out (Stableford, "Proto Science Fiction" 965)— engages directly the biological theories of racial difference rampant during the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century, specifically social Darwinism and eugenics. While it may be an overstatement to say that all proto-sf is informed by scientific theories of racial difference, it is beyond any doubt that these narratives were being produced at a time when the hierarchical ranking of races and the belief in the inherent inferiority of people of color were accepted as

23 widespread Western cultural values. Consequently, these racist positions inform and define proto-sf. As Stableford reminds us,"sf... is not a mere accident of circumstance" ( "Proto Science Fiction" 967). Though Stableford refers above to the importance of tracing the myriad of

influences on contemporary sf, his statement also applies to the influence of social Darwinism and eugenics in the shaping of proto-sf after 1859, the year

Darwin published The Origin of Species.3 One can certainly argue that all literature published between this time frame responds and contributes to the dialogue initiated by the widespread effects of social Darwinism and the implementation of eugenic policies, but one must also admit that the degree of that discursive engagement varies greatly. Many Victorian novelists, for example, were influenced by social Darwinism and eugenic policy, but few to the extent of H. Rider Haggard. Thus, for the purposes of this study, I will examine proto-sf narratives published between 1859 and 1911 which use scientific discourse to rationalize otherwise fantastic scenarios while at the same time engaging the racist pseudo-sciences of social Darwinism and eugenics. Proto-sf, furthermore, can be divided into two dominant strains: the Future War novel and the Lost Race novel. The first part of this study is devoted to an examination of these proto-sf genres. Chapter 1 will examine the Future War novel, and one of its permutations, the Yellow Peril novel, and Chapter 2 will focus on the Lost

Race novel. These narratives were enormously popular in the U. S. and Britain at the tum-of-the-century because they so well elucidated the anxieties and fantasies of those cultures. As we shall see, these anxieties and fantasies are cast in specific racial terms which reveal how elite whites constructed the racial

Other and viewed themselves in relation to that Other. Proto-sf, I argue, was

24 especially suited for this purpose because its generic conventions allowed these motivations free reign in a genre that rationalized and legitimized through scientific discourse the most extreme of racist positions.

25 Notes

1 Social Darwinism has never disappeared from American political and

scientific thought, periodically resurfacing whenever the political times are

appropriate. The most recent resurfacing occurred a few years ago with the

publication of The Bell Cun/e (1994) by Richard J. Hermstein and Charles Murray. While the study attempts to concretize the otherwise ephemeral concept

of intelligence, Hermstein and Murray's argument that some individuals are better

suited than others to function in society is essentially a social Darwinist idea.

2 Conversely, to say that every narrative written after 1911 qualifies as

modem sf is also oversimplifying matters. I will clarify the ideological differences

between sf and proto-sf in Part 2 of this study.

3 One can certainly read works like Francis Bacon's Atlantis (1629) and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726) as precursors to sf and therefore proto- sf. I do not seek to disclaim such arguments, but seek instead to place the emphasis of the definition of proto-sf on its intersection with the construction of racial categories as determined by social Darwinism and eugenic policy.

26 CHAPTER 1 THE ANNIHILATION OF DIFFERENCE THE FUTURE WAR NOVEL IN THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN

The Future War Novel

In his pioneering study of the literature of future wars, Voices Prophesying

War. I. F. Clarke points out that fictionalized accounts of futuristic warfare have long been used by Western nations as a way of envisioning the dissemination of their power and cultural values. Clarke cites the first use of this narrative strategy in the anonymously written tale, The Reign of Georae VI. 1900-1925. first published in 1763. Over the next hundred years the tale of the "war-to- come" or Future War novel became "the most favored means of presenting arguments for-or against-new political alliances, changes in the organization and equipment of armies, technological innovations in naval vessels, or even schemes for colonial expansion" (1). In the late nineteenth-century, the U. S. and Britain were enjoying a romance with new technologies, new scientific discoveries, and an ever-increasing catalogue of inventions (Kem 65-88). An account of how these innovations function in a fictionalized conflict between nations helps define the Future War novel. For example, Clarke argues that Future War novels "were deliberately shaped by their authors to present a military or a naval forecast, to teach a political lesson, or to give a demonstration

27 of scientific marvels still to come" (64). Clarke further describes the Future War novel as "the idea of progress applied to the future of warfare. It was a product of a European preoccupation with technology and change that could never let the imagination rest" (78). Clarke's study examines how developments in military technology are recast in fictive form, thereby revealing the political motivations of a nation. As such, the Future War novel functions as a space where the "[n]ew drives and new forces [which] began to reveal themselves in the 1890s" are at play. These dynamics, Clarke contiues,

gathered strength until they exerted a decisive influence on the form and direction of many of the new-style stories produced in that decade. A taste for the exotic, a delight in the marvels of military technology, a desire for adventures, an aggressive spirit of nationalism, the constant appeal from demagogues in Press and politics-these were some of the discernible influences that began to play with increasing effect upon the pattem of the imaginary war. (64)

These narratives, however, enact far more than simplistic fantasies of the uses or misuses of military technology, for they make "no space to display any interest in peace, except in way of conquest and the domination of other peoples. (Clarke

64). Thus do these novels work out the project of "imperialism and the prospect of European ascendancy throughout the world in years to come. Annexation of the space of others, outward movement of people and goods, and the expansive ideology of imperialism were spatial expressions of the active appropriation of the future" (Kem 92). It is this expression of power that this chapter investigates, as very often the might of the Westem nation-state depicted in these narratives is aimed at non-whites. In this sense, the Future War novel is the literary embodiment of social Darwinism because warfare is constructed as a means of

28 eradicating inferior species. There is no negotiation or surrender in these narratives, only a complete annihilation of the losing state. This scenario is bom out of a conflation between the national body and racial body. As Pat Shipman points out, in the closing decades of the nineteenth-century, "nation and race were virtually synonymous terms; they referred to social and cultural groups, not biological entities as in modem thought" (117; emphasis in original). The portrayal of the nation-state as a racialized body in Future War novels leads to the expression of a eugenic vision where the victor state establishes a racially pure paradigm through the erasure of ethnic diversity and the racial homogenization of the world. Ultimately, the Future War novel acted as a conduit through which the philosophy of social Danwinism and the policies of eugenics were disseminated into the channel of popular culture.

In this chapter, I will focus on what was in the late nineteenth-century the most popular literature of the future, the Future War novel (Clute and Nichols

569). I will reveal how the Future War novel uses social Danwinism and eugenics to promote the notions of white supremacy and Western superiority through fantasies of global warfare and domination. Furthermore, I will show that the

Future War novel functions as a space where fantasies of power and genetic purity are explored. These fantasies are primarily constructed along racial lines, with people of color serving as demarcations of racial impurity whose genetic degeneration threatens the interest of the human race. Conversely, American and British whites are portrayed as paradigms of racial purity whose genetic potential harbors the best hope of a promising future. Between these extreme poles there is, of course, much slippage, and it is at this moment that the cultural baggage of racism and imperialism is revealed. These contradictions and logical

29 lapses point to the wider discourse that envelops these narratives: fear of a cultural and biological violation of the political bodies of the U. S. and Britain. It is this fear that gives rise to a recurring theme in the Future War novel that I label the annihilation of difference: the suspension of political and moral tensions through a narrative fantasy that details the erasure of Others. As such, the

Future War novel enacts strategies to deal with what are perceived as threats to the cultural fabric of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century U. S. and

Britain, strategies which encourage the oppression and violation of people of color.

Louis Tracy's The Final War: The Dominance of Science, the Predominance of Racism

Sf historian Sam Moskowitz tells us that British joumalist Louis Tracy's

(1863-1928) The Final War M8961 was a bestseller in its day (Horizons 203).

The Final War details the growth of the Saxon race, by which Tracy means American and British whites, and its war with "lesser peoples." In this long and rambling tale, Britain goes to war against Germany and other European countries, even as India and Persia begin their own skirmish. There is a successful Russian revolution, the Indian Army decimates Persia, and the British gain a secret and powerful weapon in the form of the Thomson Electric Rifle which enables them to destroy all their enemies, save the U. S. with whom they have made an alliance. The novel closes with the victorious Saxon race assimilating all other cultures and initiating a new era of world peace and white rule.

30 The Final War reads like a map of the racial theories popular during the closing years of the nineteenth century. Take, for example, the cultural lineage Tracy creates. He divides world history into three historic periods. Greek civilization is the first of these divisions, the Greek being ‘Ihe strong, sensuous being, who gave order to chaos, who wrested from its bondage the perfect life of man. His was the rule of Art, that great force which gives each thing its place and finds for each a use, which cuts off the civilized from the barbarous, which carves the rich doorway of the Temple of the Ideal” (Tracy 460). The second division is Roman civilization, whose destiny it was "to found the great doctrines of jurisdiction, to give Law to the nations... .She ruled by virtue of impartial Law, by the just principles which brought all peoples willingly to her feet" (Tracy 460-

61). The third and final civilization is the Saxon empire, for "[ajrt and law had had their day: there followed the dominance of Science" (Tracy 461). We find in Tracy's distinctions a perceived cultural evolution. Society reaches its artistic apex when Greece gives humanity its "implements, its faith, its yearning, its strength: and doing so exhausted herself" (Tracy 460). Greek civilization is described as a female and organic entity: the Greek world exhausts itself, as if it is a mother giving birth to civilization, and in her birthing pains finds only the sad comfort of death. We find this same body imagery in the explanation of the death of the Roman empire: "Others arose and from her nerveless grasp snatched the scepter of her dominion" (Tracy 461). Tracy's language is telling: Rome is a "nerveless" female hand and "Others," ominously unspecified, have stripped Rome of its glory. In these brief quotes we find the anxieties plaguing tum-of-the-century American and British cultures expressed through their literature of the future: fear of the undefinable Other, fear of the

31 intrusion the Other represents, and a desire to feminize the national body, a body that must at all times be protected and govemed.

In The Final War these anxieties are alleviated by science. The role of science in the novel is to provide justification for the extermination and/or transformation of non-white bodies that have been constructed as degenerative and corrupt, and justification for control of white female bodies that have been judged necessary for the propagation of the race. The above images of the nation as a feminized body reveal the eugenic concerns that underlie the narrative, for "[tjhroughout the nineteenth century, scientific descriptions of the material world proliferated, at once codifying and complicating the project to manipulate the resources, including the bodies of women" (Doyle 6-7). Tracy's nation-bodies bring to the forefront of the narrative a sexual dimension that is only implied in most Future War novels: the construction of the female body as a slave to the process of evolution and its necessary hamessing for eugenic management. The comodification of the female body for racial purification is what Laura Doyle refers to as racial patriarchy, or "the way in which patriarchal institutions work to reproduce . . . boundaries of class and race through their controlled circulation of women in marriage" (5-6). It is important to note that

Doyle focuses on white women and the way their sexuality was policed in the late nineteenth-century and the early twentieth-century in such a way as to prevent their sexual contact with the visibly ethnic Other. "Thus," argues Doyle,

"women's sexuality and motherhood inescapably took on a racial meaning" (18).

These attempts at controlling the bodies of white women were motivated by eugenic principles, the believed result being a purer white racial identity. But if the reproductive systems of white women were under rigorous scrutiny, then

32 the non-white female body also fell under a equally Intense focus. The non-white

female body was seen as the wellspring of the stain of color, and steps were

taken to control the reproductive abilities and outcomes of women of color. We

encounter such policies in The Final War when non-white women are eliminated,

their sexuality taken as a threat to the purity of high culture. Such actions were,

unfortunately, not limited to Future War narratives. Beginning in 1907, less than

a decade after the publication of Tracy's novel, a series of sterilization laws were

enacted in the U. S. By 1931, thirty states had passed some type of sterilization

procedure into law. By the late 1950s, over sixty thousand serializations had

occurred. Most of the individuals targeted were the same as those destroyed in

Tracy's novel: blacks. Native Americans, immigrants, any "non-Saxon" people (Doyle 14-16). American culture was posed to enact much of what was fictional

in Tracy's novel. The transformation of culture and civilization into bodies is an attempt to

view history as a biological construction divorced from politics and ideologies.

The annihilation of difference that occurs in The Final War (and all Future War

novels) is portrayed as merely a purgative process that the nation-body is

undergoing, while the sterilizations and violations of actual human bodies in

society are rationalized by the belief that such bodies are not valuable. These

actions are justified by constructing society as govemed by the same immutable

laws which control the growth, evolution, and death of organic beings. As such, the nation-body is susceptible to infection. The final war of the novel is the curative process that the nation-body must undergo; a process that invariably leads to, in the words of eugenicist Karl Pearson, "suffering, intense suffering. "

Such agony, however, was thought necessary if, in Pearson's words, humanity

33 was to prevail over "inferior races" and arise "to a higher intellectual and deeper emotional life" (qtd. in Tucker 29).

Tracy views the Greek and Roman civilizations as ignorant of the revelations of science; thus they cannot evolve to a higher state. Such an evolution can be realized only by Tracy's third, and in his view, everlasting, civilization--the Saxon Race. The Saxons survive because they have gleaned the immutable truths provided by science. Art, for all its virtues, is not concrete, and Law, for all the order it brings, is too easily corrupted by outside influence; but science, as Tracy sees it, is transcendent of human folly. That the Saxons understand science is the key to their survival. Tracy believes the Saxons to be the fittest of all peoples because science provides them with a glimpse of the secret of life: “For the message which science gave the world was that that race alone would conquer in the struggle for existence which showed greatest adaptability, which could easiest accommodate itself to the boundless variations of earth's wayward moods. It was the cruel law of the survival of the fittest" (461 ; emphasis added). Tracy quotes Spencer in a passage that in a nutshell provides the ideological foundation of the novel. The entire narrative has been moving toward the revelation of the concept of "survival of the fittest" as the grand immutable truth which only Westem science has been able to discem. Spencer's idea is truly the main figure in a novel replete with generals and soldiers, statesmen and civilians, but no real characters. This absence of character was a common feature of the Future War novel. The Future War novel was not an exercise in character study, but a propagandists medium which promoted

Western supremacy and pseudo-scientific idealism.

34 Part of this idealism was the notion that the more advanced race had to determine the fate of the various human races. This responsibility was adopted by American and British men of power and was portrayed as a weighty necessity

(Shipman 124). Such a portrayal of white men suffering for the fate of the human race was, of course, meant to gamer sympathy for their cause. Contrast this description with Tracy's characterization of non-whites, whom he calls the "less fortunate peoples-more blessed perhaps, in rich qualities of heart-more developed it might be, in gentle graces and warm emotions-but forced, after all, to pay the penalty of their very virtues" (462). Non-whites are portrayed as simpletons, hardly capable of understanding the struggle for race supremacy going on around them. Tracy's characterization has much in common with author John Eggleston's comment on racial struggle which he referred to as "a game of chess with a fully developed giant intellect. . . sitting on one side, and a child on the other, that scarcely knows a pawn from a king" (qtd. in Tucker 31 ).

The non-white is portrayed as child-like, retarded in development, while the white is constructed as a towering intellect solely responsible for the continuation of the human race. Non-whites had only themselves, their culture, their religions- virtuous features, perhaps, but not enough to ensure future survival. For Tracy, only strict adherence to cold scientific fact would insure the continuation of the

Saxon race; all others would inevitably perish. This is a political vision recast as genetic necessity and expressed in biological terms:

America arose . . . America which developed a new type of being, more versatile still, and still more strenuous [than the British counterpart]. And the impulse went on, giving life to Canada, peopling the vast continent of Australia, carrying civilized arts to

35 mysterious Africa and to venerable India, and on every continent, in every sea, stamping itself in eternal characters. (Tracy 463)

America represents not only a new country but a relentless new "being" that feeds off foreign lands and their people. Again, as with Greece and Rome, we find the nation being likened to a biological organism. For Tracy, this representation of the nation as body is key to justifying imperialist tendencies by appealing to biological urges. Note how Africa and India are specified sites of colonization. Tracy never mentions that such colonization has already occurred.

The novel merely replays history in an attempt to recast imperialism from a political motivation into a biological process. Because the Saxons have nature on their side, they are portrayed as unstoppable. Many shared this vision of

Saxon supremacy, including J. R. Straton, professor at Mercer University. Note how Straton, writing in 1900, echoes Tracy's vision of an imperialist future:

The Anglo-Saxon has reached his present high civilization after a long and laborious struggle upward. Through a series of well- defined steps, he has risen from barbarism into his present plane. The system in which he now dwells is the logical outcome of all that has gone before, and consequently, the white man of today is thoroughly suited to his environment, (qtd. in Tucker 32)

Westem imperialist tendencies are further justified by Tracy through appeal to instincts and blood: "The Saxon is content where he is: the instinct of his blood tells him that the earth is his home and that his spirit must inform the nation and regenerate decaying peoples" (Tracy 464). This regeneration is met with little resistance: "Commerce bent itself to Britain and all peoples entrusted to her their possessions" (464). Westem imperialism is portrayed as a welcome force throughout the world. Historically, colonization processes have met with much resistance. In The Final War, however, that resistance is tempered by the

36 justification provided by appeals to science. Imperialism is cast as a non-political force, a movement purely influenced by biological dictates which lead, ultimately, to the realization of utopia. Observe the closing lines of the novel:

Thus, as life becomes more complex and harder grows the struggle, there is no escape for people not fitted to bear its strain, and the Saxon race will absorb all and embrace all, reanimating old civilizations and giving new vigour to exhausted nations. England and America-their destiny is to order and rule the world, to give it peace and freedom, to bestow upon it prosperity and happiness, to fulfill the responsibilities of an all-devouring people: wisely to discem and generously to bestow. The vision-far-off may be-already dawns: and in the glory of its celestial light is the peace of nations. (Tracy 464)

The Final War creates a future where Saxon blood regenerates all of humankind.

Those races which are not strong enough simply die. Yet Tracy believes his final war to be a march for peace. Imperialism, for Tracy, is not a process of conquest, but a natural movement toward biological unification of the human species. Tracy does not see this expansionism as a moral problem, but a natural working through of nature and evolution: "This, then, is the mission of the Saxon Race-slowly but surely to map itself over the earth, to absorb the nations, to bring to pass that wonderful dream of a world united in a single family and speaking a common speech" (462).

Tracy's future is marked by a homogeneity of culture. The Saxons have spread throughout the globe, absorbing into themselves all other cultures and peoples. There is in this process of assimilation a contradiction that goes unrecognized: "race-mixing" is contrary to the racial purification goals of eugenics. This logical inconsistency occurs repeatedly, yet is not recognized as such. Take, for example, the following passage: "With miraculous ease the

Saxon remodeled himself to obey every variation of climate, every manner of

37 sky, every form of life, till it became clear that he was no fixed irrevocable type, but of a plastic mold, responsive to the slightest touch, and reproducing himself in a hundred different shapes” (Tracy 463). Here the Saxon is seen to change and adapt, but such adaptation would necessitate a blurring of cultures and races, a meshing of Saxon and non-Saxon, a new race of people with a mixed and diverse ancestry. This does not occur. Rather, the act of feeding, of absorption, works in only one direction: the nebulous Saxon quality remains unchanged and immutable, while the consumed races are transformed or simply eradicated. Tracy wants his Saxons to populate the world, but he wants to keep his race pure, for it is "the instinct of his blood [that] tells [the Saxon] that the earth is his home and that his spirit must inform the nations and regenerate decaying peoples" (Tracy 463-64). But racial identity, in any act of conquest, is always undermined. Tracy praises the Saxons for their ability to adapt to their environment, but he neglects to consider that with each conquest the purity of the

Saxon blood is diminished. Tracy refuses to follow through on the scenario that he initiates because he cannot allow his Saxon race to be affected by the races he portrays as "unpure." Tracy has concocted a fantasy where whites ascend to a position of world dominance by assimilating other cultures while keeping themselves pure of outside influence. While Tracy claims his Saxons to be made from a "plastic mode" and "responsive to every touch," they do not change that mysterious quality that makes them Saxons-otherwise they would no longer be superior.

In order for Tracy to paint his Saxons as biologically superior, he must first make them pliable and adaptable to environmental forces, thus allowing them to exert their influence throughout the globe. But there remains a sexual tension in

38 the Saxon attempt to "absorb all and embrace all" that is not addressed in the novel. Tracy does not account for any sexual relations between his Saxons and the "lesser races," but it is certainly suggested in the various above quotes describing Saxon domination. How else is the Saxon to "regenerate decaying peoples"? The paradox of Tracy's colonial fantasy is shadowed by an ideology which on the one hand praises the Saxon ability to change and adapt, and on the other necessitates their not being affected by the transformations they initiate.

This contradiction undercuts the final chapter of the novel where Tracy's imperialistic fantasy otherwise runs wild, and is tied intimately to questions of race and ethnicity. How can the Saxons remain "pure" if they are coming into contact with the Other through their various conquests? This issue is never addressed. Indeed, sexual contact with the Other cannot be explored for it would reveal the ideological foundation of the novel and negate the scientific rationale that Tracy depends on for proof of his vision. Tracy's suppression of this sexual dimension raises another question: did not the readers of the novel wonder about the sexual implications of Saxon domination? While turn-of the-century

American and British society may not have been as frank in their discussion of sexuality as we are today, they were certainly concerned with the intersection of sexuality and race as revealed by a general anxiety towards miscegenation, the policing of the bodies of white women, and the eradication of the non-white female body. While Tracy and many of his readers were certainly racist, they were not necessarily fools. That educated and intelligent people could not grasp the way they were using science as a means to promote their own biases and fears reveals the pervasive influence of an ideology of aversion for the visibly ethnic Other.

39 Another important point to make here is the contradictory nature of the narrative's "solution" to the presence of people of color. On the one hand, The

Final War seeks to destroy non-whites through a social Darwinist ritual of warfare. On the other, the novel shows how people of color are transformed by a dominant white presence, their identities erased but their bodies left intact. Did

Tracy not see this contradiction or did he simply ignore it? I think this logical lapse is best understood as a fantasy of racial ized power that is played out in a variety of scenarios. Put another way, how the annihilation of difference is achieved is not important, even if such "solutions" are arrived at by mutually exclusive or contradictory elements. Clearly, any and all inconsistencies in The

Final War and other Future War novels are held together by the glue of an ideology of racism. The only factor of importance in these novels is that people of color are made subservient to the dominant white racial paradigm. After all,

Tracy and his contemporaneous scientists and readers were all working from the a priori conviction that whites were naturally superior to non-whites. All subsequent discussion-such as the annihilation of difference in literary texts and the policing of women's bodies in society-had to validate this initial assumption.

The Yellow Peril Novel

The Final War is a classic example of the Future War novel's generic formula of nationalistic and racialistic aggression. A permutation of this strategy is the Yellow Peril novel: a response by U. S. culture to Asian immigration in the late nineteenth-century expressed through the generic conventions of the Future

40 War novel. Whereas the Future War novel Is a U. S. and Western European product that initiates a fictionalized confrontation with a variety of Western and non-Western nations, the Yellow Peril novel is a U. S. construction that focuses aggression specifically on Asians, Asian immigrants, and Asian Americans.

Nevertheless, we find in the Yellow Peril novel the same fantasy of warfare expressed in the Future War novel wherein the victor race is constructed as the winner in a social Darwinist struggle for survival while the loser race is annihilated. In this sense, the Yellow Peril novel is a honing of the Future War novel and can be read as an expression of the anti-immigration fervor in late nineteenth-century U. S. culture. Put another way, I read the Yellow Peril novel as a type of Future War novel much like cyberpunk is a type of science fiction.

As cyberpunk is recognized by certain narrative conventions, so is the Yellow

Peril novel characterized by certain features; and as cyberpunk is contained within the larger genre of sf, so the Yellow Peril novel is contained within the rubric of the Future War novel. The Yellow Peril novel has two basic formulas: 1) Americans and/or

Britons repel invading Asian armies, then destroy Asian peoples; or, and to a lesser extent, 2) Americans and/or Britons fall prey to Asian cunning and are soon overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. This second scenario is usually cast as a novel of warning meant to illustrate where immigration can lead if not curbed. Both narrative strategies adhere to the strict social Darwinist logic that war between races can result in only one people evolving and the other's complete erasure. Each strategy also promotes eugenic policy as a means of strengthening the race.

41 As I mention above, the Yellow Peril novel Is a product of U. S. anxiety over what was in the late nineteenth-century believed to be unfettered Chinese immigration: “The latent bias toward non-English speaking immigrants came to the surface when Chinese workers arrived in large numbers in the 1870s. By the end of the decade, there were more than 150,000 Chinese in Califomia, mostly young males who accounted for one out of every four workers in the states”

(Muller 35). The influx of Chinese immigrants was considered a threat to the racial fabric of the country. Speaking in 1879, President Rutherford Hayes warned America about what he termed the "Chinese Problem": ‘The present

Chinese invasion [is] pemicious and should be discouraged. Our experience in dealing with the weaker races-Negroes and Indians.. .-is not encouraging... .1 would consider with favor any suitable measures to discourage the Chinese from coming to our shores” (qtd. in Takaki 206). In reality, the Chinese "constituted a mere .002 percent of the United States population in 1880" (Takaki 206).

Nevertheless, fear of the Chinese immigrant won out, and in 1882 the Chinese

Exclusion act was passed, prohibiting Chinese immigrants from entering the country.

It may at first seem ridiculous to the contemporary reader or student of history that the U. S. was thrown into such a panic over a paltry .002 percent

Chinese population. Ronald Takaki casts some light on the situation:

Behind the exclusion act were fears and forces that had little relationship to the Chinese. Something had gone wrong with America, and an age of economic opportunity seemed to be coming to an end. This country had been a place where an abundance of land and jobs had always been available. The problem for employers had always been the need for labor. But suddenly, during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, society was experiencing what historian John A. Garraty called 'the discovery of unemployment.' This new reality plunged society into a national

42 crisis. Enormous expansions of the economy had been followed by intense and painful contractions: tens of thousands of men and women were thrown out of work, and social convulsions . . . rocked the nation. (206)

Chinese immigrants were made the scapegoats for the larger economic tensions

enveloping the U. S. But Chinese exclusion raises another question: Why, of all the myriad immigrant and ethnic groups in the U. S., were the Chinese singled

out? In his Immigrants and the American Citv. Thomas Muller argues that Chinese exclusion was "totally unrelated to economic factors"; rather, opposition was "rooted in the perception that the Chinese could not be assimilated" (28).

Muller echoes John Higham, who writes in his classic study of American xenophobia. Strangers in the Land: "Califomia's anti-Chinese hysteria had presented itself largely as a defense of 'white civilization'..." (170). The Chinese were considered a threat to U. S. culture that could neither be contained nor understood:

. . . Americans rated lowest the nationalities most conspicuously remote in culture and race. No variety of anti-European sentiment has ever approached the violent extremes to which anti-Chinese agitation went in the 1870's and 1880's... .Americans have never maintained that every European endangers American civilization; attacks have centered on the 'scum' or 'dregs' of Europe, thereby allowing for at least some implicit exceptions. But opponents of Oriental folk have tended to reject them one and all. (Higham 24- 25)

While racist whites saw blacks and Native Americans as subhuman or evolutionary throwbacks, the Chinese were absolute strangers who had no place in the American fabric. "The Yellow Peril" became a common term by which to mark this new ethnic Other who was seen as intruding upon white U. S. cultural space (Wu 2). In the early twentieth-century, the term was expanded to include

43 Japanese and other Asian Immigrants. In his study The Yellow Peril: Chinese

Americans in American Fiction. William F. Wu defines the Yellow Peril phenomenon as

the threat to the United States that some white American authors believed was posed by the people of East Asia. As a literary theme, the fear of this threat focuses on specific issues, including possible military invasion from Asia, perceived competition to the white labor force from Asian workers, the alleged moral degeneracy of Asian people, and the potential genetic mixing of Anglo-Saxons with Asians, which were considered a biologically inferior race by some intellectuals of the nineteenth century. (1 )

Clearly white elites were seeing Asian immigrants as a threat to their perceived racial purity. Adding to this anxiety was the perception, supported by social

Danwinist theory, that all "races" are in competition with each other not only for supremacy but ultimate survival. This anxiety is played out in the narrative of racial annihilation which defines the Future War novel and its offshoot the Yellow

Peril novel. In the following pages I examine three texts which are key to our understanding of the logic of the Yellow Peril novel and the eugenic discourse it enacts. I focus on writer M. P. Shiel, who first coined the phrase "Yellow Peril." Bom in the British West Indies, Shiel practiced a kind of gothic proto-sf-his style showing an "obsessive concem with decorated prose"--and was vehemently racist toward blacks, Asians and Jews (Clute and Nicholls 1100). It has since come to light that Shiel was of partial African ancestry; thus his aversion for the visibly ethnic Other is more problematic than any simple charge of racism can begin to reveal. I look at Shiel's treatment of Asians and Asian Americans in his novel The Yellow Danger (1898) in hopes of better gauging how dominant ideology shaped and determined the fiction of this author of color. I follow my

44 reading of Shiel's novel with an examination of Jack London's short story "The

Unparalleled Invasion" (1910). This story bears special attention because of its especially violent treatment of Asians, and for the way science provides and justifies the method of their annihilation. I open with an analysis of Last Davs of the Republic (1880) by Pierton Dooner (1844-1907). Dooner's novel was the first

U. S. Yellow Peril novel (Clute and Nicholls 348), and as such I feel it warrants special critical attention. Last Days of the Republic details a future America besieged by the

Chinese immigrant. Dooner presents the reader with a series of events that lead from the slow arrival of Chinese workers to an overwhelming invasion force that succeeds in bribing the American government into inaction and in conquering the

American citizenry. In the Preface Dooner admits that such a tum of events seems ludicrous, but he is quick to explain his rationale. I quote at length from the Preface because it provides us with a perfect example of the racist undercurrent of scientific rhetoric:

It will, doubtless, be objected to this work that it is, in part, mere speculation; and it will, further, be urged that it is absurd in presupposing the possibility of a condition of affairs so extreme as that foreshadowed in these pages; but I have only to say, in explanation, that I am not responsible for the result any more than I should be for the product of the multiplication of two given numbers. In the one case, the numbers are submitted to the process of multiplication according to the rules of arithmetic, and a third, or additional number, is produced. It would be folly to quarrel with this result. In the second case, the data of thirty years of observation and experiment have been taken and submitted to a deductive examination-multiplied, as it were, by the hopes, the fears, the experience, the passions and prejudices of men, as well as by the example of history, and I am compelled to abide the result. That I am not satisfied with this, must be obvious; but I can no more conscientiously change it in any particular, without discovering some plain mistake in the data upon which it is based, than I could change a figure in the product of my multiplication

45 example, without discovering that I had mistaken a digit in one of the given numbers. (3-4)

Dooner lends an air of scientific credence to his speculations by reducing social forces to numerical variables whose effects and outcomes can be quantified and solved. If one cannot argue with numbers, then one cannot argue with the forces that shape social events, especially when they are one and the same. Dooner attempts to establish that social forces, like mathematics, are part of nature: constant, never changing and objectively measurable. Dooner’s future history is pure speculation, but he attempts to make legitimate his ideas by casting them as scientific discourse. Dooner wants to make his audience believe that just as mathematics follows immutable rules, so is society governed by similar transcendent and apolitical principles.

But is mathematics a pure and objective science? Luke Hodgkin writes that mathematics "is the oldest science to develop a rigorous-even rigid-idea of its own practice, so that the scientificity of mathematics has come to seem not so much historical as natural after 2,500 years" (173). Over time mathematics has become a "power above ourselves," what Hodgkin defines as scientific knowledge that seems to envelop both scientists and society (179).

Mathematics, the irrefutability of numbers, is a historical construct with beatable social and political origins, and

although the scientific knowledge which we construct becomes a 'power above ourselves', it is not a power above society . . . I think this is a crucial mistake by those who have tried to separate science', in the sense of scientific knowledge, from the society in which it is produced and consumed. From a materialist point of view the knowledge produced by scientists has no existence except insofar as it is learnt, understood, applied, transformed in the practice of other scientists or, more generally, by people who need, for whatever reason, to use them. (Hodgkin 179)

46 Dooner uses scientific language because it creates the illusion that science exists outside of the social forces which shape it. Dooner's supposedly objective account is nothing but a reflection of the general fear of the Other that was gripping American society at the time, in this case an exaggerated fear of a minuscule Chinese population.

Dooner's use of numbers to "prove" his conclusions demonstrates that science is

rooted in creative interpretation. Numbers suggest, constrain, and refute; they do not, by themselves, specify the content of scientific theories. Theories are built upon the interpretation of numbers, and interpreters are often trapped by their own rhetoric. They believe in their own objectivity, and fail to discern the prejudice that leads them to one interpretation among many consistent with their numbers. (Gould 106)

Perhaps Dooner suspected as much. If we review the Preface we find that Dooner's claims to objectivity are subtly reserved. Dooner claims that it is folly to argue that when two numbers are added a third is achieved. Similarly, Dooner claims it would be folly to argue with the conclusions he reaches on the effect

Chinese immigration will have on the U. S. because they are based on "thirty years of observation and experience." But Dooner claims he multiplies this data by "the hopes, the fears, the experience, the passions and prejudices of men, as well as by the example of history." Dooner admits he is meshing numbers with collective "passions" and "prejudices," an obvious non-scientific factor. Yet

Dooner casually glosses over this admission and moves on to his next disclaimer, that he is an impartial party, a claim I will soon address. How can

47 Dooner admit that he relies on emotional responses and still lay claim to scientific objectivity? How is this "logic" justified?

Obviously, such reasoning cannot be defended, but Dooner attempts it nonetheless. Observe the following fragment, taken from the short, three paragraph Introductory to Last Days of the Republic:

The logic of these deductions, considered in the abstract, will of course, be omitted... .It is sufficient for the author’s aims and purposes that the conclusions arrived at be stated with sufficient clearness and detail to enable the country to see the necessity of taking measure to arrest this disease, before the power so to do shall have passed, forever, beyond the reach of political regeneration. (Dooner 9)

Dooner clearly admits that he depends on human passions to help him reach his

"scientific" conclusions, but this admission completely disregards his attempts in the Preface to establish the incontrovertibility of his text. Dooner is aware of this inconsistency and seeks to resolve it by omitting the logic that leads to his deductions! He is able to justify this argumentative lapse because what is at issue is that the U. S. take "measure to arrest this disease" known as Chinese immigration. We thus come full circle. Science proves that the Chinese will be the downfall of the U. S.; this conclusion is reached by a multiplication of facts and passions: there is not need to demonstrate how this equation functions because what is at issue is the "Chinese Problem," which, by the way, can be proved scientifically to exist.

Even the most cursory reading of Dooner's argument makes obvious the illogic of his claim. But it is not enough for us to simply demonstrate the fallacy of his thoughts. We must ask why such obvious contradictions passed as reasonable to the nineteenth-century U. S. reader. I have already pointed out the

48 intense racism directed toward Asian, especially Chinese, immigrants, at the time of the novel's publication. Dooner's work is clearly an extension of the wider social forces which enveloped the author and the public reception of his novel, including the ideology of social Darwinism and society's increasing engagement with eugenic policy. It is these wider movements of hatred for the visibly ethnic

Other that allow such questionable discourse to pass as scientific fact.

What is of further interest is the detachment with which such racism was often enacted. Tucker writes that Galton always "maintained that his social agenda was a consequence of scientific truth and religious obligation " (50).

Spencer claimed "[my] ultimate purpose has been that of finding for the principles or right and wrong, in conduct at large, a scientific basis" (qtd. in Tucker 26).

These appeals to disinterestedness often mask more sinister social agendas:

Impartiality (even if desirable) is unattainable by human beings with inevitable backgrounds, needs, beliefs, and desires. It is dangerous for a scholar even to imagine that he might attain complete neutrality, for then one stops being vigilant about personal preferences and their influences-and then he truly falls victim to the dictates of prejudice. (Gould 36)

Spencer and Galton certainly fell victim to the dictates of their prejudices, regardless of their claims to neutrality. Dooner is no different. His claim to objectivity is reiterated in the closing lines to the Preface:

If, therefore, that very enterprising "failure" known as the Book Critic should wish to deal with the inevitable, I should reasonably look on with unconcern; but it is requested to understand, now, and for all time, that, in this matter, I am out of the controversy. I have simply done my duty in a matter of deductive research, and submit the result of my labors-hoping, meanwhile, that some timely act of administrative foresight may avert the impending catastrophe, which, at this period, menaces not only our civilizations, but, indeed, our very existence as one among the nations of the earth. (Dooner 4)

49 We find in Dooner the classic example of the researcher who considers

his own methods to be pure. I have demonstrated how in his Introductory

Dooner avoids discussion of his deductive methods by claiming them to be less

important than his conclusions. In the Preface Dooner diverts attention from his

political responsibility by harping on the "enterprising failure" known as the book

critic. Notice how Dooner casually refers to the critic as an "it," thereby

associating the critic with the objectified Chinese in the novel. This has the dual

effect of bringing the reader over to Dooner's side while diverting arguments of

validity into a closed literary space associated with "its" and "failures." Better to

stay on the side of Dooner who fights for Nation and Race than to bother with

such contrivances as methodology and argument.

Dooner's claims to objectivity cannot be supported, by either the author or

even the most sympathetic of readers. In his Introductory, while he is busy

diverting attention from his lack of argument, Dooner refers to the Chinese

immigrant as a "disease" and expresses his fear that America will pass beyond

hope of "political regeneration." Dooner's claims to impartiality are immediately

preceded by a moral judgment of his subject of study. Before the novel even

opens the Introductory and Preface demonstrate how claims to scientific

objectivity work to justify racism. Furthermore, Dooner's choice of words reveals the deeper anxieties at work in the novel, for "disease" and "regeneration" are

biological descriptives. Like Tracy, Dooner constructs the U. S. as a living

organism susceptible to disease but capable of regrowth. The disease-in this case Chinese immigration-must not be allowed to spread, lest the nation-body's own recuperative powers be rendered impotent.

50 To establish the Chinese as a disease, Dooner has to first construct them as inhuman, as distinctly Other. We find this portrayal a few pages into the first chapter:

Differing in manners, dress, habits of life, religion and education, and widely in their physical aspect, as well as in their physical requirements, from all others, they were also incapable of assimilation, or of social intercommunication; nor did they manifest the slightest tendency or disposition to court a closer relationship with their fellow pioneers. (15)

The Chinese immigrants are portrayed as social aliens unwilling to accept others different from themselves. The same thing can be said about white purists, yet

Dooner places the blame solely on the immigrant. Dooner grudgingly admits that

Califomia's high and unfair tax system aimed specifically at the Chinese immigrant may have contributed to their anger, but, he concludes, even "under the most considerate treatment in Califomia the same want of confidence would, still, have characterized this people" (17). By establishing the Chinese character as inherently alien, Dooner manages to excuse American political exploitation- any wrongdoing that occurs is always instigated by the Chinese immigrant while white Americans become helpless victims. John Clute and Peter Nicholls help clarify this ironic reversal of victim and victimizer: "Last Days of the Republic . .. demonstrates the terribly common dynamic by which a guilty party, or nation, feels compelled to transfer its guilt to the victim or victim-nation" (Clute and

Nicholls 348-49).

Further objectification of the Chinese immigrant occurs through Dooner's characterization of them as machine-like. Take, for example, the following passage where the Chinese laborer is described:

51 With such precision is every work performed, that the coolie seldom sustains a loss of time through the occurrence of painful accidents; he knows little of sickness, and less still of those pemicious habits which are the source of so much idleness and dissipation among the European people. To these advantages he has added a further, that he has solved the problem of cheap living. Fifty dollars per annum will maintain the ordinary Coolie laborer, whose food consists of little else than rice; and add to this that he is untrammeled by family ties, and it must be admitted that in the field of labor he is, indeed, irresistible. (Dooner 29-30)

The Chinese laborer is reduced to an automoton that does not sicken and barely needs to eat. Dooner's outrageous claim reflects white U. S. society's view of the

Chinese immigrant. Take, for example, this passage from an 1869 edition of the Overland Monthiv: "Visit a hop plantation in the picking season, and count its 50,

60, or 70 pickers in the garb of the eastem Asiatics, working steadily and noiselesslv on from morning till nioht. gathering, curing and sacking the crop"

(qtd. in Takaki 200; emphasis added). Thirteen years prior to the publication of

Dooner's novel the Chinese laborer is already being described as mechanistic in nature. While the passage from the Overland Monthly many not be directly insulting, it certainly points to a general attitude toward the Chinese laborer that leads to the more dehumanizing stereotypes promoted in Yellow Peril novels.

The individual Chinese laborer is viewed as mindless, following the routine of his or her work. Collectively, the Chinese labor force is viewed as a literal army of robots, with a single-mindedness and endurance that cannot be human. Note

Dooner's description of the Chinese army as they march toward Washington.

Keep in mind that this passage follows a description of a wasted and starving

American militia:

Among the Chinese, animal food cannot properly be said to be a part of the national diet; so that subsistence with them is in no degree contingent upon the extent of their flocks and herd. And

52 yet, these people are capable of enduring the utmost toll and the most unremitting labor, without manifesting the usual symptoms of exhaustion. Compared with the ordinary associations of life among the Chinese, the hardships of the soldier are Inconsiderable. (Dooner 245-46)

Such a portrayal "eliminates the need for true characterization and yet offers at the same time a threat which Is sufficiently dangerous and threatening to satisfy the reader" (Wu 39). This characterization Is magnified as the novel reaches Its concluslon-the overthrow of the U. S. government. The Chinese are portrayed as "nearly perfect soldiers, possessing no mental, and little physical, sensitivity.

As they become Increasingly zomblellke, of course, they also become

Increasingly subhuman. The more clearly the Chinese appear less than human, the more frightening, and dramatically effective, these novels are" (Wu 39).

Dooner manages to strip his Chinese characters of their humanity, yet leaves

Intact those elements which generate fear. But this fear also gives rise to feelings of nationalism and racial pride. If the Chinese laborers are Inhuman, then the citizens of the U. S. represent the opposite: white Americans become a paragon of morality that has been crushed by an unethical horde.

Dooner continues his dehumanizing of the Chinese with an examination of their moral code. Dooner tells us that every Chinese "who Is armed with authority Is the very Incamatlon of Injustice, oppression and sexual vice. In fact.

In these particulars he Is unconscionable" (65). Such a portrait should not come as a surprise to the reader since Dooner has already painted all Chinese

Immigrants as criminals, for "Chinese officials are empowered to contract, and do contract, with the Companies, for the transportation to America, of the offenders against the laws who have been condemned to Imprisonment" (53).

53 The Chinese lack of a moral center is blamed for the atrocities to follow once the full scale race war breaks out. In one of the many battles between the

Chinese invaders and American citizens more than

eighteen thousand white American citizens [are] brutally massacred. Whatever might have been the provocation, there was found no one to justify this terrible sacrifice of life-particularly that the victims were native bom Americans, and their adversaries a race alien alike to every sentiment and association of American life. (Dooner 203)

Again the Chinese are constructed as utterly alien, their value system completely antithetical to the morality of the "American way of life." The above passage contains a simplistic ethical dimension, namely the evil Chinese and the virtuous

"native born Americans." But who are Dooner's "native born Americans"?

Certainly not Native Americans or Amerindians or black Americans. The passage reflects Dooner's historical amnesia. True Native Americans were then enduring a very real genocide that made the fictionalized account of the Chinese conquest of the U. S. pale in comparison. Dooner, however, conveniently ignores the treatment of native people; indeed, the entire foundation of Dooner's moral code rests on the erasure of any moral transgressions perpetrated by the white govemed U. S. Only through this rewriting of history can Dooner justify his narrative. 1

While Dooner is quick to forget those people native to what is now known as the U. S., he is not so quick to forget their cousins farther south. Mexico is described as a country riddled in civil war and revolution, conditions reveled in by the Chinese Viceroy who has gained control of the states and has set his eye on

Mexico and South America. Dooner draws a bloodline between the Aztecs and

54 the Chinese, and sees the eventual invading Chinese army as enacting a sort of justice on the descendants of the Spanish conquerors. Dooner describes Aztec architecture as "stately," the Aztecs possessors of "fabulous treasures" stolen by the "vandal Armies of Spain" (142). Dooner obviously holds the Aztecs in high regard while he holds the Spaniards in contempt for destroying the Aztec empire.

Again, Dooner's memory is selective. There is very little difference between the Spanish colonization and the European colonization of the New World in terms of barbarity and blood spilled, and yet Dooner manages to criticize only the

Spaniards for the same atrocities committed by other European settlers.2 Dooner’s praise of Aztec culture is the result of a historical buffer of several centuries and the non-presence of any organized Aztec culture in the late nineteenth century. Aztecs, in other words, were safe non-whites to be admired because they were no longer a threat to white hegemony. Other native peoples were still perceived as a threat. Many whites believed that "winning the West from the red man' would be in vain if whites were now to surrender the conquered land to a 'horde of Chinese'" (Takaki 205). Speaking in 1870, Horatio

Seymour, governor of New York, suggested a parallel between solutions to the

"Indian problem" and the "Chinese problem":

We do not let the Indian stand in the way of civilization... .We tell them plainly, they must give up their homes and property, and live upon comers of their own territories, because they are in the way of our civilization. If we can do this, then we can keep away another form of barbarism which has no right to be here. (qtd. in Takaki 205)

Ronald Takaki reminds us that in "the minds of many whites, the Chinese were also sometimes associated with Indians." Consequently, many Americans believed the Chinese should be relocated to Chinese reservations (Takaki 205).

55 Dooner also provides the reader with non-sensible comparisons between blacks and Chinese. Given the Chinese characterization for machine-like efficiency, it was found that the

Coolie had been tried and found to be in every manner superior to the Negro. Added to this, the former had not, as yet, developed a taste for politics; while the latter, growing from bad to worse, had finally advanced to such a state of political development that the time and attention which he should devote to labor was thrown away in the fruitless effort to ape the partisan intrigues of his white exemplars. (Dooner 95-96)

African Americans do not figure prominently in Dooner's novel. In fact, the brief mention of blacks serves only to reinforce the portrayal of the Chinese as inhuman laborers and what was taken to be black ineptitude. With the influx of the Chinese the author sees blacks as simply disappearing, unable to compete with the new wave of laborers:

Throughout the slave states the presence of the Mongolian was the signal for the departure of the African; and of these latter, such as were not transferred to the land of their ancestors by emigration societies and private enterprise, were scattered about among the cities of the Union and fast striding toward extinction. (Dooner 134)

This social Danwinism comes full circle with a vision of a U. S. free of blacks:

The Negro, heretofore the sole dependence of the planter, faded before this invasion, and gradually, but rapidly and noiselessly disappeared-perished, it seemed, by the very fact of contact, and scattered, none knew whither, beyond the fact that many of them were transported back to the home of their ancestors. (Dooner 173- 74)

Even with America crumbling before the Chinese "hordes," Dooner cannot resist annihilating blacks. It is almost as if he cannot fathom the possibility that blacks can survive where whites have failed. This erasure is prompted by the social

56 Darwinist idea that only one "race" can be victorious. The idea of one group of undesirables subsuming another group of undesirables is nothing new. In a letter written to the London Times dated 6 June 1873, Galton suggested that "the

Chinaman" be introduced into Africa: "The gain would be immense to the whole civilized world if he were to outbreed and finally displace the negro" (qtd. in

Tucker 49). Of course, Galton writes this with the understanding that white

Europeans and Americans will eventually displace "the Chinaman."

Positing his future history as scientifically plausible, Dooner's characterization of the Chinese as non-human and immoral is cast as value-free scientific analysis. Yet Dooner cannot contain his hatreds. If whites must die, then so must blacks and, as the novel subtly implies. Latinos as well. Dooner enacts the Future War fantasy of the annihilation of difference, with the Chinese, or Yellow Peril, as victors. Such a fantasy is meant to demonstrate that whites must be ever vigilant if they are to retain their position of dominance. Note the closing lines of the novel, presented as an ominous warning to the reader:

for in America the representatives of the one race of man, which, in its relation to the family of men, had borne since the dawn of history, saw now the ancestral diadem plucked for its proud repose, to shed its lustre upon an alien crown. Thus passed away the glory of the Union of States, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century. (Dooner 257-58)

The annihilation of difference has been realized, but rather than satisfying readers' fantasy of racial domination, it has fed their fear and xenophobia. Thus

Dooner's novel enacts a displacement of political responsibility by allowing socially privileged white readers to believe themselves to be the victims of those whom they exploit.

57 Pierton Dooner's novel of warning is a good example of the paranoia rampant in the final decades of the nineteenth-century, a state of mind that spills over into the twentieth-century. Whereas Dooner chooses to scare his audience into confronting a constructed and nonexistent threat, M. P. Shiel (1865-1947) chooses to demonstrate how white Westemers can withstand any threat no matter how great. Shiel's The Yellow Peril (1899) traces the adventures and trials of John Hardy, a British sailor who is a genius of naval warfare and the only person capable of stopping the relentless Chinese hordes. Hardy's nemesis. Dr.

Yen How, is the leader of China who has concocted a plan to start the European nations warring against each other. Once all of Europe is depleted and exhausted. How plans on marching his army across the face of Europe and eventually the world. The plan almost works, but Hardy is able to defeat first the

European invasion on the sea and, after revealing to his former European foes their true enemy, the "Mongrel hordes" on land. The plot is further complicated by the added love interest, Ada Seward, for whom How and Hardy both vie. By the novel's end. Hardy has killed Yen How and won the woman. However, in an uncommon twist of events. Hardy is killed in a duel in the penultimate chapter.

He does not live to see the plague he has let loose across Europe decimate the

Chinese forces who have settled there. In the final chapter the European and

American alliance destroys all the Chinese troops not killed by the spreading plague, and, as in Louis Tracy's The Final War, the world resigns itself to the wisdom and benevolence of British and American rule.

Like Dooner, Shiel builds his Chinese characters around the basic stereotype of non-Westerners as scheming, untrustworthy and inhuman. Dr. Yen

How, the leader of the Chinese empire, is described by Shiel as a man educated

58 in the West, with a degree in medicine from the University of Heidelberg. How owns a keen mind, for "Nothing equaled his assiduity, his minuteness, his attention to detail," yet How lives sparsely and is not concerned with social position (Shiel 11). He instead chooses "to lie low, remaining unnoticed, studying, observing, making of himself an epitome of the West, as he was an embodiment of the East" (Shiel 11). Here we find the first evidence of How’s scheming nature, for although he holds the West in high regard and has adopted

British customs and manners, "In reality, he cherished a secret and bitter aversion to the white race" (Shiel 11).

How's hatred of the white race is partially explained by his own

"Eastemness." Note Shiel's initial description of How:

There was something brooding, meditative, in the meaning of his long eyes; and there was a brown, and dark, and specially dirty shade in the yellow tan of his skin. He was not really a Chinaman-or rather, he was that, and more. He was the son of a Japanese father by a Chinese woman. He combined these antagonistic races in one man. In Dr. Yen How was the East. (10)

How is a man of two worlds. Shiel claims that the "order of the day in China, and especially Japan, was Westem modemity" and in How there "was a man who simply breathed Westem modemity, and who yet was an Eastern of the

Easterners. His skin was more yellow than the yellow man's, and his brain was more white than the white man's" (Shiel 16-17). In Yen How the contemporary reader finds a character with a multiple identity. How represents several cultures, and while he may favor his Eastem identity he is nevertheless very much a part of the West. Today, How would represent cultural diversity and shifting postmodern identity. Shiel, however, presents this multiple identity as a

59 threat, for How is the embodiment of two defunct peoples. Because How is of mixed ancestry he lacks the distinction of a pure racial state; because he is Asian he is even further removed from the Westem ideal. For Shiel and his audience,

How's multiple ethnicity is a signpost for his Othemess and corrupt nature.

How is not only constructed as the morally defunct alien, but is cast as being aware of his own inferiority. Observe the following passage, where How exchanges dialogue with the Marquis, a fellow schemer. How asks him what the future holds for the "yellow race," then proceeds to answer his own question:

"Is it not this?--the white man and the yellow man in their death-grip, contending for the earth. The white and the yellow- there are no others. The black is the slave of both; the brown does not count. But there are those two; and when the day comes that they stand face to face in dreadful hate, saying, 'One or the other must quit this earth,' shall I tell you which side will?" "Which do you think?" "The white will win. Marquis." (Shiel 18)

By constructing the non-white characters in the novel as aware of their own inferiority, Shiel displaces his and the reader's racism. This displacement is temporary, however; it is obvious that Shiel uses How as a voice-box for his own racist beliefs. How's character provides the same type of buffer zone that

Dooner's mathematical analogy provides: a seemingly objective space through which to voice a purely subjective argument. Such a claim to objectivity cannot be held to very long. It is already collapsing in the same passage. How believes that the fate of the world is to be decided between two races, the yellow and the white, and all other people are either slaves or inconsequential. Shiel does not attempt to prove this "fact." The degeneracy of blacks and browns is merely taken as a given. Shiel erases these peoples from his scheme out of adherence to the social Darwinism that works as

60 the “scientific" foundation of the novel. Social Darwinism stresses that only one race can govern and thrive. As in Dooner, this principle is enacted as a battle between two conflicting races, Shiel must adhere to this "scientific principle," even if it means advancing along non-scientific grounds. Cultural diversity is a threat to the social Darwinist perspective, for it creates situations that move beyond simplistic dichotomies. In order for Shiel to realize his dream of a white world, he must first erase ethnic diversity. Only by first creating a world where only two "races" exist can Shiel enact the final racial showdown that will result in the realization of his fantasy of white supremacy.

Shiel's social Darwinism is captured in the following passage:

It was felt, of course, that the yellow conquest could not be an ordinary conquest, if it happened at all. There was no question of conqueror and conquered living together aftenwards, and fratemizing, like Norman and Saxon. The yellow conquest meant, naturally, that wherever it passed, the very memory of the white race it encountered would disappear forever. (284)

We can read this passage in at least two ways. First, we can take it to mean that the "yellow race" will not remember, or retain a legacy of remembrance for, whites. This makes sense given the two "races'" hatred for each other. But we can also read the passage as expressing a racial motivation for war. Note how casually Shiel refers to white extinction as occuring "naturally" given the context of a "yellow conquest." In Future War novels, there is no space for cultural diversity or peace. For the "yellow race" to win means the necessary extermination of all whites because warfare is always portrayed as an expression of biological drives for racial survival. Referring to warfare and exploitation as

"natural" was a popular motif in the literature of this period because it allowed authors and readers to disregard political and social processes. Dooner and

61 Tracy exploit the term, and Shiel is no exception. In these novels "natural" refers to a constructed political ethic originating in the Westem world, and any deviation from this code is immediately presented as corrupt.

Shiel holds firmly to this Westem idealism throughout his novel, in part to dehumanize the enemy. As a result, Asians are portrayed as perverse and accused of acting out horrific rituals. An example of this characterization occurs when the Asian armies conquer France. Shiel writes that the Asian armies, drunk on all the wine they had plundered,

transacted so red an orgy of massacre, screaming lust, and sighing drunkenness, so mixed a drama of filthy infamy and sabbatic Satanism, as earth, and perhaps hell, never saw. In the manner of crime the yellow man is ingenious; what we cannot conceive, he can do; so that where we end he begins, his natural talent being for the grotesque and the macabre. And when the orgy grew still for very surfeit, when there welled from him a sigh of perfect peace, down dropped his head upon its pillow of flesh, and his snoring breath fanned the hair of the naked dead. (318-19)

Not only does Shiel paint Asians as vicious and inhuman, he portrays them as necrophiles as well. This scene occurs near the end of the novel and in that sense functions as a culmination of the series of negative stereotyping Shiel uses throughout his narrative. Shiel runs the gamut of racial insults, first slighting the

Chinese as intellectually inferior and concluding with the Chinese as challenging the horrors of hell. Shiel claims Asians have a "natural talent" (that word again) for the macabre, thereby suggesting they are fundamentally evil and are in essence demons. Shiel's characterization has reached fruition. What begins as a sketch of Asians as a mindless mass develops into a portrait of horrific creatures who have no trace of humanity. A fundamental aspect of this characterization is that Asians are genetically predetermined and that their

62 degenerative natures are inherent in their biological makeup. We find a similar genetic construction used to illustrate the superiority of Shiel's John Hardy and the culture he represents. Hardy is portrayed as a genius, bom with a natural predisposition toward naval warfare. Hardy's genius blossoms when he manages to defeat the

European navies even though he is outnumbered fourteen battleships to seven.

He is able to perform this amazing feat because he had "behind him a long line of ancestors whose home was the sea. He is the apex of the pyramid, the rest of which consists of centuries of the ocean-life and ocean-culture of a race. It is

Blood that tells" (Shiel 89). Hardy's abilities are genetic, for in him rests the collective experiences of the British people. Shiel believes the skills needed to wage navel warfare are inherited, as if cumulative racial experiences can be passed down through generations.^ It is no coincidence that Hardy realizes his genius and abilities through the conflict of battle. Warfare in Future War novels is constructed as the purest method of self-realization, for an individual and the individual's collective race. Warfare allows the Britons to exert their dominance over other Europeans and, finally, the Asians. Warfare is the acting out of the survival of the fittest, with Hardy as the most fittest representative of the West.

Hardy is constructed as the apex of whiteness, yet he is simultaneously portrayed as an every(white)man with a streak of provincialism:

John Hardy had this trouble: he was a 'non-intellectual'. .. . Hardy was not a book-man; he had even a secret contempt for book-men and book-leaming.. . .These then were his weak points: that he was far from literary: that he was too fond of fermented things; that he was too fond of feminine persons. Up to the time at which we met him, he still made spelling mistakes in common English words in writing ordinary letters. (Shiel 93-94)

63 Hardy is a common man, yet he is quick to connect himself to a racial identity that is the foundation of his strength. In a letter to a friend in Britain, Hardy lists the various peoples he has encountered-Russians, Germans, and French-and notes: “Not one of them is the chosen race, dear Bobbie, 'the peculiar people.' If you want to find that, I think you had better look nearer home" (Shiel 119). This

"peculiar" national trait is what empowers Hardy and also functions as the entering point for the audience this novel is aimed at. The chosen people are, of course, British and American whites, and Hardy represents their fantasy of unbridled nationalist pride and strength. For example. Hardy does not fear the superior forces of the Asian navies. While the Asians may have more battleships and more, and more powerful, weapons. Hardy proposes “that it was not (as everyone supposed it was) a mere question of weight of metal, or superiority of gun-fire, now any more than it ever was; that a man born with the sea in his soul, and the sea-breeze in his hair, like the old sailor souls, would still do the trick"

(Shiel 59). Britons are portrayed as owning a tradition of naval battle that is genetically inherited throughout the generations. Shiel argues for this transcendent quality of nationalistic being, a quality realized in times of crisis.

Warfare is relished by Shiel and his fellow Future War authors because it provides a means by which to assert national and biological superiority over foreign nations and peoples. War becomes the medium by which nations grasp their genetic destiny.

John Hardy functions as the first step toward realizing this biological determinism. Not only is he a genius at battle, but he is also perfectly suited for his environment. Hardy is portrayed as a natural outgrowth of the world around him: "He is as strong as the rocks, and the strong earth, and the sky, and the

64 stars in their courses fight for him" (Shiel 133-34). That Hardy has the physical

elements of our universe fighting for him is a provocative image. Shiel's choice

of words is beyond simple metaphor. Shiel's novel characterizes the British

empire as a sort of political embodiment of natural truths. Hardy's cause is

essentially the cause of the cosmos, and the British empire is the glory of the

natural world made flesh. It is this conflation of political identity with transcendent

truth that provides the foundation of Shiel's novel and those of his contemporaries. Shiel, however, is perhaps more colorful in his descriptions of

white characters fighting for the just cause of the universe. Note the following

struggle between John Hardy and Dr. How: “Hardy was comparatively weak.

But in his right had was a revolver, representing the Science of Westem

Civilization, which, however. Yen's grip rendered ineffectual; and in his left had

was Yen's pigtail, representing the barbarism, the superstition, the repulsive soul

of the East” (Shiel 145). Shiel has already aligned nature with Hardy. The above

passage juxtaposes this natural state with the "repulsive" East. The East comes to represent a kind of cancer on the healthy elements of the natural world. A

battle between two men thus takes on the political dimensions of two opposing continents as well as a mythical dimension of good versus evil. Every event in

Shiel's novel thus has a multiplicity of meaning and implication, for Hardy and

How are enacting an evolutionary battle of the survival of the fittest that will determine the fate of the world. I. F. Clarke writes that it is

an understatement to call such extravagance a wish-fulfillment fantasy. [Future War novelists were] projecting an idealized image of the nation in arms. Their stories had all the force and the directness of popular and purposive fiction. The events and the characters are seen in black and white; everything is presented in the form of the polar opposites of the unspeakable enemy and the glorious nation. Since the nation is an object of worship in these

65 stores, the enemy must equally be an object of detestation. This is the other side to the utopian tale on national triumph: complete virtue faces total wickedness. (105)

Clarke's insights are valuable, but he fails to emphasize the influence social Darwinism had in justifying the belief in Westem superiority. Furthermore,

Clarke fails to mention that when these narratives erase the Other there is a fantasy of eugenic management at work. The clash of "virtue" with "wickedness" is determined primarily by a belief that the chosen people are British and/or

American because they are more culturally and biologically evolved. Such a conceit is flaunted in the closing scene of Louis Tracy's The Final War. Shiel's novel does this as well. Asians are not only defeated, they are crushed out of existence. This resolution is a eugenic fantasy of closure, satisfying the fantasy of the annihilation of difference by purging the world of the non-white Other. This purification leads to the ascension of the nations of Britain and America, minus their ethnic diversity, casting them as natural forces of the universe. The end result of such a view is that Westem civilization, and whiteness specifically, is constructed as a vehicle of transcendent potential. Shiel meshes nationalism with genetic speculation, and attempts to make legitimate racist characterization through a eugenic discourse on nationalist identity. The result is a portrait of the British people as a force of nature that is unstoppable, for "Like Herbert Spencer, Shiel saw social and biological evolution as different aspects of the same thing, and believed Nature to have an inbuilt tendency towards improvement" (Stableford, Romance 78). Future War novelists considered the annihilation of the visibly ethnic Other an improvement on the racial condition. Shiel is no different. But in Shiel we have a strange case. Born in the West Indies, Shiel was the son of an Irish Methodist preacher and a 66 mother who "may have been a Mulatto and a freed slave. Mystery shrouds the details" (Aldiss, Trillion 145). Brian Stableford, in his Scientific Romance in

Britain: 1890-1950. chooses to avoid the controversy altogether by never even bringing up the subject of Shiel's mixed ancestry. But E. F. Bleiler tells us that

Shiel has received attention outside of SF criticism because "of his partial Black ancestry" (Clute and Nicholls 1102).

Shiel's black lineage marks him as very possibly the first writer of color to practice science fiction, at least in prototype. Nevertheless, his novels, "bursting with Anglo-Saxon pride," as Stableford points out (Romance 75), provide the reader with no hint as to their author's real identity. But the novels do provide the contemporary reader with an ideological map. Shiel's novels are a continued series of ethnic denials, and his unbridled enthusiasm for white supremacy demonstrates his desire to align himself with the power elite. Was Shiel lying to himself? Did he wish to be one of the advanced and evolved people, even if it meant ignoring his true ancestry? We have no way of knowing for sure the answer to these questions. Stableford tells us that

[Louis] Tracy was a close friend of M. P. Shiel, and it was he who persuaded Shiel to write 'The Empress of the Earth' [later retitled The Yellow Danger]. . . The ideology of 'The Empress of the Earth' -s o different from the kind of religious evolution that Shiel later embraced-is very close to that of The Final War, and it may well have been Tracy's influence that was responsible for Shiel's brief acceptance of social Darwinism. (Romance 112-13)

Was Tracy's influence on Shiel so profound that it transformed a partially black writer into a white supremacist? Stableford does not seem to think so.

Stableford does find the construction of Asians in The Yellow Danger "ruthlessly nasty minded" and admits that "apart from the implicit racism of its theme

67 (backed up in the text by some social Dan/vinist arguments) it contains some highly unflattering analyses of the Chinese Character" (Romance 76).

Nonetheless, Stableford insists we

beware of taking the ideas in The Yellow Danger too seriously. Shiel was a writer who took great delight in startling his readers. He loved to strike a pose at once casual and provocative, to give offence in a carefree but never unsubtle fashion. The outré and the unpopular had a natural attraction for him, and he would avoid orthodoxy at any price... .he was attracted to opposite ideas,' and was prepared to try them out with all due sincerity. (Romance 76)

It is disturbing how a fine novelist and insightful critic like Brian Stableford can, on the one hand, tie Shiel's racism with the social Darwinism of the time and, on the other, simply dismiss it as something we should not take "too seriously." How are we supposed to take it? Perhaps Stableford finds The Yellow Danger to be an extended dark comedy of "opposite ideas," but such an interpretation would be a significant misreading of both Shiel's novel and the time out of which it was bom. Social Darwinism and eugenics were not merely risqué topics which made people blush at dinner parties. These were widespread social movements which had very serious social ramifications. Fear of the Chinese immigrant had already resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act in the U. S. in the years between the publication of Last Days of the Republic and The Yellow Danger, and Britain had taken similar measures to retard Asian immigration. That the Chinese were being continually constructed as threats to major world powers reveals the animosity directed toward them. Stableford should not expect us to simply gloss over Shiel's outright racism as the product of a mischievous mind who just wanted to stir things up.

68 Stableford Is not alone in ignoring the racial tensions present in Shiel.

Note Aldiss' closing comments on Shiel: "He was always obsessed with matters of race, possibly because of his own racially mixed blood. For a writer as strange as Shiel... there was perhaps no recourse open but a career in science fiction!"

(Trillion 146). Aldiss points out the racial underpinnings of Shiel's work and life, but then exoticizes them and places them in the service of the estrangement qualities of sf. Aldiss continues his portrayal by romanticizing Shiel as a "one time king of Redonda, mystery man, philosopher, probable lunatic, and author of thirty-one books" (Trillion 143). This characterization serves to highlight the sf genre as a locus of weirdness and the outré (to use Stableford's word), but also obfuscates the political dimension of these novels. The positions taken by Stableford and Aldiss excuse the problematic nature of proto-sf and sf literary history. Sf historian Sam Moskowitz, however, has been more critical of Shiel's racism, especially his anti-Semitism. Moskowitz claims "Shiel was anti-semitic, anti-Christ, anti-Negro, pro-war, anti-oriental, and pro-fascist" ("Plots" 57). Moskowitz also compares the intensity of Shiel's anti-

Semitism with Hitler's Mein Kampf (qtd. in Stableford, Romance 77) and reaches the conclusion that "[Shiel] was, I again repeat, an evil man" ("Plots" 65).

Stableford does not agree with Moskowitz, and argues that in Shiel's novel The

Lord of the Sea (1901) the hero and villain are Jewish, and that the balanced characterizations essentially cancel each other out (Romance 77). Furthermore, Stableford argues that Shiel's "The Yellow Wave [(1905)] .. . abandons social

Darwinism and ends with a fervent plea for harmony and the union of races under socialism" (Romance 76). Stableford excuses Shiel because he believes

"Shiel tended . . . to a quasi-symbolic format whereby a conflict between nations

69 or races would be crystallized Into a duel between Individuals embodying conflicting philosophies (Romance 76h Stableford believes Shiel "stopped thinking in terms of good and evil in order gradually to evolve a new moral sensibility" (Romance 77). E. F. Bleiler agrees, arguing that Shiel's novel

"departs from the stereotyped Yellow Peril story in seeing the quarrel between

Orient and Occident as ultimately a spiritual matter, rather than economic, as

Chinese and UK supermen strive for domination" (Clute and Nicholls 1102).

Stableford and Bleiler are essentially correct when they argue that Shiel's characters represent greater moral and immoral forces. But this so-called

"spiritual matter" is not divorced from the political spectrum in which it is grounded. Bleiler and Stableford want us to believe that Shiel's racist characterization is subsumed by his investigation of transcendental qualities.

This is the same argument put forth by Dooner in his Preface and Introductory; and it is the same position argued by scientists and social Darwinists who used

(and continue to use) scientific discourse as a means of avoiding political responsibility. Just because Shiel explores the "Truth" does not make him any less accountable for the political ramifications of his work. The construction of moral and immoral universal constants, with whites assigned as the former and non-whites as the latter, reinforces the alienness of the visibly ethnic Other and normalizes American and British white elites. Such characterization can be separated from neither its political origins nor its political consequences. Shiel is writing at a time of deep anti-Chinese feelings. The anti-Chinese rhetoric in

Shiel's novels is bom from the social environment that nurtures those feelings and gives them voice. I find it staggering that both Stableford and Bleiler attempt to excuse Shiel from the problematic nature of his novels. Still, in all faimess to

70 Shiel and the critics who defend him, Stableford and Bleiler focus on his later works, and I on his earlier. This is because Shiel is best remembered for his earlier works-Bleiler readily concedes that Shiel's "significant fantastic fiction was published 1896-1901" (Clute and Nicholls 1101)-and because those early works deal specifically with the subjects of race and ethnic warfare.

The conflict between my reading and the readings of Stableford and

Bleiler thus arises not only from differing political perspectives, but from an altogether different emphasis on the narrative at hand. Stableford and Bleiler read Shiel for his contributions to the wider discourse of proto-sf. I, on the other hand, read proto-sf to better understand how it reinforces the negative image of non-white/non-Westem peoples. Stableford and Bleiler point to Shiel's later texts as recanting or at least recasting the earlier racism. If this were true, it might excuse Shiel to some degree, but it would not excuse the ideology which gave birth to that view. This ideology did not simply disappear because Shiel chose to alter his focus from racial conflict to spiritual conflict. It is important to note that most of Shiel's proto-sf is terribly racist. The Yellow Wave, used by Stableford to defend Shiel from charges of racism, is in Bleiler's words "a non-fantastic work based on the Russo-Japanese War" (Clute and Nicholls 1102; emphasis added).

It is not a misprepresentation of Shiel's best-known novels to say that social

Darwinism, eugenics, and racism are featured to excessive degrees. Even if we were to accept Stableford's analysis of The Yellow Wave, this would still not explain the racism in the proto-sf novels written before and after the publication of The Yellow Wave. This inconsistency in ideology highlights the relationship between proto-sf and racism. In other words, it is not a coincidence that Shiel's most patently sf works are also his most racist.

71 I have spent the better part of this chapter discussing this relationship at

length. The proto-sf novel, grounded in social Darwinism and eugenic fantasy,

seeks to reinscribe a white patriarchy by annihilating all that stands in its way. Fortunately, this fantasy is realized only in proto-sf narrative. Still, while the

visibly ethnic Other is never annihilated in the real world, the Other is continually

controlled and exploited. The Chinese Exclusion Act is a good example: the

number of Chinese immigrants is controlled and those who work for below-

average wages in dangerous conditions are targeted as the reason for economic

instability. This abuse of the visibly ethnic Other can be historically documented

and its origins detailed-the origin of the Chinese Exclusion Act, for example, can

be narrowed down to a time and place when it was passed into law. Historians

have access to documents and eye-witness accounts which reveal working conditions and episodes of exploitation. However, there is another dimension to

the effects of racism, a dimension that cannot be so easily identified and

measured as can historical events. I am writing here of an intemalized racism that affects the person of color in ways that cannot be tangibly grasped. As

Gloria Anzaldüa writes in her Borderlands/La Frontera: "Culture forms our beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant

paradigms, predetermined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable are transmitted to us through the culture" (16). Shiel, a writer of

African ancestry, has accepted these models of white superiority and non-white

inferiority. He purposely composes fantasies of racial annihilation where he is his own victim. His internalization of the rampant racism of his day reveals the pervasive influence of dominant culture in the realization of his individual identity.

72 We have little knowledge of how Shiel understood his identity, other than his novels. It is conceivable then to read Shiel's novels and perhaps Shiel himself as landscapes of anxiety and denial. To better understand Shiel we would have to delve into his personal history, a study which has never been undertaken. Still, if we cannot answer the question we have raised about his personal life, we should at least continue our investigations with them in mind. I have tried to do this here. I am, however, rather surprised that the other critics I have cited have not done so. They seem content to merely gloss over the fact or ignore Shiel's ancestry altogether. Thus do the various responses to Shiel's work mask a much deeper tension in interpretation. Accusing Shiel of racism or defending him from such charges is not so much an investigation of Shiel as author, but a revelation of the state of sf criticism. Sf criticism seems content to enter into these either/or arguments which can never be truly resolved. A better strategy is to attempt to explore the forces which shaped his work and his ideology and how those forces are still active today. Shiel was a writer of African descent who wrote fantasies of white supremacy. Was Shiel a racist? A yes or no response would obfuscate the complexity of Shiel's historical position. Still, sf criticism seems to be dragged down by it, or, even worse, wants to proceed as if racism and ethnic difference are not even important issues.^ The inability of sf criticism to deal effectively with a writer like Shiel illustrates its continual marginalization of racial issues. It has been easier to fit Shiel into a wider tradition of scientific romance, as does Stableford, or to document with admirable specificity the incidents of anti-Semitic language, as does Moskowitz. While these readings are helpful and revelatory, they remain incomplete if they do not address the nature of the racist impulse in the proto-sf narrative; they remain

73 incomplete If they do not address the conflicting forces at work in Shiel and his novels, and what these forces reveal about the ideology of the time. This brief overview of Shiel does not pretend to have exhausted the wealth of research that the subject demands; rather, it hopes to open a space for future dialogue not only on Shiel, but for a more aware and politically responsible sf criticism.

One feature of sf criticism is that it sometimes focuses on authors largely unknown outside the genre (even, sometimes, on authors largely unknown within the genre). In this study, I have focused on authors who are unknown to anyone other than specialists in the proto-sf field. These specialists have tended to make blanket statements about the racism in these novels, sometimes deploring that racism but almost always accepting it as characteristic of the day in which these novels were written, then moving on to other sf concerns, like establishing tradition, influence, and the presence and accurate prediction of gadgetry. This response (or non-response) serves only to further the illusion that sf is apolitical or at the very least is not concerned with matters of ethnic difference. This response also implies that sf has somehow moved beyond such characterizations. This is simply not the case, as shall be made clear in subsequent chapters. The racism in Future War novels is most certainly a product of its day, and that is why we must examine these texts in their historical context to trace how that racism functions up into the present day. It is not simply a fact to state and then gloss over with a lax critical attitude. Furthermore, the visions of racial annihilation in Future War novels spill over into more mainstream narratives and are adopted by everyone from writers of black ancestry, like Shiel, to captains of industry, like Rockefeller. William Wu, while

74 speaking specifically of Yellow Peril novels, nonetheless makes a point that can be applied to proto-sf in general:

These novels have a minor place in American literature and have been deservedly forgotten during the century since their publication. I do not mean to emphasize their importance out of perspective by treating them in such detail. However, they do reflect a sentiment toward the Chinese in the United States that was not at all minor, and . . . many of the traits first ascribed to the Chinese Americans in these novels recur as fundamental character traits in many works by important American authors who followed. (40)

One such important author is Jack London (1876-1916), described by Earl

Labor as a "humanitarian with profound compassion for the underdog, regardless of color or race, [who] nevertheless believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-

Saxon race" (qtd. in Wu 121). Jack London wrote several proto-sf novels and short stories, including the disturbing and ironic "The Unparalleled Invasion." First published in 1910, "The Unparalleled Invasion" describes the extermination of the Chinese and Japanese by the use of biological warfare in the future war of

1976. Westem nations, afraid of the threat posed by the Asian populace, corral the Asian continent with a fleet of battleships while airplanes bombard the land with glass canisters containing every known germ, virus, and bacteria. As disease spreads many Asians attempt to flee, but they are prevented from leaving the continent by the collected foot soldiers of Europe and the United

States. Not until the following year do Westerners enter Asia, exterminating whoever is left, after which follows

the great task, the sanitation of China. Five years and hundreds of millions of treasure were consumed, and then the world moved on... heterogeneously, according to the democratic American program. It was a vast and happy intermingling of nationalities that settled down in China in 1892 and the years that followed-a

75 tremendous and successful experiment in cross-fertiiization. We know to-day the splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output that followed. (London, "Invasion " 114-15)

That this new utopia is based on a "democratic American program" is not

surprising. In London's story, white American nature is glorified by both the

destruction of Asia and Europe's willingness to adopt U. S. style democracy. For

London, all that stands between the U. S. and world supremacy are Asians,

specifically the Chinese. This view reenacts the logic of the original colonization

of North America: all that stood between the settlers and their future were the

hordes of wild Indians. The conquest of North America provides the ideological

foundation for these texts: as the native peoples of this continent were

slaughtered so are the Asians. In both cases the dream of utopia rests on one tragic and terrible contingency: the extermination of the native population.

The transformation of Asia from a sovereign nation into a new space for the realization of the colonialist impulse is very much a recasting of U. S. colonialism. It is no coincidence that the invasion occurs in 1976, the year of the

U. S. bicentennial. In a perverse celebration of this anniversary, "the conflict

between the races .. . ends in genocide for the Chinese and a substantial tribute to the Americans, in the formation of a newer version of the United States where

China used to be" (Wu 119). This new American system serves to validate the entire concept of America. The "vast and happy intermingling of nationalities" that settle China is the idea of the American melting pot transplanted onto a new geography. In effect, London is recreating a racially and ideologically pure U. S. on Asian soil. The creation of London's "utopia" is based on the belief that Asians represent a threat to the integrity and racial purity of the U. S. But why only 76 Asian immigrants? Citizens from Italy and Turkey (who along with England, France, Russia, Germany, Austria and Greece form the European alliance) are lauded by London, yet many of his contemporaries despised them. London's ethnic fickleness has little basis in logic but a firm grounding in fear and ignorance. Consequently, London falls prey to the ranking methodology inherent in social Danwinist thought. At the top of this hierarchy sit the (white) Americans who function as guides and caretakers. Beneath them are the Europeans who desire to adopt an American value system in hopes of ascending to a higher plateau of social being and consciousness. At the bottom of this hierarchy rests the Asians, who must be exterminated because they pose a threat to the vision of U. S. hegemony. Much like Dooner and Shiel, London sees Asians as mysterious and incomprehensible figures. Dooneris characterization of the Chinese are echoed in London's story:

The Chinese was the perfect type of industry. He had always been that. For sheer ability of work, no worker in the world could compare with him. Work was the breath of his nostrils. It was to him what wandering and fighting in far lands and spiritual adventure had been to other peoples. Liberty, to him, epitomized itself in access to the means of till. To till the soil and labor interminably was all he asked of life and the powers that be. ("Invasion" 106-07)

The Asian is machine-like, methodical, and meticulous. The irony, of course, is that such characteristics would be deemed admirable if they described a white

American businessman or scientist. The Asian is a negative character not because he is industrious but simply because he is Asian. In London's descriptive strategy any defining characteristic is always already a negative portrayal. As we have seen, London is not alone in this stereotyping; Shiel,

77 Dooner and a host of others use the same image of the Inhuman Chinese.

William Wu clarifies the reason for this repeating pattern:

Typing the Chinese as automata . . . results from the failure of these writers to seek any understanding of Chinese cultural behavior or Interests. Instead of characterizing the Individual Chinese, these authors claim simply that the Chinese have no Individual character. The race wars they depict climax the Inherent conflicts the Social Darwinists believed existed between old and new societies. Part of the reason these naturalist authors treat Chinese characterization lightly Is because they believe that the behavior of the Chinese Is due to their race and not to free will. In the context of the novels, therefore, the Chinese cannot be dealt with on a rational basis as human, but can only be confronted and opposed as an Irrational force. ("Invasion" 40)

In "The Unparalleled Invasion," London uses differences In language to create and emphasize an unbreachable cultural chasm between East and West:

What [the Westem nations] failed to take Into account was this: that between them and China was no common psychological speech. Their thought-processes were radically dissimilar. There was no Intimate vocabulary. The Westem mind penetrated the Chinese mind but a short distance when It found Itself In a fathomless maze. The Chinese mind penetrated the Western mind an equally short distance when It fetched up against a bland Incomprehensible wall. It as all a matter of language. There was no way to communicate Western Ideas to the Chinese mind. (London, "Invasion" 104)

That cultural differences exist between East and West Is Incontrovertible.

However, London highlights those differences and creates a schism which neither side can overcome. Much like turning the Aslans Into automatons,

London now turns them into mental aliens. This notion of the Othemess of the

Chinese Immigrant led to widespread belief In the United States that they were unasslmllatable, creating great anxiety In the American Imagination. As Stuart C.

Miller argues:

78 Americans have generally assumed that the theory of the melting pot involved a two-way process whereby immigrants contributed to the cultural matrix in the process of becoming "Americanized." Until the coming of the Chinese, however, no immigrant group had differed sufficiently from the Anglo-American root stock to compromise basic social institutions such as Christian religion and ethics, monogamy, or natural rights theory, not to mention the doctrine of material progress for the individual. Faced with the concrete possibility that it might become necessary to sacrifice substantial elements of the axiomatic beliefs in the name of a melting-pot hybrid Americanization,' many foundations were not negotiable. The immigrant had to become a convert and shed his foreign ways. The altemative was total exclusion of culturally distant groups, and a melting pot that was limited rather than infinite in scope, (qtd. in Wu 6)

London's exclusion of the Chinese is extreme, to say the least. London constructs Chinese (and Asians in general) as threats to American political and biological integrity, forcing a perspective that their extermination is not a moral issue but a political necessity. There is a coldness to London's thesis, which, as

Wu states, is "simply that China has become, by 1976, a military threat invincible to all conventional methods of war, by virtue of a gigantic population" ("Invasion"

118). Here is the passage from London's story that marks the beginning of the

Western world's unparalleled invasion of China;

The real danger lay in the fecundity of [China's] loins, and it was in 1970 that the first cry of alarm was raised. For some time all territories adjacent to China had been grumbling at Chinese immigration; but now it suddenly came home to the world that China's population was 500,000,000. She had increased by a hundred millions since her awakening. Burchaldter called to attention the fact that there were more Chinese in existence than white skinned people. He performed a simple sum in arithmetic, he added together the populations of the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, European Russia, and all Scandinavia. The result was 495,000,000. And the population of China over-topped this tremendous total by 5,000,000. Burchaldteris figures went around the world, and the world shivered. (London, "Invasion" 108)

79 But even these numbers proved too conservative. Five years later, Burchaldter realized

he had been mistaken. China's population must be seven hundred millions, eight hundred millions, nobody knew how many millions, but at any rate it would soon be a billion. There were two Chinese for every white-skinned human in the world, Burchaldter announced, and the world trembled. China's increase must have begun immediately, in 1904. It was remembered that since that date there had not been a single famine. At 5,000,000 a year increase, her total increase in the intervening seventy years must be 350,000,000. But who was to know? It might be more. Who was to know anything of this strange new menace of the twentieth Century-China, old China, rejuvenescent, fruitful, and militant! (London, "Invasion" 109)

When confronted with these numbers, the Chinese emperor responds:

"We are the most ancient, honorable, and royal of races. We have our own destiny to accomplish... .Send your punitive expeditions . . . To land half a million soldiers on our shores would strain the resources of any of you. And our thousand millions would swallow them down in a mouthful. Send a million; send five million, and we will swallow them down just as readily. Pouf! A mere nothing, a meager morsel. Destroy, as you have threatened, you United States, the ten million coolies we have forced upon your shores-why, the amount scarcely equals half of our excess birth rate for a year." Truly had he spoken There was no combating China's amazing birth rate. If her population was a billion, and was increasing twenty millions a year, in twenty five years it would be a billion and a half-equal to the total population of the world in 1904. And nothing could be done. There was no way to dam up the over­ spilling monstrous flood of life. ("Invasion" 110)

I have quoted at length the above passages because I want to highlight the constant and steady reference to numbers and statistics. The threat of China is continually cast in terms of mass. This is a rationalist approach to a constructed threat. The constant barrage of numbers the reader is subjected to in "The

80 Unparalleled Invasion" is used to justify the celebration of the imperialist impulse

which is at heart what London's story is about. London essentially follows the

same strategy Dooner employs in his Preface and Introductory: The strong

emotional responses of fear and paranoia, rampant in American society during

this period, are contained within a rationalist discourse provided by mathematical

references and scientific rhetoric.

London's attempt at rationalizing his racism can be found in a non-fictive

essay that is the ideological companion to "The Unparalleled Invasion." Written in 1904, "The Yellow Peril" presents London's idea of an Asian threat and wams that the West must "undertake the management" of 400 million Chinese. Such an undertaking is essential, argues London, for "War is to-day the final arbiter in the affairs of men, and it is as yet the final test of the worthwhileness of peoples"

(qtd. in Clareson 70). This essay is undoubtedly a progenitor to "The Unparalleled Invasion," in theme as well as form. London's story is, after all, cast as an essay taken from Walt Merwin's Certain Essavs in History. That the story is taken from a future history lends it a further air of legitimacy, if only because it shares the trappings of an academic and historical study.

This quest for validation is reflected in the narrative more directly by

Laningdale, the scientist whom initiates the plan for China's destruction. The scientist represents for London the hope that political tension can be resolved by the application of objective analysis. This rationalization is posited in biological, specifically evolutionary, terms: "Jacobus Laningdale's head was very like any other head, but in that head was evolved an idea" ("lnvasion"110; emphasis added). The strategy to destroy the Chinese is cast as a biological development, in an attempt to achieve a condition outside of politics. However, London's

81 attempt to construct this strategy as natural is rebuffed by his own insistence

upon an imposed rationalist solution to the Chinese "problem." We find at this point in the narrative a conflation of rationalism with evolutionism. This confusion

reveals the extent to which London desires a scientific reason for following through on his fantasy of annihilation. London mistakenly believes that the use of scientific language imparts legitimacy, but what is left is a wealth of scientific verbiage that is neither scientific nor objective. London's use of the scientist figure is aligned with his reliance on numbers. Laningdale and the statistics quoted are essentially the same plot device: both are failed attempts to justify and rationalize the annihilation of the Other.

It is important to highlight how the use of scientific language and the use of scientists as characters allow London and the reader to believe practically anything, now matter how ridiculous. This condition speaks to the power of scientific rhetoric, but this authority is not always clear cut. In all of the texts examined I have shown how the logic of the narrative is always on the verge of collapsing. This collapse can be triggered by the slightest of critical analysis. I do not want to underestimate the audience for these novels. As I have mentioned elsewhere, they may have been racists but they were not total fools.

It is probable, although perhaps impossible to prove, that the readers of proto-sf grasped from time to time the weaknesses of the arguments therein. That this perception was most likely repressed speaks to the pervasive influence of the ideology that these texts promoted. Nonetheless, there are moments when even the most influential of ideologies must collapse under its own weight. It as at these points that authors call into doubt the very strategies that they depend on to demonstrate their positions.

82 The Specter of Doubt: "The Scarlet Plague" and The White Man's Burden:

One such moment of doubt occurs in London's “The Scarlet Plague"

(1912). The story tells of the fall of civilization after the spread of a devastating plague that kills all whom it infects. The narrator, one of a handful of survivors immune to the disease, sun/ives to old age only after a series of harrowing adventures. The reader enters the story at a point in the old man's life when he is relating his experiences to his children and grandchildren against a post- apocalyptic background. The children doubt what the old man says as tales of civilization and order are too far removed from their realm of experience. The story is a fast-paced survival tale, much like London's famous short stories, but there is a fundamental difference between this work and "The Unparalleled Invasion." "The Unparalleled Invasion" demonstrates an unquestioned belief in the theory of social Darwinism and confidence in the necessity of eugenic management. In "The Scarlet Plague" there occurs a slippage of faith in these doctrines even as the story continues to promote a racist conception of the world.

This conflict leads to a tension that cannot be resolved from within the narrative, for the narrative is itself the source of the problem. This paradox is at the heart of every Future War novel yet it is concealed (albeit not very well) by the novelists' use of social Darwinism, eugenics, and nationalist pride. In "The

Scarlet Plague" London abandons these conventions, perhaps out of his adherence to socialist principles, but he does not abandon the racism inherent in them.

A common feature in all the texts examined in this chapter is a confidence of narrative voice. Whether it be in first or third person, the narrative voice in the

83 texts we have examined up to this point have all been sure of themselves and sure of the doctrines they are promoting. We see this same type of authoritative voice at the beginning of "The Scarlet Plague." Note the narrator's comment on the poor, an echo of the social Darwinist ethic:

In the midst of our civilization, down in our slums and labor-ghettos, we had bred a race of barbarians, of savages; and now, in the time of calamity, they tumed upon us like the wild beasts they were and destroyed us. And they destroyed themselves as well. They inflamed themselves with strong drink and committed a thousand atrocities, quarreling and killing one another in the general madness. (London, "Plague" 172)

The narrator explains the social problems of poverty and exploitation as being caused by inferior human quality. He does so with a confidence marked by a pompous and self-valorizing attitude, much like the narrators of the other novels examined here. Because many of the poor were immigrants and minority groups whose color, culture and background prevented them from achieving a high social status, the narrator's attack on the lower classes is also an attack on people of color and immigrants in general. This attack is constructed according to the principles of social Darwinism: the poor are in their state because they are not as advanced culturally and biologically as the wealthier classes. As in Dooneris Last Days of the Republic, part of the tragedy of the fall of

American civilization is a shift in power. It is now those marginalized groups, those Others, who have gained control. A true survival of the fittest scenario comes into play, with the most physically powerful taking command. The narrator, a self-described classical scholar and man of learning, is easy prey to the working class "savages." One such savage is Chauffeur, described by the narrator as "a large, dark, hairy man, heavy-jawed, slant browed, fierce-eyed"

84 (London, "Plague" 181). Such a description contrasts with white features and has much in common with popular descriptions of degenerate races. Chauffeur's name, Bill, is mentioned only once, the narrator referring to him by his title throughout the narrative. This lack of naming is the first step London takes toward dehumanizing his character. Chauffeur is known only by a working-class title, a title that marks him as a social inferior. However, because of the plague, he now enjoys a newfound position of power. He has taken as his personal servant the wife of his former employer, Mrs. Vesta Van Warden, a woman of culture and leaming with whom the narrator falls instantly in love. He is, however, helpless before the more powerful Chauffeur, and he cringes in horror at his enslavement of the beautiful Vesta:

He struck her, do you understand? He beat her with those terrible fists of his and made her his slave. It was she who had to gather the firewood, build the fires, cook, and do all the degrading camp- labor-she, who had never performed a menial act in her life. These things he compelled her to do while he, a proper savage, elected to lie around camp and look on. He did nothing, absolutely nothing, except on occasion to hunt meat or catch fish. (London, "Plague" 183)

The narrator is appalled by Vesta's enslavement not because one person is exploiting another, but because it is Chauffeur who is doing the exploiting. For the narrator (and most contemporary readers) the social order would have been completely upset. The Chauffeur should not, by virtue of inferior breeding, be in charge of a woman of such distinction as Vesta Van Warden, and yet the plague has created a situation where such "unnatural" actions are commonplace. Note the disgust this social inversion generates in the narrator:

The Chauffeur was a servant, understand, a servant. And he cringed, with bowed head to such as [Vesta]. She was a lord of life, both by birth and marriage. The destinies of millions, such as he,

85 she carried in the hollow of her pink-white hand. And, in the days before the plague, the slightest contact with such as he would have been pollution. (London, "Plague" 183)

Chauffeur's newfound power is looked upon as a contamination, a "pollution," of the natural order. Even Chauffeur senses this and, relishing the experience, boasts to the narrator; "You had your day before the plague . . . but this is my day, and a damned good day it is. I wouldn't trade back to the old times for anything" (London, "Plague" 184). Chauffeur demonstrates the ineptitude of the

"common" stock. While he is certainly the most powerful, he is unfit to govern because of his laziness and cruelty. He eventually kills Vesta and dies without passing on any of his metalworking knowledge.

While it is impossible to defend Chauffeur as a character, it is certainly necessary to critique London's use of a specific type. As quoted above.

Chauffeur is described as dark and his swarthy skin is contrasted continually against the white purity of Vesta's complexion. That Chauffeur pollutes Vesta with his attentions reveals an anxiety toward interracial relationships. The novella implies that such relationships are the result of an uncivilized society.

Thus, this mingling of races is deemed an act of savagery. Nevertheless, the narrator rescinds his views if only for a moment when discussing two Mexican tribes he encounters, Los Angelitos and Los Carmelites. He seems to bear them no ill will and seems genuinely happy to see them, commenting that the tribes "have a good country down there, but it is too warm"; but then, one paragraph later, he mentions that the world must be repopulated by "a new Aryan drift around the world" (London, "Plague" 187). As in other texts discussed here, the racism of the narrator of "The Scarlet Plague" is constantly in flux: the swarthy servant is inherently evil, the swarthy Mexicans benign. How is this contrast 86 resolved? As in Tracy's novel It is bleached by an Aryan presence that will one day rule again. Just who the narrator likes and dislikes and why is sometimes difficult to grasp, but one thing is made clear: the superiority of whites must always be upheld and when it is not it leads inevitably to tragedy.

The narrator's description of the poor is telling. He describes them as barbaric and savage, words used to define non-whites for decades leading up to the publication of the story. As the plague is a scourge on the biological safety of humanity, so the poor are portrayed as a scourge on the sociological order. The narrator effectively paints a parallel between disease and poverty, equating them as dangers that must be erased. No one in the story is able to find a cure for the plague. Conversely, no one has been able to find a "cure" for poverty, outside of the suggestion that the poor remain amongst themselves and quietly but surely breed themselves into oblivion. The meshing of poverty and plague reveals a fear of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century U. S.: the fear of contagion. London effectively captures both the horror of a plague that is incurable and the terrifying prospect that white America will be stained by immigration and poverty. But the authority with which these claims are made weakens throughout the story. The headstrong narrator is replaced with a broken man who has lost confidence in civilization. Note his attitude toward the end of the novella when he mentions the existence of gunpowder and struggles to remember how to use it. Speaking to a group of savage children the old man recalls:

The gunpowder will come. Nothing can stop it-the same old story over and over. Man will increase, and men will fight. The gunpowder will enable men to kill millions of men, and in this way only, by fire and blood, will a new civilization, in some remote day, be evolved. And of what profit will it be? Just as the old civilization

87 passed, so will the new. It may take fifty thousand years to build, but it will pass. All things pass. Only remain cosmic force and matter, ever in flux, ever acting and reacting and realizing the eternal types-the priest, the soldier, and the king... .Some will fight, some will rule, some will pray; and all the rest will toil and suffer sore while on their bleeding carcasses is reared again, and yet again, without end, the amazing beauty and surpassing wonder of the civilized state. (London, "Plague" 189)

Here the narrator turns away from the conventions of social Darwinism. Society has become a hopeless animal trapped in a constant cycle of birth and destruction, and not an organism that evolves and betters its species through time. Thus the story presents two contrasting viewpoints: Civilization is cyclical and does not follow a linear line of progress; while at the same time, the narrator depends upon an evolutionary model to demonstrate the inferiority of the visibly ethnic Other. The story ultimately abandons social Darwinism as an inaccurate means for understanding the development of civilization, but poor and visibly ethnic Others are still cast as inferior and as threats to the white mainstream.

Racism remains firmly entrenched in the narrator's voice and in the fabric of the story. The extent to which racism permeates the narrative of "The Scarlet

Plague" is conveniently ignored by sf critics. In their study of the emergence of the sf genre. The World Bevond the Hill. Alexei and Cory Panshin try to show how the novella mitigates London's conflicting beliefs about the importance of civilization: "London felt a need for civilization, that temple of the rational soul.

And he hated it. He loved the purely animalistic, and he feared it. All these impulses can be seen working at once in . . . 'The Scarlet Plague'" (129). The

Panshins praise London for the way he is able to present this conflict "with extraordinary clarity and vision" (129). This reading echoes Thomas Clareson,

88 who argues in Some Kind of Paradise that “London, for once, has control of both

his material and the tone of the narrative” (120). Yet the Panshins and Clareson

read over the deeper anxiety present in the London's story: how to justify the

superiority of whites after a belief in social Darwinism has been shattered? This

is the unstated question that is asked throughout the narrative of "The Scarlet

Plague." It is not answered, because it cannot be answered. Social Darwinism

provides a supposed scientific rationale that can reinforce a belief in white supremacy. In discarding social Darwinism, London is left with no "objective"

means to account for his racism. The "order" of which the Panshins and

Clareson write is the neat rhetorical strategy of coming full circle: the novella

ends where it started, with the narrator lamenting the fall of civilization and fearing/hoping it will rise again. But this is not closure because it leaves open the

racial tensions which London wants so much to resolve. The Panshins seem completely oblivious to the racialism and racism undercutting the narrative.

Clareson at least comments on it: "If 'The Scarlet Plague' has a flaw, it may lie in

London's description of Vesta as 'the one woman' and his portrait of the founder of the Chauffeur tribe as a 'wretched, primitive man'" (Paradise 121). Clareson's

reading implies that this "flaw" in characterization can be separated from the implications of the narratives. Clareson argues that "The Scarlet Plague" gains an added significance because "it was written and issued before World War I and the consequent disillusionment of the 1920s" (Paradise 1201.5 Clareson's point that "the intensity of the anguish voiced by [the narrator]. . . separated London from his contemporaries" is well made, as the story lacks the nationalist impulse found in other Future War narratives (Paradise 122). But we must recognize that

89 the “anguish" in “The Scarlet Plague" is due to London's inability to rationalize his racism as he so easily does in "The Unparalleled Invasion."

This anguish is ultimately reflected by the events in the story. “The Scarlet

Plague" is about both the crumbling of civilization and the crumbling of a means by which to understand civilization. London's post-catastrophe story questions the tenets of social Darwinism and eugenics by focusing on a narrator who is helpless before the lower classes as represented by the Chauffeur. Thus

London uses an sf landscape to explore the effects of a given system of ideas on his protagonists. His conclusion is clearly that social Danwinism does not work and that eugenic control is an unrealizable fantasy. The narrator, a well- educated classical scholar, and Vesta Van Warden, a pampered high society lady, are helpless when the social structure that supports them is stripped away.

In this way London refutes Spencer's ideas that the privileged enjoy their position because of an innate superiority. However, London's story is not an attack on racism but only on a specific way of justifying that racism. If social Darwinism does not work, and if a eugenic program cannot be implemented, what is to happen? London's speculations are disturbing. "The Scarlet Plague" implies that the worst elements of humanity will take over. This nihilistic view of humanity is nothing new, but it is the way London envisions this degradation of humanity that is problematic. Society's underbelly, the poor, non-whites, immigrants, represent the dark side of humanity. London's novella reduces cultural diversity and economic disparity to metaphors representing the baser instincts of humankind

(much like Asians and Jews are used to represent a transcendental Evil in Shiel's novels). It is these instincts that come to the forefront in London's novella.

90 prompting an "ethniclzation" of American society. This spells disaster for

London, who abandons pseudo-science, but not its racist foundation.

London's serious and agonized tone finds its opposite in The White Man's

Burden: A Satirical Forecast (1915) by Roger Sherman Tracy (1841 -1926).6

The novel demonstrates how social Darwinism and eugenics can be used to

"prove" black superiority, thus overturning the traditional formula of the Future

War novel. While Future War novelists were serious in their attempts to prove white supremacy, Tracy offers a tongue in cheek satire of pseudo-sciences and their conclusions. With its satire. The White Man's Burden clarifies the subjectivity of what were considered to be the objective "sciences" of social

Danwinism and eugenics. Tracy's novel details the adventures of a white man suddenly thrust three thousand years into a future Africa. Once there, he discovers blacks have ascended to a plateau of scientific and cultural knowledge that is centuries beyond anything whites have been able to accomplish. The white narrator (who remains unnamed) discovers that his people succeeded in destroying themselves soon after his disappearance, and have spent the last three thousand years catching up to the same level of society the narrator previously enjoyed-America circa 1910. The novel shares with London's novella the notion that history is cyclical. Thinking Africa a primitive country ripe for exploitation, American whites attempt to invade and the narrator agonizes over their fate as the Africans easily destroy them with their advanced weaponry. As he watches the whites die, doomed once again to descend into barbarism and replay their tragic cycle, the narrator suddenly finds himself back in his own time, confused but sobered by his experiences.

91 The sub-title A Satirical Forecast is an important qualifier of this novel.

Tracy uses social Dan/vinism not as a means to promote black superiority, but to show the ridiculous dimension of racial supremacy, no matter who benefits. In using the principles of social Darwinism and eugenics against whites, Tracy posits some insightful critiques of American and British racist ideology. Take, for example, the following argument aimed at racist pseudo-science by the narrator’s black host:

You belong to an incredulous race. That is one thing that has retarded your advancement. The white people know what they think they have proved, we prove what we know. You put proof before conviction. We start with conviction and end with proof. And this reversal of our methods has always seemed to you to be nonsense, and always will, and that has made you slow and stupid. It has been your undoing in the past, and always will be in the future, by the natural organic limitation of you minds. (R. Tracy 49)

Placing conviction before proof is the foundation of racist pseudo-science.

Arguing for just such an approach is a reversal of the scientific method of experimentation and of the need for evidence before a conclusion is established.

However, scientific method was never adhered to when social Darwinism and eugenics were established as legitimate vehicles of investigation and explanation. While believers in these "sciences" aspired to the objectivity of scientific method, they performed the exact opposite-they used scientific principles to justify the preexisting condition of racism, just like the Africans in

Tracy's novel. This scene not only establishes how the advanced African civilization reaches its conclusions about the inferiority of whites, but also demonstrates how American and British society reach their respective conclusions about the inferiority of people of color. Thus the novel illustrates the

92 malleability of any value-free social investigation, and calls into question the validity of any objective endeavor, including the scientific method.

In addition to this critique of objective measurement, the narrator's host presents a critique of Western expansionism:

The essential defect of the white race . . . is the very quality upon which they have always taken great pride, namely, that instinct for domination. They have always insisted that their civilization was the only true civilization, their methods the only true methods, their science the only true science, their religions the only true religions . . . and that it was their privilege and their duty to impose their fashions of every sort upon the other races of the globe. (R. Tracy 51-52)

What social Darwinism has "proven" as necessary for ethnic survival is in Tracy's novel presented as one of the factors that leads to the white's downfall. The strongest "race" thus becomes victimized by its inability to control its own strength. With an increase in geographic representation comes a weakening of the collective. Political power is not proof of genetic superiority, but evidence of cultural devolution. Expansionism is not evidence of strength, but of weakness.

Expansionism in The White Man's Burden is considered a corrupt enterprise because it is symptomatic of the cyclical march of history. The true function of civilization is to break out of this cyclical pattern. Whereas London sees this cycle as disastrous, Tracy sees it as a challenge. The first step toward meeting that challenge is to erase the colonizing principle:

In contrast with your people, the other races of the world have not had these ups and downs. They have lacked or suppressed this colonizing tendency, and have advanced step by step . . . This steady, though gradual, progress of the races other than white, going on beside the frequent and regular relapses of the white .. . has had already its inevitable result, viz.: the white race has been left far behind. (R. Tracy 52-53)

93 Where London sees defeat, Tracy finds victory. For London, the notion of history as cyclical results from his abandoning the theory of social Darwinism and the need for eugenic policy. To view history as a repeating pattern represents a loss of faith in the notion of progress, a devastating idea when one considers that the

United States is primarily a country that has always envisioned itself through its future, or in the words of Octavio Paz: "The country's foundations are in the future, not in the past. Or, rather, its past, the act of its foundation, was a promise of the future, and each time the United States returns to its source, to its past, it rediscovers the future" (370). For history to be cyclical means that the progress of history, the evolution of the social being, is a sham. The past presents neither a safe refuge nor a realm of renewed hope. This is why in "The

Scarlet Plague" society crumbles under the weight of what London suspected was the true nature of history. In The White Man's Burden. Tracy never adopts

London's deadening tone, arguing for a social Darwinist ethic one moment then casting it aside to claim nature is cyclical the next. This shifting perspective makes no difference to Tracy because it is that vacillation he is satirizing. This waffling serves to further illustrate the author's point that social Darwinists look for proofs wherever they can find them. Where London posits a cyclical theory of history that leads to his confusion and loss of hope, Tracy posits a satire that reveals the problems in any claim to value-free knowledge.

With this understanding of the perilous state of objective measurement,

Tracy sets out to "prove" that some ethnic groups are superior to others, once again inverting the traditional roles of superior and inferior. The narrator's host speaks: It dawned upon us very gradually that most of the criminality among our people was contributed by these Negroes of mixed blood, and finally it was . . .

94 demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the blood of the white and not of the black was to blame (R. Tracy 66). Texts contemporary to The White Man's

Burden construct a non-white presence as a form of genetic, cultural, and moral corruption. Here, however, we find whiteness as the degenerative influence.

Purity is found in color, and whiteness becomes a bleaching agent that erases the nobility of color. Tracy's novel overtums the accepted notion of black blood as a contaminant, all the while using scientific language akin to that used by social Darwinist and racist ideologues. By using the language and vocabulary of pseudo-science, Tracy demonstrates how easy it is to "prove" any racist classification.

The White Man's Burden is faithful to the extreme logic of the Future War genre. In what is perhaps the most subversive of all Future War novel endings,

Tracy envisions the near total destruction of white Americans. Whites are literally bombed into the stone age, and are left to reenact their rise and inevitable fall.

Yet Tracy clearly states that their destruction is not Africa's responsibility, but a result of white imperialist tendencies. The closing lines of the novel read "The

White Man's Burden is Himself," thus forcing responsibility back onto whites (R.

Tracy 225). The statement is rich in irony, calling attention to white injustice while at the same time satirizing the Future War narrative strategy of blaming victimized Others for their own exploitation. Such a conclusion would probably be considered controversial even today, and it is difficult for us to understand how it must have been received in 1915. The White Man's Burden is not widely discussed today, perhaps because the novel's appropriation of the Future War formula is so well done that the novel has been marginalized in literary and sf studies as too subversive and too extreme. However, it is important to reclaim

95 The White Man's Burden and other such rarities, for such a project would trace the impact people of color have had on sf. Such an investigation could help uncover a foundation of sf writers of color, or at the very least mainstream authors of color who use sf tropes in their fictions. Tracy's novel provides us with evidence that almost from the onset of racist pseudo-science there existed an undercurrent of writing engaged in an act of counter-appropriation. The reclaming of similar narratives would provide contemproary critics and authors with a counter-narrative to the mainstream narrative dominated by white authors.

Conclusion

As this chapter has suggested. The Future War novel acted as a wish fulfillment of American and British imperialism and racial supremacy. These notions found justification in the pseudo-sciences of social Darwinism and eugenics. Because of the goveming principle of social Danwinism, war was conceived of as absolute political and racial domination. Thus, fantasies of total conquest resulted in complete annihilation of non-white ethnic groupings.

Sometimes these future war novels were specific in their mistrust of the Other.

Yellow Peril novels, for example, singled out Asians, specifically Chinese, as a threat to the racial purity of the West. Similarly, immigration and cultural diversity were seen as a cancer attacking the body of the American and British nation state. Thus did the warfare enacted in these narratives act as a metaphor for the battle against the cultural and visibly ethnic Other that was being waged both in the United States and Britain.

96 Not only did the Future War novel fuel nationalistic fires, it also substituted for communication. Dialogue with the Other was never established because it was believed that the Other was inhuman, was so distinctly Other that communication was impossible. We find descriptions of the Other as non-human strewn throughout these texts: in Dooner's analysis of the impenetrable Asian mind, in Louis Tracy's description of the baffling alienness of non-white cultures, in London's stories. In place of dialogue there is only the annihilation of difference. We encounter the same desire for erasure in the companion to the Future

War novel: the Lost Race novel. If the Future War novel sought to annihilate future ethnic and cultural diversity, then the Lost Race novel sought to replay and reinforce the historical process of cultural genocide. Together, these genres enacted the fantasies of white America and England and unified them within a genre that stepped outside the boundaries of realistic literature. As such, these fantasies provided the foundation of what was to become, indeed what was already in the process of becoming, the science fiction of the twentieth-century.

The evolution of this process becomes clearer when we examine, as realized through the Lost Race novel, the desire of elite whites to replay history and to reintegrate the historical process of cultural annihilation into the closing years of the nineteenth-century.

97 Notes

1 Dooner does not realize this irony, for he attempts to begin the history of the Americas with the formation of the United States. His quickness to erase the native peoples of the northem hemisphere and go directly to the colonization by

European settlers as the starting point for life in North America is in itself an sf endeavor. Dooner implies a North America that existed in a pristine state ripe for settlement much like later sf was to imagine other planets as sites of colonization. We find in Dooner’s novel a very early version of this colonization fantasy. 2 We find this strategy repeated in the Lost Race novels discussed in the next chapter. 3 The closest parallel one finds in scientific literature is the concept of ancestral memory, as found in elephants and some birds; but this quasi-genetic description of Hardy as the inheritor of centuries of naval knowledge is more pseudo-science than a possible biological fact.

4 Conversely, the inability of literary studies to address sf is demonstrated by Wu's otherwise excellent study. The Yellow Peril. Wu never mentions Shiel, nor does he seem aware that it was Shiel who first coined the term "Yellow Peril."

See Aldiss and Clareson for detail.

5 This reading is not inaccurate, but we should keep in mind that this disillusionment which Clareson speaks of was much more evident in Britain than in the U. S. Britain spent years in WWI as opposed to the time the U. S. devoted to that v/ar. In American sf, the twenties were the beginning of a boom in sf

98 publishing that reached its fruition between the wars and after WWIi. Stableford provides a fuller discussion of this somber tone in British sf after WWI.

6 Tracy used the pseudonym T. Shirby Hodge when he first published The White Man's Burden. Is it possible he was worried about his personal safety after the novel's publication?

99 CHAPTER 2 THE LOST RACE NOVEL AND THE FANTASY OF RACIAL PURITY

The Lost Race Novel

In his seminal essay, "Lost Lands, Lost Races: A Pagan Princess of Their

Very Own," Thomas Clareson argues that the Lost Race novel emerges from

the impact of three interrelated areas upon the literary and public imagination of the [late nineteenth-century]: first, the renewed vigor of the explorations which sought to map the interiors of Africa, Asia, and South America, as well, of course, as both polar regions; secondly, the cumulative impact of geological discoveries and theories which expanded the past almost immeasurably and populated it with such creatures as Tyrannosaurus Rex, Pithecanthropus Erectus, and Neanderthal Man; and finally, the impact of archeological discoveries and theories which-from the valley of the Indus to the depths of Africa and Pre-Columbian America-raised civilizations in the past more spectacular and mysterious than legendary El Dorado or the Kingdom of Prester John. (118)

It is this romance of history and its secrets that helps shape the "basic formula" of the Lost Race novel: "an explorer, scientist, or naval lieutenant either by chance or intentional quest, [discovers] a lost colony or a lost homeland of some vanished or little-known civilization" ("Lost Lands" 119-20). The extent to which this fantasy is played out can be seen in the hundreds of Lost Race novels and

100 short stories published in the U. S. and Britain in the closing decades of the nineteenth-century and the early years of the twentieth-century J

The Lost Race novel has been traditionally ignored as juvenile^ by critics of mainstream literature, while sf critics have dismissed it as "straightforward romantic adventure" with "surprisingly little to offer" in way of "sociological or political thought-experiments" (Clute and Nichols 736). Clareson reminds us, however, that the Lost Race novel "helps to join science fiction to the central ongoing literary tradition by providing a much-needed link between the imaginary voyages to the ends of the Earth, so frequent in the eighteenth century, and the interstellar flights of recent decades" ("Lost Lands" 118). Furthermore, Clareson argues that the Lost Race novel "provided a podium from which to argue controversial issues of the day" and "emphasized those aspects of various areas of science which had the greatest impact upon, and greatest appeal to, the literary and popular imaginations" ("Lost Lands" 131).

Clareson's point is well made, but he fails to mention that the "sciences" emphasized by the Lost Race novel are social Darwinism and eugenics, especially the letter's obsession with genetic purity, or what I sometimes refer to as racial purity. Attention to genetic purity is so pronounced in these narratives that it is not an overstatement to say that they are all saturated with this singular obsession. But the privileging of racial purity leads to some problems endemic to the generic tropes of the Lost Race novel. Because the Lost Race novel depends on racially pure visibly ethnic Others, their authors have to enact a series of rationalizations to explain why native peoples are not equal or superior to British and American whites. Part of this strategy includes constructing a hierarchy of races, with Mestizos and other "mixed races" at the bottom. This

101 ladder of racial categories is informed not only by perceived racial differences,

but by contemporaneous political conflict and racist pseudo-science. In the

British Lost Race novel, for example, the portrayal of Spanish blood as a

genetically unpure influence that corrupts even non-Westem peoples is a

reflection of Britain's centuries old disdain for Iberia and its ongoing conflicts with

Spain. The Lost Race novel functions as an intersection of various racist thought

and political tensions held together by the emerging theories of racial purity and genetic determinism, on the one hand, and more traditional notions of religious

and spiritual difference, on the other. Lost Race novels thus demarcate the

intersection of the emergence of a scientific racism with the established cultural racism reflected in such notions as religious and moral supremacy. In Inventinc

the American Primitive. Helen Carr points out that "For the early colonists,

Christianity and civility were synonymous. Indians were barbarous heathens, the

colonists were civil Christians... .The Indian association with nature implied an

association with bestiality, the fallen world and the devil" (29). Christianity is

understood as a civilizing force that native peoples, for the most part, rejected.

This rejection was interpreted as a tuming away from the process of civilization,

and was taken as evidence for the defunct spirituality of native peoples. With the

development of evolutionary theory, this spiritual baseness is transformed into

biological inferiority. In Lost Race novels, religious identity and emerging

scientific explanations for genetic identity, while originating in conflicting cultural

belief systems, are used in conjunction to prove a position which cannot be

arrived at without recourse to both. The vacillation between these poles forms the ideological foundation of the Lost Race novel.

102 This chapter will focus on a handful of Lost Race novels which have as their protagonists the native peoples of Mesoamerica, including The Aztec Treasure House by Thomas Janvier, Montezuma's Daughter and Heart of the

World by H. Rider Haggard, and The Romance of Golden Star by George Griffith.

I choose these works because, as a Latino, I am interested in how Mestizo identity has been constructed by dominant culture, especially within the narrative space of Anglo-American and British proto-sf. As I will demonstrate, the Lost

Race novel generates a racial argument that enacts a fantasy of American and

British white racial purity and non-white genetic corruption. How this argument is constructed allows us a better understanding of how racism is rationalized and legitimized by dominant culture.

The Aztec Treasure House: The Politics of Capital, the Politics of Racial Purity

The American novelist and journalist Thomas A. Janvier provides us with a novel indicative of most Lost Race narratives. The Aztec Treasure House: A

Romance of Contemporaneous Antiquitv (1893) follows a group of adventurers into the deserts of Mexico where they encounter a lost Aztec tribe. The individuals in this exploring party are important for the qualities that each represents. The narrator Thomas Palgrave is an archeologist (a professor at the

University of Michigan). His main interest in the Aztecs is scientific and linguistic.

Father Fray Antonio, a Catholic priest, is interested in the conversion of Aztec souls. Raybum and Young are two railroad men, the former a civil engineer and the latter a lost-freight man, whom Palgrave brings along for muscle. Their

103 interest in the excursion is primarily economic: they see the Aztec treasure as a quick means to financial independence. Collectively, the Westem explorers represent the reasons behind any colonization: quest for knowledge, desire for power as expressed through cultural imperialism, especially as realized through religious conversion, and the promise of wealth. In The Aztec Treasure House. these motivations come together and are recast in such a way as to emphasize the genetic degeneracy of native peoples.

In the novel, the acquisition of wealth and knowledge is rationalized by the devaluing of native lives. We see this development expressed through Palgrave who, at the start of the novel, is moved by a genuine desire to understand the past. His scientific vision is at first unaffected by outside factors or potential consequences. When he attempts to recruit Young and Raybum, for example,

Palgrave forgets to mention that the Aztecs even have a treasure. As the novel progresses, however, the undercurrent of racism in Palgrave's scientific objectivity surfaces as the lure of wealth becomes stronger. The emergence of this racism is prompted by his blurring of the distinction between wealth and knowledge: "but I did very earnestly long to possess myself of that most curious arbalest, and I desired also to examine carefully-because of the discoveries of great archeological value which I hoped to make—the contents of the gold boxes and vases and earthen jars" (Janvier 431). Once this distinction between wealth and knowledge begins to crumble, Palgrave is forced outside his apolitical idea of the search for and acquisition of knowledge as a pure act removed from the workings of the world. In order for Palgrave to continue his study of the Aztecs he needs to steal their gold and thereby takes the first step in the erasure of their culture. Palgrave's quest for knowledge thus becomes an act of violence and

104 colonization, for the only way to acquire that knowledge is to effectively destroy the civilization which he wants so much to understand.

Once the acquisition of wealth is given priority, then all of Palgrave's hatreds and biases begin to surface. Note the evolution of Palgrave's racism in the following scenes. Early in the novel, as he is about to start on his expedition,

Palgrave complains that he and Fray Antonio are forced to fend for themselves, with oniy a small contingent of hired Mexicans for protection:

And for my own part, I must confess that I had a strong desire to have with me some of my own countrymen. For the gallantry of the Mexicans, which gallantry has been proved a thousand times, I have the highest respect; yet is it a natural feeling among Anglo- Saxons that when it comes to facing dangers in which death looms largely, and especially when it comes to a few men against a company of savages, and standing back to back and fighting to the very last, Anglo-Saxon hearts are found to be the staunchest, and Anglo-Saxon backs to be the stoutest which can be thus ranged together. (Janvier 69-70)

Admitting that Mexicans and peopie of color possess even a hint of gallantry is something most writers in this time period do not even grant. But even such small concessions are erased by the end of the novel. In the passage below

Raybum explains to the party, Palgrave included, how "Indians" (a generic phrase which Raybum applies to Aztecs) are weak in battle:

Indians haven't got any staying power in them. They can't hold out against anybody who stands up against them squarely, and won't be scared by a howling rush into running away. That's the reason why our little bit of an army at home is strong enough to police our whole Indian frontier. A single troop of our boys . .. can stand off a whole tribe [because] every bit of fight will go out of them the minute they find that they're beginning to go undemeath. That's the Indian way. (Janvier 310-11 )

105 Palgrave responds that "there [is] much truth" in what Raybum says (Janvier

312). This is a small phrase that could easily be overlooked, but it reveals volumes about how Palgrave, the representative of value-free knowledge, slowly concedes to his fellow traveler's racist views on what he believes is the inherent inferiority of native peoples. Palgrave's adoption of Rayburn's reactionary position is, in a nutshell, the failure of tum-of-the-century science to grasp its own racist construction.

Palgrave's final acceptance of Anglo-Saxon superiority makes whole the sphere of racism which envelops the novel. That the voice of scientific reason is revealed as the selfsame voice which reinforces a system of racism, exploitation, and domination recasts the voices of Raybum and Young and transforms their

"every-man" common sense into voices of insight. Lost race novels relish in this type of characterization of common men spouting deep thoughts in the face of dire situations.^ The thematic effect is intended to demonstrate the courage and resiliency of the novel's heroes, but it better serves to reveal the extent to which racist ideas are embedded not only in the literature but in the audience. In The

Aztec Treasure House. Rayburn and Young function as characters with whom the audience can associate. Although Palgrave and Antonio are important characters who carry most of the action, it is Young and Rayburn's provincialism that best captures the white middle-class audience's dreams of financial security.

It is also Young and Raybum who best capture this audience's nationalism and fear of the ethnic and/or foreign Other. One finds an example of this disdain when Young argues that he has been "wantin' t' get out of this d—-d Greaser country for a good while, an' I guess now I've got my chance. I must say, though,

I wish it had come a little less sudden, for I haven't anything in particular in sight

106 over in God's country.. (Janvier 73). Young's distinction between the U. S. as

"God's country" and Mexico as "Greaser country" is telling. First, we find in his description one of the basic conceits of the novel--that the explorers are somehow blessed in the eyes of God, the U. S. notion of Manifest Destiny.

Second, and in a paradoxical fashion. Young's speech reveals that while he prefers the U. S., it is difficult if not outright impossible to achieve wealth there.

The grandeur of "God's country" is never explained, merely put forth as a given much as Mexico being a defunct version of its neighbor to the north is presented as a matter of obvious fact. But why, if America is so perfect, must the explorers venture outside its boundaries to realize their fantasies?

To the lost-race utopist, history is not a constructive dynamo fueled by a sense of progress and achievement. Oriented towards the remote past, this type of utopia instead seeks to conserve a historical residue outside the chronology of events. It will therefore not focus on the unimpeachable rationality of history proper, but on a tabulated archeology which could still be validated by history but which has been negated by it. The ruins of lost civilizations come to life again as both testimony and disappearance, the presence of those civilizations-their imperative presence-and their absence- that is, annihilation-wili always intermingle in the conflicting recognition of another world and its impossible materialization. (Khouri 174)

Contemporary America holds no hope for these adventurers because of its modemity and historical reality. Explorers of lost worlds seek continually to escape the bonds of history not out of a desire to transcend it, but out of a need to reinscribe and revalidate that historical moment. The explorers seek to leave their world, which was about to move into the twentieth-century, and return to and re-experience the moment of flux when the native peoples of the Americas lost their position of power and European colonists gained theirs. Lost race

107 novels attempt to freeze this moment and replay it endlessly in an attempt to reimagine colonialist fantasies of cultural and economic consumption.

By devouring the Other who has somehow escaped history the dream of

"God’s country" is kept alive. Put another way,

In these extraordinary voyages through a contemporaneous antiquity, memories of an ambiguous promise to fulfillment surface as the kitsch version of the American Dream. Within a commodified perspective, such a dream indeed appears to have materialized for a portion of the society to which the lost-race utopist can point: for the Rockefellers, the Pullmans, the Vanderbilts, etc. Theirs is a millionaire's paradise from which the writer is practically excluded, but with which he can identify inasmuch as, like all Americas, he considers himself part of the American Dream. (Khouri 174-75)

Part of this American Dream is the ability to wield power through a racial coding.

The whiteness of the explorers provides them with the single tool necessary for their successful venture into the lost world. In Lost Race novels, the explorers are a type of white "every-man" (and they usually are men). Some may have advanced degrees but most are just working-class citizens who join the party either out of boredom, a desire for adventure, a desire for wealth, or some combination of the three factors. Nevertheless, it is these individuals who are able to outwit an entire civilization and bring back with them the stored wealth, and sometimes the women, of a lost world. This formula simultaneously reinforces the view that white peoples are superior to people of color and keeps alive the hope that lavish individual wealth and comfort is possible and attainable by any American.

Ironically, in Lost Race novels those closest to realizing the American dream of wealth are the natives. The Aztecs in The Aztec Treasure House possess fantastic treasure, having stores of gold, silver, pearls, gems, and

108 practically every precious stone in existence. As evidence of the magnitude of

their wealth they have incorporated their riches into the simple facets of everyday

life. Silverware, for example, is made of gold, and their tools and weapons are

forged with a gold alloy to increase their strength and durability. But the

explorers do not find a city with a busy commercial infrastructure; rather, they

find a static world where these riches are commonplace and for the most part

ignored and accepted as part of everyday life. This in itself is remarkable by

Westem standards, but what is of interest here is the explorers' reaction to this

static system.

As is standard in the plots of most Lost Race novels, the explorers of The

Aztec Treasure House steal the native treasure. In doing so, they are forced to hide the treasure in a cave and dynamite the room so that it is cut off forever

from the natives. But the treasure remains inaccessible to the outside world as

well because the explorers have done such a good job of hiding it. This action

has several implications. First, the explorers have no qualms about stealing what

belongs to the natives. In fact, they feel it is within their right after what they have

endured and because of their superior culture. Second, after they have looted all they can carry, they make the wealth inaccessible to anyone, including themselves. This is the expression of an extreme social Darwinism where the fittest makes it impossible for anyone else to prove themselves equal. But there is a contradiction here that remains unexplored. The adventurers feel they are worthy of the treasure because they believe the Aztecs do not understand the proper use of wealth. That the riches the natives have accumulated are not valuable within any type of economic system but serve a purely aesthetic purpose is madness in the eyes of the explorers. The explorers claim to have

109 the solution to this stagnation-returning the Aztec gold to its rightful place in economic circulation. The explorers, however, revert to the same tactics as the natives by hoarding the gold. One can argue that the natives did not need the gold for any reason other than to enjoy its beauty. They did not see gold as a means to an end but rather as the end in itself. For the explorers gold is a means to power and comfort, yet they are quick to hoard knowing full well what the gold means to their culture. The novel never makes this into an issue, however, and the explorers are actually lauded for their decision to hide the gold from possible looters and vandals. Again, we retum to the idea of the explorers' right to own the gold. This right is born from the belief that having defeated the Indians the adventurers have proved themselves the fittest and can now prevent all others from following in their footsteps. This type of logic is indefensible, outside of arguing that the explorers have eamed the gold and can do anything they want with it, a position representative of the logic of capitalism. As soon as the adventurers claim all the wealth they can carry, they establish themselves as members of a higher social order and can now act with the same indiscretion as any tum-of-the-century millionaire. The explorers' transition from common men into men of wealth is complete, and with that transition comes the erasure of the logic they originally used to justify their actions, the idea of acquisition of knowledge or the conversion of souls. The Aztec Treasure House traces not only the reenactment of colonization and conquest, it traces also the erasure of moral responsibility in a capitalist system.

As the justifications for the acquisition of treasure are varied and contradictory, so are the characterizations of the native peoples of the Americas.

110 In one scene, for example, when the party Is being taken before the Aztec high priests, Palgrave describes the priest's bearing: "His face was the strong, heavy type that is found in the figures carved on the ruins on Yucatan; a much stronger type than I have observed anywhere among the Mexican Indians of the present day" and "Even apart form his stately surrounding, his dress .. . would have informed me that this man was a priest of very exalted rank" (Janvier 255). Here we find the narrator admiring the native, but this praise comes at the expense of those Mestizos who are not dwellers of the lost world. In the spirit of the age the narrator is ranking peoples according to physical characteristics. Such a ranking is bom from the belief that white racial purity is an exalted state. Mexicans are

Mestizos, offspring of the meshing of European with native; as a result, Mexicans are deemed unpure. At best, Mexicans could only hope to be spared the ridicule of being deemed a bastard race by placing themselves in a subservient position to whites and thereby gaining their admiration. The Aztec Treasure House illustrates this position by the introduction of the final member of the party, Pablo, a boy who becomes Palgrave's valet, and his donkey, El Sabio, who possesses an almost human personality. Pablo is a servant boy who endears himself to the explorers and the reader through a series of supplications. His peasant demeanor helps illustrate his character as described by Palgrave while he gazes out of his hotel window into the plaza below: "from this quarter came towards [El Sabio] a smiling, pleasant faced

Indian lad of eighteen or twenty years old, whose dress was a cotton shirt and cotton trousers, whose feet were bare, and on whose head was a battered hat of straw" (Janvier 30). This is classic Mexican stereotype: impoverished and simple with a mule in tow. Indeed, the mule, whose name translates as "the wise

111 one," is portrayed as more contemplative than Pablo, so much so that the reader sometimes wonders who is looking after whom. Nevertheless, what Pablo lacks in wisdom he makes up for in compassion. This quality of empathy is the cornerstone of Pablo's character. All other characters are motivated out of a personal gain, whether it is money, academic curiosity, or religious/moral certitude. Pablo is motivated only out of a desire to serve. His only superficial concem is that he is paid enough money for his services to buy a raincoat and some beans for his mule. Palgrave laughingly provides him with the paltry sum he needs, only to discover Pablo has spent it elsewhere:

"Perhaps the senor will forgive me for doing so ill with his money. But indeed I could not help it. There is an old man, his name is Juan, sehor, who has been very good to me many times . . . Just now this old man is sick-it is rheumatism, sehor-and he has no money at all... And so-and so-Will the sehor forgive me? I do not need the raincoat now, the sehor understands. And so I gave Juan the seven reales, which he will pay me when he gets well and works again." (Janvier 34-35)

Such charity is displayed by no one else in the novel, and one would be hard pressed to argue with such generosity. But virtue is not the issue here, and this scene is pivotal towards a better understanding of Pablo and the image of the sen/ile Mexican. Pablo, and Mexicans in general, are painted as simpletons who are as obedient to a Catholic God as they are to white explorers. The image of

Pablo giving his earnings away is a reflection of the differences between civilized white society, which is concemed with advancement and exploitation, and

Mexican peasantry, which is concemed with only the bare essentials of life.

Mexican peasantry is praised, for they lack the drive and the killer instinct of the

Americans. But such praise is meted out in small doses, for what is painted as ultimately important in the ongoing contest of the races is precisely the American

112 instinct to supersede all other cultures. Thus Janvier's characterization of the

Mexican as reserved and giving is not so much a lauding of Mexican culture as a regret of white America's desire for power, a desire which is, in the minds of these authors, a heavy burden to bear but one which must be borne nonetheless.

We find this expression of power directed at Pablo. A male Malinche, he functions as a superficial link between the civilization of the white men and the lost world of his own ancestors. The link is tenuous because Pablo's allegiance always rests with his white masters and his mule. The initial meeting between the explorers and the Aztecs illustrates this point. Pablo is looked upon with familiarity by the natives, yet there is no hope of establishing communication:

Towards Pablo these people manifested a familiar curiosity quite unlike their reverential manner towards the rest of us, who so obviously were not of their own race. And Pablo was as much perplexed by their questions as they were by his answers; for never was a conversation carried on so hopelessly at cross­ purposes. (Janvier 201 )

Communication is initially stunted because of a difference in language. But this barrier is overcome by Palgrave's knowledge of Nahuatl, the Aztec tongue.

Nevertheless, for Pablo this language difference becomes symptomatic of a much deeper rift. While Pablo shares physical characteristics, like skin color, with the Aztecs, these similarities do not help him bridge the gap that exists between them. The tension between Pablo and the natives is immediate:

As their talk went on, getting the more involved with every question and reply, a tendency towards ill temper began to develop itself on each side; for Pablo considered that these people, who professed to be ignorant of so important a city as Guadalajara, were making game of him; and they were not less disposed to believe that he either was answering them falsely or that he was a fool. Fortunately, before any harm came of these misunderstanding, an interruption brought a temporary end to their talk. (Janvier 201 -02)

113 As the novel progresses, we see Pablo's growing distrust of the Aztecs; similarly,

the Aztec's disdain for the boy increases. There are also several references in

the novel to exchanged looks of anger between them. This antagonism between

Pablo and the Aztecs is a minor part of the novel, but an intriguing one

nonetheless. Pablo is, upon first introduction, deemed childlike and innocent.

While his age is given as between eighteen and twenty, it is easy for the reader

to forget and interpret his character's actions as those of a child closer to twelve.

His childlike quality is used as a morality gauge, as demonstrated by the scene

where he gives the old man his money. Given this characterization of Pablo as a

moral paragon, it is curious that the only antagonism he develops toward anyone is his own people. This suggests that there is something wrong with the natives,

for how could Pablo, who is like a child, be purposefully trying to bait or criticize

the Aztecs?^ To be believable, Pablo's anger with the natives should originate from

definable conflict. Yet there is nothing about him or the Aztecs that would justify

such an adverse reaction from either party. The only possible explanation I see

here is the author's blatant manipulation of a plot device. Janvier needs to set up

his Aztecs as threatening, and the most efficient and pronounced way of

achieving this effect is to have them and Pablo react against each other. This

strategy makes sense given that Pablo and the Aztecs represent two kinds of

extremes: Pablo is the child-like innocent of a peasant Mexican village and the

Aztecs are the savages of an uncivilized world. Both groups are defined by a lack of modemity. Pablo is a product of an impoverished Mexico and is thus portrayed as lacking the refinements of contemporary America. Nevertheless, he

114 is a product of the Westem world and is, at worst, merely naive. The Aztecs, however, are defined by their stark otherness and absence of civilizing qualities.

Pablo's submissive nature is evidence of his conditioning and thus his non­ threatening status. He is not a threat to the explorers because he has been taught to obey those whom he considers his white superiors. The Aztecs, however, have not undergone the same colonization process. Therefore they represent a danger because they exist outside those spheres of power within which the explorers and Pablo operate. These two poles of being are the only characterizations of natives which the novel puts forth. Natives are thus portrayed as "conquered people" or as "untamed savages." Never are they portrayed as individuals

The inherent superiority of whites is further promoted by focusing on the legends of the Aztecs. Whereas Pablo has his conditioning to keep him in line, the Aztecs have their myths, which act as safeguards for the explorers. Like most Lost Race novels dealing with native peoples, the white interlopers are always mistaken for gods. Such a plot device has historical precedence. We are all familiar with the fact that the Aztecs mistook Cortez and his men for gods, and the Taino Indians, the original inhabitants of what is now Puerto Rico, made the same error when they encountered Columbus and his men. This process of mistaken identity is echoed in practically every Lost Race novel. What is intriguing about The Aztec Treasure House is that the whites act as a catalyst for

Aztec social investigation and self-reflection. For example, the explorers' use of matches alerts the Aztec chief that he has been made a dupe by the head priest.

It seems that the head priest has been traveling to and from the lost world and bringing articles back into the Aztec civilization, passing them off as gifts from the

115 gods. The white presence alerts the chief to this trickery, for he recognizes the matches that the priest uses as those used also by Palgrave and his friends.

This is an interesting and sophisticated plot twist. For all its racist spouting, The

Aztec Treasure House paints an intriguing picture of a society ruled by a religious order. Is also shows how that society crumbles when the religious foundation is wiped away. The white explorers are able to conqueror the Aztecs because they make their gods impotent. Indeed, The Aztec Treasure House is something of a psychological novel in that the violation of Aztec space occurs at a spiritual level.

At the very least, Janvier does not fall into the ridiculous formula of the white explorers actually overpowering the Aztecs, who outnumber them.

Janvier's decision to reenact the conquest of the Americas at a psychological level is also a historically accurate one. Many historians believe that if Montezuma had not hesitated to wage war on Cortez, the Aztecs would have easily defeated the Spanish forces. Janvier's recreation is used not as a study in social psychology but as a tool to further strengthen the view that Westem civilization is biologically more fit to survive. The perception that a small group of Spanish explorers managed to crush the Aztec empire belies the fact that there were a number of factors which led to the fall of the Aztecs. Unfortunately, Janvier and his fellow Lost Race authors do not explore the myriad of factors which lead to the downfall of a civilization. Content to stick to their perception that a small group of whites would by nature be superior to a large group of non-whites, these authors create elaborate fantasies where the explorers conquer all they encounter by virtue of their own being. Such attitudes are reflected by Young's lack of respect for native lives:

116 "They killed Dennis, and that's a pretty bad business.. .But I take it that we've about evened things up by killin' eighteen of 'em -or six of their crowd dead for each one dead in ours. I guess we can call that part of th' business about square" (Janvier 107). The assigning of a numerical value to the worth of a white life versus a non-white life is telling. The ratio of 1:6 reflects trends then and now to express through scientific discourse differences of value between ethnic groups. Janvier attempts to quantify Aztec life as inherently less valuable than a white life, a view echoed by Palgrave: "As for the eighteen dead Indians-who had invited the death that so promptly had come to them-we did not bother ourselves about them at all. We left them to the coyotes" (Janvier 109).

With this inferiority of value comes the shame of being defeated or killed by someone deemed to be less in the judgment of science. For example, toward the end of the novel, Rayburn is injured by one of the Aztec warriors. In order to help him pull through. Young offers the following advice: "You see, old man . . . you've just got t' pull through. Think how d— d ashamed o' yourself you'd feel after you was dead when you had t' tell all the' folks in heaven that you was killed by nothin' better'n a mis'rable chump of an injun!" (Janvier 428). To be killed by a non-white is constructed as a process of shame. Even the fact that Young mentions heaven refers to an afterlife devoid of native life, a paradise devoid of difference. While the natives of The Aztec Treasure House are portrayed in contrast to Westem culture, there are nevertheless moments when Aztec culture mirrors that of the explorers. One such instance occurs at the beginning of the novel, when the legend of the lost city is explained to Palgrave. The legend tells that

Chaltzantzin, an ancient Aztec king, foresaw the coming of the white man and, to

117 this end, built a great city hidden deep in the jungle and away from the sight of any explorer or conquistador:

this city he then peopled with the very bravest and strongest of his race. And he made for those dwelling there a perpetual law that commanded that all such as showed themselves when come to maturity to be weak or malformed in body, or coward of heart, then should be put to death; to the end that their natural increase ever should be of the same stout stuff as themselves, and also that there might be no lack of victims for the sacrifices such are acceptable to their barbarous gods. And thus he provided that in the time of need there should be here a strong army of valiant warriors, ready to come forth to fight against the fair-faced bearded men, and by conquering them to save safe the land. (Janvier 56)

What we find in the Aztec civilization is a failed eugenic experiment, for even though they have bred only their best stock, they cannot escape their inherent faults. The above passage is informed by then popular notions of eugenic policy, but these programs were specifically designed for elite whites. As this type of logic goes, people of color cannot benefit from eugenic breeding because their genetic root is already corrupt. What Janvier does is incorporate emerging ideological trends into his narrative to demonstrate "scientifically" the genetic inferiority of native peoples. The narrative also enacts this knowledge in another way. While the explorers are making their escape. Young explains why Indians are inferior warriors to whites: "Indians haven't got any staying power in them"

(Janvier 310). Because this statement precedes the fall of the Aztec empire, it would also seem to apply to their biological and cultural longevity. "Staying power" is thus a revision of Spencer's phrase "survival of the fittest," and for the natives, not even the most rigorous eugenic policy can change what nature has already marked as inferior. The fall of the Aztec empire thus functions as a genetic closure to a course of genocide initiated four hundred years earlier.

118 Montezuma's Daughter and Heart of the World: Ranking Racial Purity

The most influential of the Lost Race novelists was H. Rider Haggard

(1856-1925). While there were other novelists who had written of imaginary journeys to lost or unknown places, it was Haggard who created the Lost Race novel formula in a career that saw the production of over fifty books. Haggard was one of the best-selling and best-oved authors of his time, and was even knighted by the queen in 1912. Haggard catapulted himself and the Lost Race novel into fame with the publication of his third and fourth novels. Kina Solomon's

Mines (1885) and She: A History of Adventure (1886). His influence can be seen in the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the science-fantasy genre, and the contemporary historical novel (Clute and Nichols 532). While Haggard wrote what can be categorized as escape novels, his works are nonetheless deeply political. Haggard's work, like the work of any other writer, reflects the political perspective of his time. Haggard's work was not a radical critique of British politics; rather, his novels promoted British ideology and culture. Consequently, his novels provide an ideological blueprint for the society from which they are bom. Haggard's fantasies of exploitation and domination make him a writer of tremendous relevance to contemporary critics interested in the political dimensions of popular writing. His narrative conventions-and, by extension, those of all Lost Race novels-depend upon outlandish schemes, magic, and the inherent Othemess of people of color, all of which combine to serve the interests of white elites in the U. S. and Britain. While the majority of Haggard's Lost Race novels take place in Africa, a handful take place in Latin America, including the historical romance Montezuma's Daughter and the formulaic Heart of the World.

119 These novels construct Aztec culture as violently primitive as compared with

British sensibility and refinement. Aztec civilization is cast as a threat to British civilization, and in the case of Heart of the World, to world civilization. Both novels, furthermore, enact racial hierarchies which reflect a desire for white racial purity, devalue native racial purity, and rationalize Spanish genetic corruption.

How the narratives sustain this confusing hodgpodge of racism provides us with a better understanding of their ideology.

Montezuma's Daughter, first published in 1893, is a historical romance told in the first person by Thomas Wingfield. Wingfield recounts his adventures as, first, a half-British half-Spanish nobleman and, later, as an adopted member and ruler of the Aztec empire. Montezuma's Daughter reflects tum-of-the-century views of race and ideas of racial purity. Consequently, it displays certain defining characteristics of the Lost Race novel: the white interloper, the beautiful native princess, the acquisition of wealth and power, and the inevitable triumph of the white protagonist. However, Haggard attempts to create in Montezuma's Daughter a historical epic that moves beyond the stylistic conventions of the Lost

Race novel while retaining the ideological elements which provide its foundation.

As a result, we find a work that is simultaneously a popular adventure tale and a detailed character study of the narrator, Thomas Wingfield.

The novel opens with Thomas Wingfield as a boy living with his parents and siblings in the English countryside. He lives a serene childhood, and the greatest shock he has to endure is that he is Spanish on his mother's side. The action of the novel begins when Wingfield finds his mother dead, killed by Juan de Garcia, his family's longtime rival. Consumed by vengeance, Thomas leaves behind Lily Bozard, the woman he intends to marry, and follows de Garcia back

120 to Spain and eventually the New World. Along the way he Is discovered and thrown overboard and presumed dead, but he washes up on shore and becomes a part of Montezuma's family when the Aztec ruler's daughter falls In love with him. They marry and raise a family, but when the Spanish arrive Thomas Is forced Into battle against de Garcia and the Spanish whom he detests. The subsequent battle claims the life of Otomie, Wingfield's wife, and he Is left broken hearted. He does, however, have his revenge on de Garcia as he watches the novel's villain go mad and fall Into a raging volcano. The Aztec empire In ruins,

Wingfield takes his family and returns to England where he raises them to forget their Aztec heritage, much like he has forgotten his Spanish heritage. Once back In England he marries Lily Bozard, who has faithfully waited for him. He Is knighted by the queen and writes a book of his adventures, the same book the reader Is reading, and lives the rest of his years In tranquillity and fame.

Montezuma's Daughter presents a complex protagonist dealing with

Issues of cultural Identity. Because the novel takes place during a heated battle between Britain and the Span, Wingfield's father demands that his son turn his back on his Spanish ancestry and embrace Instead British culture:

You are half a Spaniard, Thomas, your skin and eyes tell their own tale, but whatever skin and eyes may tell, let your heart give them the lie. Keep your heart English, Thomas; let no foreign devilments enter there. Hate all Spaniards except your mother, and be watchful lest her blood should master mine within you. (Haggard, Daughter 11)

Wingfield accepts his father's advice; he forces himself to be British while denying his Spanish background. This decision Is complicated, however, by the

Influence of Spanish blood, a substance which, claims Thomas, Is responsible for his bad temper and vice:

121 As for my father's counsel, that I should conquer my Spanish blood, would that I could always have followed it, for I know that from this blood springs the most of such evil as is in me. Hence my fixedness of purpose or rather obstinacy, and my powers of unchristian hatred that are not small towards those who have wronged me. Well, I have done what I might to overcome these other faults, but strive as we may, that which is bred in the bone will out in the flesh, as I have seen in many signal instances. (Haggard, Daughter 11-12)

Wingfield's violent streak is explained conveniently by the presence of Spanish blood and bone. This stain of color accompanies Wingfield everywhere he goes.

Another way of putting this is to say that Wingfield's major flaw is not being more British. The reader is expected to sympathize with Wingfield for all he suffers through and to share his pain of lacking a pure biology. It is not unusual for an author to gamer sympathy for the main character, especially in adventure melodrama such as Haggard wrote. What is of interest to this study is that the reader's sympathy is generated by the belief that one cannot fight against what has been genetically determined.

Wingfield's character flaws are determined by his Spanish blood , while his triumphs are due to his British blood. This categorization celebrates British moral and genetic fiber, while simultaneously denigrating Spanish culture. This formula is presented not as nationalistic propaganda, but as infallible scientific reasoning.

The origins of such differences in degree of worth were believed definable and explainable by a biological impulse: the blood, the bones, the person's physical characteristics. These biological signifiers opened up a landscape of potential or created a pit of failure. For Haggard, British biology was a thing of celebration and near perfection, while Spanish heritage was a thing of animosity and vice.

The meshing of the two marks the tragedy of Thomas Wingfield. He cannot live

122 in harmony with his mixed heritage because in tum-of-the-century terms such a

peaceful co-existence would have been next to impossible. Wingfield's mixed

ancestry is a constant state of tension mitigated by the social Darwnist idea that

there must be a single victor and that only the strongest identity can survive.

We find in Thomas Wingfield a microcosm of conflicting cultural and

political realities. Whose is the superior culture? Which country has the power

and ability to chart a path into the next century? The answer to these questions can be found in Wingfield's final victory over his own dual lineage. At the end of the novel he returns to England to reclaim the love of his childhood, Lily Bozard.

The rest of his life is peaceful, with his Spanish blood firmly under control.

Montezuma's Daughter is not only a simple adventure and love story, it is about

Wingfield's struggle to control his own identity, to subsume the conflict within him and conquer one element of himself. Victory over his Spanish blood represents not only a triumph for the character but the success of British culture, for if one man can defeat the Spaniard in himself, then British culture is surely superior to

Spanish civilization.

Spanish blood, however, is not always the root of evil. In some instances it is much more benign. An interesting aspect of Wingfield's Spanish ancestry is his maturity at an early age: "but young blood is nimble, and moreover mine was half Spanish, and made a man of me when many a pure-bred Englishman is still nothing but a boy" (Haggard, Daughter 16). This is a strange observation on the part of the narrator. Is such maturation a negative quality or is it praiseworthy, and if it is the latter then what does that imply about Spanish blood? These issues are never addressed, of course, for they force to the surface the illogic of Haggard's argument about the virtues of British ancestry and the degeneracy of

123 Spanish blood. Haggard's ideas are based on a scientific discourse that allows for the blanket application of racist methodologies that are at once complimentary even when they are mutually exclusive. For example, notice this description of

Wingfield's arch-rival Juan de Garcia:

He was very tall and noble-looking, dressed in rich garments of velvet adomed by a gold chain that hung about his neck, and as I judged about forty years of age. But it was his face which chiefly caught my eye, for at that moment there was something terrible about it. It was long, thin and deeply carved; the eyes were large, and gleamed like gold in sunlight; the mouth was small and well shaped, but it wore a devilish and cruel sneer; the forehead lofty, indicating a man of mind, and marked with a slight scar. (Haggard, Daughter 18)

Juan de Garcia is a dastardly villain and a coward who kills Wingfield's mother, yet Wingfield is quick to admit that he is a man of intelligence, as demonstrated by the slope of the forehead. Furthermore, Juan de Garcia has an almost regal flair, with his dark and handsome feature and his expensive clothes. De Garcia's shortcomings do not have a physical manifestation, but are figments of a much deeper and invisible circumstance. Haggard's description of de Garcia as

"intelligent" due to the slope of his forehead yet "terrible" due to the shape of his face is indicative of the narrative's ideological impetus. There is an overtone of craniometrics-the evaluation of the individual through a detailed examination of the skull and its contents (Gould 105-141 )-in Wingfield's description of de Garcia. At the same time, there are numerous references throughout the narrative to Spanish blood as degenerate, thus qualifying blood as both a physical and ephemeral marker. There occurs a movement from the physical, measurable world of numerical science, as represented by the shape of de Garcia's skull and face, to the abstract and theoretical world of science as social

124 and cultural policy where one's character Is predetermined by genetic blueprint,

referred to here as the concept of blood or lineage. The narrative charts a pivot

point in the history of racist dogma by claiming two methodologically contrasting

pseudoscientific approaches. This clash of explanations reflects the evolution of

racist thought in Britain and America, with the novel situated between two

movements distinct in approach but akin in conclusion.

As in The Aztec Treasure House, the natives in Montezuma's Daughter

ascribe to the same kind of eugenic codes as do the British. When Wingfield first

meets Guatemoc, Otomie's cousin, he prostrates himself before the royal figure. To this motion Guatemoc replies: "Surely, Teule, if I know anything of the looks

of men, we are too equal in our birth, as in our age, for you to salute me as a

slave greets his master" (Haggard, Daughter 109). Given that there is an

understood equality between the two men. Haggard suggests that there are

Aztecs comparable to British in degree of dignity and worth. As the novel

progresses, the reader feels a sympathy for the Aztecs: "Indeed, so well was I

treated, that had it not been that my heart was far away, and because of the horrible rites of their religion which I was forced to witness almost daily, I could

have learned to love this gentle, skilled, and industrious people" (Haggard,

Daughter 108). What we find then is a gradual acceptance of Aztec civilization, capped by Wingfield's marriage to Otomie and the family they raise.

Consequently, Wingfield comes to prefer Aztec life to Spanish life, and, after his Aztec family is killed, his hatred for Spanish culture is heightened. It is no wonder that Wingfield prefers the Aztecs to the Spanish, and it is no coincidence that Haggard creates a situation where the only culture close in honor, dignity.

125 and accomplishment to the British empire has been dead for nearly four hundred years.

While Wingfield associates with the Aztecs out of disdain for the

Spaniards, he never lets it be forgotten that the Aztecs, for all their accomplishments, are "savages." The reader is reminded of this "truth" throughout the novel. The same savage curse of blood which haunts Wingfield can be found excessively in every member of the Aztec race, including the beautiful and honorable Otomie:

At once pure and passionate, of royal blood and heart, rich natured and most womanly, yet brave as a man and beautiful as the night, with a mind athirst for knowledge and a spirit that no sorrows could avail to quell, ever changing in her outer moods and yet most faithful and with the hour of a man, such was Otomie . .. And yet there was that in her nature which should have held me back had I but known of it, for with all her charm, her beauty and her virtues, at heart she was still a savage, and strive as she could to hide it, at times her blood would master her. (Haggard, Daughter 122)

Aztec brutality is expressed through their religion, or, put another way, their lack of Christianity. "In most ways they were equal to any nation of our own world of which I had knowledge. None are more skilled in the arts, few are better architects of boast purer laws. Moreover, they were brave and had patience.

But their faith was the canker at the root of the tree" (Haggard, Daughter 107).

This savagery reaches an apex when the Aztec warriors eat the bodies of sacrificed Spaniards in front of a shocked Wingfield: "[Spaniards] were sacrificed on the alter of Huitzel, and given over to be devoured by the Aztecs according to the beastlike custom which in Anahuac enjoined the eating of the bodies of those who were offered to the gods, not because the Indians love such meat but for a secret religious reason" (Haggard, Daughter 218). Religious ritual, clouded by

126 secrecy, creates a picture of a people whose sacred lives reveal them to be less than human. The implication is that while Aztecs may have the virtues of a mighty empire and individual honor, these features are compromised by their savage religion and lack of Christianity, a criticism that is central to The Aztec

Treasure House. This same critique is leveled against the Spanish who have turned Catholic conversion into an excuse for torture. Spanish barbarity is exemplified early in the novel when De Garcia entombs a young woman, the mother of his illegitimate child, in the wall of a nunnery to hide his shame. Above these two cultures stands the British empire. The picture Haggard paints is one of British righteousness created out of a pure genetic being that the Spanish do not have and of a pure spiritual being that the Aztecs lack.

We find these same genetic concerns informing Haggard's 1895 novel

Heart of the World. The narrator of the novel, Don Ignatio, is the last in a line of direct Mayan descendants and owner of one half of the "Heart of the World," a stone of mystic powers. The novel is essentially his memoirs as told to Jones, a British businessman whom Ignatio has chosen as the inheritor of his lavish estate. At the novel's opening, Don Ignatio recounts his early adventures as a young man and his attempt to unify the native peoples of the Americas. He almost succeeds, but for the treachery of a native woman who falls in love with a

Spanish officer. His uprising thwarted, Don Ignatio retires to his hacienda never again to venture far from his home or trust another woman. Years later, as an older man, Ignatio leams that the bearer of the other half of the "Heart of the

World" has surfaced and is searching for him. Ignatio begins a quest to restore the stone which, when whole, will give native people rule over the Americas once again. During his quest, Ignatio meets James Strickland, a British adventurer.

127 They eventually find the cleaved stone's aged bearer, who rules the lost city of the Mayans, and his beautiful daughter, Maya, who immediately falls in love with

Strickland. It seems like Ignatio will succeed in his dream of creating a new native empire, but petty political squabbles and the love between Maya and

Strickland doom Ignatio to repeat the tragedy of his youth. At the close of the novel, the native peoples are divided by the turmoil among them, and the ancient city of the Mayans is destroyed by the native gods who are angry at their people's betrayal. Tragedy befalls the novel's heroes as well: Maya goes insane when she realizes that her decision to marry Strickland dooms her father and her people, Strickland dies a few years later of a broken heart, and Ignatio returns to his hermetic existence, his dreams of a native utopia forever lost.

We find the same racial distinctions in Montezuma's Daughter present in

Heart of the World: European culture is portrayed as pure and civilized, while native culture represents primitivism and barbarism. Haggard's prejudices are best demonstrated by his offensive portrayal of Mestizos. Upon his arrival in

Mexico, Jones, the character to whom Ignatio relates his story, attempts to make friends with the native population: "This attempt, however, he soon gives up in disgust, seeing that these men proved to be half-breeds of the lowest class, living in vice" (Haggard, Heart 2). This same characterization of the Mestizo is repeated later in the novel when Don Ignatio tells Jones of an incident from his past: "With them they brought a mule load of dollars . .. which some of our fellow-townsmen, half-breeds of wicked life, determined to steal" (Haggard, Heart

18). Mixed ethnicity is also portrayed as threatening. Note the atmosphere of dread when Ignatio and Jones enter a hacienda: "Several lamps were hung upon its walls, for already it grew dark, and by their light we saw five or six

128 people gathered round a long table waiting for supper... Of these men it is sufficient to say that they were of mixed nationality and villainous appearance"

(Haggard, Heart 99). All Mestizos in the novel are described as untrustworthy, degenerate, or, at the very least, passive. This racist portrayal is generated, at least in part, by a eugenic idea that holds to a notion of racial purity. While a racially pure state is itself a biological fantasy, it is nevertheless used as a rationale to "explain" the perceived degeneracy of Mestizos and natives. Not all natives are constructed in such scornful ways, however. Ignatio, a

"pure" Mayan descendent is portrayed as a man of dignity and valor; but there is a problem with this representation. Like the protagonist of Montezuma's

Daughter. Ignatio seeks to erase his cultural background. As Wingfield strives to replace the passion of Spanish blood with the refinement of British culture, so does Ignatio seek to leave behind what he considers to be his barbaric and heathenish culture and adopt instead Christianity and the trappings of a civilized

European life. For example, while Don Ignatio is pure Indian, he acts British and refers to himself as a Christian.

Ignatio's confusing European/native identity is rationalized by the fictional history of his native people. He tells the story of the white god Quetzal "who came to these lands in the far past to civilize their peoples" (Haggard, Heart 63).

Upon his arrival. Quetzal gives the natives a large, ruby-like object known as the

"Heart of the World." He claims that as long as it remains whole the natives will rule the land, but if it is ever sundered their power will vanish and their empire fall into chaos. The white god Christianizes the natives, and with their newfound religion the native people flourish until one of their rulers marries a witch from a far away land. The leader once again begins human sacrifice and there is a split

129 among the native people. Those who practice human sacrifice become the

Aztecs, while the other group, known as the worshipers of the Heart (which has now come to act as a symbol for Christ), hide out in the mountains in their secret city until such a time that the Heart can be made whole again. As punishment for abandoning their Christian ways, God sends the Spanish to conquer the Aztecs, initiating hundreds of years of servitude and oppression.

As the inheritor of this sad condition, Ignatio sees himself as ruler of his people; yet, because of his royalist mentality, he also sees himself as superior to them. Note how Ignatio addresses Moreno, a Mexican character;

However well born you may be, my descent is nobler and more ancient than yours . . . Least of all should the Don José Moreno, whose . . . mother was a half bred mestiza slut, dare to be insolent to me who, as any Indian on board this ship can tell you, am a prince among my own people. (Haggard, Heart 75; emphasis added)

Ignatio sees himself as Moreno's social and genetic better, and he illustrates this superiority by attacking Moreno's Mestizo mother. Ignatio's dismissal of Moreno and his heritage is generated by the narrative's contempt for a multiethnic identity. As such, Ignatio has intemalized the racist discourse of the culture he has adopted. There is a contradiction here that the novel refuses to address. According to the logic of the narrative, it is acceptable for a native to adopt British ways if that native is "pure," as is Ignatio. Mestizos are portrayed as being unable to refashion their identity because they are genetically corrupt. The narrative privileges racial purity, but in a way that serves the interest only of white elites. For example, while Haggard's sympathies are with Ignatio, he is always subservient to Westem culture, either through his assimilation into British culture or his valorization of Strickland:

130 At this moment... I chanced to see a man such as I had never before beheld, standing by my side and gazing at me. Stories are told of how men and women, looking on each other for the first time, in certain cases are filled with a strange passion of love, of which, come what may, they can never again be rid... .at that moment I felt something akin to it-not love, indeed, but a great sense of friendship and sympathy for and with this man, which, mastering me then, is still growing to this hour, though its object has for many years been dead. (Haggard, Heart 33; emphasis added)

Homoerotic suggestion aside, this scene highlights a form of submission that takes the form of friendship. Ignatio trusts Strickland and considers him a brother, and, consequently, a fellow member of his royal bloodline. Nowhere else is this better illustrated than when Ignatio, trapped in a cave and thinking he is about to die, reveals to Strickland the secret of the "Heart of the World" and then prepares to make him lord of all the natives. This is perhaps the greatest moment of irony in the novel, made all the more so by the author's obvious lack of intent to make it ironic. What is supposed to be a scene illustrating the growing camaraderie between these two men becomes the narrative's ideology in a nutshell: the natives of the Americas are better off being ruled by whites.

Ignatio does not die, but he has clearly chosen Strickland as the only worthy successor to his throne, completely disregarding his native assistant, who has been by his side for years, and his other loyal native followers. Furthermore, so long as Ignatio is prince, the natives will continue to be under colonialist rule since there is essentially no difference between Ignatio and the culture he seeks to free them from.

Ignatio's confusing character construction can best be understood as a failure of the narrative to create a well-developed non-white character. This

131 limitation also applies to the portrayal of Maya. Note Ignatio's description when he and Strickland first encounter her:

She was an Indian, but such an Indian as I had never known before, for in color she was almost white, and her face was oval and small-featured, and in it shone a pair of wonderful dark-blue eyes, while the clinging white robe she wore revealed the loveliness of her tall and delicate shape. (Haggard, Heart 125; emphasis added)

As the novel draws to a close, Maya becomes even more Westem in appearance. On her wedding day, Maya stuns the narrator with her European features:

On she came, or rather floated, her delicate head held high; and so strange and beautiful was the aspect of her face, that for my part, from the instant that I beheld it till she stood before me by the bridegroom, I seemed to see naught else. It was very pale and somewhat set; indeed at that moment Maya looked more like a white woman than one of Indian blood, and her curved lips were parted as though they waited for some forgotten words to pass them, her deeo-blue eyes also were set wide. (Haggard, Heart 294; emphasis added)

Both passages emphasize Maya's white skin and blue eyes and locate her beauty in non-Indian features. These features function as markers which serve to separate Maya from her native environment. This differentiation serves an erotic fantasy: Strickland can enjoy the exoticism of the native woman, while not having to compromise or challenge his own Eurocentrism. Similarly, for the most part white male readership can entertain a fantasy that is simultaneously taboo- because the object of sexual desire is a non-white woman, and safe-because the native is, in this case, also white. Maya's Westem identity is further established by her modernist perspective. The narrator comments:

132 Strange as it may seem, I, who watched [Strickland and Maya] both from day to day, know it to be true that she was in mind the more modem of the two,--so much so, indeed, that in listening to their talk, I might have fancied that Maya was the child of the New World, filled with the spirit of to-day, and he the heir of a proud and secret race dying beneath its weight of years. (Haggard, Heart 158- 59)

Maya's embrace of the present is a conscious decision on her part. Note how she even chastises Strickland for spending too much time dwelling on Latin

American history: “I cannot understand you . . . why do you so love histories and ruins and stories of people that have long been dead? I hate them. Once they lived and doubtless were well enough in their place and time, but now they are past and done with, and it is we who live, live live!” (Haggard, Heart 159: emphasis added). Maya is not interested in the secrets of the past, only with the potential of the future. She is concerned only with her life and not with the fallen empires of her people's past. Maya's love for the present comes at the expense of her people, for even though she-as a princess and keeper (along with her father) of the "Heart of the World"-has the power to resurrect them, she feels them to be beyond salvation. But what type of life does she desire if she does not feel any kinship with her own cultural history?

I tell you . . . that this home of mine, of which you are so fond of talking, is nothing but a great burying-place, and those who dwell in it are like ghosts who wander to and fro thinking of the things that they did, or did not do, a thousand years before. . . .1 believe that our blood has had its day. There is no more growth in us, we are com ripe for the sickle of death,-that is, most of us are. Therefore, if I could have my will, while I am still young I would turn back upon this city which you so desire to see, taking with me the wealth that is useless there, but which, it seems, would bring me many good things among people who have a present and a future as well as a past. (Haggard, Heart 159; emphasis added)

133 Strickland and the white world he represents seem a paradise for Maya, and they are made all the more accessible because of the wealth she has access to.5

There is in this construction a reversal of roles: usually, it is the explorers who seek paradise, but here it is the native princess who seeks to escape. Maya's reasons for fleeing her land and people are in part due to her desire to recreate herself. The emphasized phrase above implies that native culture has no meaning or relevance for Maya. What we see here is the Westem imagination unable to conceive of a world outside itself. Maya's desire to escape into a culture with a past, present, and future reinscribes Westem civilization as the primary cultural force of history.

While Maya seeks an escape from her own historical location, the narrative seeks to reenact history, specifically the Malinche myth. Malinche was

Cortez's mistress, and with her help, the legend says, he conquered the Aztec empire. The story in Heart of the World is not much different: Maya falls in love with a white man and as a result the native empire is lost. At the end of the novel, Maya and Strickland trick the priests of the lost city into letting them marry and giving them permission to live in the outside world. As soon as this occurs, a giant flood destroys the city, a literal deus ex machina which is explained as the retribution of the native gods. Understanding what she has caused, Maya goes mad and dies shortly afterward leaving behind a drowned kingdom, a broken­ hearted Strickland, and a forever-to-be-displaced prince in Ignatio. This course of events places the blame on Maya, much like Latin American historians have blamed Malinche as a traitor and key figure in the fall of the Aztec empire. Maya admits responsibility when she sees the destruction of her city. Falling to the ground, she cries out:

134 Behold my handiwork.. .and the harvest of my sin! Oh! my father, that dream which you sent to haunt my sleep was dreadful, but it did not touch the truth. Oh! my father, the people whom you would have saved are dead; lost is the city that you loved, and it is I who have destroyed them. Oh! my father, my father, your curse has found me out indeed, and I am accursed. (Haggard, Heart 340)

Maya admits her folly and her madness grows out of her regret for having forsaken her people. The implications of this scenario are disturbing, but very much in line with the formula of the Lost Race novel. As with other texts examined in this study, we once again find native people incapable of self- government, self-control, and self-determination.

Ignatio and Maya, potential rulers of the native people of the Americas, are both portrayed as white and as desiring assimilation into British culture. This portrayal reinforces the white power structure in the Americas while simultaneously justifying the subjugation of native peoples as natural due to their degenerate condition. Why does Ignatio never fully realize the extent to which he has left behind his own people? Why does Maya turn her back on her own people and choose instead Strickland's love? Part of the answer lies in the simple need on the part of the author to tell a good story of tragedy and doomed romance. But we are also justified in asking if Haggard could have written a novel where Ignatio succeeds. What would a novel of an empire of natives which conquer their white masters read like? Could Haggard have even conceived of a world where all that was natural to him was suddenly turned on its head? We have no way of answering, of course, but I do not think Haggard's background would have allowed him to tell such a story. It is fine for Haggard to show that the danger of a native rebellion exists, but it can never come to fruition. Such rebellions must, by the very workings of natural law, be quelled, or so Haggard

135 implies. Perhaps one of the most insidious of narrative techniques used to communicate this culturally racist idea of natural superiority is that the natives undermine their own efforts. All they have to do, after all, is undergo a ritual where Ignatio and Maya are joined by the stone and the power to rule all of the

Americas is retumed to them. But instead, because of petty squabbling and what is portrayed as the natural unreliability of women, the plot fails. The implication, of course, is that those in power do not even have to worry about standing guard against such an insurgence because the natives' own shortcomings as individuals will ensure their continued downtrodden state.

Haggard's strategy in Heart of the World is to portray a lost race as remarkable, but ultimately impotent. The nearest metaphor with which to describe the characterization of the lost race is a museum piece; they are fascinating to look at and valuable because of their antiquity and what they can tell us of the past, but they have no place in the contemporary age. Haggard values them only as links to a bygone time and for the adventure that their presence offers. The native community that has remained unchanged for thousands of ears offers a fresh landscape for European explorers to continue the colonization which had been ongoing for the previous three centuries. Native communities are always looked upon as objects to be explored, studied and exploited. They are resources, never people. But in Haggard's objectification there is also some envy. Haggard and his contemporaries valued purity of race.

The belief in a white superiority has its roots in a belief in racial purity, and nowhere is this purity more evident that in native communities who have been isolated from the rest of humanity for hundreds if not thousands of years. Haggard's celebration of racial purity even while he establishes hierarchies within

136 that purity is confusing, but hardly surprising. They may be portrayed as barbaric, uncivilized, and a host of other labels European explorers first placed on them, but natives still held an almost mystical attraction to proto-sf novelists.

It is the native's racial "purity" which draws Haggard; it is their original condition which he admires. But to do so he must establish his own racial state as not only pure, but superior. It is not until the end of the novel that Haggard offers a final "explanation" for white supremacy. It is religion which is the difference. Haggard implies that because both races are pure there must be some quality in whites which makes them just that much better. Christianity is Haggard's justification, and he uses the historical process of colonization as evidence of his belief in divine retribution. Again, as with the previous texts examined here, the novelist forces an explanation by meshing together two fundamentally contrasting positions, Christianity and social Danwinism, in hopes of proving objectively the a priori conviction of white genetic and cultural supremacy.

The Romance of Golden Star: The Constraints and Limits of the Genre

George Griffith's (1857-1906) novel. The Romance of Golden Star (1897), echoes the concems with genetic purity and native degeneracy that figure so prominently in Haggard's novels. Griffith's novel follows the adventures of

Vilcaroya, a resurrected Inca prince, as he gathers his people and leads them in a revolution against the white colonizers. By novel's end, Vilcaroya has defeated his enemies and married Ruth Djama, a British woman of Eastem descent who will live as his queen in the new-found native country which was formerly Peru.

137 Unlike the other novels examined in this chapter, The Romance of Golden Star ends with the creation of a native empire, rather than with the destruction of one.

However, this construction is problematic given the genetic foundation upon which it is built. While The Romance of Golden Star pretends to reach a different conclusion than other Lost Race novels, it nevertheless remains ideologically linked to those narratives. This inability to break with generic formula offers the contemporary reader and critic a glimpse at the ideological constraints at work in the Lost Race novel.

To better understand The Romance of Golden Star, it is important to first understand its author. George Griffith, the working name for British journalist

George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones, was an "outspoken freethinker" and a radical

"journalist crusading for secularism and socialism" (Stableford, Romance 44-45).

While proto-sf authors tended to be political conservatives, Griffith was extremely critical of capitalism and expansionism (Stableford, Romance 44-55). He was so anti-U. S. in his fiction and joumalism that very little of what he wrote was published in the States (Clute and Nichols 527; Stableford. Romance 44-55L

Griffith's critique of the status quo informs his novels, yet it ultimately reinforces the concept of racial purity and Westem domination.

We can see this ideological predicament expressed through the novel's main character, Vilcaroya. Vilcaroya is a genuine Inca, and his racial purity is used as a marker for his genetic superiority. Note what happens when the displaced Inca prince meets one of his own people:

I know all the Children of the Blood that are left in the land, and I have never seen your face before, yet you are of the Blood. Who are you-Lord? The last word seemed forced from his lips by some power other than his own will, and it sounded most pleasant to me, for it

138 told me that, without knowing my name, and seeing me only as a stranger, he had recognized the stamp of my divine ancestry. (Griffith 52)

Vilcaroya Is ruler because of some amorphous quality that, while recognizable, remains unexplainable. His "divine" ancestry Is a meshing of two distinct categories of political justification: supematural or spiritual agency and genetic determinism. These rationales work to place Vllcaroya's nobility outside of a political context and to justify his position as unassailable. While Griffith Is trying to make a hero of Vilcaroya, having him lead a rebellion against the forces of colonialism, the author succeeds only In reinforcing a cultural system which was beginning to accept genetic determinism as a very real social force. The novel continually stresses the point that Vilcaroya was bom to rule and that his people were bom to sen/e him. Griffith, while perhaps attempting a very different type of

Lost Race novel In terms of story, nevertheless has written a Lost Race novel which adheres to Ideas of social stratification along genetic lines. This obsession with genetic quality Is reflected In the portrayal of

Vllcaroya's native subjects. Take, for example, the following quote, when one of

Vllcaroya's generals, the white man Francis Hartness, speaks to Vilcaroya about the native stock: "You are of their own blood, the son of one of their ancient kings. These people, these Peruvians, are only mongrel descendants of those who have plundered and oppressed them for centuries. They owe them no allegiance that Is worth the name; but you they would hall, not only as their lawful king, but almost as a god ..." (Griffith 142). Hartness' choice of words Is telling.

Vilcaroya Is elevated practically to the status of a god among his people, especially by those who are of mixed ethnic Identities. In this representation we find once again the notion of racial purity as the determining factor of an 139 individual's worth. Vilcaroya's ascension to power is not so much about the freedom of a subjugated and exploited people, but about how powerful genetic determinism was thought to be in the creation of one's identity.

While The Romance of Golden Star stands apart from most Lost Race novels in that the natives have regained their own land, it envisions this regeneration through a genetic fantasy that privileges a racial purity associated with European, especially British, culture. We see this racial conceit at work when, while riding through the countryside, seeking his people, Vilcaroya enters a village:

I had already seen, while riding through the village, that the people were different to those of all other villages that we had come through on the way. They were taller of stature, prouder of carriage, and fairer of face. The blood showed red in their cheeks through the light brown of their skin, and these signs had told me that if any remnant of the pure Inca race was left these must be they. (Griffith 49-50; emphasis added)

The fairer the people, the more native they are? This is absurd. Griffith's novel does not praise native culture so much as use the image of a pre-Columbian civilization to criticize a contemporaneous political enemy of Britain. Griffith believes the native people of the Americas are dark only because of Spanish influence. As in Montezuma's Daughter. Spanish blood is constructed as a degenerative influence. The anti-Spanish and anti-colonial sentiment voiced throughout the novel is empty rhetoric that only works to establish hierarchies of racial purity. So long as this pure standard remains intact, there will always be an inferior party. Take, for example, this following statement from one of

Vilcaroya's followers: "There are five hundred [men] here. Lord, and as many thousand within the valley, whose blood has flowed pure from the olden times.

140 unpolluted by a single stain of Spanish dirt" (Griffith 53). The entire concept of the Mestizo is reversed in the most negative of ways because the old distinction between fair and swarthy still stands. The only difference is that Griffith assigns the Spanish as being dark and the natives as white. The ultimate implication here is, of course, that the white must always be essentially good and the dark essentially sinister, no matter the geographic distribution. We find this same strategy in Haggard's novels. Whenever an upstanding or impressive native is encountered, he or she is always whitened. Natives must first be infused with a European quality before they can be admired

These characterizations are nothing new, but what makes this novel so odd is that they occur simultaneously with more critical examinations of the effects of colonialism. When a character refers to natives as lazy and degenerate, Ruth chastises him and offers the following explanation: "If you belonged to a race that had been enslaved and plundered by these brutes of

Spaniards and Peruvians for three centuries and a half, do you think you would be any better than these poor fellows?" (Griffith 55). Incredibly, Ruth's statement speaks to the native condition as one which has been constructed and created by social, economic, and political forces. Whereas Lost Race novelists cited essentialist and determinist arguments as explanations for the differences between cultures, this scene implies that cultural characteristics are at least partially determined by their interaction with other cultures. In this case, the systematic exploitation and elimination of native peoples perpetrated by Spanish culture has decimated the native population. This explanation refutes the then popularly accepted notion that natives and people of color were biologically inclined towards social inferiority. Yet even as the narrative calls our attention to

141 the political origins of social inequality, it insists on marking some individuals and nationalities as naturally superior to others, as Vilcaroya is superior to his followers and Britain is superior to Spain.

This contradiction in the narrative alerts us not to bad writing, but to the cultural situation which allows such contradictions to exist in such a way that they are not a source of tension. Stephen Gould writes that "In assessing the impact of science upon eighteenth- and nineteenth century views of race, we must first recognize the cultural milieu of a society whose leaders and intellectuals did not doubt the propriety of racial ranking" (63). Griffith may have been intentionally working against the formula of the Lost Race novel, but he could not work against the racist mindset of his age. The result is a narrative that does not move beyond the racist conclusions of Lost Race novels, but merely jumbles, conflates, and confuses them, and arrives at them following an idiosyncratic path.

Conclusion

The Lost Race novel reflects tum-of-the-century concems with racial purity. In celebrating American and British culture, the Lost Race novel constructs British and American white elites as racially pure beings. The question Lost Race novels wrestle with is how to rationalize the genetic degeneracy of native cultures who have been in seclusion for centuries. After all, if these cultures have been undiscovered by the West, then it stands to reason that they are a purer breed than American and British whites whose colonization tactics have brought them into contact with various ethnic groups from Asia to

142 Africa to the New World. The rationalizations enacted by the narrative-including

vacillating between emerging eugenic theories and notions of racial purity, on the

one hand, and religious doctrine, on the other-serve to erase this tension.

Furthermore, it is possible that at some level the Lost Race novel serves to

remind tum-of-the-century British and American cultures that the colonization and

contacts which they have initiated have not degenerated their racial purity. This

rationalization is, of course, a fantasy generated by a false belief in a standard of

racial purity. Nevertheless, the emerging theories of eugenic maintenance and

control directed at people of color and marginalized whites point to a greater anxiety present in tum-of-the-century American and British culture, an anxiety which in some way needs to be alleviated. Eugenic social programs and social

policies defined by social Darwinist principles are some strategies; the Lost Race

novel is another. The strategy at work in the Lost Race novel is the historical solution of the

cultural annihilation on non-whites, specifically the native peoples of the

Americas. This solution has the effect of transforming history into an amoral

subject which qualifies the extermination of American natives as a historical

inevitability. We see this dynamic played out in the most basic plot device of Lost

Race novels: tensions which arise between the explorers and the natives always

serve to reinforce the cultural values of the explorers. This reaffirmation of the

explorers' ideological position is central to the Lost Race novel, as it is neither a

medium of political revolution nor a medium through which dominant ideology is

questioned. Rather, the Lost Race novel acts as an ideological dumping ground for the convictions of colonialism of the past and present. The Lost Race novel supports the economic and exploitive dimensions of colonialism and capitalism

143 and thus serves as a conservative reaffirmation of British and American exploration, conquest, and exploitation. Because it adheres to conservative ideological values, the Lost Race novel is a propagandistic medium which holds at its center a belief in the inherent genetic purity of British and American white elites. In The Aztec Treasure House. Montezuma's Daughter and Heart of the

World, this racial purity is expressed through the acts of forgetting and denial. In each of the novels one or more of the native characters puts aside his or her own native identity, his or her own cultural identity in order to serve the white explorers. In The Aztec Treasure House, we have Pablo who has a confrontational first meeting with the lost Aztecs who are his own people. In Montezuma's Daughter. Wingfield denies his children any knowledge of their

Aztec customs. In Heart of the World. Don Ignatio and Maya turn their back on their culture to adopt European customs. This syndrome of forgetting and denial reinscribes whiteness as a racially pure condition and serves that state through the consumption and/or destruction of the native presence. In The Romance of Golden Star, the Lost Race formula is recast as whitened natives create a utopia built on a foundation of racial ranking and genetic purity; again, whiteness is reinscribed. The Lost Race novel keeps alive the colonizer's dream that there are new places to discover, new resources to exploit. The genre acts as the final terrestrial landscape where the dreams of colonization and economic growth can occur in direct line with what previous colonization tactics. The Lost Race novel thus acts as the fantasy link to the past, a past that is simultaneously stable and recyclable. The past remains stable in these novels because there is always a

144 new civilization to explore and conquer, and it is recyclable because this dream is continually realized. But by the close of the nineteenth-century this fantasy of endless resources is dying , yet the dream of an inferior people and a place to be easily exploited remains a powerful political intoxicant. This dream of exploitation will later take the next logical step, outer space and other worlds. The desire to own and to control, under the guise of the "universal" human desire to challenge the unknown, is realized in the newly emerging American pulps. The landscapes may change dramatically, but the same driving forces of racism and exploitation and a general hatred of the Other remain disturbingly the same.

145 Notes ^ Everett F. Bleiler lists many of these In his extensive survey and annotated bibliography, Science Fiction: The Early Years (1990).

2 Clareson reminds us that this literature was written for an adult audience. Lost Race novels were never intended for juveniles because, in addition to the ideological expressions this project examines, these novels

"provided their readers with the acceptable erotica of the period" (Clareson, "Lost

Lands" 131).

3 We see provincialism passing as a deep understanding of cultural and political forces in late pulp sf, specifically in the work of Robert Heinlein. This recurring strategy reveals that proto-sf and sf narratives are trying to make some kind of profound statement. The nature of the statement may change from generation to generation, but that it is made at the expense of Others remains constant as I argue in Part 2 of this study.

4 Evidence of Pablo's passivity occurs early in the novel. After Young kicks Pablo and calls him an "infernal fool of a Greaser Indian," the boy merely smiles and nods it off as If he deserved such treatment (Janvier 77). Pablo would rather be on the receiving end of punishment than initiate any type of conflict with whites. It is not until he meets other Indians that he shows his aggressive side. 5 Here we find an interesting adaptation of Khouri's theories. Instead of the white explorer seeking the wealth of the Lost Race, it is the representative of that race, Maya, who seeks to expand her wealth into the Westem world.

146 PART TWO EARLY AND LATE PULP SCIENCE FICTION

1911-1964

147 INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO THE PULP AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION

Pulp science fiction emerges in the second decade of the twentieth- century, a child of the paranoid visions of the Future War novel and the romance and exoticism of the Lost Race novel. As I argue in Part One of this study, these nineteenth-century narratives enact strategies aimed at increasing the hegemony of American and British cultures, strategies which rest upon a foundation of social Darwinism, eugenics, and the erasure of visibly ethnic Others. Pulp sf carries forward this same concern, but under a significantly different guise. While social Danwinism and eugenics do not disappear from pulp sf, they became much more subtle in their workings as they are transposed upon a newly emerging cultural symbology. It is in the pulps that science fiction as we know it today comes into being. Massive starships, death rays, robots, alien worlds-the most basic images and tropes of what is popularly conceived of as "science fiction" are first introduced into the American imagination within the pages of cheaply printed wood pulp magazines aimed at an audience of boys and young men of white European descent. While originally a ghetto literature (Aldiss, Trillion 202), pulp sf is intimately tied to the political condition of the United States and thus is guided by and reflective of the nation's rise to power in the twentieth-century. At the time of the

148 emergence of pulp sf, “The United States was a political and cultural entity in the making. Every new symbol of technological advance-the railroad, the oil well, the radio station-was contributing to a process of creation and was seen in that light" (Stableford, "Speculative" 10; emphasis in original). Pulp sf is informed by a scientific rationalism that finds its expression in technological achievement, which is in turn viewed as the motor of progress. We may argue, then, that pulp sf is the early vision of a section of American culture, composed almost exclusively of while males, which has as its defining characteristic the romance of power: "At the core of much sf fantasy is an identification with power" (Huntington 44). But "power" in pulp sf pretends to mean something besides politics; power in pulp sf is constructed as being outside of history and social forces. Huntington writes that "It is this contradiction-an eager fantasy of power and a disclaimer of politics-that characterizes the technocratic vision, and it would not be too much to say that the resolution of this contradiction, the achievement of nonpolitical power, is in some sense the goal of all the mechanisms of SF" (44-45).

Huntington's idea can be put another way: the achievement of nonpolitical power is in fact the celebration of white power. I use white power to refer to a historical process of exploration, colonization, and exploitation that has benefited heterosexual U. S. males of European descent. By white power I mean the pervasive cultural influence that has been constructed based on the political values of white Europeans and their U. S. descendants, values which have historically included the marginalization and erasure of non-white cultures. In pulp sf, white power is constructed as a natural consequence of progress through

149 the proliferation of technology. Given this construction, pulp sf celebrates white power not as a political condition, but as a human one.

Pulp sf promotes not only white power but the American institution itself as a benign force, and enacts "what C. Wright Mills once termed 'the American celebration'-the idea that in this, the best of all possible worlds, science, literature, and other forms of culture flourish because this is truly a pluralistic society in which European type struggles linked to class, race, and gender have yielded to compromise and consensus, the vehicles through which social progress may be forged" (Aronowitz 210). It is precisely this vision of a white male capitalist utopia that stretches from Gemsback to Heinlein and remains virtually unchallenged in sf until the mid sixties.

Inherent in this vision is the drive to find "nonpolitical" methods to deal with the political anxiety at the sf core. In their attempt to create worlds where political tensions are erased and/or controlled, pulp sf authors reveal their inability to account for the ethnic Other. People of color are repeatedly portrayed as either outside the social order or so assimilated by that order that their differences are superficial at best. In pulp sf, people of color are acted upon, they are never actors. Fear of and disdain for the Other are political reactions, and while these texts repress that realization, there is simply no alternative but to realize it, if only as an implied narrative undercurrent. Consequently, pulp sf seeks to establish a condition where politics can be replaced by a nonpolitical system based on scientific knowledge. This strategy, enacted to this day by many sf narratives, expresses dominant culture's desire to escape political responsibility for those whom it relegates to the social margins.

150 Chapters Three and Four of this study are an examination of pulp sf, which I divide into two periods: early pulp sf written between 1911-1940 and late pulp sf written between 1941-1964. Like the distinctions between historical literary periods, these dates are not absolute markers, and there is an overlap of themes and motifs between them. Nevertheless, as we shall see, these dates point to significant developments and trends in the genre. The most obvious of these differences is the sf sense of style. Early pulp sf, for example, is marked by simplistic stories of super-science while late pulp sf, in response to early pulp sf, is marked by a more sophisticated narrative aesthetic; it is, in other words, better written, a development which has been discussed my numerous critics

(Aldiss, Trillion 233-71; Panshin. World 345-408: Clareson, Understanding 40-

128). While an accurate assessment of the stylistics of the genre, I will argue in the following two chapters that this process of narrative development is the necessary result of sf finding new and inventive ways of concealing from itself the ideological nature of its vision. In this sense, then, the transformation of sf from a

"sorry concoction" to a "a new sort of sense, and a better kind of wonder" is an illusion (Aldiss, Trillion 204-205). A more accurate assessment of this process would be to say that the genre explored various narrative possibilities as a means to insure it would not have to undergo the most radical change of all, namely, a revision of its racist ideology. This is not maturation, it is stagnation, a condition in which is mired almost all of twentieth-century American sf.1

151 Notes

1 Before we delve into a more focused examination of pulp sf, I would like to briefly anticipate some objections to my approach. Some may argue that my reading of pulp sf is flawed because I make too broad a generalization. After all, a detractor may argue, the period of 1911 -1964 is a long time, especially in a rapidly changing popular genre like science fiction. But my point here is that during these years the genre did not change as much as at first appeared. It is because the exclusion and exploitation of the ethnic Other in sf remained consistent from 1911-1964 that I can paint with large brush strokes. While my obsen/ation-that sf is racist in its (mis)treatment of visibly ethnic Others and in its celebration of white power-may at first appear to be a generalization, as we shall see it is a defining features of pulp sf. Still others may argue that the pulp age ended in the late forties, as the fifties and sixties saw the explosion of novels and the gradual shrinking of the pulp market. This is undoubtedly true, but the ideological parameters remained the same for the pulp and novel markets.

152 CHAPTER 3 EARLY PULP SCIENCE FICTION AND THE ROMANCE OF WHITE POWER

This chapter will examine the interplay between white power and the

ethnic Other in early pulp sf. For the purpose of this analysis I have chosen some of the best known and most influential early pulp sf narratives published

between 1911 and 1940: Hugo Gemsback's Ralph 1240 41+. E. E. Smith's The

Skvlark of Space, and Jack Williamson's The Leaion of Space. These texts

engage a fantasy of white power even as they deny political opportunity and

position to the ethnic, and sometime alien, Other. Not surprisingly, these narratives refuse to mark this situation as political, and instead construct science

as a system of value-free knowledge to justify white power as a natural

consequence of progress. To paraphrase John Huntington, these texts seek out

a means of creating nonpolitical power to justify what is ultimately a political fantasy. Of course, this is an impossible task. The difficulty of sustaining a narrative that seeks to reach such a conclusion culminates in A. E. van Vogt's

Sian, an analysis of which concludes this chapter. I argue in this chapter that early pulp sf is defined by the genre's growing political awareness of itself as an expression of white power, an expression sustained, paradoxically enough, by a continued denial of that knowledge. The working of this contradictory process is made clear when we examine how white power impacts the people of color in these narratives.

153 Hugo Gernsback and Ralph 124C 41+: Constructing the White Utopia

In April 1928, Hugo Gemsback (1884-1967) created the first literary space devoted exclusively to sf in the English speaking world with the publication of

Amazing Stories, subtitled "The magazine of scientifiction."1 Amazing Stories was by no means the first pulp magazine to publish tales of super-science and adventure, but it was the first pulp devoted exclusively to the publication of stories which extrapolated upon known scientific facts and employed scientific imagery. Until Amazing Stories, stories with sf tropes appeared alongside tales of supernatural horror and detective mysteries in magazines like Weird Tales.

The Strand Magazine, and Pearson's Magazine. Gemsback was the first editor to purposefully make a distinction between the marketing of fantasy, horror, and detective fiction and what is now known as science fiction. Science fiction, or what was sometimes referred to as scientific romance or "scientifiction," was for

Gernsback the territory of visionary writers whom he believed to be charting a future for the human race through the extrapolation of current scientific knowledge. In the first issue of Amazing Stories. Gernsback states that "By

'scientifiction' I mean that Jules Veme, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type story-a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision"

(qtd. in Ketterer 50). For the first year and a half, Gemsback literally kept to his definition, reprinting works by Veme, Wells and Poe, as well as by newer writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Gemsback's decision to publish a magazine devoted exclusively to sf has in some circles eamed him the title "Father of Science Fiction" (Moskowitz,

Explorers 242). While Gernsback was by no means the first to write sf, he may

154 have been responsible for giving the genre its name. Thomas Clareson points out that "Gemsback coined the term 'science fiction' in an editorial for Science

Wonder Stories in 1929" (Understanding 16). 2 Samuel Delany also traces the origins of contemporary sf to Gemsback's pulp: "There's no reason to run SF too much back before 1926, when Hugo Gernsback coined the ugly and ponderous term, 'scientifiction,' which, in the letter columns written by the readers of his magazines, became over the next year or so 'science fiction' and finally SF"

(Interviews 261.

Others, however, have not been so quick to praise Gemsback as the founder of modem sf. Brian Aldiss argues in his Trillion Year Spree that "To set science fiction down as something beginning with Hugo Gemsback's lurid magazines in the nineteen-twenties, as some historians have done, is a wretched error" (113). Aldiss continues by claiming

It is easy to argue that Hugo Gemsback was one of the worst disasters ever to hit the science fiction field. Gemsback's segregation of what he liked to call scientifiction into magazines designed to contain nothing else, ghetto-fashion, guaranteed the setting up of various narrow orthodoxies inimical to any thriving literature. A cultural chauvinism prevailed, with unfortunate consequences of which the field has yet to rid itself. Gernsback, as editor, showed himself to be without literary understanding. The dangerous precedents he set were to be followed by many later editors in the field. (Trillion 202)

Aldiss" critique of Gernsback met with much disfavor from the sf fan community.^

But Aldiss was not the first to blast Gemsback. In 1967, Damon Knight referred to the sf "ghetto" created by Gemsback, prefiguring Aldiss" characterization

(283). Writing in 1970, sf author James Blish (as William Atheling, Jr.) claimed that "Once Gernsback created a periodical ghetto for science fiction, the gate was opened to the regular publication of bad work; in fact, this became

155 inevitable" (119). In 1974, David Ketterer argued in his New Worlds For Old that

"For the last fifty or so years, science fiction, owing in great part to the efforts of

Hugo Gemsback, has been artificially divorced from the literary mainstream" (ix).

These views are all valid to some extent. Hugo Gemsback was not a

literary artist on par with the Modernists of his day. Nor did the stories he select for Amazing Stories and the other titles he was to edit in the following years aspire to or pretend literary greatness. Nevertheless, Gemsback felt he was doing something of great importance, namely, using science fiction as a means of promoting and popularizing science and the notion of scientific progress.

Gemsback's magazines and stories served to inform the public of the achievements of science and to popularize science as the key to utopia. Sf was for Gemsback a means of initiating real social change.

But what was the nature of this vision? Gemsback promoted a social change divorced from political machination. In place of politics, Gemsback offered scientific transcendence. This desire to create a future based on nonpolitical power and nonpolitical science is captured in two responses to a contest run by Hugo Gernsback in 1929, titled "What Science Fiction Means to

Me." A young Jack Williamson received an honorable mention for his response:

A new era dawns. Dreams of men reach out to other worlds of space and time. The new unknown of science is calling. The ships of man will follow his dreams as caravans followed the dreams of Columbus. Science will answer the call, with a thousand new inventions-inspired by science fiction, (qtd. in Bainbridge 53)

The winning entry was written by a fan named B. S. Moore:

I believe that the magazine of true science fiction is a standard scientific textbook. To the one who is seeking the light of scientific

156 knowledge, science fiction is the broad and pleasant avenue toward the goal. For the layman, to be well posted on scientific matters is to be well read on science fiction, (qtd in Bainbridge 53)

In Williamson's passage we find both the idea of transcendence inspired by science and the notion that science is itself transcendence. Moore's passage is more rationalistic in its approach and emphasizes science fiction as a primer for science, thus the comparison of the genre with the authority of a scientific textbook. Taken together, these two quotes illustrate the meshing between rationalism and transcendence that for Gemsback defined sf.

This characterization reveals a much deeper anxiety at work in the fiction

Gemsback demanded from his stable of writers. He stressed that all stories submitted to him be scientifically accurate and if any type of extrapolation was involved that it be based on logic and known fact. Aldiss notes that although

this dictât was more honored in the breach than the observance, it did have the effect of introducing a deadening literalism into the fiction. As long as the stories were build like diagrams, and made clear like diagrams, and stripped of atmosphere and sensibility, then it did not seem to matter how silly the 'science' or the psychology was. rTrillion 204)

Aldiss levels his critique against the type of story Gemsback wrote and demanded fromwriters.^ The foundation of Aldiss' critique is that Gemsback wrote and published stories that were not literary in style. Most of Gemsback's detractors, like Aldiss, Knight, and Blish, are writers who have consciously striven to make the genre more literary. These authors/critics do not ask why

Gernsback privileged the type of story where the values and dictates of science always won out in the end. This ideology is what is truly at issue in any analysis.

Just because later sf is better written does not necessarily make it any different

157 than the type of sf Gemsback published.5 Thomas Clareson clarifies the critical

confusion demonstrated by many of Gemsback's detractors when he writes that

"the problem of SF has always been one of high culture and popular culture"

(Understanding 261 ). In other words, many of Gemsback's critics have panned

him because of his lack of sophistication. To criticize Gernsback as juvenile or

as a hack is unfair, since authors like Aldiss, Blish, and Knight have the benefit of

hindsight. Their critiques come decades after Gemsback wrote Ralph 1240 41 +

and published his various magazines. The intervening decades saw the genre

develop a better sense of stylistic self; authors consciously worked against the

pulp grain in an attempt to make sf more sophisticated in style and content. Thus

the conscious efforts exerted by writers like Knight, Blish, and Aldiss, all of whom became regular sf writers in the fifties, were substantially different from

Gemsback's goals. Gemsback used sf as a means to teach and promote

science. Most sf writers have never really abandoned this goal; they have simply

foregrounded other conventions, like stylistic innovation in Horace Gold's Galaxy

in the fifties, and the sixties New Wave movement in England that gave birth to

writers like Michael Moorcock and J. G. Ballard, and influenced Samuel Delany,

Thomas Disch and Ursula K. Le Guin in the U. S.

The conflict between Gemsback and his detractors comes down to a

question of what makes sf legitimate. This conflict is bom out of the anxiety that sf is not serious literature. Unquestionably, Gemsback had something to do with the construction of sf in the United States as juvenile and escapist. In England, for example, sf never experienced a pulp movement (at least not to the same degree experienced in the U. S.), and sf tropes were adopted by acknowledged

158 literary writers like Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Olaf Stapledon. But this development is not solely the fault of Gemsback. As Thomas Clareson argues.

An idea more than a marketplace had produced 'science fiction.' The impact of the nineteenth-century sciences, fused with a desire for social reform, transformed the Westem concept of progress into a vision of utopia; subsumed in that vision of the near or distant future was the American infatuation with the machine. fUnderstandino 262)

Gemsback's fiction was responding to a strain in American thought that had carried over from the previous century: scientific progress and the perfection of society. Nowhere is Gemsback's technocratic dream better encapsulated than in this excerpt from an editorial in a 1933 issue of Wonder Stories, his follow-up project to Amazing Stories:

We all know that the system under which we live is wrong. We are just muddling around, trusting to luck that something will happen that will put us on the right track again. The present order of civilization is highly unscientific, and when we contemplate our cycles of prosperity, followed by cycles of abject depression, every thinking individual must come to the conclusion that we have failed somewhere. When people are starving in the midst of plenty, when for the first time in the history of the human race it becomes possible for humanity to labor but a short fraction of its time and have leisure for a larger percentage of its time, then, indeed, we know that something must be done about it. As I have pointed out many times before, the machine is beneficial, and it will be the machine which, in the end, will completely emancipate man. The thing that is wrong is our economic system, and our present money system. No doubt, as Technocrats put it, these are wom out and need a new control to gear them up to our machine age. (qtd. in Bainbridge 207)

For Gemsback, politics was a failure, and the only means of salvaging civilization was through the application of scientific principles as realized by a technocratic state. This view is the reason his stories sound childish and his plots ludicrous,

159 for these stories are grounded In the childhood fantasy of escape from the world and unquestioned faith in technology. As a child, this is the stuff of daydreams; as an adult, this is the stuff of apolitical technocracy. While Gemsback's detractors are quick to criticize the style of the stories he wrote and, as editor, published, they rarely delve into the political implications of his vision, perhaps because that vision has not changed substantially in sf. Perhaps Gemsback's detractors detest him not because he reminds them of a time when the genre was "ghettoized," but because he reminds them of the underlying escapist political fantasy that haunts sf even today. Thus Gemsback is a figure of overwhelming importance in America sf, for he

transferred the... earlier science-mediated romances into glossy new settings populated by cheerful American protagonists. And ever since Gemsback's editorial impetus redesigned American science fiction during the 1920s as a rehab factory to retool and customize old dreams, the field has not only survived but flourished. (McGuirk 109)

Gemsback's assignation as the Father of Science Fiction is not necessarily a compliment, for like a father who loves his child he is purposefully blind to the child's shortcomings. Nowhere is Gemsback's blindness better illustrated than in Raloh 124C 41+ (1911-12), a novel that generates a eugenic fantasy of the white male scientist as a supremely rational and sexually charged being acting out his desire for power. Ralph 124C 41 + takes place in the future world of 2660. Ralph 124C 41 + is the greatest living inventor of the time. By accident, he meets a beautiful young woman, Alice, whom he courts and with whom he falls in love. Into this romance enters Femand 600 10, a former boyfriend of Alice who is stalking her, and his friend Llysanorh, a Martian whom is also in love with Alice. Femand and Llysanorh conspire to kidnap the girl,

160 nearly succeeding if not for Ralph's intervention. In a final and desperate ploy,

Femand kidnaps Alice and takes her into space. Ralph chases them.

Meanwhile, Llysanorh tricks Femand and steals Alice from him, leaving Femand

marooned in space. Ralph rescues Femand and sends him back to Earth to face

punishment, then chases Llysanorh. Once Ralph finally catches him, however, it

is too late because Llysanorh has killed himself and Alice in an act of twisted

love. Not be outwitted, Ralph struggles to revive Alice by using a réanimation

technique he had been experimenting with earlier in the novel and with which he

had successfully brought a dog back to life. Once back on Earth and in his

private laboratory, Ralph manages to revive Alice. Not only has Ralph saved the

woman he loves, but he has found the key to immortality. The novel ends with Alice saying she will take Ralph's name as her own, and the reader has no

reason to expect anything else than a happily forever after.

The novel opens with a description of Ralph:

He yawned and stretched himself to his full height, revealing a physique much larger than that of the average man of his times and approaching that of the huge Martians. His physical superiority, however, was as nothing compared to his gigantic mind. He was Ralph 124C 41 +. one of the greatest living scientists and one of the ten men on the whole planet earth permitted to use the Plus sign after his name. (Gemsback 9; emphasis in original)

We are first told of Ralph's striking physical characteristics-he is obviously attractive and almost hyper-masculine. Interestingly, this physical description comes before Gemsback notes Ralph's "gigantic mind," as if Gernsback seeks to emphasize the macho qualities of his scientist. Ralph is cast in the mold of a rugged individualist, and has more in common with the man of action of the dime novels popular at the turn-of-the-century than with today's stereotypical scientist

161 as nerd. I wish to stress this point because it is at this time that the scientist begins to emerge as a character who is at once intelligent and action-oriented.

Note, for example, the differences between Ralph and John Hardy, whom Shiel portrays as an average man. Here, Ralph is anything but average. Everything about him marks Ralph as physically extravagant, to the point that Gemsback compares him to the physically superior Martians. This is a minor point in the novel that is never repeated, and may have been used as a rhetorical ploy to make the reader aware that Martians exist in the world of 2660. Nevertheless, there is an exoticization of Ralph's body that occurs in the opening paragraph of the novel.

Ralph's physical description marks him as a man of vigor and size. Only after making this characterization clear does Gemsback shift focus onto Ralph as a man of extreme intelligence and control. The sexual energy that Gemsback highlights, if only for a moment, is redirected into mental ability. Gemsback's description marks Ralph as mentally superior to the average human. This superiority is stressed continually throughout the novel by constant references to his inventions which are used in all parts of the world. Ralph's superiority is also most obviously stressed by his name: the plus sign functions as a demarcation of privilege and power. This position is one Ralph has acquired by nature of birth and as such points to a genetic fantasy of glamour. This mental ability most often takes the form of an extreme, almost inhuman, rationalism. For example, during the climactic space chase scene Ralph calculates that it is impossible to catch Llysanorh at his present rate of speed. Seeing no way out, Ralph begins to despair:

He sank down upon a seat and buried his head in his hands, and as he sat, striving to quiet his wom and troubled mind there 162 came to him an idea-nay, more than an Idea, an inspiration, by which he would overcome the formidable difficulties that beset him. An idea, so simple that, having once formulated it, it seemed ridiculous not to have thought of it before this moment. His soul-weariness fell from him like a discarded garment. He sprang to his feet, once more the scientist, the man of action, triumphant, dominant. His marvelous ingenuity saw the way out. His mind would again triumph over time and space. He would achieve the impossible, surmount what was now the insurmountable. (Gemsback 120)

Ralph's solution is to disguise his ship as a comet, then steer it towards Mars.

Believing his planet is in danger, Llysanorh changes course and intercepts it, meeting Ralph instead. Ralph's logistical decision is described by Gemsback as

"triumphant, dominant." For Gemsback these are unproblematic terms which have only positive implications. Ralph's logic is used like a sort of mental tool, and his ultra-rationalism enables him to perform remarkable mental acts, akin to the physical feats of daring in Haggard's popular fiction. Gemsback's portrayal of

Ralph as a rationalist who with acrobatic logic can solve any problem reflects a desire to see the world as a scientific equation that can be solved with finality and closure. This desire refuses to acknowledge the political nature of any scientific enterprise; or, put another way, the view expressed in Ralph 124C 41+ seeks to find, through science, a means of escaping the need to seek political solutions to the world's problems. By the end of the novel Ralph has made it possible for humanity to become immortal, perhaps the greatest dream of political escapism enacted by sf because it implies a transcendence of the political dimension that is a part of the human condition. This discovery simultaneously makes Ralph the most important man on the planet while rendering him obsolete: he is important

163 because he has created the means to raise humanity to an all new level, and he

is obsolete because with the evolution of humanity, privilege may no longer be a

factor in social relations. Gemsback represses this realization, however, and

therein lies the problematic that is at the center of Ralph 124C 41+. Gemsback has created a character so perfect that he is capable of dissolving his own

unique status. This paradox is not as confusing as it sounds, and is simply the

end result of the Gernsback pulp sf vision that seeks to contain all aspects of

culture within the hegemony of science. This realization can never occur in the

text, for to acknowledge it is to undermine the project of the narrative, namely,

the portrayal of science and the scientist as benign agents of order and

nonpolitical control. While the novel celebrates Ralph as the paragon of human achievement,

it must at the same time keep others subservient to that vision. In order for

Ralph to be superior there must exist those who are inferior to him. There are several characters against whom the novel highlights and contrasts Ralph. It is at these moments that the novel embraces fully the eugenic discourse it is flirting with, for the presence of these undesirables points to a fear that, no matter how much technological achievement society realizes, there will always be those who, by virtue of birth, cannot be accommodated. This fear cannot be alleviated by

Ralph's mastery over death. As I have mentioned earlier, this achievement erases Ralph's specialness even as it highlights it. Because the narrative cannot erase this anxiety of the presence of the Other, it must re-present them in ways which are non-threatening or in ways which can be dealt with by Ralph's rationalism.

164 In Ralph 124C 41+. the Other is not only cut along racial lines. There is present in the novel an aristocracy of intelligence which excludes an

"unintelligent" underclass. While this line of difference is cut along lines of class more than ethnicity, we find these "unintelligent" Others treated in much the same way as the visibly ethnic Other; namely, they are mistreated, ridiculed and relegated to the margins. By examining their situation we are better able to understand hew the novel addresses issues of racial difference. Because these unintelligent Others do net possess Ralph's or even the average person's mental abilities, they are portrayed as non-threatening and function in the role of comic relief. An example of a non-threatening Other is Peter, Ralph's manservant. While he is never racially identified, we are led to believe he is white. Peter is loyal to Ralph, yet he is never portrayed in a positive light. He is at most a faithful, if annoying, pet. Observe the following passage:

Peter, advancing his neck around the comer until one eye met that of his master, withdrew it hastily. "Well, what is it?" came from the laboratory, in an irritated harsh voice. Peter, in the act of retreating on tiptoe, turned, and once more cocked a solitary eye around the door-jamb. This one feature had the beseeching look of a dog trying to convey by his expression that not for worlds would he have got in the way of your boot. (Gemsback 28)

Peter is little else than a dog and he is treated as one. Ironically, this scene appears in the same chapter that Ralph reanimates a dog that has been dead for three years (the same experiment he later performs on Alice to reanimate her). Peter is thus likened to a dog within ten pages of Ralph's demonstration of mastery over the life and death of a dog. I doubt that this is coincidence. More likely, it is Gemsback's less-than-subtle attempt to highlight Ralph's absolute

165 authority over his manservant. This characterization is problematic because

Gemsback's portrayal of Ralph rests on the eugenic principle that some individuals are inherently better than others. Peter is purposefully constructed to play the Igor to Ralph's Frankenstein. He is timid, foolish, and an easy receptacle for Ralph's frustration, much like a dog whose spirit has been crushed.

Thus the narrative implies that Ralph's control over the dog and Peter is justified, because Ralph has achieved control over each of their lives through the application of logic and science. The control that Ralph has over Peter is portrayed as positive. The appeal of this situation is emphasized by what happens when such control is absent. A minor character, unnamed and whom I will refer to as the shopkeeper, appears for a few pages near the end of the scene that describes Remand's first and failed attempt to kidnap Alice. Made invisible, Alice is whisked away from

Ralph's side. However, Ralph is able to follow the emissions of the device

Remand uses to make Alice invisible. Ralph discovers Alice, bound and gagged, in a shop. The shopkeeper is presented as a simpleminded dolt. For example, when Ralph discovers Alice and asks the shopkeeper for a glass of water, the shopkeeper responds by removing the flowers from a vase holding discolored water and handing it to Ralph. Furious, Ralph declares, "I said water-not mud."

The shopkeeper replies, "Well, that's water, ain't it?" (Gemsback 79).

Gemsback's attempt at humor notwithstanding, what is important to note here is how the "humor" of the scene is dependent upon the shopkeeper's obvious mental inferiority to Ralph, his assistants, and Alice. The humor pivots on the notion that the shopkeeper is a fool. This difference in intelligence is again highlighted later in the scene, once Alice has been released and her safety

166 assured. Ralph asks the shopkeeper to describe Alice's kidnapper. I quote at length because I want to convey accurately Gemsback's tone:

"What about him? What was he like?" asked Ralph, sharply. "Ah," said the proprietor, swelling with importance, "that's just what I've been asking myself. Strange we should hit on the same thoughts ain't it?" "Very," commented the scientist, with wasted irony. "Can't you give any description of him. When and how did you see him, anyway?" The proprietor put his hands into his pockets and swayed backward and fonward on the balls of his feet. He surveyed each member of his little audience with glances of poignant meaning, as one who had much of consequence to tell-all in good time. Finally he spoke. "He was black," he said, "black all over." "Yes, yes, exclaimed Ralph impatiently, "you told us that before. Can't you give us something definite to go by? His face, for instance. What was that like?" The other leaned forward and tapped him on the chest impressively. "Ay, that was black too," he said "Black!" cried Ralph "Black it was-all covered with a black cloth," said the none- too-intelligent shopkeeper smugly. "He come right out of the air before my very eyes, all black, with a black cloth on his facade, and rolled out of my store like a cyclone." "You should have tried to hold him," said Ralph. "Well, I gave him a look, I can tell you. He won't forget it in a hurry. I just stood there and looked at him--like this." He screwed up his face in so alarming a manner that one of Ralph's assistants was moved to remark that it was a wonder he didn't drop dead with a face like that. "What d'ye mean?" demanded the owner of the countenance in question. "I said," repeated the assistant, "it was a wonder he didn't drop dead. I would have. It's all I can do to look at you right now." Alice, unable to control her laughter any longer, hastily murmured something about "fresh air" and went to the door. Ralph, keeping his own face straight by a valiant effort, ordered his men to lift the ultra-ray machine and take it back to the laboratory to give it a more minute inspection at his leisure. (Gemsback 80-81)

167 This passage is taken from the only scene in the novel where humor plays an important role. I do not want to criticize Gemsback for his stilted use of humor.

Ralph 124C 41+ is not a funny novel nor was it ever intended to be.® What must be noted is how the humor is generated, primarily through the degradation of a shopkeeper who does not measure up to Ralph's intelligence. Perhaps as a means of justifying this narrative ploy, Gemsback notes that the shopkeeper was

"swelling with importance" and was uncooperative, thereby suggesting that he is arrogant and thus deserves to be mocked. But what is Ralph if not arrogant in his own assumption of his brilliance? Furthermore, if Gemsback is to criticize the shopkeeper for being less intelligent than Ralph, then why does he not do the same for Alice, her father, or any of the other characters introduced throughout the course of the novel? It is only the shopkeeper who is portrayed as a moron.

It is also important to note that the shopkeeper is outside the circle of Ralph's influence, unlike Peter who is portrayed as meek and servile and firmly under

Ralph's control. Thus the character of the shopkeeper is not only a fool, but remains untouched by what the reader is supposed to accept as Ralph's malevolence. The end of the scene finds Ralph and his party leaving the shopkeeper, snickering to themselves and laughing. What is it exactly that they are tuming their backs on? They are leaving behind an individual who does not share their social status as defined by what is in the novel an aristocracy of intelligence.

This ephemeral notion of intelligence provides the means by which to gain position in Gemsback's future world. This is essentially no different from the novels in the last two chapters which sought to privilege people according to race and nationality. Just like those novels, Ralph 124C 41+ posits preexisting social

168 conditions as natural outgrowths of immutable truisms--a strategy that serves to mask social and political inequalities In society. The novel enacts a fantasy of privilege that can exist only insofar as there are those who cannot share in its realization. The above passage is one of the few instances where the political inequality in Gemsback's future world becomes foregrounded. Gemsback cannot effectively deal with this tension because it jeprodizes his entire project of creating a world ruled by the supposed impartiality and objectivity of science.

The tensions glimpsed in the characterizations of Peter and the shopkeeper become increasingly problematic with the introduction of Femand and LIysanorh. If in Peter and the shopkeeper we find tensions of class, in

Femand and LIysanorh we find tensions created by ethnic difference. Their mutual Othemess is what first calls them to Ralph's attention during a public address to Switzerland. Standing in the center of his transmission-room, Ralph is surrounded by telephots, or TV-like screens, which allow him to see whom he is speaking to and to be seen in turn. Ralph gazes upon a sea of faces.

Yet there were two faces among the numerous Telephot faceplates that Ralph in making his brief speech, found his eyes retuming to again and again. Each occupied the whole of a respective faceplate and while dissimilar in appearance, nevertheless were markedly alike in expression... .Ralph sensed no animosity in their steady almost hypnotic gaze and yet they were curiously apart from the enthusiastic throng. He felt as though he were, to both of them, under the microscope. (Gemsback 23)

Ralph distinguishes Fernand and LIysanorh by their gaze, but certainly their individual characteristics have already made them Others in the crowd of white

Swiss. This introduction of two characters based on difference leads us to wonder if Gemsback intentionally places them within a sea of white faces, the color of normality implied by the novel. If so, perhaps Gemsback is more in

169 control of what he is doing than many critics have given him credit for. This is not necessarily a compliment, however, for if Gemsback is intentionally highlighting

Femand and LIysanorh's Othemess, then he is consciously establishing parameters for them in his homogenous technocratic utopia.

LIysanorh is the strangest of the novel's two villains. Note Gemsback’s description:

It was impossible to mistake the distinctly Martian cast of countenance. The great black horse eyes in the long, melancholy face, the elongated slightly pointed ears were proof enough. Martians in New York were not sufficiently rare to excite any particular comment. Many made that city their permanent home, although the law on the planet Earth, as well as on Mars, which forbade the intermarriage of Martians and Terrestrials, kept them from flocking earthwards in any great numbers. (23-24)

We find in this passage the construction of the Martian as immigrant coming to the technocratic U. S.; Martians even make New York their home. Gemsback never tells us why Martians make New York their home. Their technologies are at least the equal to those created by Ralph. Perhaps they are slumming.

Gemsback does reveal a fear of miscegenation through the implementation of laws forbidding sexual relations between Martians and Terrestrials. Gemsback implies that it is only the anti-miscegenation law that prevents Martians from "flocking" to the earth. This trope reflects the fear of "race mixing" as a degenerative act corrupting genetic purity, but is also reflects the paranoia that white men in 2660 and early twentieth-century U. S. suffer about their women.

Because LIysanorh later captures Alice and attempts to marry her, with an understanding that marriage leads to sexual intercourse, this fear of the Other intruding upon the bodies of white women is at the novel's core. Thus, like The

170 Final War. Gemsback's novel enacts a “raciallzed patriarchy" wherein Alice's body is fought over by men of various nationalities and, quite literally, races.

This sexual anxiety is especially acute in the figure of Fernand, described by Alice's father as "a nice looking fellow--at least the women seem to think so.

Personally, I don't care for him. He is tall and dark, and has the sort of temperament that seems to delight in opposition. His eyes have a sullen expression, and his mouth is somewhat weak" (Gemsback 39). Later, as Ralph and Alice stand at a memorial to the last hamessed horse in New York (we are led to believe that all horses are now extinct), the narrator describes Femand as "a tall dark man, a little younger than [Ralph]" (Gemsback 45). There is also the shopkeeper's vague description of Femand as black. The common thread between these descriptions is that Femand is dark-skinned. It is futile to guess his ethnic background, since in Gemsback's world everyone has European first names and numbers are substituted for sumames. Certainly Gemsback intended his readers to know the villain of the novel as non-white; there is no other way to explain repeated descriptions of Femand as "dark." We find in Femand a threat to the white patriarchy the novel seeks to uphold, a threat constructed in explicitly racial and racist terms. We must remember that Femand pursues Alice for most of the novel, and it is not until the final chapters that

LIysanorh acts against Alice or the rules established in their world. Thus in Ralph

1240 41 + the central cause of tension is a non-white male, Fernand, pursuing a white female, Alice, who is portrayed as the property of a white male, Ralph. This novel acts to inscribe the dominance of white patriarchy as realized through a fantasy of all-powerful technology acting to exclude the non-white male. Non­

171 white females are excluded a priori, for they have no authority, or even presence, in Gemsback's future world.

In none of the criticism of this novel has this basic theme been addressed.

To my knowledge, no critic has called Ralph 124 C41 + what it is: a novel about a rich and powerful white man competing with a non-white man for the love of a white woman. That Ralph is white and Femand non-white is not merely an accident of plot. Basic to Gemsback's fantasy is the erasure of diversity and of difference. The idea of science fiction as a conduit for science to the masses was thus a warped enterprise from the very beginning. What was pulp sf teaching, aside from its various predictions of the splendors of future technologies? Pulp sf taught a generation of readers that people of color and white women could not truly be a part of the technocratic future. Pulp sf taught a generation of readers and future sf writers that people of color were either evil or nonexistent and that white women were commodities to be struggled over.

These constructions are central to the emerging genre's "Sense of Wonder. "7

Pulp sf carried forth the fantasy of science as an objective enterprise only insofar as it was able to contain political and cultural tensions within its rhetorical strategies. These tensions from time to time break through the narrative surface of Ralph 1240 41+. calling attention to the precarious ideological tightrope

Gemsback is walking. For example, Gemsback's technological utopia of 2660 is not necessarily a sociological utopia. A host of social problems lingers in the background of the novel. Crime is still a problem, it seems. Ralph points out that

"there have been some big embezzlement scandals recently and it was not always possible to convict those suspected due to the clever methods which these swindlers used" (Gemsback 86). Ralph continues by claiming he has

172 created a machine which makes embezzlement impossible. Ironically this claim

is followed a page later by Ralph explaining that "People are living entirely too

intensely nowadays and with the many functions that they have to perform, with

all the labor-saving devices they have, their lives are speeded up to the breaking

point. The businessman or executive must leave his work every month for a few

days, if he is not to become a wreck" (Gemsback 87). Given these circumstances, it is no wonder that the impetus for Ralph meeting Alice, an avalanche which threatened her home, was caused, as Alice tells us, by striking workers: "Unfortunately, our govemor had some trouble with the four weather- engineers of our district, some months ago, and they struck for better living.

They claimed the authorities did not furnish them with sufficient luxuries..."

(Gemsback 13). Not only do workers suffer in this future world, but criminals are used for biological experimentation:

[Ralph] was not allowed to make dangerous tests personally, thereby endangering a life invaluable to the Government. That institution would supply him with some criminal under sentence of death who would be compelled to undergo the test for him. If the criminal were killed during the experiment, nothing was lost; if he did not perish, he would be imprisoned for life. (Gemsback 21)

One can only wonder if these criminals are forced into lives of crime given their social situation. After all, Ralph tells us that "about the year 2660, the population of the planet had increased tremendously and famines due to lack of such essentials as bread and potatoes had broken out in many parts of the world ..."

(Gemsback 60). Furthermore, the Planet Govemor, "a wise man, and a kindly one" (Gemsback 21), is described as owning a pair of "over-burdened shoulders" (Gemsback 93), no doubt from having to deal with the myriad of social problems

173 facing his world. These very real social issues-exploitation of workers, abuse of

individual rights, famine--are also present on a more personal level. Ralph is frustrated with his situation. He feels he is nothing less than a ward of the state:

He was but a tool, a tool to advance science, to benefit humanity, he belonged, not to himself, but to the Govemment-the Government, who fed and clothed him, and whose doctors guarded his health with every precaution. He had to pay the penalty of his +. To be sure, he had everything. He had but to ask and his wish was law-if it did not interfere with his work. There were times he grew restive under his restraint, he longed to smoke the tobacco forbidden him by watchful doctors, and to indulge in those little vices which vary the monotony of existence for the ordinary individual There were times when he most ardently wished he were an ordinary individual. . . . "I am nothing but a prisoner," Ralph stormed once. (Gemsback 21 )

The above quotations represent the collective negative portrayals of Gemsback's future world, and are all but lost in a novel that has as its primary concem "the romance of technological progress" (Bainbridge 54). Nonetheless, these scenes work toward undoing the technocratic utopia that Gemsback is attempting to create by implying that technology only recreates problems and does not erase them. Why, then, are these scenes in the narrative? The answer is that

Gemsback needs these tensions in order to generate action; otherwise the novel is nothing but a list of technological innovations of super science. Still, the presence of these problems undermines Gemsback's entire project, for science has apparently done nothing to help most of the people in this future world. If workers aren't striking then they are on vacations from their jobs because work is driving them insane. People are used for biological experimentation. Now suddenly, the technology exists for everyone to be immortal. Just what kind of utopia is this? Is it even a utopia for the very powerful and the very privileged?

174 The novel implies that Ralph and Alice will enjoy their lives because they are rich in this world's most valuable commodity, scientific knowledge. The majority of individuals do not have this knowledge: for example, Femand remains outside the social norm because of the color of his skin and LIysanorh cannot enter into

Ralph's and Alice's world because he is forbidden by law. What we have in

Ralph 124C 41 + is a fantasy of race and class that enacts the same hierarchies which through the application of scientific thinking it pretends to erase.

In Ralph 124C 41+. the benefits of science, which Gemsback argues can solve most of our problems, is reserved only for a select few defined by ethnic and class distinctions. But there is simultaneously in the novel a desire to transcend these hierarchies even as the novel reinforces them. Remember that

Ralph has solved the problem of death. In the future, humanity will be immortal.

I have touched on this "solution" above, but I retum to it now because it functions as a means of alleviating the tensions raised in the novel by the continued presence of social problems which science cannot solve. By transcending death,

Ralph is on the verge of creating a new type of life, a new and different human.8

This new life acts as a means of alleviating political responsibility. Try as he might, Gemsback cannot construct science in a vacuum. In other words, if science is to work, then it must have the ability to solve social problems; however, this ability on the part of science can be demonstrated only by the continued presence of social problems. This vicious circle is not a problem within the scientific endeavor (scientists may believe in their ability to view subjects of study objectively, but this is different from believing they are capable of solving the world's problems), but a direct result of the burden of responsibility pulp sf places on the function of science. How does pulp sf break out of this loop?

175 Quite simply, it changes the rules of the game and introduces the possibility of solving technologically any social dilemma. In other words, if, as Gregory

Benford has said, there is no "technological fix for the human condition" then pulp sf will create a different form of life for which a technological fix is possible (82).

This strategy seeks to justify the technocratic fantasy of political transcendence even while the narrative demonstrates its inability to ignore political issues.9

This ideological strategy is denial of science as a political enterprise. At the very least, it is an obfuscation of humans as political beings. Pulp sf has no choice but to enter into this fantasy given its aims: the construction of a technocratic utopia. Gemsback fails in this attempt, for he needs social problems to provide impetus for his plot. He also needs political tensions for without them his characters would be even less human than they already are. Furthermore, he needs these political issues to create compartments of easily definable good and evil (no one in the novel is truly evil: LIysanorh is tragic, Fernand is misguided, and all others are dolts). The only way Gemsback can construct these characterizations is with preexisting racist and misogynist formulations which reflect racial and class differences in U. S. culture of the early twentieth- century. We find this same strategy, only displaced onto the classic sf landscapes-outer space and alien worlds-in the work of E. E. "Doc" Smith.

E. E. Smith and The Skylark of Space: White Power Reaches for the Stars

Gemsback's discovery of E. E. "Doc" Smith and the publication of The Skylark of

Space in Amazinc Stories from Aug. to Sept. 1928 is considered by some critics

176 to be the editor’s greatest achievement (Clareson, Understanding 17). This is not as overblown a statement as it might at first appear. Smith's The Skylark of

Space initiated the super-science story or "space opera" 10 as it came to be known later and was the first in a stream of stories which had outer space and alien worlds as their setting. Today, when we think of sf we invariably enter into a fantasy of gigantism: humongous space vessels as in the Star Wars movies, faster than light drive as in Star Trek, interplanetary warfare and galactic civilizations. It is easy to forget that these clichés were not always the norm.

Their existence is due mainly to the influence of E. E. Smith who wrote about them for a wide audience for the first time in The Skylark of Space. 11

Smith's imagery vaulted him to the top of American sf writers in the late

1920s, and he enjoyed that position throughout the 1930s (Panshin, Dimension

311 ). Hugo Gemsback described the impact Smith's story would have on current and future fans of sf in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories:

Perhaps it is a bit unethical and unusual for editors to voice their opinion of their own wares, but when such a story as "The Skylark of Space" comes along we just feel as if we must shout from the housetops that this is the greatest interplanetarian and space flying story that has appeared this year. Indeed, it will probably rank as one of the great flying stories for many years to come. ("Editorial" 390)

In the October 1928 issue, Gemsback continued his prediction of the impact Smith's story would have on readers:

By the time you finish reading the final installment of "The Skylark of Space," we are certain that you will agree with us that it is one of the outstanding scientifiction stories of the decade; an interplanetarian story that will not be eclipsed soon. It will be referred to by all scientifiction fans for years to come. It will be read and reread. ("Editorial" 610)

177 Gemsback goes on to admit that his claims "are not mere prophecy . . . because we have been deluged with letters since we began publishing this story"

("Editorial" 610).

Gemsback's choice to publish The Skylark of Space demonstrates his degree of sawy and his willingness to take risks. Smith originally wrote the series between 1915 and 1920. Thereafter the story was rejected countless times by editors who considered it too unrealistic. Gemsback's predictions as to the future of humanity almost always missed the mark, but he was quick to recognize the novelty of Smith's story and what it would mean to his scientifiction audience.

The meaning of The Skylark of Space and subsequent space operas and super-science stories of the early pulp age was summarized by E. E. Smith in his

1940 address to the world sf conference in Chicago:

The casual reader does not understand science fiction, does not have sufficient imagination or depth and breadth of vision to grasp it and hence does not like it. What brings us together and underlies this convention is a fundamental unity of mind. We are imaginative, with a tempered, analytical imaginativeness which fairy tales will not satisfy. We are critical. We are fastidious. We have a mental grasp and scope which do not find sufficient substance in stereotypes, in the cut and dried. Science fiction fans form a group unparalleled in history, in our close-knit although informal organization, in our strong likes and dislikes, in our partisanships and our loyalties. The necessity of possessing what I may call the science-fantasy mind does now and probably always will limit our number to a very small fraction of the total population. In these personal meetings, there is a depth of satisfaction, a height of fellowship which no one who has never experienced it can even partially understand, (qtd. in Huntington 48)

Smith's speech is essentially an elitist claim to special knowledge. Sf from its inception in the pulps was working toward this notion of itself as a voice of reason

178 and vision. Smith claims special status for sf authors and fans. In doing so he sets himself apart from the mainstream while simultaneously joining its most exalted ranks. John Huntington interprets Smith's claims as a fantasy of specialness which sf fans have about themselves:

Reading SF is, for them, not simply a flexing of the mind; it is a participation in an elite society, in this way it may be an aesthetic experience . . . whereby 'taste' is a way people negotiate their cultural capital' and mark out a secure place for themselves in a society that according to purely economic criteria would ignore them. (47)

This demarcation of a privileged social space goes hand in hand with the value

Gemsback places on the qualities of scientific genius. Early pulp sf thus captures what is today political reality-the economic and social privilege heaped upon scientists. This desire for political power is expressed by Smith when he separates sf authors and fans from casual readers. This is a differentiation along lines of intelligence as much as it is a differentiation along lines of ethnicity and gender.

As H. Bruce Franklin points out, "science fiction has been until very recently purely a 'Western' literary form, that is, one practiced exclusively by white Europeans and their American descendants, and one utilizing the literary and cultural conventions of these people" (Future Perfect 1). Smith and the other authors examined in this chapter work inside these cultural conventions. At the same time they express these tropes, they also try to narrow them, to carve out their own space of power. When Smith speaks of the "science-fantasy mind" which will limit the number of sf fans and authors to a "very small fraction of the world population," he is enacting a eugenic fantasy of privilege. The "science- fantasy mind" was taken as existing a priori to the sf genre: the mindset was

179 always already there. Because this mindset was inborn, any subsequent interest

in sf was taken as a natural development. Such a view undervalues the impact

of social variables on the shaping of the imagination of the sf readership. For

example, it is no coincidence that the majority of those who listened to Smith

deliver his speech were white men. Sandra Harding has pointed out how the

androcentric nature of science masks the genderfication of the scientific

enterprise as masculine. Science is logical, abstract, rational, and detached--

everything society conditions a woman not to be. Conversely, the qualities which

make for good science are precisely those which are admired in men. This distinction is not biological; it is not a natural state of affairs for the sexes. We

must understand that "gender is fundamentally a relation, not a thing, " and that it

is a relation bom out of social forces with locatable historical origins (Harding,

Whose Science? 13).

As gender is a social construction, so is Smith"s audience a product of various cultural forces. Their attraction to sf is understandable from a social

perspective when we begin to examine the construction of sf as a literature about

science, or in Gemsback's equation "seventy-five per cent literature interwoven

with twenty-five per cent science" (qtd. in Westfahl, "Continuum" 90). If men are

conditioned at birth to privilege certain social values like rationality and power over others like emotion and empathy, then it makes sense that they would be

drawn to careers in science or science fiction. Smith's idea that he and select

others were bom into sf establishes a caste that separates them and demarcates them as superior and important. It is an attempt to carve out a position of

authority based on appeals to science and white male identity. Gemsback may

have at some level understood this strategy, for he took every opportunity to

180 promote Smith as a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Smith's advanced degree gave him an air of authority, and his adoption of sf seemed something of an invitation to the high society ball. Science and science fiction thus acted as a means of disseminating position and power among a larger section of white men. This is not so much a challenge to the loci of social power, but a re-entrenchment of that power. Smith's desire to categorize sf authors and fans as belonging to a "close- knit although informal organization" with "partisanships" and "loyalties" which cannot even be partially understood by outsiders uncovers the desire on the part of the sf community to see itself as representative of an elite tier of American society. Just what marks this elitism becomes apparent when we focus on the works generated by these authors and read by legions of fans.

The Skylark of Space follows the adventures of Dr. Richard Seaton, a govemment chemist who discovers the mysterious properties of the metal X, a substance that can unleash the intra-atomic force in copper. The resultant energy is virtually limitless in scope. Seaton leaves his govemment job, and together with Reynolds Crane, a millionaire industrialist, builds a spaceship-the

Skylark. Into the narrative enters Dr. Marc "Blackie" DuQuesne, a black chemist who works alongside Seaton and who has shady business dealings with a company known as Steel Trust. DuQuesne knows of the power of X and conspires with Steel Trust to steal the formula in an attempt to control the unlimited power supply and thus become its sole provider to the world. Seaton and Crane leam of DuQuesne's and Steel Trust's agenda, including their plan to infiltrate the company Seaton and Crane have hired to build the Skylark. Seaton and Crane decide to build their own Skylark, a superior model to the one they had originally planned. Meanwhile, DuQuesne, frustrated by his failed attempts

181 at finding the mysterious solution of X, kidnaps Dorothy Vaneman, Seaton's fiancée and flees into outer space in a ship powered by the small amount of X he was able to steal. In the ship is Perkins, a rogue working with DuQuesne, and

Margaret Spencer, whose father once worked for Steel Trust. Margaret Spencer has been working for Steel Trust in hopes of uncovering evidence to confirm her suspicions that the company stole her father's inventions. There is a struggle between Dorothy and Perkins, and somehow the solution of X is disturbed and the ship flies off at light speed into the distant galaxies where it is pulled into the orbit of a sun. As the ship slowly drifts toward the star, it seems all is lost.

But in classic pulp fashion, Seaton and Crane come to the rescue in their Skylark. Seaton, it seems, had attached a homing beacon to DuQuesne in one of their previous meetings; following it across light years they find the ship and rescue its crew, except Perkins whom DuQuesne has killed. Seaton and Dorothy

Vaneman are reunited, and Crane and Margaret Spencer begin to fall in love. On their way back to Earth, they stop at several planets in order to get more copper which, after the X is applied, is their source of energy. In their search for copper they discover a planet where all the life-forms-including saber-tooth tigers, giant insects, and camivorous trees-are at constant war with each other; a planet where a shape changing alien takes the form of the protagonists then threatens to kill them in the interests of science; and finally a planet, Osnome, where Seaton and party encounter three races, two at war with each other and the other the slave of both. Seaton and company immediately align themselves with the just and honorable race and quickly exterminate the opposing race. During the battles the Skylark suffers damage, but it is repaired with an impenetrable metal indigenous to the planet. The new improved Skylark is even

182 more powerful and faster than before. While on the planet, Seaton and Dorothy

Vaneman and Crane and Margaret Spencer are married. The party retums to earth with jewels and platinum, all of which are common on the planet and with which they will corner the economic market back home. As the Skylark nears the

Earth, DuQuesne manages to escape in a special suit he built. He parachutes to the ground before the others leam of his escape. No matter, Seaton and party retum to their home base wealthy and with an unlimited source of power which they will use for the benefit of all humanity. My synopsis of Smith's narrative does not over-simply matters too much.

Pulp sf is notoriously straightforward in plotting, with complexities usually emerging from elaborate twists in plot in order to heighten suspense or build on the action. Later in this discussion I will examine the ideology at work when

Seaton and party encounter the Osnomians. As we shall see, this meeting functions as a transposition of the Lost Race novel into pulp sf form . For now, however, I focus on Seaton and DuQuesne, the two main characters in the novel.

I will examine how their racial differences reflect the social values the novel supports and critiques. More specifically, Seaton, the virtuous white scientist represents science as a value-free enterprise while DuQuesne, the black villain, represents social corruption and political scheming.

Much like Ralph in Ralph 124C 41+. Seaton is cast as the daring and masculine hero. Throughout the narrative there are constant references to his

"powerful chest" (Smith 399), and everyone from Dorothy to the slaves on the planet Osnome marvel at his "display of muscular development" (Smith 404).

Even when he shakes hands with someone it is repeatedly described as being done with a "crushing grip" (Smith 531). As with Gemsback's scientist/hero,

183 Smith has created in Seaton a paragon of mental and physical accomplishment, sprinkling throughout the narrative hints and reminders of the character's power and strength.

Physically, DuQuesne is much like Seaton. Crane describes DuQuesne as "the big black fellow, about [Seaton's] own size" with "the brains, the ability, and the inclination" to match that of the novel's hero (Smith 404). DuQuesne is described as:

A striking figure. Well over six feet tall, unusually broad-shouldered even for his height, he was plainly a man of enormous physical strength. His thick , slightly wavy hair was black. His eyes, only a trifle lighter in shade, were surmounted by heavy black eyebrows which grew together above his aquiline nose. (Smith 392)

DuQuesne also has a "forbidding but handsome face," and whenever he is busy

"manipulating connections" he does so "with his long, muscular fingers" (Smith

392). Seaton and DuQuesne are essentially the same character. They are both scientists, and physically they are almost identical, the main difference being that DuQuesne is black and Seaton is white. Where they differ is psychologically.

DuQuesne is described as a "cold and self contained," a "firm Pragmatist" (Smith

533). He "is absolutely cold and hard, a perfect fiend. Where his interests are concerned, there's nothing under the sun, good or bad, that he won't do" (Smith

533). Margaret describes DuQuesne as "utterly heartless and ruthless, so cold and scientific" (Smith 546). DuQuesne is criticized for being too much the scientist and is constantly compared to Seaton with his almost childish innocence and enthusiasm for knowledge. DuQuesne even comments on Seaton's naivete, claiming that "he has never kept any of his discoveries secret or tried to make

184 any money out of them, though some of them were worth millions. He published them as soon as he found them, and somebody else got the money" (Smith 393).

Seaton's nickname is "nobody home," so named because of his lack of political sawy. Even his best friend, Martin Crane, feels Seaton to be naive. "For a man with your brains you have the least sense of anybody I know. You know that [the metal X] is worth, as a power project alone, thousands of millions of dollars, and that there are dozens of big concerns who would cheerfully put us both out of the way for a thousandth of that amount" (Smith 404).

What we are presented with in Seaton is a character who does not grasp the political dimensions of science while in DuQuesne we have a character who grasps little else. Smith of course favors his white blond hero, but he cannot simply make DuQuesne disappear from the narrative; othen/vise there would be no conflict. Seaton wants to provide cheap energy to the world, while DuQuesne wants to monopolize that power. These are both political motives. Smith, however, wants to keep his hero politically neutral, so any political actions are taken by DuQuesne and sometimes by Crane. Sometimes Smith breaks with this strategy in moments of particular tension. For example, when the heroes are preparing to leave Osnome, they are given enough platinum to fill one of the rooms aboard the Skylark. This scene is significant because it is the only instance when the otherwise politically naive Seaton discusses at length what he considers to be a social problem:

What are you going to do with it all, Dick?" asked Crane. "That is enough to break the platinum market completely." "That's exactly what I'm going to do," replied Seaton, with a gleam in his gray eyes. "I'm going to burst this unjustifiable fad for platinum jewelry so wide open that it'll never recover, and make platinum again available for its proper uses, in laboratories and in the industries.

185 "You know yourself," he rushed on hotly, "that the only reason platinum is used at all for jewelry is that it is expensive. It isn't nearly so handsome as either gold or silver, and if it wasn't the most costly common metal we have, the jewelry-wearing crowd wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. Useless as an ornament it is the one absolutely indispensable laboratory metal and literally hundreds of laboratories that need it can't have it because over half the world's supply is tied up in jewelers windows and in useless baubles. Then, too, it is the best thing known for contact points in electrical machinery. When the Govemment and all the scientific societies were abjectly begging the jewelers to let loose a little of it they refused-they were selling it to profiteering spendthrifts at a hundred dollars an ounce. The condition isn't much better right now; it's a viscous circle. As long as the price stays high it will be used for jewelry, and as long as it is used for jewelry the price will stay high, and scientists will have to fight the jewelers for what little they get." "While somewhat exaggerated, that is about the way matters stand. I will admit that I, too, am rather bitter on the subject," said Crane. "Bitter? Of course you're bitter. Everybody is who knows anything about science and who has a brain in his head. Anybody who claims to be a scientist and yet stands for any of his folks buying platinum jewelry ought to be shot. But they'll get theirs as soon as we get back. They wouldn't let go of it before, they had too good a thing, but they'll let go now, and get their fingers burned besides. I'm going to dump this whole shipment at fifty cents a pound, and we'll take mighty good care that jewelers don't comer the supply." (Smith 630-31)

What occurs here is a break in the containment within which Smith wants to keep his hero. This slip occurs at both the narrative and ideological level. Formally,

Seaton does not sound like the same character we have been reading for the last hundred plus pages. Thematically, Smith has him enter into a political discourse, for his desire to "break the market" is a political strategy. Smith and sf readers may not recognize this as a political tactic because Seaton's desire to advance the cause of science is put forth on moral grounds. The above scene illustrates nicely the ideology of the sf novel and its reading audience. Whenever politics is

186 involved it is always a result of outside and negative forces. Whenever there is a political point to be made by the hero, it is cast as beneficial to all of humanity and thus transcendent of political machinations.

Smith's desire to keep his hero free of political stain is perhaps the reason why the novel places so much emphasis on DuQuesne. The villain becomes increasingly interesting as a character as the novel progresses, while Seaton remains predictable. As the novel draws to a close, DuQuesne, now possessing great wealth amassed on Qsnome, proclaims, "At last... I will be what I have always longed to be--a money power. Now I can cut loose from the gang of crooks and go my own way" (Smith 635). A few paragraphs later, however,

DuQuesne threatens Seaton and Crane:

I can say, however, that while I have made a fortune on this trip so that I do not have to associate further with Steel unless it is to my interest to do so, I may nevertheless find it desirable at some future time to establish a monopoly of X. That would of course necessitate the death of yourself and Crane. In that event, or in the case any other difference should arise between us, this whole affair will be as though it had never existed. It will have no weight either way, whether or not you try to hang me. (Smith 636)

DuQuesne remains an enigmatic and therefore complex character. Furthermore, it is DuQuesne's nature that best captures the true state of science. If DuQuesne is a political opportunist who does whatever it takes to promote his own agenda, does not the scientific community, with its big money interests and govemment contracts, do the same? A view of science as parasitic on the culture which shapes it cannot be promoted in pulp sf that has as its main function the popularization and celebration of science as transcendent knowledge. Any such tensions must be contained and controlled.

187 Splitting science into good and bad is a means of instigating such control.

The dual natures of DuQuesne and Seaton act as a type of metaphor for the popular conception between good and bad science, a distinction which, as

Sandra Harding points out, "is a false and distorting image" because the

"sciences are part and parcel, woof and warp, of the social orders from which they emerge and which support them" (Whose Science? 37). The conflict throughout the narrative is thus a simplistic clash between the uses and abuses of science, with science's positive aspects winning out. Such a conclusion allows pulp sf to continue its uncritical revelry about the glory of science and technological progress. This fantasy can be sustained only for so long before it begins to collapse.

Smith is able to conceal and contain these tensions from an audience that refuses to read his text critically. But The Skvlark of Space, from the continued demand of the sf reading audience, generated several sequels, all of which heighten the impossibility of splitting into good and bad the science the sf audience craved. In its immediate sequel. Skylark Three (Amazing Stories Aug.-

Oct. 1930), Seaton's mind is enhanced a thousandfold, and by story's end he has succeed in defeating a legion of alien conquerors and DuQuesne who was in league with them. DuQuesne retums in The Skvlark of Valeron (Astounding

Stories Aug. 1934-Feb. 1935), this time the intellectual equal of Seaton.

DuQuesne manages to take over the Earth while Seaton is trapped in the fourth dimension. However, Seaton escapes, sets all to rights again, and manages to trap DuQuesne in a time stasis which will last one hundred million years. In the final installment. Skylark DuQuesne (If Worlds of Science Fiction Jun.-Sept.

1965), DuQuesne escapes Seaton's trap, but this time his plans to conquer Earth

188 are interrupted by the alien Chlorans. Seaton and party play second fiddle to

DuQuesne, who manages to destroy the Chloran galaxy, slaughtering 99 trillion of them spread across 149, 297, 319 solar systems. By the end of the story, DuQuesne has left Earth to rule his own solar system, and Seaton and Dorothy are so intellectually advanced they may no longer be human.

Taken in its entirety, the series charts the evolution of a select group of humans. In The Skvlark of Space we find the first leap into outer space and the many worlds there. In subsequent installments, science is used to portray humans as outside of a political condition. This is the same strategy used by

Gemsback when he concluded Ralph 124C 41 + with a vision of humanity as immortal. This formula is an escapist fantasy generated by dominant culture to avoid the pressures of political responsibility. Part of this escapism is an uncritical dismissal of all that stands in opposition to it. While Seaton and

Dorothy are off in search of godhood and DuQuesne is busy ruling his own galaxy, a tremendous violence has occurred. Robert Sampson points out that

The culmination of four novels, packed with super science, is the destruction of an entire galaxy. Even granting the necessity, it is singular that the end product of the supreme technology is a quasi- stellar flame mass. Surely the end product of science and technology can be expected to total more than this. We began so optimistically, releasing the energy contained in a copper plate. And now look. (Sampson 224)

What is of further importance is the person responsible for this destruction-

DuQuesne. We find here a perfect manipulation of plot. I have shown how Smith desired to protect Seaton from the political consequences of The Skylark of Space. Here that strategy is carried to a new extreme. Skylark DuQuesne establishes that the Chlorans must be destroyed. Such violence cannot be

189 perpetrated by Seaton, the white hero of scientific investigation and high morality.

It must be perpetrated by DuQuesne, the black villain What is not emphasized is

how Seaton himself benefits from this action. What Smith has done, most

probably unbeknownst to him, is illustrate the impossibility of splitting good from

bad science. It is not merely a formulaic convention that has DuQuesne coming

back time after time. DuQuesne's "bad" science is necessary for Smith to continually emphasize Seaton uses of "good" science. By series end, however, the two can no longer be separated.

More than forty five years elapse between the time Smith began The Skvlark of Space and completed Skylark DuQuesne. In the latter Smith tries to retain the same faith in pure science characteristic of his original story. By the sixties, however, science was no longer the fail-safe solution. With Vietnam in the process of unraveling, the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over everything, and a growing awareness of the corrupt nature of the American political system. Smith's vision seemed juvenile in comparison. Nonetheless, the books were reissued in hardcover and were bestsellers in their paperback reprints. The sf community still looked to Smith as a father-like figure. Smith's renewed popularity cannot be dismissed as nostalgia. The Skylark sequence is characterized by the most insistent fantasies in the American un/consciousness: colonialism, power, wealth, and eliding the responsibilities that each of these categories necessitates. Ultimately, we encounter the desire to purge difference and gender tensions, as do Seaton and Dorothy in their white heterosexual godhead. The Skylark sequence concludes by positing middle-class American values circa 1920 as essentially moral codes goveming us all.

190 These codes include the privileging of white over non-white. We see this most obviously in the character of "Blackie" DuQuesne. Because DuQuesne acts as a counter to the good science qualities projected by Seaton and as a substitute for Seaton in matters of politics, DuQuesne must remain an essential part of the narrative. To destroy DuQuesne would be to strip Seaton of any interest he may hold for the reader. Put another way, Seaton is interesting only because of what he cannot do. DuQuesne is thus the motivation behind the various plots of the sequence. Consequently, Smith cannot deal as swiftly with

DuQuesne as he can with other "villains." One such group of villains Smith can destroy are the dark-skinned Mardonalians of the planet Osnome.

While Seaton and party are on the planet Osnome they encounter three races: the Mardonalians, who are evil; the Kondalians, who are good; and savages who are the simple-minded slaves of the other races. Upon first landing on Osnome, the party encounters a group of airships battling several flying creatures shaped like torpedoes with scores of tentacles, dozens of wings, sharp beaks, and a row of eyes. The creatures are too powerful for the airships, but the Skylark is able to destroy them. Upon landing, the Skylark party meets with the flyers of the airships, the Mardonalians. To demonstrate their thanks, the

Mardonalians give Seaton and party their own personal slaves. Later, as the party is lounging in their rooms awaiting a feast in their honor, one of the slaves constructs a helmet with some material he has hidden in his belt. The helmet turns out to be a type of thought projection device which enables the slaves to communicate with Seaton and party. The slaves, it is revealed, are Kondalians of royal lineage who are being kept in servitude as a means of humiliation. A short circuit occurs, and Seaton is able to learn all about the Kondalians as

191 Kunark, the Kondallan prince, is able to learn all about Earth. It becomes apparent to Seaton that his slaves are the "good" guys, and together they escape from the Mardonalians. Once in the Kondalian kingdom, the Skylark is rebuilt (it suffered damage fighting the air creatures), many times larger and more powerful than before. The Skylark then destroys an invading army of Mardonalians, and peace and prosperity is returned to the planet Osnomia before Seaton and party head home. The episode on Osnome, comprising the last third of the novel, provides us with an opportunity to examine the transposition of the Lost Race novel into early pulp style sf.12 Practically the same pattern is followed: explorers encounter an alien civilization, they intervene in its affairs, and a "just" conclusion is reached. The Lost Race novel had waned in popularity by the time The

Skylark of Space was published, but the genre's espousal of colonialism found a new home in early pulp sf, as did its fantasy of quick and fabulous wealth. These motifs, it seems, are never out of fashion, and simply take on new guises from time to time. In the 1920s and 1930s, those trappings were the pulp conventions, in many ways originating with Smith's The Skylark of Space. But if we look deeper, we find that, just like in the Lost Race novel, fantasies of power and money are not all that are being satisfied by these narratives. In addition to wealth and power is an espousal of biological superiority. In

The Skylark of Space this emphasis on biological development is immediately established when Seaton and party first lay eyes on the Mardonalians: “They were a superbly modeled race, the men fully as large as Seaton and DuQuesne; the women, while smaller than the men, were noticeably taller than [Dorothy

Vaneman and Margaret Spencer]" (Smith 554). The Mardonalians have about

192 them an air of physical brilliance that can be found only in Seaton and

DuQuesne. Crane is left out of the equation altogether. Dorothy and Margaret, however, are portrayed as inferior, at least physically, to the nonhuman women.

Smith does not follow this line, if only because he does not want to denigrate his heroines. Nevertheless, the text has already established a hierarchy and this scene only serves to highlight it. This characterization of women as inferior to men has already been established in episodes scattered throughout the narrative. Take, for example, the following conversation with Dorothy attempting to explain to Margaret the physics of weightlessness:

"It's mass or inertia or something like that. A thing has it everywhere, whether it weighs anything or not. Dick explained it all to me. I understood it when he told me about it, but I'm afraid it didn't sink in very deep. Did you ever study physics?" "I had a year of it in college, but it was more or less of a joke. I went to a girls' school, and all we had to do in physics was to get the credit; we didn't have to learn it." (Smith 534)

In a later scene, Seaton is dividing responsibilities aboard the Skylark and has designated the men to examine the location of various stars. Margaret volunteers to record whatever figures are given her, proudly exclaiming, "Taking notes is the best thing I do" (Smith 547). In the meanwhile, Dorothy is off cleaning the kitchen and tending the beds.

Smith does not want his female characters on an equal mental par with his men; that is clear. But the scene with the Mardonalians complicates matters because here he suggests that men and women have not experienced equal rates of biological development. This portrayal is a far cry from assigning women household chores and secretarial position while men explore the cosmos. This characterization merely reflects patriarchal culture in the early twentieth-century

193 America, and similar and numerous examples can be found in and outside of pulp sf. But to suggest women are an inferior species is to attempt to justify political inequality by appealing to the privileged rhetoric of scientific discourse.

Furthermore, such suggestions are made periodically in situations which reinforce Seaton's white male identity as the pinnacle of evolution. We must ask here what it is that pulp sf is doing. These stories not only draw strict divisions of gender, but actively push the idea that women are inferior biological specimens.

This is accomplished in The Skylark of Space by comparing the Earth women to

Osnome women. At the same time this comparison takes place there is also the displacement of sexual desire onto a biologically advanced female concept that exists only in the pages of sf pulps. How did such desires affect the mainly male sf pulp readership? How did such images affect the construction of women and gender in the sf to follow? These are important questions which cannot be fully addressed here. What I wish to point out is that The Skvlark of Space, like the

Future War novel and the Lost Race novel, is creating a hierarchy along biological lines.

One important difference between The Skylark of Space and Lost Race novels is that the aliens are not always inferior specimens. In Lost Race novels the native and indigenous peoples are always less developed and thus easy prey for the explorers. In sf, the aliens are neither always inferior nor are they always ripe for exploitation. In some instances, like in Smith's stories, the aliens are projections of the readership's fantasies of racial purity. Notice how Smith has three races on Osnome, one good, one bad, the other irrelevant. It is only a matter of determining the good from the bad and then proceeding from there.

Once the bad is exterminated, the good can prosper, especially with the help of a

194 slave race. Such a simplistic account of alien species is a cliché of sf, and few critics have adequately explored why. I suggest that this simplistic depiction of alien civilization exists because it projects the racial homogeneity that dominant culture at some level desires. Sf satisfies to some degree the suspension of ethnic conflict, the overwhelming diversity and breakdown of cultural barriers that are characteristic of our political lives. It is not surprising that the sf alien acts as counter-production to this reality. Moral decisions are easier to make, and war, another characteristic of early pulp sf, is easily waged and won against adversaries who are portrayed as homogenous and one-dimensional.

Smith's aliens are conveniently split along moral lines. Yet they also are superior biologically to all except Seaton and DuQuesne. Does this mean that

Smith is promoting a black man as the model of evolutionary development? Far from it; such a claim is impossible for Smith to make given his subject matter.

But he has, whether consciously or not, set DuQuesne and Seaton on an almost equal footing. How this tension is alleviated marks the emergence of the narrative's ideology. The most basic of contrasts between DuQuesne and

Seaton is the color of their skin. From this difference grows the most basic of stereotypes: that black is evil and white good. This distinction is highlighted in the Osnomian races. The Mardonalians are the darkest of the races while the

Kondalians are the lightest. When Seaton and party first meet the Kondalians, they are described as "much lighter in color than the rest of the gathering" (Smith

555). The Mardonalians are a dark green, and all subsequent descriptions of the

Kondalians refer to them as a light green, their coloring a result of the different light on Osnome. When Dorothy first sees the dark Mardonalians from the

Skylark she cries, "I wouldn't want to look like that for a million dollars . .. and if

195 I'm going to look like that I won't get out of the ship" (Smith 554). Later, in a room illuminated by Earth-like light, she refers to the Kondalians by saying, "Now we can see what color they really are . . . Why, they aren't so very different from what they were before, except that the colors are much softer and more pleasing.

They really are beautiful in spite of being green" (Smith 618). Upon first meeting the Mardonalians, Seaton's party is struck by their dark complexion, but upon first meeting the Kondalians, they are taken aback by how light-skinned they are.

The Mardonalians become a threat, but the Kondalians' skin tone becomes softer and they become pleasantly green to the point that Seaton says of Dunark, "He's a good, square man-one of our kind of folks" (Smith 618). This acceptance is cut along a coded-color line. The light-skinned race has the most in common with Seaton and his party (DuQuesne excluded) and physically they become pleasing to the eye. But just what are these commonalties; what ties bind these two distinct races across light years of space? Because Seaton and Dunark were linked by the communication helmet, and because of the short circuit that occurred, each understands the other's world and culture. When Crane asks Seaton to tell the party what he knows,

Seaton enters into a long monologue about the Kondalians. I quote at length because the scene is especially important not only for our understanding of

Kondalian culture, but for a better understanding of the social fantasy that the novel promotes:

"Well, as nearly as I can explain it, it's a funny kind of a mixture-partly theology, partly Darwinism, or at least, making a fetish of evolution, and partly pure economic determinism. They believe in a Supreme Being, whom they call the First Cause-that is the nearest English equivalent-and they recognize the existence of an immortal and unknowable life-principles, or soul. They believe that the First Cause has decreed the survival of the fittest as the

196 fundamental law, which belief accounts for their perfect physiques... "They are magnificently developed for their surroundings. They have attained this condition by centuries of weeding out the unfit. They have no hospitals for the feeble-minded or feeble­ bodied-abnormal persons are not allowed to live. The same reasoning accounts for their perfect cleanliness, moral and physical. Vice is practically unknown. They believe that clean living and clean thinking are rewarded by the production of a better physical and mental type.. ." "Yes, especially as they correct wrong living by those terrible punishments the Kofedix told us about," interrupted Margaret. "That probably helps some. They also believe that the higher the type is, the faster will evolution proceed, and the sooner will mankind reach what they call the Ultimate Goal, and know all things. Believing as they do that the fittest must survive, and thinking themselves, of course, the superior type, it is ordained that Mardonale must be destroyed utterly, root and branch. They believe that the slaves are so low in the scale, millions of years behind in evolution, that they do not count. Slaves are simply intelligent and docile animals, little more that horses or oxen. Mardonalians and savages are unfit to survive and must be exterminated. "Their ministers are chosen from the very fittest. They are the strongest, cleanest-living, and most vigorous men of this clean and vigorous nation, and are usually high army officers as well as ministers." (Smith 622)

Smith presents the Kondalians as a civilization that has neared perfection by the implementation of a rigorous eugenic program. The elimination of the

"feeble-minded, the "feeble-bodied," and any "abnormal persons" has left only a fit and pure society. The emphasis on physical improvement is echoed in a preceding passage addressing the lack of crime in Kondalian culture:

"Are there no criminals any more [asked Seaton]?" "No. With the invention of the thought recorder an absolutely fair trial was assured and the guilty were all convicted. They could not reproduce themselves, and as a natural result crime died out." (Smith 615)

197 As physical perfection is accomplished, so is psychological stability achieved.

Smith's eugenic solution to crime posits any type of social deviance as genetic in origin. Such a qualification takes us back to the common nineteenth-century practice of characterizing the poor, prostitutes, and those who did not enjoy an established place in society as mentally ill and or genetically flawed (Gould 142-

75; Shipman 226-34; Tucker 61-71). In order for Smith to wipe out crime he must first make it a genetic corruption which can be purged by a eugenic program. The Skylark of Space thus reinscribes the racial hierarchies and genetic concerns present in the Lost Race and Future War novel. The main difference is that in The Skylark of Space such a political view is subsumed by the elements of super-science that the narrative foregrounds. While the emphasis is never directly on a eugenic program, the super-science that Smith celebrates can be achieved only by adherence to a eugenic plan. Kondalian civilization plays out this desire for racial purity. Their light complexion and similar values immediately identifies them with Seaton and party. We have traveled light years and found a society that reflects the genetic fantasies of dominant U. S. culture. This longing is at the heart of The Skylark of Space-the hope for a fantastic future of racial purity overflowing with super-science marvels. This vision has its underside, however, and it is revealed by Smith's designation of good and evil. It is no coincidence that the evil Mardonalians are the darkest of the Osnome races and that they are ultimately destroyed. The Kondalian adherence to principles of social Danwinism and eugenics necessitates just such a conclusion. The importance of Darwinian notions to the Kondalians is illustrated when the leader of the Kondalians addresses his people during the marriages of Seaton and Dorothy, and of Crane and Margaret:

198 That is the boon. The vindication of our system of evolution is easily explained. The strangers landed first upon Mardonale. Had Nalboon met them in honor, he would have gained the boon. But he, with the savagery characteristic of his evolution, attempted to kill his guests and steal their treasures, with what results you already know. We, on our part, in exchange for the few and trifling services we have been able to render them, have received even more that Nalboon would have obtained, had his plans not been nullified by their vastly superior state of evolution. (Smith 627)

Later, in their rooms, Dorothy replies, "Dick, sweetheart, wasn't that the most wonderful thing that anybody ever heard of? Using the word in all its real meaning, it was indescribably grand, and that old man simply superb" (Smith

627). Seaton agrees: "It sure was all that. Dottle mine, little bride of an hour."

(Smith 627).

It is never clear whether Dorothy and Seaton's enthusiasm is for their marriage or for what the Kondalian leader has proclaimed about their concept of evolution. This vagueness in the narrative acts as a means toward better understanding its ideology. Smith has remained somewhat vague on the

Kondalian's theory of evolution: the characters neither embrace nor criticize it.

Here, however, we see an enthusiasm for the Kondalian view. This enthusiasm comes at a moment when Dorothy and Seaton are married, an act that by

Kondalian standards is designed to further their social contract of eugenic order.

Before they are married, the couples must pass a kind of lie detector test designed to insure that each holds no secrets from the other. The couples of course pass the test and are married.

This test functions as a genetic measuring stick designed to insure maximum compatibility. It also reinforces race as an objective category that can be measured and compared. The heroes of the novel pass the genetic test; the

199 Mardonalians do not. This dualism rests firmly on the simplistic and oldest of notions that the lighter-skinned race is superior to the darker. The Skylark of

Space reinscribes this racism as system that is outside political origin and is instead located in some "scientific" sphere of knowledge that can be gauged with the proper technology. We see this same fantasy of racial purity at work in Jack

Williamson's early novel, The Legion of Space.

Genetic Destiny In Jack Williamson's The Lealon of Space

Jack Williamson (b. 1908) published his first sf story in 1928; his most recent novel, The Black Sun, was published early in the spring of 1997. Williamson's career thus spans the development of science fiction; he was even publishing sf before the term "science fiction" came into use. Many consider Williamson to be one of the greatest living writers working in the genre and to be above criticism (Asimov 83). At worst, critics have commented that some of his early works are marked by "purple prose and . .. slapdash imagination" (Panshin. World 235).

His most important early work, The Legion of Space, first appeared in Astounding

Science Fiction in 1934. On the cover of the most recent paperback reprint,

Alexei Panshin refers to it as "the single most popular science fiction novel serialized during the '30s." Williamson's early novel is marked by the construction of a plotline that I call genetic destiny, or how the inherent biological superiority of one man leads him to greatness. This genetic destiny is a category of racial superiority, albeit one that avoids the virulent racism we encounter in the novels examined in the first two chapters. Nor is this racial construction even as

2 0 0 coarse as the view that Gemsback and Smith express in their early novels.

Nevertheless, The Legion of Space revolves around the assumption that some individuals are better suited to rule than others and that some individuals are innately superior to those around them.

As with almost every other text examined in this study, the hero of The

Legion of Space is male, white, heterosexual, and, in this case, a member of a military organization. John Star is a young recruit into the "Legion of Space," an organization whose sole purpose is to protect a beautiful young woman,

Aladoree, who is the only person in the universe with the knowledge to create the

AKKA, an ultimate weapon capable of utter destruction. John Star is related to the commander of the Legion, Adam Ulnar, and is the nephew of Eric Ulnar, who is famous for having traveled farther than anyone into the depths of space. Soon after joining the Legion, John Star is ordered to arrest his three fellow

Legionaries: Jay Kalam, Hal Samdu and Giles Habibula. Confused by the order he follows it nonetheless. Once the three men are imprisoned, John Star realizes Aladoree has been kidnapped, and by none other than his relatives,

Adam and Eric Ulnar. Leaming that the members of his family are traitors to the

Legion, Star starts off after them, with Kalam, Samdu and Habibula as companions. Star manages to find and trap Commander Ulnar and steal his ship. The senior Ulnar asks John to join him and reveals the history of the Ulnar clan. John is shocked to find that he comes from a royal lineage that once ruled the galaxy with an iron fist before the Green Hall, a collection of scientists, was able to defeat them and bring democracy back to the galaxy. Commander Ulnar had placed John Star in an orphanage so that he would never know his true

201 identity as one destined by royal blood to rule. Now it is time for John Star to

take up his family crown and help his family reclaim the throne.

John Star is surprised by this revelation, but refuses commander Ulnar's offer. Commander Ulnar, upset by Star's decision, nevertheless informs him that

Eric Ulnar has formed a pact with the Medusae, an alien race he encountered

during his travels. The original plan was to capture Aladoree and use the AKKA

to conquer the galaxy. Eric Ulnar involved the Medusae to help them conquer

Earth in case things went wrong, and he has taken Aladoree to the Medusae

home world. John Star and friends take flight to the Medusae home world, are

forced to crash land in the ocean, and must make a trek across an inhospitable

land populated by savage creatures and dense jungles. After months of

searching, they reach the Medusae capital where they discover Eric Ulnar is

being held captive. He tells Star and company that the Medusae have betrayed his trust and plan to use Aladoree and her secret of the AKKA to conquer Earth

and tum it into a new home world, as theirs is dying. Star and his men find

Aladoree, but are betrayed by Eric Ulnar who still seeks the favor of the

Medusae. The party manages to escape after several close calls, but not before Aladoree is injured by a Medusae weapon which places her in a comatose state.

John Star and company race back to Earth, where they discover the Medusae have already begun to change the atmosphere of the planet, including launching a type of chemical warfare that decays peoples' bodies and minds, leaving them mad, disfigured killers. While having outraced the main Medusae invading force, they are powerless to prevent them from attacking Earth. Gazing into the sky, they see the Medusae armada arriving. John Star tries one last desperate attempt to revive Aladoree by proclaiming his love for her. Of course, this works,

202 and she regains consciousness in time to tell John Star she feels the same way about him, to construct the AKKA, and to destroy the Medusae. As reward for his actions, John Star is assigned to be Aladoree's personal body guard for life.

The Legion of Space is an old story dressed up in sf tropes: John Star is the prince who returns to claim his throne and his princess. Williamson adopts the classic fairy tale motif that lineage, or blood, always determines a character's action. During the time of publication, however, this was a far from innocent concept. Germany was already beginning to enact legislation which would lead directly to the Holocaust of WWII (Shipman 145-70), and in the U. S. there was already legislation establishing eugenic parameters of reproduction (Kevles 96-

112). John Star's characterization is bom out of this drive for racial purification and a belief in genetic destiny. John Star is the youngest member of a family which has over generations made great strides for all humanity, including the conquest of space, the colonization of various planets, and the invention of technological marvels (Williamson, Leaion 11-12). Williamson's narrative implies that the Ulnar family is directly or indirectly responsible for every advancement experienced by humanity since the late twentieth-century. This influential role is magnified by the events in the narrative. It is the two senior Ulnars who are orchestrating an overthrow of the current empire in an attempt to reinstate the

Ulnar monarchy, and it is John Ulnar who stops them. This clash for power is cut along genetic lines: the fate of all humanity rests upon the actions of this genetically superior white family.

Williamson's narrative celebrates the special quality of the Ulnars, even those whom the reader is supposed to despise. The traitor, Eric Ulnar, is a hero who has explored the farthest reaches of space. This role of explorer and

203 conqueror of deep space represents the highest possible achievement in pulp sf.

While clearly a villain, Eric Ulnar is nevertheless endowed with the qualities of greatness which drive Williamson's narrative. These qualities are never rigorously questioned, even when the senior Commander Adam Ulnar claims to abandon his belief in the monarchy: "I'm losing my faith in aristocracy. Our family is old, John; our blood is the best in the System. Yet Eric was a craven fool. And the three men with you—common soldiers of the Legion-have shown fine metal" (Williamson, Leaion 168). This statement is meant as a refutation of a ruling class whose sole claim to power is lineage. Nevertheless, John Star is bom of this privileged caste, and his success ironically reinforces the very system that the novel seeks to undermine. Why does this obvious paradox go unnoticed? The narrative celebrates the romance of power, but seeks to make it benign, or, as Huntington states, nonpolitical. What occurs in The Leaion of

Space is that a pre-existing political system is reconstructed along lines which allow it to be read as nonpolitical. So long as the novel is read this way, contradictions in the narrative go unnoticed, or at least they do not act as a source of tension for the reader. Obviously, The Legion of Space satisfies the sf reading community's fantasy of white power. Furthermore, this fantasy is rationalized by the construction of science as a system of value-free knowledge.

Early in the novel we are told of the development of the Green Hall, a league of scientists who overthrow the tyrannical Ulnar ruling class. But we are also told that three generations of iron rule pass before the scientists act, and then only because the ruling Ulnar attempt to suppress scientific research. Are the scientists not bothered by the suppression of democracy so long as it does not impact them? If the scientists are so concemed with freedom, why do they

204 wait three generations to act? What does this imply about the "democracy" they establish and for which John Ulnar fights? These questions cannot be answered from the information in the narrative, and the novel does not even anticipate them being raised. It is this inability of the text to account for such questions that allows us to glimpse the ideology at work. Science is constructed as the salvation of civilization, as witnessed by Aladoree and her construction of the

AKKA, and it is put forth as being above all criticism. It is not a coincidence that

Asimov refers to Williamson as also being beyond critique. What is at issue here is an entire way of knowing, namely that science and militarism in the proper hands can lead to utopia. 13

Because of his genetic heritage, John Star is portrayed as capable of expressing these scientific and militaristic concerns in a safe and utilitarian way.

He functions as a medium through which the sf reading community lives out its fantasies of power. The mentality at work in The Leaion of Space is precisely that expressed by E. E. Smith in his 1940 speech. Both that speech and the novel enact a desire of empowerment for those few individuals "with a science- fantasy mind" who understand science and are interested in the future of humanity. Science and the sf perspective act as a type of cultural capital which the sf community uses to seek out its own base of power (Huntington 47). In the days of early pulp sf, hope of enacting any type of social change is illusory, the majority of the sf community being limited to white teenage boys and men in their twenties. But the sf community establishes a sort of consensus that it knows the best course of action to take if only those in power will listen.

But the sf community's desire for power, as expressed through pulp sf narratives and conventions, is ultimately a matter of degree. Sf readers and

205 writers at this time are primarily white men. They do not seek to actually change the preexisting political systems, but to enjoy a larger slice of the political pie.

This desire is illustrated in Williamson's novel by Aladoree's place in the military hierarchy. Aladoree is considered the most important person in the galaxy because of her secret knowledge of the ultimate weapon. And yet, she needs protection from a motley, almost pathetic, group of men: John Star, who is barely in his twenties, and his three companions who are middle aged and at least one who is so obese he has trouble walking. This scenario makes no sense, but it can be taken as unproblematic by a core reading and writing audience who wish to see power expressed through a group of unassuming men. Aladoree may be the most important person in the galaxy, but without her male entourage to protect her she is helpless. Even when it is time to build the AKKA, it is the men who find the necessary materials, she being too weak from her injury to participate in any lengthy or rigorous search.

Aladoree's devaluing is symptomatic of the pulp audience's need to focus power solely on white men and their inventions. We have already seen the construction of sf technology as a locus of ultimate power in Ralph's various inventions and in Seaton's skylark; to these we add Williamson's AKKA. In the

AKKA we encounter the ultimate instrument of war. It is an ideological weapon as much as a doomsday device because it has the ability not only to destroy whole armies or worlds, but to wipe out any conflicting ideological mindset the opposing group may hold. The ultimate weapons of pulp sf are rhetorical strategies for making natural the narratives' ideology. In this case science and technology, with the added strength of a military, represent the pinnacles of human achievement. It should not come as a surprise then when we find that the

206 AKKA, the ultimate expression of technocracy and militarism, operates on principles far removed from reason. The AKKA is

a tiny thing. It looked very dimple, very crude, utterly useless. The parts of it were fastened to a narrow piece of wood, which was mounted on a rough tripod, so that it could be turned, aimed. John Star examined it-and entirely failed to see the secret of it. He was amazed again at its simplicity, incredulous that such a thing could ever vanquish the terrible, ancient science of the Medusae. Two little plates, perforated, so that one could sight through their centers. A wire helix between them, connecting them. And a little cylinder of iron. One of the plates and the little iron rod were set to slide in grooves, so that they could be adjusted with small screws. A rough key-perhaps to close a circuit through the rear plate, though there was no apparent source of current. That was all. (Williamson, Legion 185)

After its construction, all Aladoree has to do is aim the device at the approaching

Medusae armada, touch the key, and the enemy simply vanishes. In scenes like this one, early pulp sf enters into a state of denial of the very parameters of science and reason it seeks to establish and celebrate. In

The Leaion of Space, the solution to the Medusae problem is a total abandonment of science in favor of a dues-ex-machina cast in pseudo-scientific garb. We must ask why certain obvious departures from science and reason are at times accepted by the sf community, especially when we consider that sf, especially during the early pulp age and throughout The Golden Age, valued its grounding in scientific plausibility. The casual abandonment of scientific accuracy reveals that it is not so much incidents and passages from the novel that are held to scrutiny by sf fans and writers, but the outcome of the plot and how that resolution establishes an ideology that is acceptable to the sf community. In other words, the AKKA is an acceptable, if not scientifically plausible, weapon because it feeds the readers' fantasies of escapism and the 207 pulp sf vision of a technocratic future where what E. E. Smith called "science- fantasy" minded types enjoy special status. It is these conceits, together with a

racial fantasy of purity and privilege, which early pulp sf serves. Early pulp sf evokes these fantasies in simplistic ways-straightfonward plotting and clear-cut distinctions between heroes and villains being the most characteristic. The lack of complexity at a formal level masks the wealth of complexity occuring at the thematic level. The simplicity of early pulp sf is due to the unwillingness of authors and readers to examine or even admit to the political nature of the sf endeavor. Of course, such a delusion cannot remain stable, especially when the point of pulp sf is to envision the future change technology initiates. While authors and readers see such change as scientific and not political per se, it is nevertheless a political fantasy of power that these narratives express. How to mask the political nature of scientific knowledge and its functions becomes the central question which future sf has to address. The increasing difficulty of enacting this denial marks an end to early pulp sf, for the simplicity of its storyline can no longer contain the ideological tensions at work in the narrative. We find how this conflict is expressed in a novel that is simultaneously the high point of the early pulp style sf and the beginning of the more formally and thematically complex late pulp narrative of the 40s and 50s, A. E. van Vogt's Sian.

A. E. van Vogt, Sian, and the Fantasy to Power

Early pulp sf culminates in A. E. van Vogt's (b. 1912) Sian, first serialized in 1940 in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction. Van Vogt was

208 profoundly influenced by Gemsback's Amazing Stories (Alexei and Cory Panshin, World 448-49), but he significantly altered the form of the popular pulp tale into something quite different from the space operas of Smith and

Williamson. Sian follows the maturation of Jommy Gross, a slan. Slans resemble humans outwardly, with the exception of the two tendrils which sprout from the tops of their heads, but they are really the next step in human evolution,

Slans have two hearts, are stronger, and have greater endurance than regular humans. They are also able to read minds and communicate with ESP powers.

Furthermore, slans mature mentally at an accelerated rate compared to that of an average human and are significantly more intelligent than the average human.

The novel opens with Jommy as a child. He and his mother are on the run, pursued by slan-hating agents of a future Earth monarchy devoted to hunting down and exterminating the slans. Jommy's mother is killed, but he is able to escape by hiding out beneath a dilapidated building. While he has managed to fool the search parties hunting for him, Jommy has not been able to deceive

Granny, an old woman who seeks to exploit him and his powers. With nowhere left to go, he agrees to stay with Granny and run small con jobs for her. As he matures, Jommy decides it is time to seize his destiny. Jommy goes in search of his late father's greatest creation, an atomic weapon. However, Granny, her mind weakened by drink and age, informs the police of his whereabouts. She has unwittingly doomed herself, because it is a major crime to house a slan.

Nevertheless, Jommy saves Granny, to whom he feels he owes a debt. Jommy's first move is to find a flier that will take him away from the city, where he can study and plan for his future. While still a child, he discovered that another race of slan, the tendrilless slan, live and work in the city alongside the humans but

209 unknown to them. These tendrilless slan operate rockets and possess anti­ gravity technology. Jommy is not sure where these tendrilless slans come from, but he knows that with their technology he can flee the human hunters. He manages to steal a rocket, is nearly caught by a slan named Joanna Hillory, but manages to escape. He makes a home for himself and Granny, and spends the ensuing years perfecting his father's weapons and working on a variety of inventions. The novel also has a second story line, that of Kathleen Layton, a slan who was raised and is being held captive by Kier Gray, the ruler of Earth. She is constantly in danger from Gray's police chief. Petty, who despises all slans.

When she is eighteen, Kathleen escapes. In the meantime, Jommy Cross has devoted his free time to tracking down other slans. He finds Kathleen in an abandoned building which also houses a secret underground slan hideout.

Jommy instantly falls in love with her, but they are immediately caught by Petty who kills Kathleen. Jommy escapes, but it is only a matter of time before the tendrilless slans discover his hideout. His laboratory destroyed, he flees to Mars where he attempts to contact the tendrilless slans and inform them that he is working toward peace. He is caught, however, and is brought before Joanna Hillory, who has been placed in charge of his capture. In a twist of events,

Joanna informs Jommy that she is willing to trust him. But the tendrilless slans are about to launch an attack on Earth, destroying humanity and slan in hopes of making the world safe for tendrilless slan. Jommy then flees to Earth, in hopes of meeting with Gray and achieving a peaceful resolution. Jommy manages to sneak into Gray's tower, but once inside he is caught in a trap laid by Gray himself. Jommy thinks his hope for peace doomed when Gray reveals himself to

210 be a slan and the Impending war a ruse. Jommy is amazed, but Gray explains that the tendrilless slans are in fact true slan who have been modified to appear more human. This transformation has occurred so that humanity may ease itself into the next evolutionary stage. Within fifty years, all tendrilless slan children will be bom full slan, and tensions between tendrilless slan, humans, and slan will be resolved because everyone will be a slan. In a final twist. Gray re-introduces

Jommy to his daughter, Kathleen. Her death was faked to fool Petty and to allow her freedom and peace until the conflict was resolved. Together, they will be the next generation of slan rulers, and with the new energy resources that Jommy's father invented and which Jommy perfected, a glorious future will be had by all.

It is almost impossible to provide a synopsis of a van Vogt story without making it sound irreverent. Yet van Vogt had the extraordinary ability to carry his narrative along at such a frantic pace with stupefying events that it is difficult, even for the most critical of readers, to not get caught up in it. Many critics have referred to his stories as dream-like, and indeed the imagery and sudden shifts in narrative make one feel as if a dream is being recorded with astounding detail.

For example. Van Vogt consciously interjected a new idea every 2000 words in order to keep his plots interesting, and through his fiction he "claimed to be presenting higher forms of logic to the reader" (Clute and Nichols 1268). This approach to narrative results in sudden shifts of place, as in "The Weapon Shop" when the main character enters a building and is suddenly transported to the center of the known universe, or in bizarre juxtapositions of images, as in Slan when Granny goes into town in a horse-drawn wagon, with studebakers driving around her, and the magnificent slan tower, like something out of epic fantasy, looming always in the background. There is no doubting van Vogt's truly

211 ingenious and at times inspired imagination, and it was his powerful images and convoluted story-lines which "intensified the emotional impact and complexity of the stories [pulps of the 40s and 50s] would bear" (Clute and Nichols 1268).

As in Williamson's story, at the heart of Slan is a fantasy of power.

And, again, as in Williamson's story, the desire for power is concealed by a narrative that seeks to establish principles of freedom and peace. In The Leaion of Space these democratic values are juxtaposed with a despotic and evil alien empire, thereby creating a simplistic dualism that forces the reader to choose the side of "good," exemplified by Williamson's heroes. Van Vogt complicates matters, however, as there are never any definite positions expressed in his narrative until literally the final page of the novel. By this point, one can argue, the reader is too exhausted by the novel's frantic pacing to do anything but accept van Vogt's reality-bending resolution. For example, we are expected to see Gray as a dictator-a benevolent one, but a dictator nonetheless-and thus at odds with the principles of individual freedom the novel expresses; yet in the closing chapter of the novel he is revealed as a wise leader who has everyone's, including Jommy's, best interests in mind. Similarly, we are supposed to sympathize with Jommy Cross and the plight of the slans, but then we learn the unjust social system which exploits them actually serves their own ends. To read

Slan is to experience this constantly shifting perspective. We have no grounding in the narrative, no point to latch onto from which we can understand what is happening in the story. In John Huntington's words, "In such a situation the reader is put in the passive position of follower. Any independent interpretation is likely to be overruled a little later" (156).

212 Huntington's observation Implies something about the reading strategies of sf audiences; namely, that didactic narratives which attempt to define If not deny Individual Interpretation are comforting or at least not unpleasant to communities of sf readers. Why Is this the case? To better understand the way

Slan Is read we have to look at the community that has kept It In print over the decades. Early sf fanship was already an organized force by the time Slan was published. One such fan even took the Ideology In Slan to Its logical but absurd conclusion. Writing In his 1943 fanzine Cosmic Digest. Claude Degler spelled out a course of action for pulp readers:

Man is still evolving toward a higher form of life. A new figure Is climbing upon the stage. Homo Cosmen, the cosmic men, will appear. We believe that we are mutations of that species. We are convinced that there are a considerable number of people like ourselves on this planet. If only we could locate and get In touch with them. Someday we will find most of them, and then we will do great things together... .And Indications are that when all these people are united they will make an organization which not only will have an expert on every subject, trade, and profession, but that their pooled knowledge will be far In advance of anything that has been developed on earth to the present day. Thus, we urge every reader. . . who believes he has a work of some far-reaching scope to perform, who believes he Is part of a great plan, and who Is convinced that he knows things today unknown to science, to write your editor, who Is one of those people! The time has come for action! (Wamer 186)

While these may be the ravings of an overzealous fan, Degler voiced a desire shared by many In the sf community: they wished to be seen as Important and pivotal figures in the transformation of society. Already, sf fans viewed themselves as special Individuals. As John B. Michel writes In his eugenic call for biological advancement "Mutation or Death!" read at the 1937 sf convention,

Phlllycon: "There Is something In each and every one of you fans which places

213 him automatically above the level of the average person; which, in short, gives him a vastly broadened view of things in general " (qtd. in Wamer 187). The problem these fans faced was that no one else seemed to agree with their self- analysis. Fans were a sub-culture and a mostly invisible one at that. They were not political strategists nor did they have any economic clout to back up their claims of superiority. These were middle-class white males in their teens and twenties, most of whom were educated, either formally or self-taught, in the sciences, and who sought to change society and ultimately the world to fit their notion of utopia. For these fans, sf pulp narratives were a blueprint for what society could and should be; for everyone else, the pulps were the stuff of juvenile and escapist fantasy. It is the containment and appeasement of this conflict-the tension between sf fandom's dream of the future and society's refusal to take that vision seriously-that defines Slan and accounts for the novel's ongoing popularity. Slan shares much in common with the earlier pulp visions of Gemsback,

Smith and Williamson: the celebration of science, the reliance on adventure and plot gimmicks, the happy ending. But politically van Vogt is enacting a more sophisticated and more sinister ethic than his sf precursors. The early pulps posited good and evil as essential and separate concepts, with good winning out every time. But in Slan there is no clash of opposites. There is only a system that contains these opposites and is able to manipulate them. Such a hegemony is justified by the presence of technocracy and scientism. Slan invites its readers to share in its fantasy of power because it seemingly celebrates science, intelligence, and personal freedom, the qualities which form the thematic comerstone of pulp sf. Yet it also enacts the romantic idea of revolution and

214 rebellion, for Jommy's desire to save his world, the slans, and humanity is posited as revolutionary. By the end of the novel, however, we discover that the system that Jommy is attempting to usurp is itself the goal of his struggle. For sf readers, this scenario was a paradox: it allowed the reader to entertain his

(because it was invariably a "he" who was doing the reading) fantasy of rebellion, of acting outside a political system, and to succeed against that system by joining with that system.

This contradiction has failed to generate either confusion or anxiety in the novel's readers. Why? Perhaps because Slan is a story about a white boy (that he owns a pair of tendrils and has ESP power is ultimately of little importance) who must overthrow a white empire to claim his genetic destiny as ruler, only to learn that that empire has already prepared the way for him and is only waiting for him to act. Slan is ultimately a story about the continuity of white power. This reading helps clarify why Slan was and continues to be such a popular work in sf circles. White readers, most of whom are young men, may feel alienated from mainstream society, but it is only a matter of time before they, like Jommy Cross, begin to understand that society works for them and has been preparing the way for them all along. The movement from outcast fan to mainstream society member mirrors precisely Jommy Cross' maturation process, from outcast slan to member of the ruling elite. It is this transference of white power from one generation to the next that is the reason Slan disavows politics. Because Slan portrays the best possible minds already in power, it ultimately negates the necessity for social change even as it enacts a desire for social revolution. That the ongoing stability of the social order must be the direct result of any subversive action is the lesson readers are expected to take from the novel. "In

215 this fantasy," writes John Huntington, "disruption is stabilizing, and obedience to

the status quo revolutionary" (158). The continued popularity of van Vogt's novel,

and his other work as well, is that it reflects accurately the safeguarding of the

interests of power by a class marked originally as outsiders. This is wish

fulfillment of the highest order: one is a rebel and the establishment all at once. This role can be enjoyed only by the white elite, or at the very least the children

of those elite who play at slumming until they are ushered into positions of

privilege. Van Vogt's narratives mask in sf tropes this passage of white power

from one generation to another. It is this transference of power that has been

celebrated, for the most part unconsciously, by several generations of sf reading

audiences. The way Sian was and continues to be read helps us discern the

ideology which drives sf. It reveals how sf, then and now, eases anxieties about

political complexity by the joining of disparate and contradictory elements. This

is not to say that Sian is able to harmonize political differences; rather, Sian is

able to negate the anxiety raised by political tension by creating a fictional world

where such disharmony and contradiction pass as order.

Conclusion

Pulp sf is characterized by a vision of the future that attempts to divorce white power from politics. This strategy was flawed from the start, as demonstrated by the exploitation of the Other in Gemsback's Ralph 124C 41 + and Smith's The Skylark of Space, the eugenic vision in Williamson's The Legion of Space, and van Vogt's fantasy of power. These narratives use the authority of

216 scientific discourse to explain as natural the extension into the future of white power. We can argue, furthermore, that pulp sf is an attempt by dominant culture to define for itself an ideal future space, marked by a technocratic landscape, where the political nature of its existence is replaced with a system of what John

Huntington refers to as "nonpolitical" power. But early pulp sf also realizes this strategy as implicitly political and as an extension of white power. The containment of this contradiction --the attempt to justify white power through nonpolitical means-is the defining quality of all sf, and it first emerges in an albeit clumsy form in the early pulp period. Sian. I argue, is a tuming point in early pulp sf because it marks an instance when the genre can no longer deny the political vision it enacts. Rather than admit science and white power are mutually complimentary and political enterprises, Sian initiates a stage in genre sf where the continued repression of that understanding must be enacted in increasingly complex ways. As we shall see, in its next phase sf become stylistically more

"mature" as it enacts increasingly complex strategies through which to repress the political nature of its vision.

217 Notes

1 In his Trillion Year Spree. Aldiss provides us with a list of non-English

European magazines which exclusively published sf and predated Gemsback's publications (202-03). Aldiss' point is well made, but this in no way invalidates

Gemsback's importance. His immigration to the states placed him in the right place at the right time: a country on its way to world power status with a population eager for fantasies about their future promise. Whatever his failing as an author, his influence on the genre has been profound. 2 There is some controversy attached to Clareson's position. Some sf historians feel Gemsback abandoned his phrase "scientifiction" in favor of

"science fiction" because it was suggested to him by fans in letters. For all we know, the term "science fiction" may have originated in the mind of a twelve-year- old fan suggesting it in a letter to Gemsback. Still, Gemsback was the first person to formally use the term "science fiction" in a way that could have been, and was, adopted by the general public.

3 Aldiss recounts this in the essay "Science Fiction's Mother Figure" in

The Detached Retina and provides an anecdote of Sam Moskowitz's criticism of his theory that Gemsback was not the "Father of Science Fiction." Aldiss argues in Trillion Year Spree that his critique of Gemsback was like disturbing holy relics

(202), I point to this conflict because I wish to highlight the adoration heaped on

Gemsback and Gernsback-style sf by many readers and authors. 4 At times, Aldiss' comments move from criticism to an almost personal attack. Aldiss refers to Ralph 124C 4^+ as a tawdry illiterate tale fTrillion 203)

218 and comments that the fiction published in Amazing Stories was written

"mercifully by other hands (Trillion 204).

5 For example, William Gibson's "Gemsback Continuum" pretends to satirize Gemsback-style sf even while it unknowingly promotes identical values, the only difference being that they have been disguised and transplanted into a cyberpunk milieu. For a revealing analysis of this story, and a rather devastating critique of the much overrated subversive quality of cyberpunk, see Carol McGuirk's essay "The New 'Romancers.'"

6 One can, of course, laugh at its descriptions of people sucking dinners out of long tubes or roller-skating down city sidewalks, but such imagery is funny because it is dated and reminds us of a future that never came to pass.

7 "Sense of Wonder" was a term used to describe the effects of pulp sf upon its readership. Clute and Nichols discuss the "Sense of Wonder" at length in their The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 8 This is a long-standing trope in sf, and has been with us since

Frankenstein. The creation of altemative forms of life probably goes back to the earliest myths of people all around the world. But here I am discussing the creation of life by the application of "scientific principles" govemed by a belief that the world is understandable and to some degree controllable. This consciousness permeates Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and is why Aldiss has referred to it as the first sf novel. The use of the concept of artificial life as a strategy of eliding political issues is used by Foul Anderson in "Call Me Joe," discussed in the following chapter.

9 We still see this approach used in contemporary sf. See Gary Westfahl's "The Gemsback Continuum: William Gibson in the Context of

219 Science Fiction" in Siusser and Rabkin for his discussion of this trope in Neuromancer. wrongly considered by many to be a radical departure from traditional sf.

0 Sf author Wilson Tucker created the term in 1941 to refer to "hacky, grinding, outworn, spaceship yam," but ended instead by being applied "to colorful action-adventure stories of interplanetary or interstellar conflict" (Clute and Nichols 1138).

11 British author Robert W. Cole's The Struggle for Empire (1900) takes place in outer space and details the conquering of other worlds by and for the

British empire. This precedes Smith's The Skvlark of Space by at least a decade and a half. However, this book had a limited reading audience and never achieved popular status. It is doubtful that Smith ever read the book or even heard of it before he started writing The Skvlark of Space. Because it was written for the pulp audience and because it shaped the imagery of the American pulps which in tum shaped American and world sf, especially after W. W. II, I feel justified in my claim that The Skvlark of Space was a work of far greater influence. 12 Thomas Clareson points out that in Smith's Skylark novels one encounters "the permutation of the future war motif" (Understanding 18).

Clareson is speaking of the themes of warfare that run throughout the series.

While this is certainly the case, I also find the Lost Race themes of biological hierarchy to be present and to play as significant a role.

13 As we will see, it is precisely these themes which are taken up by

Robert Heinlein and become the dominant sf tropes of the 40s and 50s.

220 CHAPTER 4: "DON'T WORRY; I'M NOT GOING POLITICAL ON YOU": IDEOLOGY, WHITE POWER, AND NARRATIVE STRATEGY IN THE LATE PULP AGE

A classic sf story by Theodore Sturgeon, "Microscopic God" (1941), opens with the following sentence: "Here is a story about a man who had too much power, and a man who took too much, but don't worry; I'm not going political on you" (127). We find in these lines the repression of what is at the heart of all pulp sf: a fantasy of white power. As discussed in the previous chapter, this power is cast as nonpolitical, a strategy, I argue, which serves to mask the racial meaning underpinning the genre. In early pulp sf, this meaning is addressed in unsophisticated ways; but in late pulp sf, those stories published between 1940-1964, the clumsy visions of Gemsbackian-influenced sf give way to more complex, and more contradictory, narratives. Late pulp sf is more aware of itself as a political enterprise, yet it cannot admit this knowledge lest it cast its fantasy of power as political rather than as a natural consequence of technological progress. This contradiction does not exist in proto-sf, where white racial superiority is openly promoted and embraced. Nor does it exist in early pulp sf, where white power is conflated with technology and progress. In order for this contradiction to pass as reasonable, sf must necessarily become a more complex animal. This development has been explained as a maturation of the

221 genre, or as sf authors becoming more polished and honed in their craft. While

late pulp sf may be better written than its predecessor, to argue that its

emergence represents a radical shift in sf narrative is a misreading of the genre

that serves to distract us from what remains an unquestioned premise in all pulp

sf, namely, the necessity of enacting a fantasy of white power that is justified

through recourse to scientific and cultural positivism. Late pulp sf marks a point

in the development of the genre where the ideological nature of such a strategy

can no longer be denied.

This chapter will examine late pulp sf stories which seek to enact white

power through technological venues, which because of their "scientific" nature

are constructed as being value-free. In late pulp sf technology and progress are

problematic subjects because of their interplay with issues of ethnic difference. 1

As we shall see, ethnic difference is a constant source of irritation for these

narratives because it acts as a reminder that nonpolitical power is an illusion.

Ethnicity threatens to open a spectrum of difference and political possibility that these narratives attempt to contain. Late pulp sf addresses this political condition through an act of denial: it claims to be nonpolitical, as the disclaimer in the opening of Sturgeon's story cited above seeks to remind us. It is this attempt to erase the political dimension from what is inherently a political strategy that marks the ideology in late pulp sf. As with previous phases of sf, this fantasy of power is enacted at the expense of the visibly ethnic Other. To better understand this impulse in late pulp sf, I will examine a variety of classic narratives, including "The Marching Morons" by C. M. Kombluth, "Call Me Joe" by Poul Anderson, "Way In the Middle of the Air" and "The Other Foot" by Ray Bradbury, and "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. I conclude this chapter with a longer discussion of the works of Robert Heinlein, specifically "Lifeline,"

"The Long Watch," and the novels Starship Troopers and Famham's Freehold.

C. M. Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons": Erasing the Other

C. M Kornbluth's (1923-1958) "The Marching Morons" (1951) portrays a future society where three million intellectual elite maintain the world for the remaining five billion morons. In this aristocracy of intelligence, social privilege is a burden which must be shouldered by the brightest of the citizenry. Into this world awakens "Honest John" Barlow, a "man who was accidentally thrown into a state of suspended animation" centuries before (Kombluth 136). Barlow is amazed to find a city of the future beyond his wildest imaginings, but this surprise turns to confusion when he leams the secret of his new home. The guide, Tinny-

Peete, explains to Barlow that everything in this future world is a trick played upon the gullible masses:

The rockets aren't rockets. They're turbo-jets-good turbo-jets, but the fancy shell around them makes for a bad drag. The automobiles have a top speed of one hundred kilometers per hour- a kilometer is, if I recall my paleolinguistics, three-fifths of a mile- and the speedometers are all rigged accordingly so the drivers will think they're going two hundred and fifty. The cities are ridiculous, expensive, unsanitary, wasteful conglomerations of people who'd be better off and more productive if they were spread over the countryside. (Kombluth 148)

In this world morons pretend to run the social system, but the intellectual elite control all aspects of life from behind the scenes. Low-level government employees, for example, make all the decisions and allow only moron presidents

223 elected by moron citizens to play at being in charge. Similarly, nurses are in fact

brilliant medical specialists who make sure moron doctors work only with

advanced medical instruments which literally do surgeries and diagnostics for

them. The intellectual elite have even produced horrific birth control films which

are the cinematic blockbusters of their day. Movies "like Babies Are Terrible and

Don't Have Children were fantastic arguments against parenthood--the

grotesquely exaggerated dangers of painfully graphic childbirth, vicious children,

old parents beaten and starved to death by their sadistic offspring" (Kombluth

147). The moron audiences to these films merely sit by, "placidly chomping sweets and showing no particular signs of revulsion" (Kombluth 147). The future

ruling class, overburdened by supporting billions of morons who are reproducing at an astonishing rate, asks Barlow for help in finding a solution. Barlow, adapting his experiences as a real estate agent and his knowledge of Nazi genocidal practices, concocts a plan to destroy all the morons by blasting them into space. Once this is done, the ruling elites tum the tables on Barlow and use his own plans against him. The story ends with Barlow "[l]ying twisted and broken under the acceleration" of the rocket that flies him to his doom (Kombluth 163).

The conflict central to "The Marching Morons" is a moral dilemma: How do the elites manage to solve the problem of the morons while remaining innocent of their exploitation of them? Barlow first offers several "solutions" to the problem of moron breeding, but they are rejected in tum. This scene is important because it offers us insight into the logic of the story's moral position. Barlow asks:

224 "I don't understand! Why don't you let them go to hell in their own way?" The man grimaced. "We tried it once for three months. We holed up at the South Pole and waited. They didn't notice it. Some drafting room people were missing, some chief nurses didn't show up, minor government people on the non-policy level couldn't be located. It didn't seem to matter. "In a week there was hunger. In two weeks there were famine and plague, in three weeks war and anarchy. We called off the experiment; it took us most of the next generation to get things squared away again." "But why didn't you let them kill each other off?" "Five billion corpses mean about five hundred millions tons of rotting flesh." Barlow had another idea. "Why don't you sterilize them?" "Two and a-half billion operations is a lot of operations. Because they breed continuously, the job would never be done. "I see. Like the marching Chinese!" "Who the devil are they?" "It was a-uh-paradox of my time. Somebody figured out that if all the Chinese in the world were to line up four abreast, I think it was, and start marching past a given point, they'd never stop because of the babies that would be bom and grow up before they passed the point." "That's right. Only instead of a 'given point,' make it 'the largest conceivable number of operating rooms that we could build and staff.' There could never be enough." "Say!" said Barlow. "Those movies about babies-was that your propaganda? "It was. It doesn't seem to mean a thing to them. We have abandoned the idea of attempting propaganda contrary to a biological drive." "So if you work with a biological drive--?" "I know of none consistent with the inhibition of fertility." Barlow's face went blank: "You don't, huh? You're the great brains and you can't think of any. " "Why, no," said the psychist innocently. "Can you?" (150-51; emphasis in original)

Of course, Barlow can, and his "solution" is conveniently made to safeguard the intellectual elite of the story. The responsibility for five billion deaths is placed on the head of Barlow who is, in turn, punished for his crime by those who first asked him to commit it. This is a confusing scenario, and no critical reader can

225 merely accept the innocence of the ruling elite, nor does their "punishment" of

Barlow in any way excuse their act of genocide. Nevertheless, this tenuous

moral action functions as the resolution to the conflict of what to do with a

population that is intellectually crippled because it gives back control to the

intellectual elite while the annoying man from the past is silenced.

John Huntington points out that "It is unclear as to how we are to read

this 'solution.' Certainly it must be intended as a piece of cynical dark humor, but the humor indulges its anger in ways that make one wonder whether the

unthinkable solution may not also be a wished one" (62). Huntington continues this line of inquiry:

I see no other way of interpreting this story except as saying that a drastic solution, such as that devised by Barlow, is necessary for the problem of the 'morons'... .Dark comedy becomes the only way of holding this contradiction together, and even as the comedy succeeds, it self-destructs. The contradictions, which are at first limited to the attitudes of superior condescension to the monstrous future, finally become those of the story itself; genocide is both a horror. . . and a final solution. The logic of the story cannot see any way out. The bittemess of the humor has a grim pleasure to it; the story delights in making its audience face the implication of its attitudes. (64)

Huntington's observations allow us a foothold into the disturbing implications of

Kornbluth's story and, indeed, late pulp sf itself. Kombluth's story poses a

fantasy where genocide is presented as an unthinkable solution even as it is enacted to satisfy the sf need to celebrate intelligence as a value in itself. How the story denies this knowledge, and what this strategy reveals about the genre,

is the focus of Huntington's insightful argument. But Huntington's discussion of nonpolitical power as the fantasy which this and other stories like it seeks to create does not go far enough.

226 Nonpolitical power, expressed in Kombluth's story as Barlow's "solution,"

is based upon ethnic difference: "We need the rockets and trick speedometers

and cities because while you and your kind were being prudent and foresighted

and not having children, the migrant workers, slum dwellers, and tenant farmers

were shiftlessly and short-sightedly having children-breeding, breeding. My

God, how they bred" (Kombluth 149). There is an anxiety here that is clearly

bom out of class difference. There is also, I believe, an anxiety based on ethnic

difference, as people of color constitute a disproportionate percentage of the

underclass. I do not think I impose a racial reading here when I say that in the

popular imagination migrant workers and slum dwellers are most commonly associated with Latinos and blacks, respectively. This is not to say that it is only

these groups which serve these roles, or that they do nothing but function in such

capacities. I simply point out that they are often perceived as such. Given this

understanding, I suggest that fear of the visibly ethnic Other as a cultural

contaminant, more so than the distinction between intelligence and stupidity, drives "The Marching Morons" towards its muddled conclusion. But even as this

racism drives the story, it is also subsumed by the narrative. "The Marching

Morons" is not often discussed in relation to ethnic issues in sf (on those rare

occasions when race is a subject of critical investigation) perhaps because in the

perception of dominant culture below-standard intelligence is so often associated with lower and immigrant classes made up primarily of people-of-color. Yet even as the story is driven by a fundamentally racist assertion that the source of all social ill is the uncontrolled breeding of lesser peoples, it simultaneously denies

its own racist observations. An interesting scene occurs when Barlow meets a man who is to be his partner in finding a solution to the problem of the future:

227 The hawk-faced man said, "I'd like to work with you on it, Barlow. My name's Ryan-Ngana." He put out his hand. Barlow looked closely at the hand, then at the man's face. "Ryan what?" “Ngana." "That sounds like an African name." It is. My mother's father was Watusi." Barlow didn't take the hand. "I thought you looked pretty dark. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but I don't think I'd be at my best working with you. There must be somebody else just as well qualified. I'm sure." The psychist made a facial sign to Ryan-Ngana that meant, "Steady vourself. boy!" "Very well," Ryan-Ngana told Barlow. "We'll see what arrangement can be made." "It's not that I'm prejudiced, you understand. Some of my best friends-" "Mr. Barlow, don't give it another thought...." (Kombluth 152-53; emphasis in original)

The obvious purpose of this scene is to paint Barlow as racist and thus despicable in the eyes of a reading audience comprised (then and to this day) primarily of white men. This strategy thus reveals something about how the sf community views itself. Since Ryan-Ngana is "intelligent" he obviously falls within standards of audience acceptance. Furthermore, as part of the elite class he becomes an object of identification. Ultimately, however, Ngana achieves sympathy in the eyes of the pulp sf community not because he is being discriminated against for the color of his skin, but because his intelligence is not being appreciated. While Barlow's racist response is determined by Ngana's color, the reading audience's response to Barlow is determined more along the lines that he cannot accept intelligence regardless of what form it takes. As my discussion of Sian reveals, the pulp sf community longs to see itself as important and as having something to say. Ngana's silencing speaks directly to their social condition and not to the political exploitation of African Americans.

228 If my reading of this scene seems forced, then one need only ask why

Ngana is not more "fully" black. How would his characterization have been received by the fan audience if he were first generation African? This is a legitimate question, for the story necessitates that Ngana not be too much of the

Other but only just enough so that Barlow's foolishness can be made clear.

Creating an African Ngana, I feel, would be going too far, for he would threaten to uncover the racism that is already in the reading audience and the story. Even as the narrative pretends to condemn racism, it is actively pursued when it suits the purpose of plot. Tinny-Peete has already discussed how out-of-control breeding among the lower and immigrant classes led to the moronic overpopulation. Following such a lecture, one can only wonder at the legitimacy of Tinny-Peete's response to Barlow's racism: "Upstairs, waiting for the helicopter, Barlow was explaining to Tinny-Peete that he had nothing against

Negroes, and Tinny-Peete wished he had some of Ryan-Ngana's imperturbability and humor for the ordeal" (Kombluth 153). We should also keep in mind here

Barlow's earlier comparison of the morons to the marching Chinese or Yellow

Peril: "Somebody figured out that if all the Chinese in the world were to line up four abreast, I think it was, and start marching past a given point, they'd never stop because of the babies that would be bom and grow up before they passed the point" (Kombluth 151). Tinny-Peete is in no way disturbed by this comment and in fact uses it to better illustrate his point of the dangers of moron overpopulation. Why is one racist insult acceptable and not another?

This conflicting response to racism speaks to the narrative's lack of concem for racism. Racism is only a tool to be used to further the function of the story: on the one hand racism is condemned, on the other embraced. Because

229 of this contradiction we must not confuse an African position of power in this future world as indicative of a multicultural utopia. Ngana is a disguised mark of white power, an empty symbol used to allay charges of racism. A ruling elite of

African ancestry does not excuse the genocidal fantasy the narrative enacts, but merely serves to cloud the racist nature of that vision. We may even argue that the title of the story is itself a paranoid permutation of the paradox Barlow refers to. The marching Chinese of his example become, in effect, the marching morons of the story, the only difference being that the morons contain every racial stereotype created and promoted by dominant culture.

"The Marching Morons" enacts a fantasy of white power that is unmatched in pulp sf. To find its parallel, one needs to retum to the scenarios of the Future War and Lost Race novel. Unlike these older genres, however, "The

Marching Morons" attempts to contain and disguise its racist desire. The story even goes so far as to condemn racism even as it is driven by a genocidal desire motivated by racism. The contradiction at the heart of "The Marching Morons" is bom from the understanding that the ideas engaged by the story are explicitly political but that the narrative must never allow this knowledge to surface, for to do so would threaten to mark the entire sf enterprise as a political endeavor rather than an exercise in objective knowledge. The result of such an understanding is a series of rationalizations and tensions which threaten to reveal the narrative for what it is, white propaganda. We may thus argue that the unstated measure of what makes for "classic" sf is how well a story engages this denial. By this standard, "The Marching Morons" is classic sf at its very best.

230 Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe": Colonizing the Body of the Other

The genocide that occurs in The Marching Morons" is not indicative of most sf of the late pulp age, even if the strategy the story enacts to deal with its own violence is. Such violence is often directed at a nonhuman subjects, usually aliens or some variation on the alien theme, as in Poul Anderson's (b. 1926) "Call

Me Joe" (1957). Nevertheless, just because this action is directed at non-human entities does not make it any less problematic. Often, the alien/non-human substitutes as a safe space for fantasies of colonization and exploitation to occur. This scenario feeds the fantasy of nonpolitical power, allowing explicitly political statements to be made through generic tropes whose function it is to obscure such understandings. "Call Me Joe" takes place simultaneously on the surface of Jupiter and on one of its moons. The main character, Edward Anglesey, is a scientist who has been horribly disfigured and has been forced to spend the rest of his life confined to a futuristic version of a wheelchair: "Edward Anglesey was a bit of a shock the first time. He was a head, a pair of arms, and a disconcertingly blue stare. The rest of him was mere detail, enclosed in a wheeled machine"

(Anderson 5). Anglesey has been running an experiment on Jupiter's surface.

With the help of an esprojector and a psion-helmet, Anglesey can control Joe, an organic life-form that has been developed artificially and has been designed to live on Jupiter's harsh surface. More than a simple remote-controlled satellite,

Joe is described as the "perfect Lockean tabula rasa" (Anderson 31). Anglesey can literally feel and see the world through Joe's eyes. Whatever Joe experiences, Anglesey experiences as well. Anglesey is Joe and vice versa.

231 Joe “stands about five feet tall" and resembles "a feline centaur with a thick prehensile ta il.. . The torso was squat, long-armed, Immensely muscular; the hairless head was round, wide-nosed, with big deep-set eyes and heavy jaws, but it was really quite a human face. The over-all color was bluish gray"

(Anderson 12). Anglesey's experiments, however, are constantly being disrupted by a malfunctioning K tube, "the heart of the esprojector" that amplifies Anglesey's "psionic pulses" which enable him to mesh with Joe (Anderson 17). A psionics expert, Jan Cornelius, is brought to Jupiter's moon to determine why the tube Is misfiring and fix the problem. Comelius begins to suspect that the latent personality in the Joe creature is beginning to take over Anglesey. Cornelius' theory is that Anglesey realizes his consciousness is being erased only at a subconscious level, and that this anxiety is forcing the K tube to constantly explode. What he does not understand, however, is how much Anglesey enjoys

"living" in Joe's body and exploring the harsh Jupiter landscape, home to ammonia gales, methane falls, fearsome caterpillar creatures and "mantalike birds with flesh as dense and hard as iron" (Anderson 26).

To prove his theory, Comelius eavesdrops on one of Anglesey's psionic projections by linking into the esprojector. Cornelius believes he will not be noticed because Anglesey is focused on an important new experiment: the scientists on the moonbase are sending down a host of fellow creatures, or

Jovians, which Anglesey/Joe will educate and organize into a community to continue research in an environment that is too harsh for humans to inhabit. Nevertheless, Comelius' intrusion is immediately noticed, and Anglesey forces him out of his and Joe's joint mind. At this point in the story, both Anglesey and

Comelius realize what has actually been happening: Anglesey does not want to

232 retum to the station. In fact, he does not want to retum to his life as an invalid at all. The K tube has been exploding because Anglesey cannot accept having to retum to his old body. He prefers to stay in Joe's body on Jupiter, carving out an existence on that harsh new frontier. Armed with this new knowledge, he leaves behind his body on Jupiter's moon and permanently transfers his consciousness to Joe's body. With a newfound hope for the future, Anglesey/Joe strides out to meet his fellow Jovians to begin a new life of colonization and scientific investigation on the Jupiter frontier.

Any discussion of "Call Me Joe " has to examine the nature of the relationship between Anglesey and Joe. Anglesey argues that

"our pseudojovian, Joe, has a physically adult brain. The only reason I can control him is that his brain has never been given a chance to develop its own ego. I am Joe. From the moment he was 'bom' into consciousness, I have been there. The psibeam sends me all his sense data and sends him back my motor-nerve impulses. Nevertheless, he has that excellent brain, and its cells are recording every trace of experience, even as yours and mine; his synapses have assumed the topography which is my 'personality pattem.' "Anyone else, taking him over from me, would find it was like an attempt to oust me myself from my own brain. It couldn't be done. To be sure, he doubtless has only a rudimentary set of Anglesey- memories-l do not, for instance, repeat trigonometric theorems while controlling him -but he has enough to be. potentially, a distinct personality." (Anderson 7; emphasis added)

The construction of Joe as a potential personality raises some important questions. Is Joe a sentient entity? Anglesey's description of the pseudojovian implies that he is. If this is the case, then Joe is little else than a slave to the whim of Anglesey and his fellow scientists. The narrative refuses to directly contemplate this situation, constructing Joe as an extension of the laboratory, as a vehicle of scientific exploration and, ultimately, as a site of romantic escapism.

233 The question of Joe's individuality cannot be pursed to any real extent in the story, because doing so creates a political tension that the narrative refuses to address lest it risk revealing itself as a political exercise. Joe's individuality, in other words, must remain a clouded issue in order for the narrative to continue its illusory enactment of nonpolitical power. Nevertheless, the question of Joe's potential autonomy does at times surface, and the narrative's rationalization, its

"explaining away," of this political problematic provides us with a glimpse at how the narrative seeks to enact its fantasy of white power.

Anglesey's description of his melding with Joe is our first hint at how power functions in their relationship. Anglesey states that

"whenever [Joe] wakes up from sleep-usually a lag of a few minutes, while I sense the change through my normal psi faculties and get the amplifying helmet adjusted-l have a bit of a struggle, I feel almost a . . . a resistance until I've brought his mental currents completely into phase with mine. Merely dreaming has been enough of a different experience to ..." Anglesey didn't bother to finish the sentence. (Anderson 7)

There is obviously some aspect of Joe's latent personality that objects to

Anglesey's intrusion. Joe's resistance to Anglesey implies not only autonomy, but a desire to protect that autonomy. Anglesey himself states that for a human to take over another human mind is impossible because "the other brain will fight back instinctively" (Anderson 7). But Joe is not human; he is an artificial life form bred for specific purposes, including being controlled by an outside source, so this resistance should not be happening. Why, then, does it occur? Anderson could have written the story with Joe as a mindless puppet. The question is would it have worked as well? Probably not. Joe needs to be sentient in order to function as a subject upon which power, specifically white power, can act.

234 It is precisely this strategy that is under investigation here. Asking whether Joe's rights are being trampled does not clarify the workings of this narrative. Rather, we have to ask why the story seeks to create a "Joe" in the first place. Anderson could have used some of the native creatures of Jupiter.

Why this is not done is important to the logic of the story. Anderson's use of native Jupiter creatures would, I think, open a space of political tension. Artificial life, represented by Joe, is created as a means to bypass the moral and political implications of the system of control initiated by the scientists and their technology. But these moral and political points continually resurface because the story can only realize itself within these social categories. Joe's creation is an example of the genre's use of what it perceives to be nonpolitical power: because Joe is an artificial being his rights are not an issue. Nevertheless, Joe's latent personality is mentioned throughout the narrative, recasting the original purpose of the story into a political confrontation. This contradiction marks the logic of the narrative. It exists because the story, and the sf genre itself, relishes the exercise of power even as it denies it. We see this denial, or at least a refusal to follow through on the story's implications, in Anglesey's aborted speech in the quotation above. The ellipses mark a point where something is left unsaid or unthought. This point is the narrative's reflection on the political nature of its agenda, a reflection that cannot be put into words lest it be acknowledged.

To better understand this agenda we need to examine the function that

Joe serves. Viken, one of the scientists on the moonbase, explains the functions of the pseudojovians:

"Eventually females will be sent down, and uncontrolled males, to be educated by the puppets. A new generation will be bom normally-well, anyhow, the ultimate aim is a small civilization of

235 Jovians. There will be hunters, miners, artisans, farmers, housewives, the works. They will support a few key members, a kind of priesthood. And that priesthood will be esp-controlled, as Joe is. It will exist solely to make instruments, take readings, perform experiments, and tell us what we want to know!" (Anderson 16)

This colonizing enterprise also has another effect: the reinstatement of slavery as an accepted Western value. The above quotation makes it clear that the pseudojovians are capable of developing their own distinct personalities. These individuals, it seems, will be made to serve the needs of a priesthood of scientists working physically in absentia but in mental control of their subjects. Perhaps more than any other scene in the story the above dialogue serves as a point when the narrative can no longer contain the contradiction upon which it rests. It is clear here that nonpolitical power cannot function, yet the narrative quite causally makes these comments then moves on. The point to take from this scene is the constant presence of white power just below the surface narrative.

The narrative seeks to create a situation where the use of labor is innocent of questions of exploitation and abuse. At the same time, however, the narrative enjoys the power it is able to wield in envisioning a scenario where exploitation occurs. "Call Me Joe" and the body of late pulp sf is informed by the acting out and simultaneous denial of this colonialist fantasy. Another dimension to this fantasy is the function it serves for those who enact it. In addition to using the pseudojovians for purely scientific research, their bodies act as a potential site of escapism. After Anglesey permanently transfers his consciousness into Joe, Comelius asks Viken,

236 "Was Anglesey the only hopeless cripple on Earth?" Viken gaped at him. "And there are aging men, too," went on the psionicist, half to himself. "Someday, my friend, when you and I feel the years close in, and so much we would like to leam-maybe we too would enjoy an extra lifetime in a Jovian body." He nodded at his cigar. "A hard, lusty, stormy kind of life, granted-dangerous, brawling, violent-but life as no human, perhaps, has lived it since the days of Elizabeth the First. Oh, yes, there will be small trouble finding Jovians." (Anderson 33)

This is one of the central conceits of sf-the past reexperienced in a futuristic landscape. This is not the place to examine that impulse. What this scene reminds us, however, is how the story continually sets up utopie circumstances at the expense of Others-the physically challenged body and the appropriation of a race of pseudojovians who have already demonstrated autonomy. It is difficult not to compare Joe and his fellow pseudos with visibly ethnic Others (as well as those Others whom society has also deemed outsiders, such as the disabled and gays and lesbians): both are acted upon by a system that promotes itself as benign, both have their bodies appropriated by the dominant culture (one is reminded of the han/esting of human organs from the unsuspecting poor of Latin America and the parallels with Joe seem ever more accurate), and both their voices are stifled in the face of more "important" values.

The above quotation is the penultimate scene in the novel (the story ends with a doctor's brief mention that Anglesey's body died with a smile on its face), and in so doing sen/es to launch the story in a new direction: an extended colony on

Jupiter, and perhaps eventually the rest of the galaxy, that is based on a patriarchal white male ethic. As in all these stories, this political construction is naturalized by allusions to scientific exploration and human drives. Nevertheless, we are constantly reminded of its political nature by the unequal function of

237 power, in this case summarized nicely in what can be read as a chilling comment on the consequences of the story's action: "Joe has all Anglesey's habits, thoughts, memories, prejudices, interests" (Anderson 31). This is the colonized imagination in its purest form-complete, total, and absolute assimilation into a dominant ideology. "Call Me Joe" enacts a contradictory narrative strategy: it seeks to create artificial life as a means of bypassing political consequence and initiating nonpolitical power; still, it returns to a scenario where power is exerted over what can only be described, given that the narrative refers to his "resistance," as an unwilling subject. My reading attempts to clarify how late pulp sf denies its political position on race even as it enjoys the political privilege out of which it is bom. While "Call Me Joe" does not specifically address the visibly ethnic Other, by implication the story enacts a system where some "races" are better suited than others to rule. The parallels with the "real world" are obvious. These stories do not exist in a vacuum, as the tropes which they employ are specific to the political circumstance which surround them. We can gain an even better understanding of how sf tropes are inextricably linked to cultural values, including racism and white power, in two short stories by Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury's “Way in the Middle of the Air" and "The Other Foot ": The Recolonization of the Other

Ray Bradbury's (b. 1920) "Way in the Middle of the Air" (1946) tells of a massive black exodus from Earth to Mars. As the blacks walk and drive to their spaceships, they are taunted by a white man, Teece, who sits on his house

238 porch with a group of his white friends. As the story reaches its conclusion,

Teece is angered by the blacks' dream for freedom, what he considers insolence on their part. He chases after them only to find the road strewn with their former possessions amassed during their time of exploitation on Earth-a litany of sad histories left behind. He returns just as the rockets blast off to Mars. While his friends prompt him to watch the spectacle, Teece refuses. The story closes on

Teece's hollow-sounding comments that the blacks still referred to him as

"Mister" even as they were leaving.

"The Other Foot" (1951) takes place twenty years later, after the blacks have settled on Mars. Into their idyllic community lands a spaceship carrying half a million white survivors. An unnamed white man begs the blacks to provide for them, as the Earth has been decimated after a nuclear war. Willie, one of the colonists, wants to punish the whites, angry at the injustices of the past, but his wife, Hattie, seeks only peace. As the wasted white man recounts the terror of the war and all the places that have been destroyed, Willie has a change of heart and the black community welcomes the white refugees into their world.

In my experience teaching these stories in the classroom, student response has been overwhelmingly positive. They read these stories as affirmations of common humanity and presentations of a future free of racial strife. My students' readings are echoed, albeit in more academic fashion, by

Ellen Bishop, who argues that Bradbury's stories use "the Africanist presence critically to challenge the white racist worldview by enabling this other to speak, thus acknowledging an other subject" (91). I open this analysis of Bradbury's stories with readings which find them politically unproblematic to call attention to how easy it is to misread the complex

239 narrative strategy these stories perform. Rather than seeking to overturn racist practices or providing an “Africanist presence" from which to view categories of self and other, these stories subtly enact the late pulp sf fantasy of white power.

First, these stories construct acceptance of white power as something other than political by recasting it as an impulse bom of human decency. Second, by positing racial difference as the division between whites and blacks, these stories reify white power even as they pretend to undercut it.

"The Other Foot" closes with one of the children asking Willie whether he has seen the white man. Willie responds by claiming, "Seems like for the first time today I really seen the white man-1 really seen him clear" (Bradbury, "Foot"

38). We can read this scene as moving toward the dissolution of the barriers which existed between Willie and white American culture. In the scene previous to this one, the unnamed white man runs down a list of places that were destroyed by the war, including the town where Willie's father was shot and hung.

The destruction of the locations of exploitation and violence thus serves as a metaphor for the erasure of a preexisting political system. The time for reconciliation is upon us, it would seem. Willie's reaction that for the first time in his life he sees clearly the white man can be read as an instance when he is able to view his life and the world around him outside of political circumstance. The story would have us believe that the black exodus to Mars has provided a means of an altemative, nonpolitical perspective. This is a classic recapitulation of the central conceit of sf-that space travel will open up a new horizon for humanity that will bind us all as a single entity. Bishop fails to take this ideological strategy into account, an oversight which leads her to read the story as a critique of white hegemony:

240 Bradbury shows us (former) African Americans who are able to see the complex relation of self and other vested in racial differences that the white man had for so long denied, because they are able to occupy another territory (a psychological time-space that comes to be literally represented as Mars) from which a different view is possible. Key to this critical perspective, is the asymmetrical relation it bears to the white man's (psycho-graphic) "turf" and the narrow view of the world that is possible from there. The former African Americans on Mars have constructed a more complex sense of self and other, and a more complicated (and humane) psycho-graphic territory on which to live. They avoid the simple reversal of terms within the dichotomous structures of the white racists' thought and the reality and subjectivity that that thought produces. Bradbury, in these stories, has critically used the "Africanist presence" to expose the serious limitations of a white, racist worldview. (92)

The notion of subject displacement (in this case the transposition of African

Americans to the new landscape of Mars), while certainly a valid critical tool when applied to most strains of U. S. literature (especially as performed by Toni

Morrison, the source for Bishop's argument), begins to unravel when applied to sf. This is not to say that sf is detached from the mainstream of American literature; rather, sf works out complex strategies that often differ from those performed by more traditional narratives. Bishop's reading of Bradbury fails to take into account that this subject displacement is relocated within a strategy that has as its singular goal the establishment of nonpolitical power, or white power disguised as a nonpolitical condition. We see this ideology play out in the way whites are accepted, particularly by one of Bradbury's most provocative characters, Willie.

Willie's initial anger at the arrival of the whites is a political reaction. The narrative seeks to contain and erase that reaction not because it seeks a kinder space for people to exist in, but because it seeks a new place where white power can extend into. In reading "The Other Foot" we must not forget that Willie 241 occupies a "black" space, devoid of whiteness. Whiteness is a mystery, something to be objectified and pointed at:

"What are you going to do with that white man?" asked Hattie. "Do?" said everyone. “W hy-just look at him is all." "You sure?" "What else can we do?" (Bradbury, "Foot" 29)

The sudden intrusion of a white presence into the black community is a type of colonization, recast and reconfigured by Bradbury to seem more benign. In previous works discussed in this study we have examined how white power establishes itself under the guise of universal human drives. "The Other Foot" differs only in the way it establishes this deception. In place of the alien Other we have the visibly ethnic Other. In place of scientific exploration we have human decency. The ship that lands on Mars is said to contain half a million people.

Could these individuals not have found a place on Earth to start again? How about the moon? Is it absolutely necessary that they recolonize a black space?

The story cannot pursue these types of possibilities because it would then not exist. However, neither can it pursue the possibility that the blacks would reject the white refugees. While such a course of action may be read as unflattering to the blacks in the story, this is not the sole reason this potential plot development is not pursued. Sf is hardly worried about sympathetic portrayals of people-of- color, after all. A black community cannot be explored because such an investigation would deny the political goal of this story-the creation of a white presence in a place where it previously did not exist. Because colonization occurs without physical confrontation does not make that action any less violent.

The violence perpetrated exists at a more abstract level-the imagination that cannot conceive of a space where whiteness has not intruded. It is this absolute

242 need for a white presence that marks "The Other Foot" as a story of colonization passed off as a meditation on human decency.

Even as the story concludes on a note of human harmony, it is motivated to it by an understanding of colonialist violence. The Martian Chronicles is, after all, a story about the colonization of a world whose original inhabitants have been displaced by humans.2 Bishop points out that the Martians

are partially analogous to the Native Americans who were wiped out as a civilization in the American west (the geographic space), surviving mostly in the dominant culture's symbolic field (displaced our of time and history into myth) as noble and primitive others, ghosts of (white-male-European) American's lost primitive-in-tune- with-nature-self. (88)

This is an important obsen/ation, if only because it introduces into the already problematic representation of the intrusion of white power into a black society another point of contention: the simplistic construction of ethnic difference upon which these stories are conceived. Upon first reading "Way in the Middle of the

Air" the sf elements are obvious: the rockets launching on their way to Mars. But with a closer analysis we may argue that the main sf construct in the story is the racial makeup of this world so simply divided between white and black. White and black are essentialist terms in the story-distinct with absolutely no overlap.

Blackness is portrayed as stable and unchanging, as is whiteness. For example, although the story takes place in 2001, the landscape and language are very much mid- if not early-twentieth century. This is perhaps forgivable since

Bradbury was writing to his time and may not have been concerned with future projection of current social conditions as was the case with other sf. Still, this quality of timelessness cannot excuse the reductionism it creates. When one of the white men asks where blacks built their rockets, another replies "in Africa,

243 maybe" (Bradbury, "Air" 91). The Implied connection between African Americans and Africa seems located in an understood racial or genetic quality, rather than in a sociological condition. There is no reason why African Americans have to have such a close connection to Africa, but this device is nevertheless used to explain why the rockets were built with no white interference. The obvious problem with this explanation is that there are whites in Africa, but there is deeper problem as well. The explanation Bradbury uses here is put forth as unproblematic and the reading audience accepts it as such. This acceptance of a conflation of black experience with African experience reveals late pulp sf's limitations of exploring adequately the diversity which exists within any specific ethnic group. In "Way in the Middle of the Air," all blacks think and act the same and are portrayed as a homogenous mass: The black warm waters descended and engulfed the tow n... .Like a kind of summer molasses, it poured turgidly forth.. ." (Bradbury

90); "that slow, steady channel of darkness" (Bradbury 91); "The river flowed black between the buildings, with a rustle and a creak and a constant whispering shuffle. It was a very quiet thing, with a great certainty to it; no laughter, no wildness, just a steady, decided, and ceaseless flow" (Bradbury 92). There is an extreme objectification functioning in these descriptions, a lack of characterization that calls into question the racial vision this story seeks to establish. It is almost as if Bradbury cannot see as human those he seeks to sympathize with. We see this confusion expressed in how Bradbury describes some of his black characters: "a seventeen-year-old colored boy . . . all arms and feet and long legs and round watermelon head" ("Air" 97; emphasis added).

This description enacts a stereotype even as it attempts to be sympathetic, and

244 alerts us to how racism is interwoven into the fabric of a narrative that seeks to

be non racist.

We find a similar confusion in Bradbury's construction of his white

characters. Teece is the most outright racist of the lot. He is designed to be the

voice box of the racist Old South. Near the end of the story, Teece detains a

black child and refuses to let him go. He releases him only after the other men

on the porch confront him. As the boy and his family pull away he cries out

"What you goin' to do nights from now on? What you goin' to do nights, Mr.

Teece?" (Bradbury, "Air" 99; emphasis in original). The child's question prompts Teece to remember those nights he, and fellow members of the KKK, as the

scene implies, lynched and shot blacks. The story closes with the men on the porch contemplating their past and future:

The men on the porch sat down, looked at each other, looked at the yellow rope piled neat on the store shelves, glanced at the gun shells glinting shiny brass in their cartons, saw the silver pistols and long black metal shotguns hung high and quiet in the shadow. Somebody put a straw in his mouth. Someone else drew a figure in the dust. (Bradbury, "Air" 102)

It turns out that all the men are affiliated with the KKK and have taken part in the lynching and killings. If this is the case, why do they have a sudden change of heart when Teece is holding the boy? It seems odd that they would suddenly cease the racist practices and beliefs they have spent their lives enacting. The story seeks to make these supporting white characters passive and in many ways the opposite of Teece, yet they are reconstructed in the closing scene to be identical to Teece.

This is a confusing turn of events which threatens to undo the logic of the story. What is happening here, I think, is evidence of the narrative wrestling

245 with its problematic construction of blacks and whites as homogenous groups.

Because blacks are characterized as being all one and the same, the narrative must make whites a reflection of that simplistic dualism. At the same time this characterization is cast, the narrative stabilizes white power even as it pretends to critique it. White power is maintained so that it can rematerialize, albeit in a more benign and humbled but no less effective form, in the sequel "The Other

Foot." Failing to see how white power is recast and reestablished allows Bishop to argue that

By locating ["Way in the Middle of the Air"] in the midst of a typical SF book, Bradbury performs a subtle but powerful critique of racism. First, he critically shows us the Africanist (and Native Americanist) presence in its displaced and liminal function on a mythical Mars in relation to a colonialist-racist white man's project. Then, he asymmetrically reverses the scene and, by allowing the African American other to speak back to the white man on his way to an other (immanent) world, he offers both a specific and powerful critique of both the white man's way of being-in-his-world and of the larger ethical dilemma of the fundamental dichotomizing of self- other relation.3 (91)

While there is certainly a critique of racism at work in "Way in the Middle of the

Air," it is merely a critique of method, not ideology. Bradbury certainly does not support violence, but these stories do enact a fantasy of white power that Bishop misses perhaps because she reads these stories outside of the ideological context within which late pulp sf is situated. Bishop's analysis of the black voices in Bradbury's stories perhaps reveals a deeper motivation on her part and on the part of those of us who seek to find a space for the visibly ethnic Other in sf. To some degree this is an act of desperation, as Bishop's forced reading reveals. I am excited when critics examine pulp sf for the ways Other voices function. But in our desire to hear those voices we must not be deaf to the ideology which

246 contains them, an ideology of white elitism that is always central to these narratives. The occasional nod in the direction of the visibly ethnic Other does not necessarily mark a narrative as progressive. As I have attempted to show here, such a position more often than not serves to further obscure the ideology at work in these texts.

To better understand how this obfuscation functions, we need to understand that "Way in the Middle of the Air" and "The Other Foot" capture

America's obsession with racial types. More to the point, these stories reflect how U. S. culture seeks to contain ethnic difference within simplistic categories of black and white. Such a construction fails to take into account the differences that exist within black and white communities: there is no single black or white experience just as there is no absolute black or white identity. Furthermore, such a view fails to take into account the plethora of communities who are at once nonwhite and nonblack. The erasure of this complexity serves the interest of white hegemony, for it casts difference as a concept that is easily bridged and erased. As we have seen, this is precisely what occurs in these stories as the door is opened for a recasting of white power.

At the heart of Bradbury's stories is a fixation on the necessity of a white presence and the desire for continued colonization of the bodies of Others. What makes Bradbury's stories atypical of the time in which they are written is that they address specifically the need for a system of white power to exist while seeking to mask that political strategy by recourse to a moral code. More often, white power is expressed as a nonpolitical agent under the auspices of scientific rhetoric. The classic sf example of science as an immutable system of

247 knowledge that cannot be challenged is Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations"

(1954).

Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations": Punishing the Other

Tom Godwin's (1915-1980) "The Cold Equations" (1954) takes places on board an EDS, a small spaceship with precisely the right amount of resources to complete its mission. In this case, the pilot is flying to a colony world to deliver some much-needed medical supplies. While en route, he discovers a teenage stowaway, Marilyn. Horrified, he does not know what to do. The girl is nervous at first, but figures she will pay the fine once she gets to the colony where her brother is stationed. The pilot explains to her that the ship cannot support her extra weight and that its fuel will bum out before they reach the colony. Eventually the girl comes to understand her predicament. To insure the ship arrives safely, Marilyn jettisons herself into the void of space, sacrificing herself for the well-being of the colonists. "The Cold Equations" has been celebrated by the sf community as a classic exploration of how all of human endeavor is contained and defined by the physical laws governing the universe. Godwin's story enacts the most valued elements of sf: rationality and a strict adherence to scientific understanding at the expense of human emotion and response. James Gunn writes that "The

Cold Equations" is a "touchstone story because if readers don't understand it they don't understand science fiction. The intellectual point made by the story is that sentimentality divorced from knowledge and rationality is deadly" (Gunn 72).

248 Gary Westfahl points out three flaws with Godwin's classic story which allow us to glimpse the ideology at work in the narrative. First, Westfahl argues that the story "seems to reflect a view of science that is at least a century out of date. The four nouns that define modem physics are relativity, probabilitv. uncertainty, and chaos. We no longer see Newton's clockwork universe, but rather one that is surprisingly unpredictable, illogical, even whimsical" (Engineers

74; emphasis in original). Second, Westfahl reveals that "The Cold Equations" is more of an "aberration than a representative model" (75), and he challenges readers and critics to find five more stories which promote similar views (81).

Third, Westfahl argues that the story is in fact opposite to most sf in that a technological solution to a posited problem is not found. "And that impulse-the determination to push and twist scientific reality to meet human need-is, I submit, what actually defines both practical science and hard science fiction "

(76). Westfahl continues by pointing out that the spaceship in the story is not built to any logical standard, that engineers always account for "fudge factors" and that "precisely calculated spaceships" are not the way engineering is done

(76). '"The Cold Equations' may be a story of good physics," concludes

Westfahl, "but it is also a story of lousy engineering " (76). Much like Westfahl,

John Huntington calls attention to how the narrative refuses to rigorously explore the possibility of saving the girl: "Throughout the story items have been mentioned on the spaceship that are dispensable: there is the door of the closet, the blaster, the people's clothes, the pilot's chair, the closet itself, its contents, the sensor that registers body heat, the bench she sits on. Do they still need the radio?" (81). Puzzled by the story's course of events, one of my students asked how the girl gets on board the spaceship in the first place. This student then

249 went on to say that it would be impossible for her to get on board a NASA space shuttle just before a scheduled launch.

These critiques attack the story for its lack of logical consistency.

Because it is sf, such an attack is a necessary component of any critique as the genre is often measured and judged, both by readers and writers, as to how accurate it is to the facts. Godwin's story is accurate to the rules of physics in that the ship cannot land with the added weight, yet curiously lapse when it comes to justifying those circumstances. There is a paradox at work here that demands further attention. In his praise of the story, James Gunn inadvertently comments upon the ideology which allows this logical conflict to exist:

"The Cold Equations" could have been told only as science fiction, not because the point of the story is science fiction, but because every other situation retains an element of hope for rescue. In a contemporary lifeboat story or a story about wagon trains crossing the plains, the sacrifice of an innocent stowaway to save the lives of the remainder brings up images of the Donner party; the point of those stories would be the survivors' lack of faith and their love of life above honor. Science fiction gave Godwin an unparalleled opportunity to purify the situation in such a way that there was no hope left for last-minute salvation, no possible sight of land or rescue ship, no company of soldiers to ride over the hill. (Gunn 72; emphasis added)

Gunn seeks to praise sf for its ability to "purify" a narrative, but what he unknowingly refers to is the sf strategy of invoking the rhetoric of science to obscure an otherwise political argument. As Huntington points out, "the rhetoric of science is a sop to reason, allowing the reader to indulge in a fantasy which may be entirely irrational" (79). This suspension of rationality is what occurs in

"The Cold Equations," but what marks it as sf is that this irrationality is put forth in a way that seems extremely rationalized. This is the narrative strategy Gunn

250 inadvertently celebrates when he argues that "The Cold Equations" could only be written as sf.

While we can demonstrate that "The Cold Equations" is a logically

inconsistent story, we must still explore why it is taken as an example of the ultimate expression of rationalism by the sf community. A rigorous critique of the story reveals two conjoined dynamics at work. First is the political agenda the story masks as scientific rationalism, and second is a motivation to violence that is justified as the playing out of physical law. The defining element at work in "The Cold Equations" is a celebration of order, of the immutability of the physical universe. To understand this basic

"truth" of the universe is a point of pride in the sf community, especially in the late pulp era. Thomas Berger points out how Astounding editor John W. Campbell

(1910-1971) believed that only "those superior individuals who perceive the fact of a rigid and immutable universe and acted to manipulate natural forces on that basis, were working toward their potential, or were in fact fully human" (175). I bring Campbell into this discussion because it was he who originally published

Godwin's story after having forced Godwin to rewrite it six times, including making him change the ending. Campbell's revisions of Godwin's story are informed by a view which seeks to make a fetish out or rationality to the extent that a person's worth is determined by his or her adherence to a mechanistic view of the universe. Any deviation from this worldview is cause for censorship:

Campbell insisted that with the cold "realism" that characterizes his elite came an acceptance of responsibility that could come from no other view. This led Campbell explicitly to reject and repeatedly denounce democracy, as well as to make several proposals for limiting the right to vote. "Why be hypocritical," he asked, "and tsk- tsk at a wise group using authoritarian methods wisely." (Berger 169; emphasis in original)

251 If acceptance of a mechanistic universe was a prerequisite for political action, then any political action necessarily has to reflect the workings of the universe:

Campbell offered the premise that the best form of govemment would be a benevolent tyranny. In the absence of a science of sociology, govemment was an engineering problem . . . and such a despotism offered the best attainable results with the materials at hand, an engineer's optimum. (Berger 171)

This political view Informs "The Cold Equations" and determines the course of action it has to take. It Is here that we find an explanation as to why the pilot does not throw anything out of the ship or why the ship Is equipped only with precisely the right amount of fuel for precisely the right amount of weight.

Campbell, working through Godwin, expresses a desire for absolutes that determine everything from the rotation of the farthest star to the outcome of elections In a small town in rural Ohio. It Is this belief in a system of absolute knowledge that can never be questioned that becomes the groundwork of a political philosophy of power and privilege. For Campbell, and the sf community, adherence to a view of a mechanistic universe provides a rationale for an extension of their limited political power. Because these mostly white males are scientists or at least interested In science, they seek to model political activity on a view of the universe which they at once understand and can argue is free from political agenda. This conceit is the source of late pulp sf's desire to create a condition of nonpolltlcal power.

"The Cold Equations" masks an explicitly political agenda in rationalist terms. A means of better understanding the political nature of this strategy is to explore the knowledge these narratives deny themselves. "The Cold Equations"

252 works toward rationalizing and justifying a horrific violence aimed at a figure characteristically outside the sf community, a female. Marilyn becomes a site upon which is focused an extreme anger, as noted in Gunn's reading:

The girl is to blame for her own predicament, her innocence is irrelevant, the universe doesn't care about her motives, and the others would be as guilty as she if they compounded her fatal mistake by dying with her. The reader who does not understand this has not read the story correctly... .Perhaps the point of the story is science-fictional after all; where else would such a point be made; by what other audience would it be understood? And considered satisfying? (73)

Gunn's comments are a chilling reminder of the nature of the sf vision. The Other must be punished for any transgression of an order which is believed to originate in the universe and to stretch into the social arena. At a superficial narrative level, Marilyn's death is taken to be necessary, but unfortunate. The narrative pretends to agonize by repeating constantly the inevitably Marilyn's sacrifice

"I'm sorry," he said again. "You'll never know how sorry I am. It has to be that way and no human in the universe can change it." (Godwin 550)

"It's not the way you think-it isn't that way, at all," he said. Nobody wants it this way; nobody would ever let it be this way if it was humanly possible to change it." (Godwin 552)

"Everyone would like to help you but there is nothing anyone can do." (Godwin 553)

He swung around to face her. "You understand now, don't you? No one would ever let it be like this if it could be changed." (Godwin 555)

We are even told that Marilyn's brother "would know there had been nothing the pilot could do (Godwin 555). But even as the narrative regrets its actions there

253 "remains an air of smug self-righteousness in the recognition of the universe's cold neutrality" (Berger 168). This tone should alert us to the way in which the narrative takes pleasure from its own regret. There exists an unstated alliance with the "cold equations" that drives the narrative and determines its course.

This is a political choice, not an inevitable one. Furthermore, the choice being made is to punish the Other, to exercise power over the Other while at the same time to claim to be unable to influence the circumstances. This is the dream of white male power made safe, or nonpolitical, by the rhetoric of science, while at the same time made explicitly political so that pleasure can be taken from its execution. Even as this contradictory impulse is played out within the narrative's ongoing dialogue of helplessness, it is also being played out in the minds of the reading audience who are participating in this fantasy. "The Cold Equations" is a popular story with sf communities because it is able to perform so many political functions at once-the punishment of the Other, the extension of white male power over the female body, the suspension of political responsibility-while at the same time celebrating a rationalist response that is constructed as nonpolitical. As we have seen, the rationalist elements in the story serve an explicitly political motivation-the punishment of those who do not have a place within this system of white male order. While in this story the Other is a girl, it is important to point out that the way the story treats the teenager is indicative of the way late pulp sf deals with those Others-women, people of color, the underprivileged, the physically disabled-who do not fit comfortably within its fantasy of white male power. Key in this discussion is the way the story attempts to elude responsibility for an act of

254 violence it at some level seeks to perpetrate. "The Cold Equations" thus serves

as a classic example of political privilege and power masquerading as scientific

detachment. Even as the narrative denies its politics, it takes pleasure in

enacting those politics, in this case by punishing the Other. We see this strategy of denying yet celebrating this white male power repeated over and over again throughout sf narratives of the late pulp age, especially in the fiction of Robert A.

Heinlein

Author Study: Robert A. Heinlein and the Celebration of White Power

Perhaps more than any science fiction author of this century, Robert A.

Heinlein (1907-1988) has asserted an influence on the sf genre that continues to be felt to this day. Heinlein rose to popularity during the fabled Golden Age

(1936-1948) of sf and was arguably its most important contributor. Heinlein, more so than any author before him, infused his narratives with overt political agendas-the Americanization of the world and the cosmos-rationalized as an innate human drives. For Heinlein, a libertarian/right-wing political consensus was not merely a tool of the state, but a universal condition through which humankind could realize its greatest potential. Like his fellow sf authors, Heinlein expressed this potential through a technocratic vision of the future, but where

Heinlein deviated from other authors was in his specific concem for freedom as it exists within the workings of systems of power.

Freedom, for Heinlein, represents the greatest of human values.

However, his notion of freedom is tempered by the necessity to protect it at all

255 costs, whether freedom is threatened by aliens (as in The Puppetmasters and

Starship TroooersT religious mania (as in the novella "If This Goes On-"), or non-Westem political forces (as in Fifth Column). In Heinlein's universe, freedom can be protected only by either a military force or an organized center of power usually represented by a dominant white male or an organized collective of white males. Creating a fictional society that privileges freedom while simultaneously retaining a powerful center of order leads, of course, to increasingly greater degrees of tension in the narrative. Heinlein is conscious of this problem, albeit more so in his later work than in his earlier stories. To read any of Heinlein's fiction is to see the author wrestle with this ideological conflict. It is how Heinlein addresses the conflicts his narratives give rise to that concerns this study.

Heinlein's stories help us better understand an impulse that is present in sf narratives beginning in sf's modem phase with Hugo Gemsback's Ralph 124C

41+. This impulse is an expressed belief and trust in foundationalism: "a faith in the human capacity to gain access to a permanent, timeless foundation for objective, context-free, certain knowledge" (Marx 21). When such a belief functions free from self-reflection the inevitable results are narratives which express an unrestrained enthusiasm for technology, like Gemsback's novel and Smith's The Skylark of Space. In A. E. van Vogt's Sian we see the first inklings that this ideology is not without its problems. It is in Heinlein's work that we find, for the first time in modem sf, the emergence of a narrative strategy that attempts to establish nonpolitical power by locating the origins of power outside the sphere of culture even as the story consciously strives to enact political change. To see

Heinlein juggle this impossible task it to understand what John Huntington refers to as the "thought processes of the genre" (48). Ultimately, Heinlein's stories and

256 novels seek the reification of a system based on a patriarchal, capitalist, male ethic; his works, in other words, create a space where the fantasy of nonpolitical white male power can be played out. In Heinlein's universe there is rarely any difference between the social and the scientific. It is ironic that contemporary sociological studies of science have reached the same conclusion, but whereas the field of Science Studies seeks to demonstrate the socially constructed nature of all knowledge systems, Heinlein does very much the opposite. Heinlein attempts to resolve political conflict by the application of scientific knowledge which he believes to be value-free. Consequently, the social problems of poverty, inequality, and racism (to name just a few) are cast as solvable social equations. In various stories, for example, we find Heinlein's characters actually working out formulas containing social variables.^The end result of such problem solving leads inevitably to a utopia that is marked by a totalizing ethic. Put another way, Heinlein’s absolute belief in an American notion of liberty and his unfailing trust in science as a system of objective knowledge leads him to construct social utopias that on the one hand privilege freedom and scientific achievement as the greatest of human values, while on the other seek to contain and erase any attempt to view these institutions in a critical light. Any threat to American individualism and science is always met with military force and the protection of such values is always possible only by the presence of military power. What we uncover in Heinlein's narratives is an extreme discomfort with the notion of possibility. By this I mean that social and political change is, for Heinlein (indeed, for practically every other pre-1965 sf author) always cast as a threat.^

257 We are forced to ask why an author so concerned with freedom and so enamored of scientific achievement should fear any kind of dissenting opinion. I suggest that Heinlein always privileges order over freedom, that the technocratic vision in Heinlein's stories is, as in Gemsback's novel, a way of creating order in society and maintaining power in the hands of white elites. While science functions as a metaphor for freedom, it is always tempered by a strict adherence to "what has to be"--social codes which reinforce masculine notions of power and of capitalism as the natural state of human affairs. In Heinlein's narratives, science is a system that allows for only certain possibilities-like a right wing, libertarian govemment. Science must be adhered to and must be defended.

Religious monarchies, for example, are a threat to Heinlein not because they repress social freedom, but because they repress the scientific knowledge that

Heinlein sees as fundamental for the creation of social order.

Heinlein's faith in scientific truisms is a means of empowerment, a method for reinforcing the political and military power of white American culture. In this sense Heinlein is one of the most "American" writers of the century. Heinlein's confidence in a core of objective knowledge is also a means for him to skirt the issue of ideology. Evidence of this strategy is provided by Alexei Panshin, who points out that Heinlein once requested sf audiences to read his work

"objectively" (SF In Dimension 97). Just what Heinlein means by this is unclear.

What we can be sure of is that Heinlein does not skirt political issues, as he is one of the genre's authors who is most concerned with political matters and has done more than any single author to mesh right-wing politics within sf generic conventions. Furthermore, Heinlein's belief that his works can be "read objectively" means he does not see himself as ideological because he believes

258 the science in his fiction acts as a type of filter. Much like conservative scientists accept scientific method as a process that erases the impact of prejudices and social forces upon the object of study, Heinlein sees science as a means of proving the inherent rightness of American capitalism and individualism. Another way of saying this is to argue that Heinlein does not believe in the impact of history. For Heinlein, ideology never Interrupts a person's freedom of choice.

Heinlein takes the notion of American self-reliance to a new level: not only are his protagonists self-made men, but they also have the ability to understand completely the political world that surrounds them. Such an understanding is bom out of Heinlein's view of politics as an equation that can be proven or solved. The adherence to such a totalizing view places Heinlein strictly in a positivist camp alongside those who do not believe science and technology are ideological. There is little point in entering into a debate with Heinlein, although one can go through his narratives and pick out the wealth of contradictions and paradoxes which he glosses over.6 Of more interest to this study are the worlds which Heinlein creates and what they reveal not only of Heinlein but of the sf genre as a whole. The erasure of the non-white presence or the construction of non-whiteness as degenerative and anti-technological in earlier strains of sf carry over into Heinlein's fiction.

However, what is fascinating about Heinlein is his explicit desire to be non-racist and all inclusive.^ This desire for homogenization finds its cultural parallel in the notion of the great melting pot, where all our differences are erased in favor of an

American identity. This totalizing movement is at the heart of all of Heinlein's fiction, for only by bringing everyone together to create one coherent political body can the author initiate a greater movement toward social freedom and the

259 final realization of the technocratic dream of the colonization of the solar system.

Heinlein's freedom takes the form of a massive system of conditioning where difference is erased and discourse is always controlled and muted in favor of a simplistic notion of freedom that has the suspicious quality of keeping power localized in military-like hierarchies and white elites. Because Heinlein's future worlds are marked by this homogeneity, ethnic difference, when it appears, provides us with a glimpse at how Heinlein and an entire school of sf deals with the presence of non-white identities.

I will examine several of Heinlein's narratives, looking specifically at how the non-white presence is constructed in Heinlein's technocratic, white future. I will examine the process of cultural erasure non-whites undergo in order to make them productive members of the state. Ultimately, Heinlein's portrayal of the ethnic other enables us to glimpse how a dominant culture justifies its power over those whom it rejects.

Heinlein's failure to create a democratic space for non-whites is by extension the failure of sf to account for the visibly ethnic Other. In an even larger sense, this failure is itself the result of science as it has been constructed and used to further institutions of domination and repression. Heinlein's fiction offers us glimpses at the workings of power and of the failure of equality and justice in science as a social system. More so than any sf author, Heinlein contains this failure by transforming it into a technocratic cause for celebration. Perhaps this is the real reason behind Heinlein's popularity: his ability to transform adherence to the status quo into revolutionary politics and replace true political change with nationalist fervor.

260 We find this tension between the status quo and the Other at the onset of

Heinlein's literary career. Heinlein's first published story, "Lifeline" (1939),

centers on an immigrant scientist. Dr. Hugo Pinero (the narrative hints that he is

Italian), who creates a machine that can foretell to the exact moment the death of

any individual. Fellow scientists are, naturally, skeptical and consider Pinero to

be a charlatan. Nevertheless, Pinero's machine is proven to work and he goes

into business on his own as a scientific fortune teller. Insurance companies see Pinero as a threat to their industry, and they hire killers to exterminate the doctor

and destroy the machine. The assassins do their job, but not before Pinero has

predicted the time of his own death as well as the deaths of the various members

of the scientific Academy who first ridiculed him The individual details are kept in

marked envelopes in a safe in the office of the Academy's chairman. Upon

hearing of Pinero's death, the Academy members check Pinero's envelope and

discover that his prediction was true. They contemplate opening the rest of the

envelopes, but decide instead to bum them and forget the entire experience.

"Lifeline" may end in tragedy, but it is downplayed by the ironic comment

at the close of the story. After setting fire to the envelopes, Baird, the chairman

of the Academy, replies, "I'm afraid I've ruined this tabletop" (Heinlein, "Lifeline"

33). This aside acts as a dismissal of the crisis that confronts the scientists and

the money interests in the story. This crisis is nothing less than the potential for

real social change that Pinero and his machine represent. It is important to remember that this potential has been initiated by an immigrant, someone

outside the American political system, and that any possibility of change is met with resistance by the status quo, in this case represented by scientists and insurance companies.

261 The allegiance between the scientific community and big business is established early in the story. During Pinero's speech to the Academy, its chairman addresses Pinero: "Must I remind you that you are not a member of this body, and that we did not invite you" (Heinlein, "Lifeline" 15). Pinero's retort, however, speaks to the intersection of science and capitalism:

Pinero's eyebrows lifted. "So? I seem to remember an invitation on the letterhead of the Academy?" The chairman chewed his lower lip before replying. "True. I wrote that invitation myself. But it was at the request of one of the trustees-a fine public-spirited gentlemen, but not a scientist, not a member of the Academy. " Pinero smiled his irritating smile. "So? I should have guessed. Old Bidwell, not so, of Amalgamated Life Insurance? And he wanted his trained seals to expose me as a fraud, yes? For if I can tell a man the day of his own death, no one will buy his pretty policies. " (Heinlein, "Lifeline" 15-16)

"Lifeline" establishes Pinero as a lone scientist, working against powerful social forces which seek to suppress scientific knowledge. But in this early story

Heinlein seems to be confused as to how to deal with this conflict. The narrative does not support outright the insurance companies and the Academy, but neither does it celebrate Pinero's accomplishments. The story's conclusion is also ambivalent and seeks to refocus the narrative on the scientists' decision to not read the envelopes. Such action paints the scientists as moral figures who understand that some lines should not be crossed. This is something of a contradiction for a group that works so closely with individuals who hire professional assassins. Nevertheless, the story wants to take away emphasis from Pinero and the implications his device holds for society and refocus on the scientists and their decision to censor, or at least reject, Pinero's device, even though Pinero's machine turns out to have been scientifically valid. This

262 revelation raises another issue: Should not the scientists be angry that muscle in the employ of an insurance company has destroyed what has turned out to be an advanced piece of technology? The narrative skirts this issue entirely. Any closure the story gains comes from Pinero's death and the destruction of his machine. Thematically, this leaves open many questions about the role of scientists in a democratic society, the intersections of science and capitalism, and what institutions can wield power in American society. Heinlein refuses to explore these questions even as they drive the narrative. It is in our attempt to determine why these questions are not pursued that we catch a glimpse of the ideology at work in the story. The most fascinating feature of Heinlein's first published story is how he raises a host of social problems which are attached to science, yet concludes by ignoring them. What does it mean to slip back into what can at best be called a willful naivete? Heinlein, along with practically every other sf writer of the time, seeks to contain a view of science as pure, even when he clearly shows it to be in league with economic forces. To ignore the implications of this relationship is to essentially support an existing economic system and to stand in opposition to any changes to that system. "Lifeline" seeks to contain the very threat it presents, namely, that sf is aware at some level that the science it celebrates as

Truth is in fact a cultural force. In "Lifeline" we find the view of science as a social production begin to overwhelm the narrative's ideological desire to paint knowledge as value-free. The narrative denies its own observations, leading the reader to embrace fully and willingly the uneven distribution of power in American culture.

263 It is this issue of power and who can wield it that is at the heart of "Lifeline" and so many of Heinlein's other narratives. We must not neglect in this discussion that "Lifeline" is a story of assimilation: the immigrant is initiated into the American social structure and his identity, in this case his life, is erased. As a consequence of this erasure, the potential for social transformation (in this case, a piece of technology that can help people plan their lives and which will force a restructuring of the insurance industry) that Pinero represents is also gone. This erasure means the continuity of a closed social system that is based upon an

American capitalist ethic that cannot be challenged. The preservation of this system is most likely the reason why Heinlein's scientist is an immigrant, for

Pinero's Otherness places him outside the system of American science and industry that sf and sf readers celebrate.

While the story depends on Pinero being an outsider, and because of this characterization I read Pinero as an Other, Heinlein seeks to impose upon him the nebulous moral value reached at the conclusion of the narrative. Toward the end of the story, a young couple expecting a baby visits Pinero, and he discovers their fate. He refuses to tell them what he has found, saying only his machine is not working. Though he tries to stall them, they finally leave and Pinero watches helplessly from his office as they are run over by a car. After canceling his appointments for the rest of the day, he "sat down in his chair. His cigar went out. Long after dark he held it, still unlighted" (Heinlein, "Lifeline" 31). The pensive Pinero is obviously reconsidering his invention. This narrative strategy alerts us, paradoxically enough, to Pinero's secondary importance in the narrative. What is important is his effect on the scientists and businessmen in the story and their subsequent reactions. Pinero reconsidering his invention is

264 the first step toward the narrative marking use of the machine as immoral, it is at this point that the political issues raised in the story begin to be muted in favor of some moral value that is never defined. Pinero's death (he is visited by the assassins immediately following the scene with the couple) is the end point of critical reflection upon the issues raised by the narrative. The threat to social order Pinero poses is gone, and we are led to believe that the questions his device forces readers to ask have also disappeared. By killing Pinero, Heinlein avoids any thoughtful examination of the conflicts of power which run throughout his story. Furthermore, Heinlein sets up the narrative so that Pinero, the victim of the system, the Other, the one who offers the most potential for change, admits or at least begins to suspect that his position is wrong. We find in this development a deference to an entrenched system of power that Heinlein seeks to defend, even when his view of science as value-free fails him and he is forced to fall back upon a non-explicit moral judgment of Pinero's technology as simply "wrong."

Heinlein's first story rejects a radical technology that would force society to reconstruct and reenvision its economic and power relations. The story also raises the issue of science as being tied to social forces and institutions, but refuses to examine these implications. "Lifeline" negates the possibility of social change in favor of the preexisting social order. Pinero's presence is portrayed as a threat to the "American way of life," and as a result he is killed and his device destroyed. We have in "Lifeline" a story where a safe space, meaning a position in society where the Other can be contained, cannot be established, and as a result the only possible solution is the Other's destruction.

265 If in "Lifeline " we find the exclusion of the Other from the ruling system, then in Heinlein's "The Long Watch" (1948) we find what happens when the

Other is brought in and embraced by the system. "The Long Watch" takes place aboard a space station. Johnnie Dalquist, a junior bomb officer with a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, is called by his superior officer. Colonel Towers, and is asked to join a planned overthrow of the current Earth govemment. Johnnie contemplates the proposition but decides against it, and instead single-handedly infiltrates the bomb room and prevents Towers and his men from seizing the stored atomic weapons with which they plan to threaten Earth. In his attempt to keep out

Towers and his men Johnnie is forced to rewire the bombs, thereby releasing radioactivity into the room. He loses consciousness, but not before he has averted the overthrow of the Earth govemment. He dies a hero, with a military space burial and a posthumous promotion to the rank of admiral.

The educated scientist/military man is a recurring character in Heinlein's work, but in "The Long Watch" Heinlein deviates from normal sf characterization.

Towards the end of the story Heinlein hints that Johnnie is black. How this is done is worth examining. Locked in the bomb room. Towers and his men trying to find a way inside, Johnnie

wondered if he had the courage. He did not want to funk-and hoped that he would. He dug into his jacket and took out a picture of Edith and the baby. "Honeychile." he said, "if I get out of this. I'll never even try to beat a red light." He kissed the picture and put it back. There was nothing to do but wait. (Heinlein, "Watch" 270; emphasis added)

The sudden interjection of the black vemacular "Honeychile" in a story that is lodged firmly in the emerging tradition of Anglo American sf is Heinlein's first use of a strategy of temporary estrangement. I use "strategy of temporary

266 estrangement" to mean the sudden disassociation pre-60s sf readers felt when

confronted with the possibility that their sf hero was not a white male. I use the

qualifier "temporary" because these heroes of color are eventually accepted by

the audience. Heinlein repeats this strategy in his later and more famous work

Starship Troopers, which I discuss below. Most sf readers are conditioned to

reading about white futures, where the main characters, as in their world, are

white males. Most sf readers simply assume the characters they are cheering on

look and act much like themselves. The inversion of this narrative given helped

gamer Heinlein the reputation for being controversial. At a superficial level, this

reputation is deserved. After all, sf was dominated by white male writers and white male characters until the late sixties. For a non-white character to emerge as a hero in an sf narrative was rare in the late forties, but at a deeper level this characterization is shallow and exploitive.

Heinlein's "controversial" characterization is superficial because the black man in the story is working for a govemmental system that has erased the concept of difference. Any discomfort the reader may feel at the revelation that the character is not white eventually passes. In Heinlein's future melting pot, everyone is brought together and contained by a system of political power that, curiously, is never presented in any specific light. This story is controversial because it places a black man in a position of power (he is able to turn back the rebel forces) and privilege (his doctorate in nuclear physics). Nevertheless, the story is accepted by the sf community as good sf and as an example of sf that seeks to embrace all. After all, is it not clear that Johnnie is a hero who saves the world? Why is this story so easily digestible to the sf community, even when it presents a hero so unlike the majority of sf audiences? The appeal of this story

267 is that it makes safe the black presence by stripping it of political power and placing it in the service of the status quo. Johnnie is safe to cheer for and even sympathize with because he is not a threat and works in favor of white power.

This story thus has several implications about power that are worth examining in more detail.

First, what type of govemment is Johnnie defending? We do not know, but we are expected to accept it is a just political system. Second, just because

Johnnie has a place of privilege in this govemment does not necessarily make it a legitimate democracy. Heinlein often creates political systems where a plurality of ethnic backgrounds and genders interact and work together on seemingly equal levels. These types of utopias are marred by a totalizing ethic that does not celebrate the plurality it advertises, but rather filters and homogenizes that diversity. As a result, Heinlein's future worlds often have everyone acting like middle-aged heterosexual white males. What is of interest here is the failure of

Heinlein, sf audiences, and the entire sf endeavor to recognize these types of totalizing systems as an extension of white power and consequently of racism, homophobia, and sexism. In "The Long Watch," Heinlein attempts to create a melting pot world where individuals are judged by how well they serve the system. What is left unexplored is the nature of this servitude, and who are the system's beneficiaries and who are its casualties. "The Long Watch" seeks to find a space for the visibly ethnic Other, but in doing so erases all notions of cultural identity in favor of a totalizing non-identity. Ultimately, "The Long Watch" celebrates an extreme form of Americanization and assimilation. For Heinlein to find within these notions the concepts of freedom and individuality reveals the extent to which a colonialist enterprise functions in his stories.

268 "Lifeline" and "The Long Watch" are part of a longer series of stories which together make up Heinlein's Future History, a phrase coined by John W.

Campbell, the enormously influential editor of Astounding. Damon Knight describes this Future History as "a history, not of the future, but of a future-an altemate-probability world which is logically self-consistent, dramatic, and recognizably an offshoot of our own past" ("Introduction" 10; emphasis in original). Knight continues by pointing out what Heinlein reminds us of in these stories:

The ultimate problem is man's control of his own inventions—not only the minor ones, like the crossbow and the atom bomb, but the major inventions-language, culture and technology. We are a tough and resourceful lot, all things considered; our descendants will need to be tough and more resourceful still. ("Introduction" 13)

Knight argues that the importance of Heinlein's Future History lies in its illustration of the resourcefulness of Man: "The odds are all against them. The stars are high, life is short, and the house always takes a percentage. But Man himself is so unlikely that if he did not exist, his possibility would not be worth discussing. Heinlein's money is on Man and I have a hunch that the next century will prove him right" ("Introduction" 13).

These two passages reflect the lack of rigorous critique that has marked the sf reading community for decades. Knight, himself a prolific sf author, seems content to plot out the future of humanity along a social Danwinist line where toughness and resourcefulness are tests of biological and cultural superiority.

Knight seems perfectly comfortable describing the development of culture by comparing it to economic metaphors, specifically gambling- "the house always take a percentage" and "Heinlein's money is on Man." These descriptives are

269 put forth as unproblematic and as having a special relationship to culture and

technology. Knight's casting of cultural development in these terms is at least

partly influenced by the ideology at work in Heinlein's Future History. Knight's

lack of critical investigation demonstrates not only his own acceptance of

Heinlein's ideas but the acceptance of them by the sf community as a whole.

Putting aside Knight's enthusiasm, we should examine more closely just what it is that sf is celebrating in these stories. At one level, the "triumph of Man" scenario, as I have already demonstrated above, is in fact a triumph for a political system that either erases difference or excludes it altogether. There is also the similar motivation in these works to express a form of militarism that extends Western dominance.

We encounter this Westem hegemony masquerading as a future world- govemment in Heinlein's stories of the forties through thefifties. 8 Defenders of

Heinlein may argue that this early period does not adequately reflect the fullness of Heinlein's political philosophy. Quite the opposite, I purposefully chose to examine these early "minor" works to demonstrate how Heinlein's political views toward the visibly ethnic Other remain constant later in his career. We encounter once again a totalizing system where the Other's identity is erased in one of

Heinlein's major works, Starship Troopers (1959).

Starship Troopers follows the adventures of a young military recruit, Juan

"Johnnie" Rico. The novel traces Rico’s development from a young, naive recruit to an experienced fighting man. Along the way, Johnnie encounters such stock characters as the clichéd bullying drill sergeants whose tough exteriors hide their genuine love for the troops they train, to the inhuman Bugs which are waging a war against the human species. Johnnie endures a rigid, almost sadistic military

270 training that is later justified as the skills he learns repeatedly save his life in battle. The novel is an sf Bildungsroman, with the protagonist’s maturity marked by a complete understanding and acceptance of the military structure that governs Heinlein’s future world-state.

Critical reaction to Starship Troopers. especially from inside the sf community, has been primarily negative. Brian Aldiss refers to it as a disastrous expression of power (Trillion 218). Jack Williamson sees it as a "dark, disturbing novel" ("Youth" 30). H. Bruce Franklin argues that "militarism-together with imperialism-is the novel's explicit message" (Heinlein 112). In his study Heinlein in Dimension. Alexei Panshin likens Starship Troopers to a military training film

(94-98). Nevertheless, Starship Troopers won a 1959 Hugo award for best novel of the year, and, according to Dennis Showalter, "critics and reviewers have been apologizing ever since" (qtd. in Dolman 196).

The popularity of Starship Troopers reveals much about the expectations of the sf reading community. On the one hand, the sf readership has enjoyed it tremendously. On more than one occasion I have discussed the novel with sf fans. Their reaction to the novel betrays their interest in sf conceptions of futuristic military hardware and the notion of warfare as play. After all, these fans argue, the bad guys are Bugs and the good guys are “us.” Lest we reduce all sf fans to a group of readers who enjoy novels of military adventures, I have also encountered those readers who admire the novel because of its political ideas and ideals. This type of fan enjoys Starship Troopers because of its vision of a society that runs smoothly and efficiently while, at least seemingly, protecting and ensuring freedom to its populace. In my experience these have been the two dominant readings of Heinlein's novel. While they are seemingly different views-

271 the former view stresses the novel's presentation and resolution of conflict and the latter view focuses on the novel's exploration of a social utopia-they share one ideological feature: an appreciation for the order that exits in the futuristic society depicted in the novel.

In Starship Troopers the source of social order is the future military establishment. Starship Troopers has been judged controversial because it depicts a military force in charge of society, which makes it all the more confounding that Heinlein can deny the novel’s militaristic intentions (Franklin

112). Most sf authors and critics agree that the military should not have as much power in the political and social arenas as the novel depicts. Leon Stover suggests that this view has informed most readings of Starship Troopers because "it is only by his dislike of the military that the liberal culture critic earns his credentials" (qtd. in Dolman 197). Starship Troopers has thus fed a situation where a leftist interpretation necessitates a critique of the unfettered militarism the novel promotes, while those readers and critics to the right praise the novel for its adherence to Jeffersonian principles of "natural aristocracy."

These are the arguments and views which have surrounded the novel since its publication. Few critics and fewer fans have questioned the concept of order in Starship Troopers so much as they have questioned how that order is expressed. What is the nature of this order that undercuts Starship Troopers and so much of Heinlein's other work? It is the order brought about by a political system that is all encompassing. This vision is nothing new in sf, but in the case of Starship Troopers the vision's problematic nature is accentuated because power is realized and channeled through the military, and this makes those of us on the left legitimately uncomfortable. As Everett Dolman points out, "[i]t is the

272 fear of this illegal transfer of power from civilian to military control that is the

moral basis for much of Starship Troopers' criticism" (209). In most sf, ideological systems masquerade as technology and the problematic implications of this type of vision are at least partially hidden by the sf imagery.

Consequently, sf narratives just as problematic as Starship Troopers are able to avoid rigorous critique because they do not immediately stand out as ideological

(as has historically been the case with works like “The Marching Morons" and

"Call Me Joe"). For now, however, I wish to refocus attention on an aspect of

Starship Troopers that runs throughout the novel but that has received limited critical attention. I refer here to the ethnic background of its main character, Juan

Rico, how his ethnicity is portrayed in the novel, and, just as important, the way sf audiences have interpreted "Johnnie's" Otherness.

Part of the controversial nature of Starship Troopers is generated by the revelation of the character's non-white identity. As in "The Long Watch," Heinlein uses a strategy of temporary estrangement to upset the readers' expectations.

Samuel Delany remarks on this estrangement in describing his first reading of the novel:

About two-thirds through the book, when our young hero, having survived the first 200 pages of dangers, is making the choice inevitable in such stories (whether or not to go on and take officer's training), there is a brief respite from the adventures . . . As he looks in the mirror, he makes a passing mention of the nearly chocolate brown hue of his face- And I did a strange double take. The hero of this book, who for 200 pages now had been telling me of his daring exploits and intimate fears, was not the blue-eyed, blond hero of countless RKO Second World War films. He was not Caucasian at a ll. .. his ancestors were Filipino! (Starboard Wine 30^

273 Delany's expectation of the blond, blue-eyed hero was shared my many in the sf

audience. The heroic white presence in sf narrative was a given up until the mid­

sixties, a change in part prompted by Heinlein's novel. Suddenly, the hero was

non-white, a Filipino, with chocolate-hued skin.

Heinlein's strategy of temporary estrangement works exceedingly well in this novel because Johnnie has already gained our sympathies. As an extension of our embracing Johnnie is an acceptance of the system of order Heinlein creates. Heinlein's novel enacts a type of liberal humanism in that it forces readers to see Johnnie as human before seeing him as non-white. Johnnie's humanity is highlighted by the war he fights against the Bugs. In this way Starship Troopers enacts what may be the greatest sf conceit of all, that an extraterrestrial threat or at least the knowledge that we are not alone in the universe will bind us in our common humanity. But what is the nature of this unification? As in "The Long Watch," it is an order built on an explicitly American ideology of assimilation. Juan Rico is so much a product of his society that his ethnic difference has ceased to be an issue altogether. As such, Starship

Troopers enacts the desire for racial harmony popular in America pre-1960s. If we examine this desire more closely we find that it is not racial harmony that is being sought, but the negation of racial conflict. These are two very different political conditions. Racial harmony is not achieved in Starship Troopers. All that is gained is the erasure of a concept of difference. This erasure is not total, however. Ethnic difference remains but in a way that it is not threatening to the system of order Heinlein promotes. In the closing pages of the novel, Johnnie is reviewing the manifest of ships. He comments that one of them should be named Magsaysay. Johnnie's friend, Bennie Montes, replies:

274 "What?" "Ramôn Magsaysay," I explained. "Great man, great soldier --probably be chief of psychological warfare if he were alive today. Didn't you ever study any history?" "Well," admitted Bennie, "I learned that Simon Bolivar built the Pyramids, licked the Armada, and made the first trip to the moon." "You left out marrying Cleopatra." "Oh, that. Yup. Well, I guess every county has its own version of history." "I'm sure of it." I added something to myself and Bennie said, "What did you say?" "Sorry, Bernardo. Just an old saying in my own language. I suppose you could translate it, more or less, as: 'Home is where the heart is.'" "But what language is it?" Tagalog. My native language." "Don't they talk Standard English where you come from?" "Oh, certainly. For business and school and so forth. We just talk the old speech around home a little. Traditions. You know." "Yeah, I know. My folds chatter in Espahol the same way." (Heinlein, Troopers 205)

This exchange, brief as it is, reveals much about the function of culture in the world of Starship Troopers. On the one hand, the characters admit that each country has its own version of history. Johnnie wants to celebrate his national icon while Bennie argues for the greatness of Simon Bolivar. Clearly, pride in one's heritage is a part of this world. That pride, however, is expressed through military figures, individuals who serve the world-state. Given the extreme nature of this system, one has to wonder whether expression of ethnic identity can be realized only through military iconography. Reading with greater scrutiny we can discern that not every aspect of the characters' ethnicity is celebrated. For example, Johnnie claims his native language is important only in his home environment. This statement takes the form of a dismissal: "Traditions. You know." Furthermore, given that his mother is dead and his dad is enlisted, one

275 has to wonder whether "home" even exists. What then is the necessity of his native tongue if there is no environment to support it? Similarly, Bennie does not seem to value his own heritage outside of its relationship to the current military state. Bennie claims his "folks chatter in Espahol." To chatter, according to

Webster’s, is "to utter a succession of inarticulate, speechlike sounds ' and "to talk rapidly and to little purpose." Heinlein's choice of words reflects stereotypical views of Spanish as a language that is spoken so quickly as to be nonsensical.

Furthermore, to refer to spoken Spanish as "chatter" implies that what is being said is neither important nor relevant. This brief exchange between Johnnie and

Bennie (keeping in mind that the English versions of their real names are used throughout the novel) reveals the degree to which ethnic difference is deemed unvaluable in this future world. Finally, and most disturbingly, the passage implies that ethnic difference is important only when it provides additional venues through which to disseminate dominant ideology as expressed by those ethnic heroes who have served the military order.

My reading of Starship Troopers is informed by contemporary theories of postmodernism, which privileges a diversity of possibilities as opposed to

Heinlein's all encompassing systems, and of Postcolonialism, which attempts to navigate the responses of colonized people to the impact of history on their lives.

Thus my reading is historically locatable within a system of intellectual responses to precisely those values expressed by dominant culture in a novel like Starship

Troopers. I raise this issue because I seek to establish a contrast to the more positive receptions of Starship Troopers, namely those readings which see it as depicting a tolerant society where everyone is equal. As I state above, erasure of difference, not racial harmony, is the dominant feature of the world depicted in

276 the novel. Many who have commented on the novel have missed this fundamental point. Surprisingly, such a reading comes from an unexpected source, Samuel Delany, who writes:

among the many changes that had taken place in this future world that I had been dazzled by and delighted with, the greatest was that the racial situation . . . had resolved itself to the point where a young soldier might tell you of his adventure for 200 pages out of a 300-page novel and not even have to mention his ethnic background-because it had, in that world, become that insignificant... .But there, in that Heinlein novel, this simple fact, placed where it was, in concert with all the accompanying technological and sociological changes, suddenly detonated an image, brief and bright, of a world where the two nets, the two webs, the matrix of black society and the matrix of white society, had become intenwoven in such a way that an equitable interchange of money, goods, information, and emotions had somehow come about-so that in this world the specificity of a person's race was truly no longer the privileged information it is even today, suggesting as it does so much about experiences we may have had, about realities we may have known. (Starboard Wine 30-31: emphasis in original)

Delany's observations come from a chapter titled "The Necessity of Tomorrows" wherein he argues that sf is important because it provides us with possible models for future worlds. ‘‘[I]f science fiction has any use at all," writes Delany, "it is that among all its various and variegated future landscapes it gives us images for our futures" (31 ; emphasis in original). The desire to read sf as a thought experiment on future landscapes is a common feature of sf criticism and one of its most important functions. Nevertheless, it is not without its problems. Delany's reading of Starship Troopers focuses on the potential of sf to create spaces for people-of-color and to envision worlds where ethnicity is not a source of conflict. Delany's essay, originally published in 1978, reveals his motivations as a writer-the inclusion of people of color in a traditionally white genre narrative.

277 For this, and all his work in the field, Delany should be commended. But his reading of Starship Troopers is also indicative of the way sf audiences find visions of new worlds where these visions do not necessarily exist. Starship

Troopers argues for adherence to and assimilation into an English-speaking

Americanized military world-state. Such a view is forward looking only insofar as it follows the most politically conservative strains of thought to their extreme.

Surely sf can do more than this. That Delany finds reason to praise the novel reveals the extent to which people of color have been excluded from the genre. To read Delany's 1978 essay twenty years later helps us to appreciate the veiled eyes with which people of color have had to read sf. We often search out those smallest of details in texts which we can claim as empowering and which can help us envision the futures we desire, our own utopias of color. That such readings take place within narratives that simultaneously deny those utopias marks the precarious and paradoxical nature of marginalized persons reading what are ultimately discourses of white power expressed through a technological vision of its own imagined future.

Delany's reading of Starship Troopers as depicting a future where race is not important represents a confusion on his part between representations and objectifications of people of color in sf narratives. Given the time of Delany's initial reaction (he writes that he read the novel in 1960, and his essay captures the effect it had on him then), his interpretation of the novel is understandable.

But Delany is not alone in his reading of Heinlein's novel. Contemporary critics and readers have also reacted in a confused manner to Heinlein's strategy of temporary estrangement. For example, in his otherwise insightful essay, Everett Dolman refers to Juan Rico as "Hispanic," but the novel clearly refers to him as

278 Filipino. Some confusion over his name is understandable, but Johnnie states flatly that his native language is Tagalog (Heinlein, Troopers 205). He is clearly not Hispanic in the sense that he traces his cultural origins to Spain or Europe; he is "Hispanic" only insofar as his colonial identity is privileged. Other sf fans

I've encountered, in and outside the academy, have referred to Johnnie as black.

Even Delany, who states that Johnnie is Filipino, goes on to discuss the novel in terms of bridging white/black conflict. This muddled reaction to Johnnie's ethnic background reveals the extent to which people of color have yet to establish a sense of place in sf. Furthermore, in so much of the criticism that exists on Heinlein, almost none of it explores his work from a perspective of the ethnic other. For example, in their respective discussions of Starship Troopers, neither

Clareson nor Aldiss even mention that Johnnie is non-white. Delany's two page treatment is the longest piece of work that explores the issue of ethnicity in

Starship Troopers.

Taken together, these responses point to the general inability of sf and sf communities, including critics and fans, to address issues of ethnic difference.

This condition is the result of an ideology that privileges a totalizing hegemony based on a white heterosexual male ethic. In this type of approach, politics is defined as any dissenting opinions which threaten the established social order that has been deemed natural. In Starship Troopers, world cultures have been homogenized and exist under an umbrella meritocracy. As Philip E. Smith writes, “For Heinlein, biology also explains politics: A political system allowing a maximum of personal freedoms and a minimum of govemment interference will best accomplish the advancement of the race" (141). This system is an unproblematic political condition for Heinlein because his govemment is

279 portrayed as the best for the race. The question we have to ask here is what is meant by “race" in Heinlein's fiction? Clearly, it is not the human race that benefits from this system, but a part of it that enjoys its position of power.

Heinlein's "human race" is not a world race at all, but a projection of an elite white ruling class into a future landscape that has been constructed to explicitly serve their needs. Starship Troopers is thus the ultimate expression of a fantasy of white power. All difference is subsumed and controlled in favor of an agenda that seeks to destroy all that is different from it. The human war with the Bugs is a portrayal of a much larger issue at the heart of Starship Troooers-the erasure of difference and the homogenization of culture. Heinlein's concept of race in Starship Troopers is narrowly defined in hegemonic terms. Consequently, the reader is forced to tease out the implications of Heinlein's future world because he does a remarkable job of painting that world as a system based on personal merit and abilities. Once we begin to look critically at Starship Troopers the implications of the world depicted in the novel are made clear. Heinlein's theory of racial identity is but a mask for what he truly wishes to promote-a straight white male capitalist ethic that cannot allow for any variation. We find this racial theory followed to a logical and disturbing extreme in Heinlein's 1964 novel, Famham's Freehold.

Famham's Freehold relates the adventures of Hugh Farnham, a contractor in his fifties, and his family, including his obese and alcoholic wife, Grace; their conceited son, Duke, who has an almost slavish devotion to his mother; their daughter, Karen, who is pregnant and who harbors sexual desire for Famham;

Karen's friend, Barbara, a young woman recently divorced who has fallen in love with Farnham; and the family servant, Joseph, a black, humble "houseboy" type

280 character. Together, they survive a nuclear blast in Hugh's fallout shelter and are sent into the far future. They find themselves in an idyllic countryside, with no signs of civilization. Famham, who returns Barbara's affection, is the happiest he has ever been in this natural setting, but problems soon begin; Karen dies during childbirth and Grace, already near madness, snaps and blames Famham for not getting Karen to a hospital. With Duke, Grace prepares to move away from the collective. Before the group can split, however, they are discovered by Ponse and his followers, all of whom are black or non-white. Farnham and his family are taken as prisoners and made into slaves, with the exception of Joseph who is made part of the ruling class. Ponse explains to Famham that the same nuclear war that sent him to the future was responsible for the destruction of most of the white world. Non-whites have taken over and have made slaves of the whites whose ancestors nearly destroyed civilization. Grace becomes the willing consort of Ponse, Duke allows himself to be castrated so he can remain by his mother's side, and Barbara, pregnant by Hugh, is imprisoned, her children to be made into slaves or, worse yet, food for their black masters. Hugh Famham, as with all of Heinlein's heroes, desires only freedom. He concocts a plan to escape but is captured by Ponse and his men. Ponse comes to realize that he will never break Famham, and rather than having him be unfaithful he decides to send him back in time, thus getting rid of him while testing his newly built time machine.

Famham, Barbara, and their twin babies are sent back to the time of the nuclear attack where they protect themselves in an abandoned mine. After the attack is over, Famham and his new family live as a free people in the wildemess. The novel closes once they have established their family business, "Famham's

Freehold: Trading Post and Restaurant & Bar" (Heinlein, Freehold 332).

281 Famham's Freehold illustrates Heinlein's obsession with power and who should wield it. Hugh Famham is Heinlein's prototypical hero: a white male obsessed with personal freedom and whose authoritative presence binds everyone to him. In this novel, however, that will is frustrated by an opposing character every bit as powerful, this time a black man whose political views clash with Famham's desire for liberty. This conflict clarifies the tension in Starship

Troopers and so much of Heinlein's other work-the clash for power between different classes and ethnic groups. Clearly, Heinlein's sympathies are with his white hero. Famham represents the very best the human race has to offer, while

Ponse represents the very worst, including slavery and cannibalism. Heinlein attempts to mute the racism in this role-reversal scenario by attempting to demonstrate that his lead character is not a racist. For example, before the party encounters Ponse, Farnham prompts his daughter to marry Joseph so that they may begin to repopulate. His daughter responds:

“Joe is nice. But he’s just a boy, even though he’s older than I am. If I said, 'Bool’ he would jump out of his skin. No.” “Does his skin have something to do with your choice?” “Daddy, you tempt me to spit in your face. I’m not Mother!” “I wanted to be sure. Karen, you know that color does not matter to me. I want to know other things about a man. Is his word good? Does he meet his obligations? Does he do honest work? Is he brave? Will he stand up and be counted? Joe is very much a man by all standards that interest me. I think you are being hasty.” (Heinlein, Freehold 117)

Famham once again demonstrates his "non-racist” stance later in the novel, this time in an argument with his son, Duke, who claims:

“There never was a nigger bastard who wouldn’t rape a white woman if he had the chance.” “Duke! That’s poisonous, insane nonsense. You almost persuade me that you are crazy.”

282 “I-." ‘‘Shut u p ! You know that Joseph, to give one example, had endless opportunity to rape any of three white women for nine long months. You also know that his behavior was above reproach.” “Well... he didn’t have a chance to.” “I told you to shut up this poison. He had endless chance. While you were hunting, any day. He was alone with each of them, many times. Drop it! Slandering Joseph, I mean, even by innuendo. I’m ashamed of you.” (Heinlein, Freehold 243-44: emphasis in original)

While Famham insists repeatedly that all men are equal, the novel paints blacks and non-whites as morally corrupt and inhuman.9 On the one hand, the novel presents the freedom-loving Famham who goes to painstaking measures to prove he's not racist. On the other, we have the clearly racist character construction of Ponse and his followers. It is almost as if Heinlein wishes to celebrate Famham's (and by extension his own) tolerance and morality, yet cannot help but construct portraits of non-whites as not capable of reaching

Famham's high moral standards. This construction praises Farnham for his willingness to accept the Other, while criticizing non-whites as unworthy of the respect Farnham pays them.

In Famham's Freehold it is the visibly ethnic Other who is the political oppressor and exploiter. This reversal of power illustrates a recurring theme in

Heinlein's fiction: the erasure of history. In my discussion of Heinlein's Future

History we see how historical forces are ignored as non-factors. The same pattern is repeated in Famham's Freehold: Ponse is the totalitarian leader while Famham is the helpless victim of the system. Any critique of this novel has to take into account what Heinlein is trying to achieve. As in most of his work,

Heinlein attempts to demonstrate the importance of freedom and the necessity of individual responsibility. In Famham's Freehold that lesson is taught by inverting

283 the power structure of society, then demonstrating how power can be abused by anyone. The immediate problem with this scenario is the Ethnocentric nature of its presupposition. There is no reason to believe that non-whites would rule the world through slavery, oppression, and cannibalism. We can just as easily speculate that a world ruled by non-whites would be extra-cautious not to repeat the oppressive tendencies enacted throughout history. But speculation on the characteristics of a world ruled by non-whites is not the issue here. What is the issue is that Heinlein sees such a world as a threat. Could he have seen it as a positive thing? Does such a world have to be a dystopic nightmare characterized by the worst of human actions? I argue that in Heinlein's case such a world cannot be anything but the oppressive landscape he envisions precisely because his concept of freedom is intimately tied to the notion of white power. As we have seen in Starship Troopers, it is a white hegemony that is the foundation for

Heinlein's future utopias. For Heinlein, freedom and individuality can flourish only in a system that is based on American values. Just what these values are is often nebulous. Aside from freedom and virtue, we must also include whiteness, maleness, and an expressed desire to own property. Such a value system is not concerned with liberty so much as it is concerned with opportunism, or what

Alexei Panshin has called a “wolfish individuality" (Heinlein in Dimension 84).

Evidence of this agenda comes at the end of Famham's Freehold, when

Famham is retumed to the past. Gone is the expressed desire for "revolution" seen in earlier works like "If This Goes On--." Famham is content to escape and make good on his own, away from the future that troubles him. Why this escape when in most of Heinlein's work there is a direct confrontation between Heinlein's character and the political system he seeks to overtum? Perhaps the reason lies

284 in the nature of this future social system. Gone are the Bugs or the anonymous

religious sects, and in their place is a figure, Ponse, very much like Hugh

Famham. For example, both are strong authority figures and both are

accustomed to giving orders, Famham when his party first sets up camp and

Ponse as leader of his people. Both men see women as a means to an end,

propagation of the species. Both men are rationalists and are concemed with

extending their power over others.

In these respects, then, Ponse resembles Famham in every way save for

his ethnicity. Ponse is Famham taken to his logical extreme. I cannot help but suppose that Heinlein realizes the similarity between hero and villain. Perhaps as a means of avoiding the implications of this resemblance, Heinlein introduces a deus ex machina in the form of an experimental time machine which provides

Famham a way out of the future. Such a narrative move is explained by

Heinlein's refusal to deal with a situation that would expose his philosophy as an ideology and not the objective truism his narrative attempts to establish. Here it is important to recall that Heinlein is thought of as a realist writer who writes with a common sense view of the world: As sf author James Gunn writes in his

Alternate Worlds:

[Heinlein] seemed capable of coming up with ideas that never had been thought before or of revitalizing old ideas with new treatments. He would write the definitive treatment of more science fiction themes than any writer since H. G Wells, and perhaps because- unlike Wells-he had no apparent philosophy to promote, his stories seemed to exhaust the possibilities implicit in their concepts. (170)

Gunn's position is clearly wrong, but it does reveal the extent to which Heinlein's ideology was and is shared by the sf community. I propose that this ideology makes itself clearer as the narrative of Famham's Freehold progresses. The

285 conflict between Hugh and Ponse reveals that what Heinlein believes in is a sort of benign white power, not universal freedom. Leon Stover, in Heinlein's defense, puts this obsen/ation another way: "The unlovely victory of black culture in fFamham's Freehold! is nothing if not a testimony to... racial and cultural pluralism; yet, for all that, a pluralism harmonized with the majority values of the nation's founders" (61). Obviously, the entrenchment of power in limited circles of U. S. culture is viewed by Heinlein and some members of the sf community as unproblematic. Any violation of pre-existing divisions of power are always interpreted as negative, exemplified by Famham's reactions to the historical record he spies while doing translation work for Ponse:

He read a great deal-every evening . .. and half of every day. He begrudged the time he spent translating for Their Charity but never neglected it; it was the hopeful key to better things. He had found it necessary to study modem culture if he was to translate matters of ancient history intelligibly.. . . But his true purpose was not translation but to try to understand what had happened to his world to produce this world. (Heinlein, Freehold 210: emphasis in original)

Later, when Famham discovers what has happened and the matrilineal descent through which the blacks choose their leaders, he replies, “And God help the human race” (Heinlein, Freehold 2141. In these passages, "his world" and

"human race" have explicitly racial meanings. They refer specifically to white culture and white peoples, not the human race as a whole. We find these appeals for the survival of the race strewn throughout Heinlein's novels and stories, as in Starship Troopers and an earlier, similar novel. The Puppetmasters.

For Heinlein, race refers to the interests of elite whites, their concerns and aspirations. A critical examination of Famham’s Freehold, reveals a more accurate picture of Heinlein's concept of race, and there is no political system

286 based on merit like the one in Starship Troopers that can hide what amounts to a desire for white hegemony motivated, according to H. Bruce Franklin, by

Heinlein's fear of black power (Heinlein 167-69). Heinlein's inability to envision a political system based on something other than non-white American values speaks directly to his concern with valorizing traditional elements of Anglo-

American culture as the sole means of realizing utopia.

It is perhaps this reason that Famham's Freehold has been referred to by

Samuel R. Delany as Heinlein's "most distressing novel" (Starboard Wine 421.

More than any other work, it displays the venom Heinlein was capable of producing. It is in this novel that his "meanness of spirit" is revealed (Asimov 78).

Whatever one may think of Heinlein, however, it is sometimes difficult to refute the assertions made in his narratives. More so than any other sf writer, Heinlein had the ability to convert readers to his side. This manipulation is accomplished by creating situations in the text that seemingly can be resolved only in certain ways. Invariably, Heinlein's way happens to support a white male authority that bends all to its will. Delany's comments on Heinlein's narrative strategy help clarify the problematics involved in reading Heinlein:

Suffice it to say that what distresses one about the Heinlein argument in general, when it is presented in narrative form, is that it so frequently takes the form of a gentlemanly assertion: 'Just suppose the situation around x (war, race, what-have-you) were P, Q, and R; now under those conditions, wouldn't behavior Y be logical and justified?'--where behavior Y just happens to be an extreme version of the most conservative, if not fascistic, program. Our argument is never with the truth value of Heinlein's syllogism: Yes, if P, Q, and R were the case, then behavior Y would be pragmatically justifiable. Our argument is rather with the premises: Since P, 0, and R are not the situation of the present world, why continually pick fictional situations, bolstered by science-fictional distortions, to justify behavior that is patently inappropriate for the real world? (Starboard Wine 42-43; emphasis in original)

287 Delany's question goes to the very heart of Heinlein's narratives: just what is the

point of these political fantasies? For Heinlein and those who see him as an

example to be emulated in- and outside of sf, the point of the narrative is

primarily entertainment. Heinlein himself revealed this in an interview with Leon

Stover (n. pag.). Nevertheless, Fred Erisman points out that Heinlein's decision

to write juvenile sf was inspired by his desire to instruct others on the importance

of a free citizenry informed by scientific awareness (Erisman 95). Certainly these

two motivating forces need not be mutually exclusive, but there is a disconcerting

effort to sometimes excuse politically problematic narratives like Famham's

Freehold as simple entertainment while qualifying other narratives which are

deemed unproblematic as furthering the end of science education. To call

something "entertainment" is too often used as an excuse not to consider its

political implications. The question we must ask here is why is a text one thing

and not also the other? To truly explore the politics at work in a narrative like

Famham's Freehold is to undertake an examination of the racism that infuses the

entire catalogue of one of sf's most beloved authors. It is also to examine the

racism at work in the genre's history. This is not a popular undertaking, and it is

easier to excuse works like Famham's Freehold as entertainment at best, or at worst as uncharacteristic of Heinlein, when they in fact reveal the deepest conflicts in sf and the culture that produces it.

In so much of Heinlein's work we find an arrogant belief in: 1) the idea that personal liberties can be protected only by recourses to near-fascist states, and

2) one dominant political ideology as the only means to ensure social order.

When read critically we find Heinlein's works always enact a desire for white power and a desire to express that power over Others. Heinlein never evaluates

288 the possibility of radical social change, namely, the dissolution of a capitalist

system that feeds off racism, sexism, and oppression. For Heinlein, questions of

personal liberty are too wrapped up in traditionalist views of American political

life. Here we see Heinlein's ideological foundations which he does not fully grasp: he is a white man and has enjoyed far more privileges than white women

and/or people of color. He still believes in a system that allows him freedom but

denies it to so many others. He excuses this contradiction by spouting off about

individual potential and personal responsibilities as if these were inborn factors.

Like most libertarians and anarchists, Heinlein overvalues notions of freedom of

choice. Heinlein does not consider the overwhelming presence of history and

politics in our daily lives, even though he writes about them with such passion. If

he could truly grasp their influence he would understand that his ideas of

personal choice are laden by historical conditions which create an unlevel

political playing field. He can ignore these forces because he is one of the few

who is privileged and whom the system protects. Heinlein's narratives are thus a

recapitulation of the relationship between a white male and the American status quo.

This relationship gives rise to another question: Is Heinlein a racist? I

raise this issue because Heinlein has been accused of racism, especially in the latter part of his career (Delany, Starboard Wine: Franklin, Robert A. Heinlein:

Smith, "Evolution of Politics"). But this question is perhaps misleading because it presupposes an intentional expression on behalf of the author. Certainly it can be argued that Heinlein's entire catalogue of work is racist in that it celebrates American social values like science and colonialism which have been demonstrated to be inextricably linked to racism. In this sense, then, Heinlein is

289 a racist because he supports systems of power which exploit and marginalize those individuals who are separated from the power elite by economic disparity and cultural and ethnic difference. In another sense, however, Heinlein is genuinely concemed with issues of freedom and personal liberty. His work is a conscious exploration of these issues and how they function in political systems where power is always a factor. How Heinlein deals with the precarious relationship between liberty and order, freedom and power, society and the military reflects the primary concems of capitalism in the second half of the

Twentieth Century. In this sense Heinlein is perhaps the quintessential of all

American writers, for he captures so well the tension between American values of freedom and the counter impulses of an American capitalist state that always seeks to further its own position of power. Thus at one level Heinlein believes all should be judged according to their ability to contribute to the national body.

Heinlein feels that those who cannot be productive members of the social body are lacking. This distinction is not necessarily cut along ethnic lines. For

Heinlein, a person's worth outweighs his or her cultural identity.

This philosophy is one based on merit and offers a simplistic appeal to those who seek to solve society's problems by simply dividing it into those who can and those who cannot contribute. 10 But as I have argued such an approach undervalues the impact of history on our lives. Such an approach does not fully appreciate the level at which we have been colonized by systems of power which establish ways of seeing. By ways of seeing I mean, for example, the impulses in society to overvalue white skin over black, to judge a British accent more sophisticated than an Latino accent, to judge masculinity as always superior to femininity. In other words, these ways of seeing are factors which reinforce

290 dominant ideological patterns in culture and which prevent, or at the very least make extremely difficult, the possibility of political change. Heinlein does not fully appreciate the power of these ways of seeing. He believes completely in the

American idea of individuality and the illusion of autonomy it bestows upon individual consciousness. As a result, his narratives reify a fundamentally

American view of the world and in so doing reinforce an ideology that erases cultural diversity in an attempt to homogenize the political body. This totalizing movement in American political ideology is a source of strength for Heinlein, for it presen/es in theory a space for everyone in the body politic with everyone working together toward a common goal of a free society. As we have seen, however, this strategy results in the erasure of ethnic difference and diversity of any kind. Because Heinlein seeks a totalizing resolution to what he figures to be a political problem, that of conflicting ideologies, his narratives hearken back to the same resolutions used by authors of Future War and Lost Races Novels and other earlier sf from the teens through the thirties. All these narratives seek to exert control over the cultural body through scientism and militarism. It is no coincidence that the authors of these narratives have been primarily white males writing from a position of privilege. Heinlein is no different in that respect, but where he is different is in his genuine desire for individual freedom and the ability of human kind to reach utopia. We see this expression most clearly in Heinlein's short story "If This Goes On--" (1940) where the main character comes to the following understanding:

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked;

291 contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything-you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. (499)

We should have no argument with the basic premise of this statement.

But as in so much of Heinlein's fiction this dream of a free society is only realized

by the empowerment of a totalizing system that is not so different from the one it

has replaced. Today we value the tension that is a part of any changing political

thought. It is within the arguments and conflicts that dialogue occurs and

wherein a multiplicity of possibilities can be played out. We can hardly fault

Heinlein for not being Postmodem in his outlook, but where he does falter is in

his reluctance to envision radical social change. Heinlein's visions of future

utopias are based on a romanticized notion of European colonization. They are not forward looking, but seek instead to return to a non-existent historical place

where their values can be endlessly played out. In this sense all of Heinlein's

fiction is regressive in nature. Heinlein is not a realist who is "telling it like it is,"

but a romantic who fails to realize the contradictory impulses of the ideology he

so passionately promotes.

Conclusion

Late pulp sf published from 1939-1964 enacts a fantasy of white power.

This fantasy is expressed in ways that attempt to mark that power as nonpolitical, usually as a natural development of scientific principles applied to sociological

conditions. The rhetoric of science, however, cannot mask the inherently political

292 nature of this fantasy. As we have seen, Otherness and difference upset the working of this fantasy, for they tie sf directly into the political arena it seeks to transcend. This understanding occurs within the narrative even as the narrative denies that process. The subsequent tension gives rise to the more complex animal I call late pulp sf, where complexity is defined not as a more "mature" version of Gemsbackian sf, but as a recasting of the same themes of technocracy and white hegemony into a mode which further obscures their political natures. To better understand this confusing process we have examined sf texts which are considered by the sf audience as belonging to the sf "canon."

As we have seen, these narratives create their fantasies of nonpolitical power at the expense of visibly ethnic Others, very often by recourse to violence or cultural erasure.

In this sense, then, sf has not developed but has remained disturbingly stable throughout its various phases. Future War and Lost Race novels,

Gemsbackian pulp sf, and the Heinlein-dominated sf of the mid twentieth-century have all remained constant in their celebration of white power and their devaluation of people of color. There is no doubting that these strains of sf have many differences, but their mutual desire for white hegemony contains and explodes those differences. We may argue that sf has not changed at all, but merely refashioned itself in ways which makes its recurring fantasy of white power more easily communicable to its audience which seeks to escape social responsibility for racism and other exploitive and repressive actions. Sf is the ultimate literature of escape because its primary goal is to create a space of political non responsibility. If this is the case, then sf is neither a literature of ideas nor a literature of cognitive estrangement (Glute and Nichols 311-314);

293 rather, sf is a discursive mode that allows dominant culture to rationalize its fantasies of power as something other than political. This definition allows us a clearer understanding of the narrative strategies initiated by the sf of the late pulp ag e.

294 Notes

^ Not only is ethnic difference a source of tension in these stories, but gender differences and sexual orientation differences are sources of tension as well. My study focuses on ethnicity, but with the understanding that difference is a cultural grid that cuts across many lines.

2 "The Other Foot" appears in The Illustrated Man. but it is clearly a sequel to "Way in the Middle of the Air" which appears in The Martian Chronicles.

Because the two stories are so closely related I feel at liberty to discuss The Martian Chronicles even as I refer to a story which appears in The Illustrated

Man. At the risk of confusing matters, I feel it pertinent to call attention to an inconsistency in these stories: all the original Mars colonizers are white, leaving the question of what happened to them if only blacks live on Mars. Even if one were to argue that this does not matter because "The Other Foot" is not included in The Martian Chronicles, it would still not explain the rationale for blacks moving to Mars in "Way in the Middle of the Air" if they were merely going to encounter more whites. This inconsistency may have contributed to the decision to omit "Way In the Middle of the Air" and "The Other Foot" from the recent hardcover reprinting of The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. One can only wonder whether there are other, more sinister, reasons as well.

2 The Martian Chronicles is not a "typical" sf book of this time neither in its formal narrative styling nor in the way it enacts its ideological perspective (even if that perspective is very much in line with other contemporary works). Bradbury made his reputation outside the genre as well as within it publishing in literary magazines like The Saturdav Evening Post. McCall's. Esquire, and Collier's

Weekly (Clute and Nicholls 151). In regarding the novel as "typical," Bishop

295 reveals her unfamiliarity with the history of pulp sf, an unfamiliarity which, I feel, is reflected in her argument.

4 In "Blowups Happen," for example, Heinlein attempts to balance the social necessity of atomic energy with its potential for destructive application. Dr.

Lentz a psychiatrist/mathematician and Mr. King, the superintendent of the power plant, believe a solution can be reached by applying what Heinlein calls the calculus of statement:

[Lentz] obtained a sheet of paper from King, and commenced to write... Presently he stopped, and spun the paper over to King. "Solve it!" he demanded. King studied the paper. Lentz had assigned symbols to a great number of factors, some social, some psychological, some physical, some economic. He had thrown them together into a structural relationship, using the symbols of calculus of statement. King understood the paramathematical operations indicated by the symbols, but he was not as used to them as he was to the symbols and operations of mathematical physics. He plowed through the equations, moving his lips slightly in subconscious vocalization. He accepted a pencil from Lentz, and completed the solution. It required several more lines, a few more equations, before they canceled out, or rearranged themselves, into a definite answer. He stared at this answer while puzzlement gave way to dawning comprehension and delight. (110-11 )

In addition to casting cultural forces as quantifiable scientific variables, the story also has two minor characters of interest: Israfel, a black bartender, and Edith, a young prostitute. Israfel works on the outskirts of the community that surrounds the power plant. His bar is a type of haven for the scientists who work the plant as well as the location from which Edith solicits her clients. Thus, white women and people of color represent sites of escape and pleasure from the serious world of the white male scientists who are busy formulating solutions to the problems of the world.

296 5 Granted, Heinlein often presents narratives wherein rebels are victorious

in their revolution; but these rebels are always fighting against religious

totalitarianism or against the suppression of scientific knowledge, and their

struggles always result in the creation of utopias which resemble post-WWII

American society. Put another way, Heinlein always sets up fictional situations

where the introduction of the "real world" status quo is presented as

revolutionary. This approach is a variation of the similar strategy employed by van Vogt in his Sian.

6 For a study of these moments of self-contradiction, see Alexei Panshin's

Heinlein in Dimension. For a critique of this approach, see Samuel Delany's

Starboard Wine (40-45).

7 It is important to note that while Heinlein at times went out of his way in his narratives to paint his characters (and by extension himself) as non-racist, he seemed more than content to be sexist. The best example of this hierarchy of oppression is Farnham's Freehold discussed in this chapter.

8 In the late sixties, Heinlein began to reconsider the idea of a world- govemment. Deciding such a system would be too totalitarian, Heinlein's emphasis shifted to envisioning rebellions against such a government. These narratives reenacted the American revolution on various sf landscapes-the moon in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) is probably the best example of this historical displacement in Heinlein's later work. Nevertheless, the end result was always the same: the creation of a new society founded squarely upon traditionalist American ideology.

9 I purposefully exclude women here because it is obvious Heinlein sees them as little more than property (at least in this novel), their main purpose being

297 to breed, thereby continuing a community that can keep alive the principles which

Heinlein feels are important. Furthermore, black women are mentioned only in passing and exist only in the background. The emphasis seems to be on black men taking advantage of white women. In addition to portraying blacks as cannibals, the novel also implies black men are sexual predators who hunger after white women.

10 The most recent espousal of this position can be found in The Bell

Curve (1994) by Richard J. Hermstein and Charles Murray.

298 PART THREE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE FICTION AND THE RACIALIZED SUBJECT

299 CHAPTER 5 AUTHORS OF COLOR, PROBLEMS OF REPRESENTATION, AND SF AT THE CLOSE OF THE MILLENNIUM

The Changing Face of SF

Chapters 1-4 of this study examine U. S. and British sf published between the years 1859-1964. As I have argued, the exploitation and exclusion of the visibly ethnic Other remains a constant throughout this period. In the mid-60s, however, the face of sf begins to change. The New Wave, a collection of British and U. S. writers including J G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Norman Spinrad, and

Harlan Ellison, emerges during this time as a radical force that questions many of the assumptions of pulp sf. New Wave sf is marked by an emphasis on the soft sciences-psychology, sociology, anthropology—and by an experimental approach to narrative. Nevertheless, New Wave authors are primarily white men rebelling against their literary forefathers, and we can argue that the underlying ideological assumptions about race and ethnic difference changes very little, if at all. We find a more subversive approach in the feminist sf of the late 60s and the early 70s. Writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda McIntyre, Pamela Sargent,

Marion Zimmer Bradly, C. J Cherryh, and Cherry Wilder question many of the ideological assumptions of the genre, including patriarchy, colonialism, and the importance of science and technology. Feminist sf in the 70s provides a voice

300 for alternative political views previously excluded from the genre or relegated to its margins. Alongside feminist writers we find the gradual emergence of writers of color, like the African American writers Samuel Delany, whose work was first published in the 60s, and Octavia Butler, whose fiction was first published in the

70s. In the 80s, their voices are joined by other writers of color, including

Charles Saunders, Stephen Barnes, S. P. Somtow, and William Wu. These more diversified voices are all but muffled by the explosion of cyberpunk, a movement made up of primarily white male authors who in the 80s acquire reputations as social radicals. While Native American Misha and Asian American

William Wu appropriate cyberpunk's notoriously white masculine discourse for their own purposes, sf authors of color are not generally associated with the cyberpunk scene. Cyberpunk leads to a diversified acceptance of sf on the part of a much larger community-the adoption of William Gibson's Neuromancer

(1984) as a postmodern text by the academic community, the bestseller status of cyberpunk novels, and cyberpunk's popularization in TV serials and Hollywood film-but by the early 90s it is suffering from overexposure.

Current sf is a watershed of the genre trends of the last thirty years. We find today stories with pulp sensibilities which employ cyberpunk tropes, such as

Hardwired (1986) by Walter John Williams; feminist sf masquerades as space opera in C. J. Cherryh's Downbellow Station (1981); social Darwinism is replayed and recast for a contemporary audience in Poul Anderson's Harvest the Stars

(1993); we find sexuality and gender explored through sword and sorcery imagery in Samuel Delany's Neveryona novels; a contemporary version of the

Future War novel can be found in The Empire of Ice (1994) and its sequel. Earth

Winter (1995) by Richard Moran; and Jewelle Gomez places her lesbian African

301 American vampires in a cyberpunk context in the final chapter of The Gilda

Stories (1991 ). Contemporary sf is not dominated by any specific formula, but is instead a conglomeration and a hodgepodge of it own history. This situation is especially attractive to authors of color because it gives them the freedom to experiment with any number of generic tropes. The sf field is, in other words, ripe for reconfiguration by sf authors of color. But before we examine the nature of such an act of revision, it is important that we have a clearer understanding of the sf genre at the close of the millennium.

The State of SF Today

Writing about the state of the genre today, George Slusser argues in a recent essay that sf production is "a process of writing novels, that, in and through its own autofunctioning mechanisms, has brought about a systematic leveling of all great names and personal oeuvres" (87; emphasis in original).

Slusser samples a random selection of paperback sf novels which enact a

"'remembering' process that is little more than a self-sustaining simulacrum of what was formerly recognized as SF personalities and themes" (87). He refers to this development as the "homeostatic culture machine," where "We do not, in the end, have either authors or works in the traditional sense; we have instead a series of self-writing structures that vary according to the pressures of a culturally generated set of thematic constants and variables" (92-93). Contemporary sf narrative consists of subjects and themes "whose level of obsession has, at a given moment in the flow of cultural information, reached temporary paroxysm

302 . . . we do not have genres or thematic structures so much as vectors of information" (Slusser 93). Slusser continues by claiming that

these vectors, disruptive in themselves, are at the same time forcing homeostatic restructuring of a "landscape" where literature and culture have become virtually indistinguishable from each other. We have multicultural mixing; concomitant decay of cities; the mongrelization of languages, races, and styles; finally, the explosive interface of computer and biological constructs— information and DNA manipulation, structures mixing, dissolving, reforming, but seeking equilibrium. (93)

Slusser concludes his discussion of the homeostatic culture machine by arguing that if "we consider the theory of dissipative forms . . . we have at least the possibility of an open-ended process, hence of something at least new (if beyond good or bad) coming from it (95).

While Slusser seems confident that the homeostatic culture model will benefit the production of sf in the long run, he does have some concerns about its current condition. For example, in reference to Karen Haber's novel. Mutant Season (1989)-described by its cover blurb as "a nationally best-selling first novel in the powerful new four-book series that chronicles the struggles of mutants and normals for the fate of the Earth" (qtd. in Slusser 90)-Slusser claims that "the text of feminism [undergoes a] process or writing, and miswriting, itself"

(90). Slusser points out how "mutant women, the jacket copy tells us, must be

'willing to use their psychic power and mutant sexuality to get what they want the most.' (90). Slusser raises some important questions: "Are these nothing more than metaphorically enhanced 'female ruses'? For feminists, is this not a step back to the gender trap . . . Or simply that old-fashioned desire of biological women to love a biological man?" (90). Slusser argues that

303 The neat mutant-female analogy seems to be breaking down of in its own internal dynamics. To link sexual and psychic power, unthinkingly, as here, produces, in a kind of action-reaction response, perhaps unwanted 'reactionary' resonance, for are we not simply reevoking what feminists find so demeaning-'feminine intuition'? What we may be witnessing here is the homeostatic text reacting against an overload of feminist power fantasies. Homeostasis should not be equated with subversion' or some such 'deconstructive' force however. What we are seeing instead is a process that is seeking to reorganize what is essentially a dissipative process. The text simply says NO to an excess of individual and doctrinal power trips; the homeostatic machine kicks in, and a sort of bizarre reordering results . . . we experience a text where all-too-expected elements rearrange themselves in a logic of the unexpected. (90-91)

But just how unexpected is this logic? Feminist novels which reinscribe patriarchy even as they critique it are nothing new to the genre. Slusseris analysis of sf and the marketplace^ is, I think valid, but it does point to some disturbing reactions within the genre. Haber's novel hardly exists in a vacuum; it is obviously expressing a deeply rooted ideological conviction bom out of the culture which is responsible for producing it. While Slusser claims that "there are no longer any economic forces operating in today's marketplace" (95) and that the driving productive force behind sf novels today is the homeostatic culture machine, we have to at least be suspicious of the ideological conventions which are responsible for the creation of the homeostatic condition in the first place. As

I mention above, Slusser hopes something different may be born out of this condition, but seeing how this statement comes at the conclusion of an essay that points to some very real problems in the genre, I cannot help but read it as almost self-delusional. Slusseris homeostatic culture machine may be a development of the current sf marketplace, but it is also a reaction to the possibility of progressive political thought in the genre.

304 It should come as no surprise that this reaction often takes the form of

dismissal. Haber's novel, for example, adopts a "feminism" more in common with that espoused by postfeminists like Camile Paglia than with the more radical

positions called for by, say, Judith Butler or Andrea Dworkin. As Slusseris homeostatic culture machine is quick to dismiss the potential of radical feminist

revision, so too it is quick to dismiss the politics of multiculturalism. In one of his

latest novels, Russian Soring (1991), Norman Spinrad envisions a near future world where "The United States has embraced chaotic multiculturalism and

rejects its European heritage" (Slusser 90). The result, of course, is a "stagnant, decaying United States . . . losing ground in space exploration to a rejuvenated and revitalized Euro-Russian society" (Slusser 89). Slusser refers to Spinrad's novel as a "patriotic sermon" informed by "Fears of immigration, NAFTA, [and] affirmative action" (89). Slusser is, I think, accurate in his assessment of the anxieties which drive the novel, but he ignores their implications when in the next sentence he states that Russian Spring is "a product of the autonomously functioning cultural machine" (89). To mark the machine of culture as autonomous is to ignore the historical origins and developments of ideology. This study has shown how an ideology of white power has led to the exclusion of the visibly ethnic Other in sf published between 1859-1964. Spinrad's novel continues this discourse; the only difference is it occurs within a marketplace that has changed its marketing strategies. We see here an echo of what occurs in the transition from early to late pulp sf where a more complex narrative strategy is developed to recreate the unchanging ideological nature of an ongoing narrative of non-white exclusion. Slusseris homeostatic cultural machine may very well be a reaction to the growing political awareness the genre has gained in

305 the last three to four decades. The conservative nature of this response is best illustrated by Norman Spinrad's novel. We should keep in mind here that Spinrad was one of the radical writers of the New Wave of the 60s and 70s and made his reputation by being harshly critical of right wing, Heinleinesque sf.3

Nevertheless, Spinrad levels such criticism while at the same time producing novels like Sonas From the Stars (1980), where blacks rule through an oppressive technological system and salvation comes from a (white) galactic civilization and, most recently and as I mention above, Russian Soring, which portrays multiculturalism as anti-technological and regressive. There is no real difference between the genre's right-wing elitists like Heinlein and its leftist radicals like Spinrad. Any distinction between their politics can be made only within a specific group, white males, who have differing political philosophies but share a sense of unease at how to navigate a political and cultural terrain marked increasingly by recognition of ethnic difference. The dismissal of the visibly ethnic Other is not a feature of the homeostatic cultural machine, but precedes and to a great degree determines its course. Slusseris machine is informed by this illusion of political conflict and this anxiety over cultural plurality.

In novel's like Russian Spring we find the visibly ethnic Other being punished for his/her presence; this formula is one strategy of dealing with the

Other. Brad Linaweaver and Edward E. Kramer in their Libertarian sf anthology Free Space (1997) presents us with another strategy contemporary sf has developed to dismiss the presence of the Other and, by extension, to downplay the Western history of colonization and exploitation. In their Introduction,

Linaweaver and Kramer write that

"Free Space" is a science-fiction answer to the historical problem. It is possible to own the scenery? Well, no one should object if the 306 land you occupy was created by you! With access to energy and resources on a scale that inspires exaggeration, the frontier of the future is something very different from frontiers of the past. There are no native peoples in the asteroid belt. No aborigines on Mars. No troublesome animal species grazing on the moon. This time, there's nothing to get in the way. The solar system is easy pickings. (11)

There are a number of problems with this position (What is "land created by you"? What is meant by "energy"? Is there labor involved, and, if so, who is performing it and under what conditions? Why do the authors refer to biological communities as "troublesome species"? Do non-Westemers "get in the way" of progress?), chief among them being the uncritical acceptance of colonialist and expansionist impulses. The logic of this statement is driven by a desire to escape the responsibilities imposed on the West for the colonization practices of the last five hundred years. Whereas Spinrad's novels and comparable narratives seek to blame and punish the Other, here we find a desire to escape from the Other and the political ramifications produced by the presence of the

Other. This narrative strategy seeks an escape from history even as it wishes to replay that history in a way that is made safe from political tension. We find in this response to the presence of the Other a recapitulation of the classic pulp strategy of nonpolitical power. So long as there are no natives on the moon, or animal species on Mars, then colonialist desire can pass as a natural impulse, divorced from political machination. This fantasy is not a product of the homeostatic cultural machine; rather, it helps to define the machine as a disavowal of the fantasies of white power that function as the foundation of all sf.

307 Toward a Definition of Science Fiction

Slusser's theory of sf as a self-replicating homeostatic cultural machine

alerts us to how the genre replays and recasts themes of white power and right-

wing politics in guises that are marketed as new and progressive. Nevertheless,

Slusser's idea is not so much a definition of the genre as it is a description of the

genre as a mode of production. The homeostatic cultural machine is, in Slusser's view, self-generating, operating by no specific rules other than those generic conventions which it seeks to escape from even as it recasts and reproduces them. We must ask why this process is in place, and resist the notion that it is a natural development as Slusser’s argument implies. John Huntington provides

us with a better understanding of the workings of sf when he refers to the "thought processes of the genre"-the series of rationalizations which pulp sf enacts to justify its political implications and fantasies as nonpolitical. In Part

Two of this study I have built on Huntington's notion to argue that pulp sf enacts fantasies of white power. In this view, sf is the projection of the political desires of dominant culture onto a narrative landscape where the rhetoric of science is used to rationalize the erasure of the visibly ethnic Other. Sf thus functions as a continuation of the racist ideology used by scientists and social philosophers of the nineteenth-century and the early twentieth-century. I do not make this claim lightly; nor do I claim that pulp and contemporary sf writers are racists in the sense that they feel that whites are superior to non-whites. After all, Stephen

Gould has shown how some of the most racist science of the previous century was perpetrated by men who saw themselves as social progressives working in the best interests of non-whites.^ What I am arguing is that in the twentieth

308 century, beginning in the teens and flowering in the 40s, sf establishes itself as a narrative used almost exclusively by dominant culture to express its infatuation with its own position of privilege. This privilege is rarely critiqued, and when it is, it is usually a matter of degree, as I cite above the "conflict" between the

Heinleinesque school of sf and the New Wave position as expressed by Spinrad.

The point here is that the ideology is never questioned because it is the stability and continuation of white power that defines the genre. White power is the ideological cog that drives the homeostatic cultural machine.

While this desire still functions in contemporary sf, it has been joined by other, more subversive voices which seek, for the first time in the genre, to undo it and recreate it into something truly different, and not just the recast iconography of the genre we see functioning inCyberpunk.5 Sf still functions as a fantasy of white power in the work of Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, Jerry

Poumelle, and David Drake to name just a few. But in the work of other white writers sf is undergoing a transmutation, a radical reenvisioning where the future landscapes of old have been replaced by the multicultural presence of today.

This development is at once exciting and disturbing, because it generates problems of representation and comodification of the visibly ethnic Other by dominant culture. At the same time, there have emerged a handful of authors of color whose fiction navigates the white fantasy generic landscape of sf. At the present moment sf is lattice of these conflicting political views; but to say that authors of color and the more conservative factions of sf are complete opposites is to underestimate the complexity of the current state of sf. Novelistic pairing between Larry Niven and African American Steven Bames demonstrates that white conservatives and authors of color can work together within the genre and

309 not be totally at odds.® But we cannot simply accept such cooperation as a sign that all is well. More than ever in the history of the genre, sf is a locus of tensions, pullings, and disruptions. We can see this condition as a good thing because it promises to initiate what has been lacking in the genre since its inception-change. But to better understand the current state of the genre, we must first understand the change in the culture in which it operates.

Sf at the end of the millennium functions in a radically different environment than its pulp predecessor. In Living Danoerouslv. Henry Giroux writes that

As old borders and zones of cultural difference become more porous or eventually collapse, questions of culture increasingly become interlaced with the issues of power, representation, and identity. Dominant cultural traditions once self-confidently secure in the modernist discourse of progress, universalism, and objectivism are now interrogated as ideological beachheads used to police and contain subordinate groups, oppositional discourses, and dissenting movements. (90)

Sf is not divorced from this cultural development, and we can draw analogies between pulp sf as the dominant generic cultural tradition and new sf by authors of color and sympathetic white authors as the interrogation of that tradition. Pulp sf is in part defined by an authoritative voice, illustrated best by Heinlein's didactic novels. We still see this practice today, particularly in the work of Poul

Anderson and Larry Niven. This totalizing narrative is still the dominant voice of the genre, but "as we move into the twenty first-century, we find ourselves no longer constrained by modemist images of progress and history. Within the postmodern era, the elements of discontinuity, rupture, and difference provide altemative sets of referents by which to understand modemity as well as to challenge and modify it" (Aronowitz and Giroux 115). It is this possibility of

310 political and cultural change that promises to replace the discourse of white

power that has run rampant in sf throughout the twentieth-century.

But this promise is riddled with difficulty and frustration. Sf is situated squarely within the larger discourse of the cultural war between multicultural perspective and traditional mores, of a return to traditional political perspectives or envisioning progressive political policies, of the visibly ethnic Other becoming an active agent in the determination of his/her life or the continued role of passive agent to the working of dominant culture. But as Henry Giroux points out,

“Underlying the proliferation of these diverse and various battles is a deeper conflict over the relationship between democracy and culture, on the one hand, and identity and the politics of representation on the other" (90). It is this question of representation that figures prominently in today's sf. Above, I mention how white authors construct the visibly ethnic Other in ways that are promising and yet disturbing. Ethnic characters are portrayed as far more sympathetic today than in past decades. At the same time, however, their Other identities are used as a means of creating stranger, more different landscapes. World-building and the creation of a strong sense of Otherness has always been a staple of sf and is in many ways the conceptual comerstone of the genre. The stranger the alien and its culture, the greater the degree of suspension of disbelief, thus the more powerful the sf reading experience For many, the genre's ability to create a strange environment remains the characteristic of sf that differentiates it from other strains of literature. The strangeness of the sf landscape has in the last twenty years been replaced by the emerging presence of the visibly ethnic Other. In Tricia Sullivan's Lethe. (1997), for example, the physically augmented main character is introduced as being of Central

311 American/Native ancestry. Similarly, Expendable (1997), by James Alan

Gardner, describes a future where many worlds have banded together in peace, and only "The ugly, the flawed, the misfit, the deformed . . . the unwanted . .. are flung to the farthest comers of the galaxy to investigate hostile planets and strange, viscous creatures" (back cover description). The main character of the novel is Festina Ramos, representing an ethnicity and gender which have been traditionally outside sf circles. In Harvest of Stars (1994) Poul Anderson creates a future moonscape where a multicultural environment functions as a strange and exotic locale where the lost white hero wanders amidst non-Western wonders and horrors. In this case, a multicultural environment has replaced the alien landscape. In Neuromancer (1984), Jamaicans are presented as empowered, yet strangely distanced and having little if any effect on the world of its white hero. Case. These novels share the same function of creating a strange space where the (white) reader can escape from the "real world." It is not the dismissal of their difference that generates problems, but the focus on it, a focus so narrow that it recasts the visibly ethnic Other into the mold of the extraterrestrial Other. Whereas before the visibly ethnic Other was either inconsequential or identical to whites, the ethic Other is now used as a site of exoticism and as a means of highlighting the strangeness of the sf landscape.^

Dismissal and exotification are two sides of the same ideological coin: dominant culture's appropriation of the visibly ethnic Other. This use of the visibly ethnic Other in sf is in part generated by a desire to consume Otherness.

Bell hooks argues that white U. S. culture assimilates into itself aspects of the

Other-the foreign, the exotic--in order to economically exploit the ethnic group.

Hooks calls this type of assimilation "eating the other"--white culture digesting

312 elements different from itself, thereby putting forth the illusion that it is allowing for a different voice but in actuality divorcing that voice from any real ethnic context, in effect bleaching it of all but its most superficial difference: "The comodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture" (hooks 21 ). This consumption points to a desire on the part of dominant culture to enjoy that which is different from it while at the same time incorporating the Other into itself. Here we have the conflicting desire for Othemess meshed with the need to erase it.

This need is in part generated by a hegemonic drive that seeks to saturate all cultural diversity and experience. In sf, this drive is represented by the appropriation of people of color into narratives which depend on Otherness for their qualities of estrangement. As hooks points out, this "attempt at defamiliarization . . . distance[s] us from whiteness, so that we will return to it more intently" (29). The tragedy of this strategy is that it is enacted, more often than not, by liberal white writers who actively seek to include the Other into a discourse that has excluded them, sometimes intentionally, for so long.

But contemporary sf is far more than white authors envisioning strange landscapes of ethnicity. Sf by authors of color is a form of resistance to sf history even as it appropriates that history for its own ends, namely the attempt to

"redraw the map of modemism so as to effect a shift in power from the privileged and the powerful to those groups struggling to gain a measure of control over their lives in what is increasingly becoming a world marked by a logic of disintegration" (Aronowitz and Giroux 90). This disintegration is key to

313 understanding sf in the closing decades of the twentieth-century. In previous decades, sf was marked by 1 ) an Intellectual segregation Imposed upon Itself by a community that considered Itself more Intelligent than most of society, and 2) a ghettolzatlon by the academic community that viewed sf as juvenile and escapist.

Contemporary sf writers of color function under a significantly different system.

Michel Kandel argues that contemporary sf writers use sf Images In fundamentally different ways than their predecessors. While he does not refer to sf authors of color, his point Is nevertheless applicable to them: "It Is not that these writers are breaking out of the sf ghetto. They are perfectly happy to use sf; they enjoy the genre. It Is simply that the ghetto walls do not exist for them and never did" (6). Disintegration occurs here at the level of genre history; In other words, traditional tropes and Images are exploded and recast Into something fundamentally different from what they were before. We find the revision of classic generic motifs begin to occur In the mld-60s and to continue Into the present. For example. In "Driftglass" (1967) and "Aye, and Gomorrah," (1967), Samuel Delany meshes the human/alien dichotomy Into a new picture of the human as Other. In "Driftglass," a biologically augmented

Brazilian man Is horribly disfigured In an underwater accident. His Interaction with the augmented community forms the "action" of the story. Here, the focus Is on the Other community and the differences within that community. The Other Is not an alien or a single mass of strangeness, but a complex of emotion and desire. In "Aye, and Gomorrah," sexless surgically altered humans designed for space work use their free time to satisfy the sexual fetishes of normal humans.

The story Is an examination of the underside of dominant culture, and how that underside In fact determines and defines dominant culture so that the difference

314 between them is erased. In Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979), time travel is used as a means to explore the impact of slavery on its contemporary African

American female main character. In The Gilda Stories. Jewel Gomez appropriates the gothic vampire novel and cyberpunk imagery to explore lesbian relationships in a society that has marked homosexuality as deviant. These narratives are fundamentally different in the way they approach the function of sf.

We have in many ways come full circle; from Gemsback's call for a literature of science education to a literature of radical social revision. For sf authors of color, sf is a political medium through which to express ideas which dominant culture finds threatening in a literature dominant culture has traditionally found reassuring.

Representations of People of Color in Contemporary SF

Sf at the end of the millennium deals with the presence of visibly ethnic

Others in three ways: first, the erasure and dismissal of difference which I have discussed in previous chapters and which does not bear further examination here; and second, white authors who embrace people of color and use them as major figures in their narratives. As I mention above, this strategy initiates a problem of representation, as many white authors inadvertently use people of color to heighten the strangeness and exoticism integral to the sf reading experience. To better understand this dynamic I will examine below how

Maureen McHugh's novel China Mountain Zhang (1992) presents a muddled construction of the visibly ethnic Other even as it is sympathetic to the plight of

315 the Other. It is this well meaning contradiction that characterizes much sf written by whites today. The third and most provocative way sf addresses issues of ethnic difference comes from authors of color who use sf tropes to pursue more radical and liberatory methods of self-determination and examination. In these narratives, sf is used to critically investigate dominant culture and aggressively create a space for people of color within that culture. Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower (1996) represents a radical shift away from traditional sf ideology even as it uses tropes familiar to readers of the genre. Butler's novel stands as an example of how sf by authors of color becomes a very different animal than that written by the field's primarily white writers. Together, China Mountain Zhano and Parable of the Sower provide us with a better understanding of how cultural plurality and ethnic difference function within contemporary sf.

China Mountain Zhang takes place in the twenty second-century, in a world dominated by Chinese hegemony. The novel's main character Rafael

"China Mountain" Zhang is a gay man in his twenties who is half-Chinese, half- Latino. We are told that at birth he underwent an operation to erase his Latino features so as to better pass for Chinese. Though he is an ABC (the novel's abbreviated version of American Bom Chinese), he is awarded a fellowship to study in China, an almost impossible honor for someone who isn't a native.

Zhang accepts the reward, but worries that his Latino heritage will be discovered and his fellowship revoked. Even worse, if he is outed he will probably be imprisoned. While Zhang experiences some close calls-his Chinese lover and tutor, for example, commits suicide when he is outed-he manages to earn his degree and return to the U. S. Once back home, he goes into business for

316 himself. The novel ends while he is waiting to close an important deal, but the reader is led to believe that Zhang will be successful.

Zhang's Latino heritage is first presented as a source of tension. Early in the novel, we find him reflecting on his identity: "Spanish is the first language I ever learned because my mother's birth name was Teresa Luis" (McHugh 2).

While Spanish my be his first language, Zhang is not comfortable with his Latino background: "I am never sure I am her son, although I don't rationally doubt it.

It's just that the connection between us is very tenuous" (McHugh 5). Though

Zhang refers to himself as "half-Hispanic," he considers his Latino ancestry as something outside himself, as something not truly his. The distance Zhang feels from "Hispanic" culture is posited in biological terms: "Perhaps I have so few of

[my mother's] genes that we are more like cousins" (McHugh 5). As in so much sf, genetic markers are used to stabilize ethnicity as a biological truism rather than a socially constructed category.

Because Zhang's Latino nature is cast as a subjective quality, it emerges under moments of frustration and confusion, almost like a reflex or allergic reaction. For example, in a moment of anger, Zhang begins to babble to himself:

"I am talking, talking, talking, but what I am saying does not seem important.

Some of it is in English, some of it is Spanish, my mother's language" (McHugh

88; emphasis added). Spanish becomes a hodgepodge of emotion rather than a rational discourse. This irrationalism is described as originating in Zhang's mother, and the mother tongue. There is a conflation here-between women as irrational beings and Spanish as a hastily spoken language full of emotion and passion but little reason- expressed through the genetic description of Zhang's lack of Latino genes. Traditionally, women and irrationality have been

317 constructed as threats to the rationalized patriarchal discourse of sf (Huntington

94-100). In McHugh's novel, these same concerns haunt Zhang at a genetic level because of his mother's biological inheritance. These representations are of interest here because they surface in a novel that attempts to work outside the sf conservative tradition. China Mountain Zhano is about a bi-racial gay male, and that in itself marks the novel as non-traditional; yet, Zhang is constructed within generic categories which exclude and marginalize non-white characters, and which paint the visibly ethnic Other as genetically corrupt. These constructions, in a nutshell, are the main problematics faced by contemporary white sf authors who write about non-white characters. But even as this reification of racial categories occurs, the novel seems to want to break free from its dependence on genetic determinism. Whenever

Zhang is relaxed or under strain, his Latino heritage seems to emerge. Towards the end of the novel, for example, during a vidphone conversation, Zhang's new lover asks:

"Rafael Zhang. Or Zhang Rafael, which?" I laugh, "Neither. Either Rafael Luis, or Zhang Zhong Shan." Okay." He looks cautious. "Which is your real name?" "Both, my mother is Hispanic and my father ABC." (McHugh 303)

Similarly, there are times when Zhang lapses into Spanish, and it is his Chinese identity that is erased. During a speakeasy raid, for example, Zhang and his tutor, Haitao, are cowering in the shadows, frightened for their lives. In Zhang's words: "Sigue," I whisper, I can't think in Chinese, when I try to think of Chinese it comes out Spanish" (McHugh 175). The scene continues with Zhang praying, in Spanish, that the police won't find him and his lover. A possible reason for his

318 falling back onto his mother's tongue is the alienation he feels while in China.

After all, Zhang was bom in America; also, he and his lover are being pursed by the Chinese authorities not only for playing illegal neurogames, but because the

speakeasy is a gay hang-out. But if it is a question of alienation, then it would

make more sense for him to revert to English. The Spanish language plays a

muddled role that the narrative never makes clear. I do not think this confusion is

intentional; rather, it is created out of the narrative's inability to juggle

representations of ethnicity and ethnic difference while at the same time trying to

localize ethnicity as a purely genetic category. We find here the narrative

repressing an understanding that it is at some level realizing-that racial difference is based more on cultural factors than genetic codes.

This muddled understanding is expressed during several moments in the novel when Zhang reveals his Latino heritage. The results are interesting because they help us discem how the narrative constructs its notion of difference. Zhang admits to being Latino only when he can use the (inevitable) estranging results to his benefit. Early in the novel, Zhang is dating his foreman's daughter, San-xiang, if only to allay suspicions that he is gay. When the girl's father, Qian, attempts to pressure Zhang into marrying the girl, Zhang lashes back the only way he can:

"You wanted your daughter to marry me!" I say. "You tried to bribe me with your talk of Guangzhou University!" My face is flushed, I feel it. "Well Foreman Qian, something you did not know, my mother is not Chinese. I am not really Chinese. My mother's name is Teresa Luis and she is Hispanic!" (McHugh 42-43)

As soon as Qian learns Zhang's true identity, he stops attempting to arrange a marriage. In fact, he stops talking to Zhang altogether (aside from a few words of

319 business for politics' sake). As soon as Qian knows Zhang’s ancestry, Zhang becomes just another underling, something less than Chinese. But Zhang knew this would happen. He uses his social inferiority to promote his own desires, not because he wants Qian to know he is proud of his Latino ancestry. Toward the end of the novel we have a similar scene. Zhang does not attempt to deny his

Hispanic ancestry when confronted with it by Mr. Wang, the vice-president of the company to which he is applying. "It does not matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice," says Zhang (McHugh 301). Knowing that there is no way around his situation, he merely downplays that fact that he is Latino and foregrounds the fact that he can do his job. In both these scenes, Zhang's Latino identity is used as a means of establishing difference. In the first scene, ethnic difference is used as a source of tension which cannot be overcome. In the second, it is passed off as inconsequential. These portrayals of identity are reminders of how people of color sometimes have to negotiate their positions in society. McHugh illustrates this point very well, and I think it is one of the novel's strongest aspects. The problem here, however, is with the function of ethnicity as a plot device that surfaces only when it generates tension in the narrative.

Because ethnic difference serves this function, it reads as if it is tacked- on. Latino identity becomes a plot-device which provides tension and generates action while at the same time providing a dose of exoticism. We can better understand this function when we examine how "Latino-ness" never seems to go beyond the occasional peppering of a Spanish phrase. Take, for example, the following comment which Zhang reads from a subway advertisement: "Una luz brillara en tu camina" (McHugh 44, 310). First, "brillara" should have an acute accent on the final "a." The more glaring error, however, is "camina." As it is

320 used in the previous phrase, "camina" is a verb meaning "to walk." The phrase should read "Una luz brillara en tu camino"--“camino" being the noun, meaning path--or-"Una luz brillara en tu caminar"--"caminar" also being a noun, meaning path or walkway. Either "camino" or "caminar" would be acceptable in the sentence; as it reads, however, "camina," is the incorrect substitute of a verb where there should othenvise be a noun. But I cannot rightfully ascribe this flaw to Zhang. After all, he's merely reading from a sign (although he should have caught it if he was fluent in Spanish, as it is one of those minor yet glaring errors). However, there are moments in the narrative when Zhang confuses some basic features of Latino culture. For example, when he is having dinner with Vice-President Wang, Zhang tells the reader his meal is "a spicy southwestem dish; chicken in mole with a salad of avocados, tomatoes and onions" (McHugh 301 ). But "mole" has neither an acute accent on the "e" nor is it pronounced with an accent on the "e." "Mole" does not have an acute accent, and it is the "o" which is stressed in speech. Furthermore, chicken in mole (or polio en mole) is not a spicy dish. Mole is a derivative of chocolate and is actually quite smooth. Still, Zhang does admits his Spanish is really calô, or

"Street Spanish. Nothing they would understand in Bogota" (McHugh 303).

However, if Zhang's Spanish is slang, then it does not make sense for him to respond to his first meeting with Inviemo by saying: "Yo habito aqui"--again, an acute accent is deleted: "aqui" (McHugh 269). This is the equivalent of saying:

"I inhabit this place" or "I reside therein." If Zhang knew true slang, he would not be speaking in what translates into an overly-formal address.

In addition to the muddled Spanish phrases and deleted acute accents,

Zhang's observations reveal some further problems with how the narrative

321 constructs ethnicity. Towards the end of the novel, Zhang flies to New Mexico-

Texas to meet with the representatives of a company that is considering hiring him. He is greeted by Ms. Ngyuen, whom Zhang describes as being "brown as my mother and [who] despite her Asian name looks Chicano" (McHugh 296). It strikes me as curious that he refers to his mother as Spanish, as if she's from

Spain, and yet compares her physical features to a Chicana, a woman of

European and native ancestry bom in the U. S. Is Zhang's mother European

Spanish, or a Mestiza-an amalgamation of white and native? For that matter, was it Zhang's white European features which were erased, or his brown.

Mestizo, features? If Teresa Luis is as brown as a Chicana, then Zhang's heritage must include Latin American natives as well as European Spaniards. If this is the case, why does he refer to himself as Hispanic and Spanish? Perhaps he doesn't have to because, in the future, it is possible this term does not exist.

His term, Spanish, may set up a false European image in the mind of the reader; and the reader is totally justified in thinking of him as such. Yet his mother's color reveals to us that Zhang is not white; he is (or was) brown. In The Last

Generation. Chern'e Moraga discusses the nomenclature which has been forced upon the Latino population in the United States:

After a decade of "hispanicization" (a term superimposed upon us by Reagan-era bureaucrats), the term Chicano assumes greater radicalism. With the misnomer Hispanic, Anglo America proffers to the Spanish surnamed the illusion of blending into the "melting pot" like any other white immigrant group. But the Latino is neither wholly immigrant nor wholly white; and here in this country, "Indian" and "dark" don't melt. (Puerto Ricans on the East Coast have been called "Spanish for decades and it's done little to alter their status on the streets of New York City). (Moraga 57)

322 Perhaps Zhang's "Hispanic" ethnicity can be traced to Puerto Rico. Such a possibility is given credence by Moraga's point that Puerto Ricans and

Nuyoricans have been referred to as "Spanish" by white culture. If this is the case, then Zhang has adopted the discourse of dominant culture in his definition of himself.

The question, then, is whether McHugh is creating intentionally a character whose Spanish skills reflect his being raised within a Chinese culture, or whether she is presenting a character with tacked on Latino stereotypes?

Zhang's Latino roots never play a major role in the narrative, so it is hard for me to believe that McHugh would have set up an elaborate scenario-such as having

Zhang not catch grammatical errors on subway signs, mistaking mole for a spicy food, claiming to know slang but instead speaking in wooden, formalized

Spanish-just to prove that Zhang is out of touch with his Latino roots. Quite the contrary, Zhang's lack of knowledge about Latino culture is a reflection of the pitfalls which a white author can fall into whenever s/he writes from a minority standpoint.

To better understand this problematic, we can look at some of the other

"Hispanics" in the novel, like Jeremy Inviemo. Zhang meets him for a second time at a party, and Inviemo is dressed in a matador outfit. Later, Zhang tells us that Inviemo changes "into something baroque, to go with his Spanish clothes"

(McHugh 282). Here, the "Spanish" element is presented as something exotic, strange, sexually unknown and alluring. As for the host of the party, his name is

Cinnabar Chavez. The name itself swells with exotic Othemess. These characters, regardless of their gender, are strange because they are foreign, because they dress oddly, and have funny names. These are not true

323 characters; rather, they are images which depend and function based on an ignorance of Latino culture. Furthermore, they are images which have been marked as Other to the constructed normalcy of privileged white culture. As such, Zhang's identity is a source of exoticism much like the futuristic technologies and landscapes that provide the backdrop to the novel. The danger here is that ethnicity is deformed into a genre trope, and the estrangement qualities of sf images are transposed onto the body of the non-white Other. The problems of representation at work in McHugh's novels are discussed by Linda Alcoff in her essay, "The Problem of Speaking For Others." Alcoff argues that the problem of speaking for Others has two origin points:

First, there is a growing recognition that where one speaks from affects the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend one's location . . . a speaker's location . . . has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker's claims and can serve either to authorize or disauthorize one's speech. (6-7)

Alcoff defines speaker's location as "social location, or social identity" (7). We can localize McHugh's identity as a white woman from Ohio who spent several years teaching in China. The time she spent in China obviously informs the construction of her main character, Zhang. Given her experience she obviously has more knowledge of Chinese culture than the average person from the U. S.; thus, according to Alcoff's definition, she has some authority when it comes to speaking for the Other. However, this authority may only be a question of degree. Yes, McHugh knows more about Chinese culture than the average white man or woman, but this does not make her construction of Zhang any less problematic; after all, McHugh is not a gay Asian man. Additionally, there is

324 nothing in her autobiographical description or in the way she constructs Latino identity that points to any familiarity with Latino culture.

This situation brings up Alcoff's second problem of speaking for Others, that "certain privileged locations are discursively dangerous. In particular, the practice of privileged persons speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons has actually resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reinforcing the oppression of the group spoken for" (7). This side-effect occurs in China Mountain Zhang because the construction of Latino identity portrays a false image of Latinos. For example. Latinos are portrayed as "Hispanic," meaning their European roots are privileged rather than their native and/or African origins. Also, "Hispanics" are portrayed as a homogenous group-Zhang's mother, for example, looks Chicana, but she could be Puerto Rican-where difference dissolves into one Latino hodgepodge. These portrayals undercut the diversity of Latino communities and promote distorting images of Latino identity in the popular imagination. Creating a non-white character is a far more complex process than simply choosing an exotic name. Yet I am uneasy at simply declaring that white authors cannot write about non-white characters. To police the production of fiction is itself a loaded ideological position which initiates a whole set of problems ranging from censorship to how we gauge accuracy of representation. Alcoff, however, presents a way around this frustrating dichotomy when she proposes that "anyone who speaks for others should only do so out of a concrete analysis of the particular power relations and discursive effects involved" (24). This position forces writers to create a significantly different narrative where the emphasis is not on universalism or estrangement, but on the negotiation of these poles. This

325 complex narrative action Is not In play In McHugh's novel, or In most contemporary literature, sf Included, written by whites.

Can such an approach be adopted by sf? Historically, the genre has been marked by a didactlve narrative strategy and an emphasis on white power. As elements In the genre work actively against that tradition, there Is an opportunity for the emergence of dialogue. Alcoff, acknowledging the Influence of Gayatrl

Spivak, argues that "We should strive to create wherever possible the conditions of dialogue and the practice of speaking with and to rather that speaking for others" (23). This is a worthy goal, and one I think that many contemporary white sf writers would like to adopt. The problem I see Is that many white writers have absorbed uncritically the Ideological thrust of the genre even as they question traditional sf narrative. In other words, while many contemporary white sf writers may be politically opposed to an sf writer like Heinlein, they still function within a shared ideological conviction. This problem arises because the ideology of white power Is so ingrained In the sf generic landscape that the same problems we see

In the pulp age and earlier are replayed today In an atmosphere that consciously strives against them. I feel this Is a tragic situation because while many white writers seek to redress the wrongs of the past, they succeed only in recasting and replaying them. This tragedy Is compounded by a reading audience that does not see the problem as it Is developing. For example, in the New York

Times Book Review. Gerald Jonas writes: "Let me quickly add that China

Mountain Zhano is not a book about racism or homosexuality. These facts of life are simply built into the world that Ms. McHugh unfolds for us" (22). A similarly muddled judgment by Norman Splnrad appears on the novel's blurb page:

"despite Its masterful wealth of cultural detail, China Mountain Zhang is not a

326 political novel." In these readings of the novel there is obviously a denial of the political knowledge the book expresses. I have discussed the origin of such responses in Part Two of this study, but it bears repeating here. Sf continually seeks to deny the political understanding it always enacts. This understanding is a playing out of the fantasy of white power. In pulp sf, this power is expressed as a hegemonic value; in contemporary sf, this power is expressed by consuming the Other, then spiting him/her out in a way which seems sympathetic even as it is exploitive.

McHugh writes within an ongoing dialogue of white authorial privilege, even as she seeks to move beyond it. To say there is no way out of this situation is to assume that white writers cannot write differently and to dismiss the political and intellectual contributions of authors of color. Oppressed peoples are capable of producing what Spivak calls a "countersentence" (qtd. in Alcoff 23), and which

Alcoff believes "suggests a new historical narrative" (23). Sf by authors of color provides a countersentence to the genre's ongoing imperialist discourse, and we find the emergence of a new sf narrative in many of their works, including the fiction of Octavia Butler. Writing in her essay, "Parables of Race and Difference," Teri Ann

Doerkson writes that "Butler's novels and short stories . . . provide the science fiction community with some valuable paradigms. They are good, well-thought out, solid narratives with protagonists who are people, generally women, of color, and with underlying and challenging assumptions about gender and race that have the potential to lead the once typical white or male reader into some

(perhaps uncomfortable) realization about his or her own society" (22). As one of the few people of color writing sf, and perhaps the only African American female

327 sf writer,8 Butler “fills an important role by allowing her voice to be heard within a genre that has traditionally excluded both women and African Americans" (22).

Butler's fictions function as "bridging agents, spanning . . . the gap between social reality and fiction" (Doerkson 33). Her work addresses a variety of political themes untouched by most traditionalist male sf, including "forced reproduction, unequal power, the ownership of self by another, the siblingship of human with alien, and the failure of siblingship within species" (Haraway, Visions 378).

Butler's sf is far removed from traditional sf authoritative narratives which uncritically celebrate individualism, expansionism, and imperialism.

Nevertheless, she is quick to address the impacts of such belief structures on what is always in her fiction a multicultural cast of characters who have to create a space for themselves in strange new environments.

For example, in the Xenogenesis Trilogy, Lilith, an African American woman, has to navigate through a future landscape where aliens have invaded an Earth devastated by nuclear war. The only way for the human race to survive is to merge with the alien Oankali. We find here a fundamentally different story from more traditional sf narratives where humans fight back and are victorious against the alien invaders, or even the New Wave inversion of that trope wherein humans are crushed by superior alien technology.^ In Butler's trilogy, the alien

Other represents physical and political change, and that change is embraced as something necessary. In place of reactionism we find a willingness to explore altemative possibilities of being. As Donna Haraway points out, Butler writes

"survival fiction more than salvation history" (Visions 378).

We can better understand Haraway's description when we examine

Parable of the Sower (1993), Butler's most recent novel. The story takes place in

328 a near-future America where the nation's infrastructure is in the process of collapsing and the economy is in ruins. Gangs roam the streets, and people live in segregated neighborhoods in fear of their lives. The euphoric effects of the most popular drug are compounded whenever the user watches a fire consume an object; as a result, thousands of drug-crazed addicts have created forest fires which spread through the northwest. Because federal regulations have been abandoned in hopes of jump starting the economy, corporations have initiated slavery under the guise of "company store" policies. The novel focuses on a young African American woman, Lauren Olamina, who suffers from being hyperempathic-she can feel the pain experienced by someone or something near to her. As a result of her condition, she seeks peace and harmony in a landscape dominated by violence and exploitation. Over the course of her young life she has written in a series of "verses" a philosophy of life she calls Earthseed, a fusion of Christianity, Eastern and Native religions, and New Ageism, whose goal it is "to leam to shape God with forethought, care and work; to educate

[people] and benefit their community, their families, and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny... .[which is] A unifying, purposeful life here on Earth . . . A real heaven, not mythology or philosophy" (Butler 234).

Earthseed is ultimately about change and of its inevitability and necessity as these "verses" from Lauren's book of Earthseed illustrate: "All that you touch, /

You change. / All that you Change, / Changes you. / The only lasting truth / Is

Change. God / is Change" (Butler 70). After Lauren's stepmother and brother are raped and bumed, she leaves her Califomia home in search of a better life. As she walks north to Oregon, she is joined by others who are also seeking a new home away from the violence that is racking the U. S. Lauren gradually

329 surrounds herself with a multicultural group of whites, blacks, Latinos, and

Asians. Though there is tension, they all work together, and many even adopt

Lauren's Earthseed philosophy. At the close of the novel, they reach Oregon and together the group creates a new colony based on principles of peace and freedom:

So today we remembered the friends and the family members we've lost. We spoke our individual memories and quoted Bible passages, Earthseed verses, and bits of songs and poems that were favorites of the living or the dead. Then we buried our dead, and we planted oak trees. Afterward, we sat together and talked and ate a meal and decided to call this place Acorn. (295)

Parable of the Sower uses traditional genre tropes-the devastated landscape and the quest for utopia-but radically re-envisions and recasts them.

The point of the novel is not to reinscribe the status quo, but to create something new. This is a simple variation on an established tradition that has taken for granted the necessity or retuming things to "normal." We find this normalizing strategy in China Mountain Zhano as Zhang is in the process, we are led to believe, of becoming a successful business man. Here, the outsider represses his identity so that he may succeed in life, where success is defined as a secure job and comfortable income. Butler's novel, however, explodes this situation by basing change on those elements which McHugh's novel seeks to downplay. In other words, Butler works toward establishing a society based on a political and spiritual philosophy that privileges harmony with nature and with others, rather than one which ascribes unthinkingly to a capitalist ethic that reinscribes oppressive political policies and social arrangements.

330 Butler reveals the normalizing ethic that most sf evokes for what it is--a dangerous ideology of exclusion and violence. In his critique of this formulaic approach, Brian Stableford writes that "normalizing endings are inappropriate to science fiction because the tacitly take for granted that the status quo is a privileged state whose restoration is the only appropriate outcome of any situation in which the possibility of change becomes urgent" ("Generation" 325).

In Parable of the Sower, social disintegration is caused by current political conditions taken to their logical extreme. Butler's novel thus addresses directly the anxiety most sf represses in its fantasies of destruction as in nuclear holocaust or alien invasion scenarios-namely, the fear of radical social change. Butler's vision of social change is determined by a réévaluation of social power. In Parable of the Sower, power flows freely within the group; Lauren acts as a type of guide, but she is not the seat of power. Furthermore, she encourages dialogue between the group, even when such discussion runs to a critique of the Earthseed philosophy. When Lauren claims that Earthseed can help initiate a heaven on Earth, one of the group, Harry, replies.

Or a hell... Human beings are good at creating hells for themselves even out or richness . . . [Earthseed] sounds too simple, you know." "You think it's simple?" [Lauren] asked in surprise. "I said it sounds too simple." "It sounds ovenA/helming to some people." "I mean it's too... straightfonward. If you get people to accept it, they'll make it more complicated, more open to Interpretation, more mystical, and more comforting." "Not around me they won't!" I said. "With or without you, they will. All religions change . . . After all, if 'God is Change,' surely Earthseed can change, and if it lasts, it will." (Butler 234; emphasis in original)

331 What is privileged in this discussion is not Earthseed, but the ability of the group

to discuss and decide how well Earthseed suits its purposes. This is a significantly different dynamic from what we see in Heinlein and pulp narratives,

where there is a "way of doing things" that is argued for and adhered to. The

didacticism of most sf is replaced here by the necessity of dialogue. Butler's strategy differs from McHugh's approach as well. McHugh uses

the visibly ethnic Other to revalidate the monolithic nature of the status quo, in

this case American capitalism. It is not an oversimplification of McHugh's novel

to argue that its main point is a critique of the effectiveness of Communism as a political system. 10 This position is illustrated by a gay, biracial character who Is

discriminated against by a system that forces him to live on the margins. This

construction leads to a problem of representation because Zhang is used only as

a means of indirectly supporting the most traditionalist calls to U. S. nationalism.

What we have in McHugh's novel, then, is the use of an oppressed non-white,

gay character to demonstrate how great it is to live in a system where such

marginalization is not supposed to occur. This is a contradiction that is kept together by the obscuring forces of ideology, namely the inability to read U. S. culture as an agent of oppression and exploitation. Because McHugh's novel challenges communism it also forces us back onto the American myth of liberty and freedom for all citizens. The novel indirectly asks, "Think how much happier

Zhang would be if he lived in a world dominated by the U. S. instead of China?"

Chances are, it wouldn't make that much of a difference to Zhang. The novel uses Zhang's identity to support a U. S. ideology that in the "real world" marks him as deviant because of his sexuality and as an outsider because of his ethnicity. When Zhang joins the business world we find once again the

332 réinscription of traditional values, and their acceptance marks Zhang's maturity.

We have retumed, as Stableford points out, to the normalized ending which negates the need for social revision. Butler's novel avoids this trap because she uses the interaction of her white and non-white characters to challenge established bases of political power. Unlike McHugh who seeks to reinscribe U. S. hegemony, for Butler "restoring an original sacred image can be a bad joke" (Haraway, Visions 378). Much U. 8. sf written by whites takes for granted that sacred image of white power. This system functions as an ideological origin point to which the narrative must always retum; yet "Origins are precisely that to which Butler’s people do not have access" because they are disenfranchised (Haraway, Visions 378). Lauren's quest is not just for a new physical home, but for an ideological space where an origin can be created outside of traditional belief structures. This act of reconception is, as I say above, marked by an absence of authoritarian structure; as such "totalizing theory is a major mistake that misses most of reality"

(Haraway, "Cyborg" 181).

It is clear that Butler is intentionally working against the grain of sf narrative. In discussing the impossible chance of the family moving to Olivar, an exclusive corporation-owned-and-run city where citizens live in protected enclaves, Butler writes:

Maybe Olivar is the future-one face of it. Cities, controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction. My grandmother left a whole bookcase of old science fiction novels. The company- city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped "the company." I've never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that's the way it will be. That's the way it is. (110)

333 Here the sf fantasies of the pulp age are revealed as ineffective for dealing with the complexity of contemporary political tensions and economic disparities. The classic scenario of the white male hero in rebellion is too simplistic a scenario that does not take into consideration the impact of colonialism and racism on the cultural imagination.

Butler also appropriates and rewrites the classic sf trope-space travel.

While the desire to escape the Earth and create a new place is standard to the genre, Butler uses it in ways fundamentally different from white male authors.

Most other U. S. sf colonization narratives replay the creation of the nation-state- as in Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966) and Poul

Anderson's linked series of stories, New America (1982). This strategy is in part generated by a desire to escape from political responsibility and instability by initiating a fantasy that returns the reader to what is presented as a simpler time of clear and established values. Whereas authors like Heinlein and Anderson tend to use the colonization trope to reinscribe political and cultural hierarchies and barriers, Butler appropriates the colonialist impulse for democratic ends. In Parable of the Sower, space travel functions as means of celebrating diversity and encouraging contact with other species:

People speculate about intelligent life, and it's fun to think about, but no one is claiming to have found anyone to talk to out there. I don't care. Life alone is enough. I findit... more exciting and encouraging than I can explain, more important than I can explain. There is life out there. There are living worlds just a few light years away. (73-74)

Space exploration is not simply an endeavor for the sake of knowledge, but an intentionally political action designed to facilitate and encourage new possibilities of experience and social policies. We see this view expressed in Lauren's

334 rationale for moving to new worlds.: "I think people who traveled to extrasolar

worlds would be on their own-far from politicians and business people, failing

economies and tortured ecologies-and far from help. Well out of the shadow of

their parent world" (Butler 74). Butler portrays colonization as an opportunity to

create a new state where the history of racism and colonization are replaced by a

different set of values based on diversity, feminism, environmentalism, and

multiculturalism. This is not an unproblematic assertion as it enacts a desire to

leave behind our current Earth-bound political condition. But Butler tempers this fantasy-it is an ultimate vision of Earthseed, and the novel is more concemed

with the protagonists reaching a safe place and creating for themselves a space

in tom fabric of U. S. culture.

Parable of the Sower functions as a countersentence to more traditional sf

narratives written by white authors Butler intentionally subverts standard genre

formulas in order to refashion them into tools of resistance. Her sf functions as a

source of empowerment to people of color who seek to create a space for

themselves in sf, and for whites who wish to open sf to a larger audience.

Butler's sf recreates sf, transforming it from a conservative and often regressive white male discourse of colonialism and technocracy into a literature of

democratic vision and multicultural promise.

I have touched on how contemporary sf written by authors of color differs from pulp sf of the past and contemporary sf by white authors. This chapter does not pretend to have exhausted this topic. If anything, this chapter serves as an

introduction to the incredible amount of work that needs to be done to better

understand contemporary sf and how people of color appropriate it for their own

purposes. Nevertheless, I feel that any such discussion must take into account

335 my critique of the way white sf authors use people of color as estrangement factors in their fiction. The bizarre alien of old has been replaced by the person of color and by non-Westem cultures. The intent of such portrayals is rarely antagonistic; in fact, I think quite the opposite is true: white sf authors are trying to incorporate people of color into a field that for so long excluded them.

Nevertheless, this inclusion is fraught with problems of representation that reveal the problems inherent not only in sf, but in the culture that produces it. These problems stem from difficulties of conceiving and understanding ethnic difference as culturally determined and influenced by the impact of colonialism, racism, sexism, and homophobia. It is an examination of these factors and their impact on culture that informs sf written by authors of color. Rather than an uncritical acceptance of genre tropes, authors of color present what Spivak refers to as a "countersentence" as they work to create a space in a narrative that traditionally has been saturated with racism and sexism. Ultimately, if sf is to survive and prosper as a truly speculative genre, it will have to begin addressing issues of racism, diversity, and power in ways that are progressive and open to political and social change.

Conclusion: The SF Marketplace Today and the Future of SF in Print

In a recent essay, sf author Gwyneth Jones tells of her experience at a

1995 sf convention in Glasgow where she asked: "why are there so few non­ white faces in this hall?" (9; emphasis in original). She goes on to say.

336 We were sure there must be enclaves of sf writers and readers everywhere, but we couldn't prove it. Someone dredged up a memory of a little boy In an African town running around in a Superman tee-shirt. I didn't find this image reassuring. I dismissed Superman as a form of Coca-Cola, mere White North merchandising, and then I wondered: has science fiction ever been anything else? (9)

Jones' anxiety points to what I have been arguing in this study, that sf is a fantasy of white power marketed as nonpolitical escapism. Today, this illusion can no longer go unchallenged. As people of color gain more power in the West, and as barriers between the First and Third World collapse and global economies become increasingly intertwined, the colonizer/colonized dichotomy can no longer pass as a legitimate mode of political discourse. The colonized subject is no longer passive and, we understand today, is to a great degree responsible for the identity of the West. To better understand this interaction between white and non-white, we need only look at ethnic diversity in the U. S. and the current U. S. sf marketplace.

In the last few years print sf has undergone a crisis, with first-time author paperbacks dwindling while simultaneously there has been an explosion of television and cinematic sf and the hundreds of media tie-ins (such as Star Trek and Babylon 5 novels). At the same time, we have seen a steady decline in magazine sf with all the major titles finding their total sales cut in half over the last ten years. 1 Even though science fiction in film and TV is more popular than ever before, sf in print is suffering. Obviously, something is occuring here. Part of the reason why non-print media can substitute for sf literature is that the ideological conventions remain at some level the same. In other words, the fantasy of white power we find at work in sf literature is the same as on the big

337 screen. It is possible that the sf reading audience is having the same experience

at the theater that they are having after investing many reading hours in a novel. If this is the case, then the problem might be that sf in print is failing to create

new works and new experiences for its reading audiences.

The static condition of print sf is in part due to the lack of ethnic diversity in

the sf community. As people of color reach new economic levels of prosperity,

few of their funds are channeled into sf in print. While other factors of the U. S. economies have marketed themselves toward minority money, print sf has been

unable to bridge this gap. Gary Westfahl insightfully points out the reason for this

situation:

most science fiction writers . . . claim to believe, and in a way do believe, in complete racial equality and in firm opposition to racism in all its forms. Yet they do not know much about, and have little personal contact with, people of color, and other than authorial pronouncements, they do nothing to address the problems faced by racial minorities in America . . . the science fiction community .. . has marshaled its considerable resources to support space and missile defense programs but never to support programs to improve the lives of minorities. Simply put, science fiction is not part of the solution to racism, so it is part of the problem of racism- whether members of the community . . . realize it or not-and readers of color, recognizing the difference between armchair egalitarianism and the real thing, stay away from science fiction. ("Racism" 81-82)

Westfahl's reading of contemporary print sf reveals the rift between it and people of color. Because sf has so little to offer people of color, what is the point

of our reading and buying it? Over the course of the last few decades such

questions, while they may have been raised, were not in any urgent need of

being answered. Now, however, the genre finds itself in a position where it has to reach a wider audience out of economic survival. In order to prosper, sf is

going to have to become something else, because what it is now is not selling. If 338 sf Is going to change, it is going to have to hit new markets, and the one largest untapped market it has never actively pursed is people of color. Sf must now, for the first time and out of financial necessity, consider whether it satisfies the reading needs of communities of color. This means narratives written by people of color or at least narratives that portray people of color in roles beside that of the exotic Other.

Science fiction has, after all, always thought of itself as a literature of the future. According to recent population statistics. Latinos will be the largest minority group in the U. S. twenty years into the new millennium, and by the halfway mark of the twenty first-century, people of color may constitute half of the nation's population. If sf is truly concemed with the future, then it seems that these topics should be at the focus of the genre's speculative eye. With very few exceptions, they are not. But if sf is to survive and become a true literature of ideas, rather than a reactionary and regressive literature, it will have to reevaluate its ideology of white power and begin addressing issues of difference as they exist across the political and cultural spectrum.

339 Notes

1 Pamela's Sargent's The Shore of Women (1986) comes to mind. Here, a future all-woman society lives in technologically advanced cities while men exist outside in the wilderness. By the end of the novel, one of the women has

"rebelled" against her society and has begun having relations with a male in hope of getting the sexes communicating once again.

2 I use marketplace to mean the commercial forces which market sf and the various hybrid novels, collaborations, shared world anthologies, theme anthologies, fantasy/sf conglomerations, and movie and TV spin-offs. Mutant

Season, for example, boasts the name of incredibly prolific author, Robert Silverberg, on the cover in an attempt to help sell the book. Silverberg is also married to Karen Haber. A similar strategy occurs in the marketing of series novels, such as "Isaac Asimov Presents," or "Ben Bova's Discovery," "Arthur C.

Clarke's Venus Prime," where unknown writers piggyback the names and ideas of well-established writers and/or their ideas. An interesting variation on this strategy where established names lend their talents to classic themes/worlds has occurred recently with the publication of Gregory Benford's Foundation's Fear

(1997), the first book in the new Second Foundation Trilogy-building on Asimov's classic trilogy which itself grew into five books, or, depending on how one looks at it, ten books. The second book in the series. Foundation and Chaos (1998) is by Greg Bear.

3 Spinrad is most famous for his novels Bug Jack Baron (1969), about a near future sex-obsessed U. S. and the adventures of TV personality Jack Baron, which was denounced in England's Parliament, and The Iron Dream (1972),

340 which posits an altemate-world where Adolph Hitler becomes a sf writer. The novel is an effective critique of right-wing militarism in sf.

4 Gould's The Mismeasure of Man provides many examples and detailed analysis of nineteenth-century scientists, their experiments, and their ideology.

5 For a detailed examination of how cyberpunk functions as a repackaged

Gemsbackian vision see Gary Westfahl's "The Gemsback Continuum': William

Gibson in the Context of Science Fiction" in Slusser and Shippey.

6 One can also argue that the radical element in Games' fiction-evident in his cyberpunk trilogy consisting of Streetlethal (1983). Gorgon's Child (1989), and

Firedance (1994)-are absent from, perhaps consumed by, his work with Niven, on such adventure novels as Dream Park (1981), The Barsoom Project (1989) and The Califomia Voodoo Game (1992), all of which take place in a high-tech, role-playing game environment. Games also collaborated with Larry Niven and

Jerry Poumelle on The Legacy of Heorot (1987), described as "reflecting many of

Poumelle's convictions" (Clute and Nicholls 92). The novel is a tale of planetary colonization based on Beowulf and is a good example of political and militaristic agendas passed off as biological drives. A telling summation is provided by

Clute and Nichols who conclude their entry by arguing "that [Stephen Games] has acquired a good amount of skill and gear, but has yet to speak in his own voice" (92). Games' voice gains some authority in his novel. Blood Brothers

(1996), which explores the relationship between a white supremacist and a black computer hacker, who together must face an ancient evil if they are to save their lives and the lives of their families. His new novel is due out early to mid 1998.

7 At the same time that this newer strategy for dealing with the presence of the ethnic other is in play, there is also the continued use of the pulp strategy

341 of dismissing cultural plurality in favor of a homogenous cultural identity. For example, Poul Anderson, in his short story “How to be Ethnic in One Easy

Lesson" (1974), creates a situation where a Chinese student of the future is forced by his advisors to create a parade out of respect for ethnic customs and human solidarity in the face of increasing extraterrestrial influence. The student,

Ching, feels no connection to his past and resents the order, but complies out of fear of endangering his standing at school. He asks an alien friend, a reptilian creature named Adzel, to stand in as the Chinese dragon, thus making a mockery of the administration's attempt at excluding extraterrestrials. The parade goes well and everyone is satisfied. Though he does a good job, Ching has little knowledge of his heritage and is portrayed as resisting any association with it. The only character with an appreciation for cultural diversity is constructed as a bureaucrat who hates extraterrestrials. The story seeks to embrace the Cther even as it mocks non­ white cultures. The cynical title defines ethnicity as something spurious and unimportant which can be attained quickly and easily. In Anderson's story, respect for ethnic heritage is cast as something only government bureaucrats seek to impose, and not as something people desire. Ultimately, the story implies that ethnic heritage is not important, only people; of course, "people" is defined here by a totalizing white American ethic.

8 Jewelle Gomez considers herself a fantasist, as mentioned in Butler's interview (Potts 337). There is, most recently, Tananarive Due , who has written two well received novels. The Between (1995) and Mv Soul to Keep (1997), but they are horror more than sf.

342 9 Thomas Disch's The Genocides (1965) is a classic example of this type of story. The novel, while bleak, presents an altemative to the Heinleinesque school of pulp sf where the white scientist and/or man of action always finds a way of defeating the alien invaders against impossible odds. While such a narrative inversion undermines the authoritative discourse of traditional sf, the portrayal of the alien as an incomprehensible and dangerous Other still raises problems of representation and points to what functions at some level as a racial anxiety.

10 We see the same conclusions reached in her short stories, especially "The Lincoln Train" (1995), "Necropolis" (1994), and her second novel. Half the Dav is Might (1994).

11 Analog went from 21, 217 newsstand sales in 1985 to 7,048 in 1997, and their subscription rate dropped from 75,967 in 1985 to 46, 324 in 1997. All the other magazines, including Asimov's SF. The Magazine of Fantasy and SF. Realms of Fantasy, and SF Age posted similar, if not worse, numbers. For complete statistics on the dwindling sf market see the Locus February 1998, the "1997 Year in Review "issue.

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