DOCSLIB.ORG

Wij-Articles-Final2- Joanna Russ-Breaking up Borders And

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Wij-Articles-Final2- Joanna Russ-Breaking up Borders And Joanna Russ’s Kittatiny: A Tale of Magic Breaking up Borders and Spaces of Confinement in Joanna Russ’s Kittatiny: A Tale of Magic Isabel Morales Jareño, Universidad Camilo José Cela, Madrid, España1 ABSTRACT Joanna Russ (1937-2011) has taken her readers into a world of fantasy with the adventure story Kittatiny: A Tale of Magic (1978). Although it is seemingly a fantasy narration for children and follows the structure of the traditional hero’s tale – separation, initiation, and return – Kittatiny is pervaded with the author’s usual radical feminist and sexual touches, characteristic of a good part of her literary production. The narrative contrasts with Russ’s usual science fiction short stories, novels, novellas, and critical essays because of its resemblance to the fantasy genre. This study highlights the book’s valuable contribution to the literary feminism of the 1970s and analyzes Russ’s treatment of the traditional fantasy literature for children from a feminist perspective. The focus is on Kit’s journey across natural environments, where she can live in her own space of uncertainty without social or emotional rules and is free to live her own experiences without any ties and confinements. JOANNA RUSS: THE FANTASY WRITER In the 1970s radical feminism and sexuality played an important role in the US panorama, prompting the appearance of social and political groups. Joanna Russ was one of the representatives in the literary spheres and also a writer and critic of traditional folktales and mythology. The 1960s and 1970s were not only political periods about civil rights movements, feminism, or anti-war movements, but also a time of political radicalism on all levels across the nation (Grant, 2006). Russ expressed particular admiration for Carla Fraiser, activist and writer who in 1967 set up the Radical Women (RW) group-aimed to teach women leadership, theoretical skills, and class-consciousness. Joanna’s introduction to Clara Fraser’s Revolution, She wrote (1998) is a praise of her courage and socialist revolutionary ideas and an appreciation of successfully combining feminism and socialism for twenty-nine years. Fraser was also the originator of the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) based on Leon Trotsky’s ideas, where women, people of color, and sexual minorities (such as homosexuals) struggled for their liberation. Inspired by these ideas, fervent American feminist writers like Betty Friedan 1926-2006)– writer and founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW)– the radical and unconventional Kathy Acker (1948-1993), Alice Sheldon- James Tiptree Jr. (1915-1987), and Joanna Russ (1937-2011) expressed sharp criticism about “the social pressure on girls to be nice rather than authentic and honest, thus becoming “female impersonators,” who must fit their whole selves into small crowded Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal Volume 13 Number 1 (2016) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2016 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. 1 Joanna Russ’s Kittatiny: A Tale of Magic spaces” (Lindow 2009, 132). Nancy F. Scott describes the origins of National Organization for Women in the foreword to Barbara J. Love’s Feminist Who Changed America, 1963-1975 (2006), and explains its main purpose during a time of antiwar- protest against the US war in Vietnam: …the time has come for all women in America, and toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a full equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the world-wide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders. (Love 2006, 1) Russ was influenced by this revolutionary context of protests and radicalism led by women’s determination to end patriarchy, as the most necessary step towards a truly free society. She, therefore, attempts to struggle for such feminist ideas as social pressure, love, and family relationships through a fantasy tale for children. As a fantasy story, Kittatiny: A Tale of Magic (1978) epitomizes a new shift in Russ’s literary production, which includes a number of science-fiction short stories and novels, as well as critical academic writings. However, Joanna Russ is not in the only one to write feminist fairy tales, and other works also exalt womanhood and girlhood in the limited patriarchal frames. Anne Sexton’s poems, Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) and Little Red Riding Hood, both published in 1971, show women’s oppressive stances. Other feminist fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood (1977) by Olga Broumas, The Moon Ribbon (1976) by Jane Yolen, Angela Carter’s The Donky Prince (1970) and Tanith Lee’s Petronella (1979) are only a few epitomes of this style of writing. Literary fairy tales as Jack Zipes describes, “… are socially symbolical acts and narrative strategies formed to take part in civilized discourses about morality and behavior in particular societies and cultures.” (Zipes 1994, 19) Russ’s fantasy tale appeared only three years after the publication of one of her most renowned feminist SF2 novels, The Female Man (1975). At that period, she also published some of her most famous titles of SF genre, among them And Chaos Died (1970), The Adventures of Alyx (1976), We Who Are About to (1977), and Two of Them (1978). However, Kitattiny: A Tale of Magic is not a SF story or a feminist polemic; it is, however, an adventure narration where fantastic and imaginary characters help the writer tell a magic tale. Is it a children’s fairytale? What is the aim of writing about feminism through a fantastic tale? As this paper attempts to show, Kitattiny thoroughly represents Russ’s feminist and sexual insights concerning the cultural ambivalence Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal Volume 13 Number 1 (2016) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2016 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. 2 Joanna Russ’s Kittatiny: A Tale of Magic about women and their emotional and cognitive skills to behave with authenticity and honesty under social pressure. As Marge Piercy (2001) suggests, the range of concerns that runs through the body of Russ’s work includes “…survival, alienation, loneliness, community, violence, sex roles, the nature of oppression both external and internal, the necessity and the nature of further civilization.”3 The references to Joanna Russ’s magic tale, as in the Cyclopedia of World Authors (Magill 1997, 1287), are usually non-existent or brief: “Kittatiny: A Tale of Magic is written to provide young girls with a positive female figure for the genre of fantasy.” There is, largely, a lack of awareness or minor interest in a story like Kittatiny, since she is considered a successful SF writer with her noted work The Female Man (1975). And although Kittatiny4 has not been recognized as one of her award-winning works, it should be claimed as another notable representation of Joanna Russ, as a feminist writer. Furthermore, given that this story has been scarcely analyzed, this essay aims to analyze its valuable contribution both as another feminist literary depiction of the 1970s and as a fantasy-inspired manifestation of Joanna Russ’s feminist leanings. It focuses on how Russ treats women’s gender roles and sexuality through a narration replete with many characteristics of the traditional fantasy literature for children. Among those, it is necessary to investigate how two different spaces, fantasy and reality, converge and influence the hero throughout her journey, in the course of which accidental imaginary characters and natural landscapes are also protagonists. These rhetorical elements are all part of a quest, and particularly, a young girl’s quest. Throughout the girl’s journey, there exists a tight relationship between the natural environment and the girl, which Russ joyfully deals with, and no ties or confinements, either psychological or physical, can be found. Intentionally, these openness and psychological freedom show how women can live in their own space of uncertainty, where no social or emotional rules are a condition any more. During her quest, she ventures into imaginary episodes where she experiences vulnerability and uncertainty, and meanwhile she finds herself surrounded by amazing natural elements and events. In this way, she finds no social confinements, limits, or pressures, and becomes connected to an open world. Nature is a habitual element that Russ uses to provide the reader with either a disconcerting taste of natural spaces as in Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal Volume 13 Number 1 (2016) ISSN 1209-9392 © 2016 Women in Judaism, Inc. All material in the journal is subject to copyright; copyright is held by the journal except where otherwise indicated. There is to be no reproduction or distribution of contents by any means without prior permission. Contents do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. 3 Joanna Russ’s Kittatiny: A Tale of Magic The Adventures of Alyx (1976)5, or else, descriptions of her deep love for natural beauty, as in On Strike against God (1980). Both as a SF and critical essayist, Russ has thoroughly defended a strong feminist position. And her anger, wit and strength shown in her fictional writing is further incremented by her publications as a critical feminist writer, including How to Suppress Women’s writing (1983) and To Write Like a Woman (1995). And among her SF works, there are three representative examples: When It Changed (1972, the short story precursor of The Female Man), Picnic on Paradise (1968, her first SF novel collected in the Adventures of Alyx), and the 1982 Hugo Award novella, Souls.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 1970S Feminist Science Fiction As Radical Rhetorical Revisioning. (2014) Directed by Dr
    BELK, PATRICK NOLAN, Ph.D. Let's Just Steal the Rockets: 1970s Feminist Science Fiction as Radical Rhetorical Revisioning. (2014) Directed by Dr. Hephzibah Roskelly. 204 pages. Feminist utopian writings from the 1970s included a clearly defined rhetorical purpose: to undermine the assumption of hidden male privilege in language and society. The creative conversation defining this rhetorical purpose gives evidence of a community of peers engaging in invention as a social act even while publishing separately. Writers including Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., and Ursula Le Guin were writing science fiction as well as communicating regularly with one another during the same moments that they were becoming fully conscious of the need to express the experiences of women (and others) in American literary and academic society. These creative artists formed a group of loosely affiliated peers who had evolved to the same basic conclusion concerning the need for a literature and theory that could finally address the science of social justice. Their literary productions have been well-studied as contemporaneous feminist utopias since Russ’s 1981 essay “Recent Feminist Utopias.” However, much can be understood about their rhetorical process of spreading the meme of feminist equality once we go beyond the literary productions and more closely examine their letters, essays, and commentary. This dissertation will show that this group of utopian fiction writers can be studied as exactly that: a loosely connected, collaborative, creative group of peers with specific ideas about how humanity could be better if assumptions of male superiority were undermined and with the rhetorical means to spread those ideas in ways which changed the literary and social conversation.
    [Show full text]
  • Immortal Words
    NOW·NYS-Page 12 ' · Parental Notification (Continued from page 9) Immortal Words If a young women does not feel comf'Ortable in discus· sing abortion with her parents, it is an invasion of (her·•ay) Shirley Polykoff has become the first ''living" 4>rivacy to force her to do so with a law. It's far too late woman to join the Advertising Hall of Fame. Polykoff, fe.. save any parent-child relationship if it exists only ' who was honored last March, reportedly carved her because of a·statute. And who would trust the reaction niche tn ,the advertising world by inventing the famous of a parBD.t whose daught~!' doesn't trust· her/him hair dye company slogan: "Does she or doesn't· she? 1 e.nough, to discuss the topic in the first place. Parental .,.', · Only her hairdresser knows for sure.'' notification by law is not needed where parents ·have fulfilled their roles adequately-or are prepared. to ac· cept the conseQ.uences of their own inadequacles or their daughter's right to choose ah'Ortion. Where parents have been inadequate to the point where· their minor pregnant daughters· do not turn to them voluntar. 'flle Science Fiction Sisterhood Uy., it is criminal to punish the daughters by forcing them to a confron~ation. I suspect ·that it is precisely that­ (Continued from page 9} punishment-that the authorS of parental notification Leigh Breckett, T. laws have in mind for .these young women. Marjen ·Zimmer Bradley, T. Suz,y McKee Charnas, F, X. Isn't it interesting that'the State of Utah, the MORMON Mildred Clingerman, T, ss.
    [Show full text]
  • Single-Gendered Worlds in Science Fiction: Better for Whom? Victor Grech with Clare Thake-Vasallo and Ivan Callus
    VECTOR 269 – SPRING 2012 Single-gendered Worlds in Science Fiction: Better for Whom? Victor Grech with Clare Thake-Vasallo and Ivan Callus n excess of one gender is a regular and worlds are commoner than men-only worlds is that a problematic trope in SF, instantly removing any number of writers have speculated whether a world Apotential tension between the two sexes while constructed on strict feminist principles might be utopian simultaneously generating new concerns. While female- rather than dystopian, and ‘for many of these writers, only societies are common, male-only societies are rarer. such a world was imaginable only in terms of sexual This is partly a true biological obstacle because the female separatism; for others, it involved reinventing female and body is capable of bringing a baby forth into the world male identities and interactions’.2 after fertilization, or even without fertilization, so that a These issues have been ably reviewed in Brian prospective author’s only stumbling block to accounting Attebery’s Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (2002), in for the society’s potential longevity. For example, which he observes that ‘it’s impossible in real life to to gynogenesis is a particular type of parthenogenesis isolate the sexes thoroughly enough to demonstrate […] whereby animals that reproduce by this method can absolutes of feminine or masculine behavior’,3 whereas only reproduce that way. These species, such as the ‘within science-fiction, separation by gender has been the salamanders of genus Ambystoma, consist solely of basis of a fascinating series of thought experiments’.4 females which does, occasionally, have sexual contact Intriguingly, Attebery poses the question that a single- with males of a closely related species but the sperm gendered society is ‘better for whom’?5 from these males is not used to fertilise ova.
    [Show full text]
  • “WHEN IT CHANGED”, DE JOANNA RUSS Lucia De La Rocque (UERJ/ FIOCRUZ)1
    50 A QUESTÃO DAS TECNOLOGIAS REPRODUTIVAS EM “WHEN IT CHANGED”, DE JOANNA RUSS Lucia de La Rocque (UERJ/ FIOCRUZ)1 A percepção das escritoras feministas de ficção científica do amálgama entre os campos ocupados pelas questões de gênero e de ciência passa, necessariamente, pela discussão travada por essas autoras acerca do papel da mulher numa sociedade em que a ciência respalda o poder masculino. Essas obras denunciam como uma forma de ciência, alavancada pelo patriarcado, manipula o corpo da mulher, principalmente nas questões que remetem ao biológico. Esse tipo de leitura, na realidade, instiga debates fundamentais para o feminismo, cobrindo desde a discussão em torno de formas alternativas de reprodução humana, tais como se apresentam na ficção e já aconteceram ou estão para acontecer, envolvendo maior ou menor teor decisório das mulheres sobre seu próprio corpo, até questionamentos sobre a idéia do ciborgue, altamente polêmica e trazida para o cerne dos estudos feministas com as obras pioneiras de Donna Haraway. Neste trabalho, focaremos justamente a primeira inovação mencionada: o modo pelo qual a ficção científica de autoria feminina tem encarado as biotecnologias reprodutoras (novas tecnologias reprodutivas, ou NTRs). As NTRs têm desempenhado um papel bastante ambíguo quanto à arena de estudos de gênero. Por um lado denunciadas como ferramenta do patriarcado por grande parte da crítica feminista (Scavonne: 2003), por outro essas tecnologias também têm sido encaradas como possibilidades de libertação do corpo da mulher no que concerne à reprodução da espécie; e é nesse cenário onde se encaixa o conto When it changed, de Joanna Russ, de 1975, focado no presente trabalho.
    [Show full text]
  • New Cultural Models in Women-S Fantasy Literature Sarah Jane Gamble Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University
    NEW CULTURAL MODELS IN WOMEN-S FANTASY LITERATURE SARAH JANE GAMBLE SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE OCTOBER 1991 NEW CULTURAL MODELS IN WOMEN'S FANTASY LITERATURE Sarah Jane Gamble This thesis examines the way in which modern women writers use non­ realistic literary forms in order to create new role models of and for women. The work of six authors are analysed in detail - Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ and Kate Wilhelm. I argue that they share a discontent with the conventions of classic realism, which they all regard as perpetuating ideologically-generated stereotypes of women. Accordingly, they move away from mimetic modes in order to formulate a discourse which will challenge conventional representations of the 'feminine', arriving at a new conception of the female subject. I argue that although these writers represent a range of feminist responses to the dominant order, they all arrive at a s1mil~r conviction that such an order is male-dominated. All exhibit an awareness of the work of feminist critics, creating texts which consciously interact with feminist theory. I then discuss how these authors use their art to examine the their own situation as women who write. All draw the attention to the existence of a tradition of female censorship, whereby the creative woman has experienced, in an intensified form, the repreSSion experienced by all women in a culture which privileges the male over the female. All these writers exhibit a desire to escape such a tradition, progressing towards the formulation of a utopian female subject who is free to be fully creative a project they represent metaphorically in the form of a quest.
    [Show full text]
  • KNDW1 Ina. ' APR Ll 1978
    ... & ... _ I\ Advertising Supplement J] A KNDW1 ina. ' APR ll 1978 Pr .0. Box 86031 Pittsburgh, Penn . 15221 , 1 \ FrREEI!>GM 0f Tf.fE P,RESS BEilGNGS TQ THOSE WHO OWN TfriE PRESSI New from KNOW KNOW Annotated Priceli$t 312 IS GAY RIGHTS A FEMINIST 317 WOMEN IN CRISIS: KELP ON THE Have you ever tried to convince a friend or colleague that a particular ISSUE? by Anna Weitz. WAY by Reba Deal. feminist change is needed and wished you had the perfect argument, well­ LESBIANS, LESBIAN RIGHTS ANO Explores the problems of worded, brief, convincing, immediately available? You knew you had read it TKE ERA by Kay Whitlock. battered women using the recently, but where? You remembered--careful ly gave your friend the tit le Two feminists discuss the personal experiences of women and author of the book--and realized they probably would never bother to relevance of gay rights to the from the Butler County (Ohio) get the book and read it. -- feminist movement and lesbians Women's Crisis Center. Contains stake in the ERA. Pennsylvania facual dat4 to document KNOW, founded in 1969 by a sma 11 group of Pittsburgh NOW members, obsessed HOW Magazine, 1g75. 20¢. widespread seriousness of ·the with the romantic notion that revolutions require printing presses, has problem and offers encouragement been supplying the answer to that need, in the fonm of moderately priced to those who would seek to pamphlets and books since its founding. 313 KOW TO FACE AN ATTAGKER by help battered wanen. KNOW, Joan Lester. lg7B. 40¢. If you are new to the movement, you may not have heard of KNOW .
    [Show full text]
  • Aurora 25 Bogstad & Gomoll 1986-Wi
    Issue No 25 Humor & SF Vol. 10 No 1 Winter 1986-87 ISSN 0275-3715 Issue No 25 Humor & SF Vol. 10 No 1 Winter 1986-87 ISSN 0275-3715 Features Subscription Information 2 In tro d u c tio n : On Femi A th re e -is s u e su b sc rip tio n to Aurora nism, S cience F ic tio n , and Humor Diane M artin Is a v a ila b le fo r $10 w ith in the US, 4 Dear E d ito r ia l Horde (L e tte r s ) You Folks or $13 o u tsid e the US. A ll su b scrip ­ 36 C o n trib u to rs ' G a lle ry Themselves tio n s requested a t former ra te s w ill be c re d ite d a t c u r r e n t r a t e s . An Is s u e returned to you because you Articles f a ile d to n o tify us of your change 7 An Open L e tte r to Joanna Russ Jeanne Gomoll o f address reduces your su b sc rip tio n by one iss u e . 11 Humor In S ta r Trek Susan B a ilie tte 2 Back issu e s of Aurora a re a v a ila b le 4 A B rie f Survey of Women In Comics Hank L u ttr e ll fo r $3.50 each, w ith these ex cep ­ tio n s: Issu e #12/13 o r photocopies Reviews of Joanna Russ’s Books of #s 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, and 21 cost $5.
    [Show full text]
  • When-It-Changed.Pdf
    When It Changed Joanna Russ —Again, Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison, 1972— Katy drives like a maniac; we must have been doing over 120 kilometers per hour on those turns. She’s good, though, extremely good, and I’ve seen her take the whole car apart and put it together again in a day. My birthplace on Whileaway was largely given to farm machinery and I refuse to wrestle with a five-gear shift at unholy speeds, not having been brought up to it, but even on those turns in the middle of the night, on a country road as bad as only our district can make them, Katy’s driving didn’t scare me. The funny thing about my wife, though: she will not handle guns. She has even gone hiking in the forests above the forty-eighth parallel without firearms, for days at a time. And that does scare me. Katy and I have three children between us, one of hers and two of mine. Yuriko, my eldest, was asleep in the back seat, dreaming twelve-year-old dreams of love and war: running away to sea, hunting in the North, dreams of strangely beautiful people in strangely beautiful places, all the wonderful guff you think up when you’re turning twelve and the glands start going. Some day soon, like all of them, she will disappear for weeks on end to come back grimy and proud, having knifed her first cougar or shot her first bear, dragging some abominably dangerous dead beastie behind her, which I will never forgive for what it might have done to my daughter.
    [Show full text]
  • American Feminism and Joanna Russ's the Female
    This article was downloaded by: [University of Cambridge] On: 22 October 2014, At: 02:08 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Women: A Cultural Review Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwcr20 Unnatural acts: American feminism and Joanna Russ's the female man Amanda Boulter a a Lecturer in the School of Cultural Studies , King Alfred's , Winchester Published online: 19 Jun 2008. To cite this article: Amanda Boulter (1999) Unnatural acts: American feminism and Joanna Russ's the female man , Women: A Cultural Review, 10:2, 151-166, DOI: 10.1080/09574049908578385 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574049908578385 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
    [Show full text]
  • Learning from Science Fiction
    HARD READING Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, 53 Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies Editor David Seed, University of Liverpool Editorial Board Mark Bould, University of the West of England Veronica Hollinger, Trent University Rob Latham, University of California Roger Luckhurst, Birkbeck College, University of London Patrick Parrinder, University of Reading Andy Sawyer, University of Liverpool Recent titles in the series 30. Mike Ashley Transformations: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1950–1970 31. Joanna Russ The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews 32. Robert Philmus Visions and Revisions: (Re)constructing Science Fiction 33. Gene Wolfe (edited and introduced by Peter Wright) Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writing/Writers on Wolfe 34. Mike Ashley Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1970–1980 35. Patricia Kerslake Science Fiction and Empire 36. Keith Williams H. G. Wells, Modernity and the Movies 37. Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon (eds.) Queer Universes: Sexualities and Science Fiction 38. John Wyndham (eds. David Ketterer and Andy Sawyer) Plan for Chaos 39. Sherryl Vint Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal 40. Paul Williams Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War: Representations of Nuclear Weapons and Post-Apocalyptic Worlds 41. Sara Wasson and Emily Alder, Gothic Science Fiction 1980–2010 42. David Seed (ed.), Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears 43. Andrew M. Butler, Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s 44. Andrew Milner, Locating Science Fiction 45. Joshua Raulerson, Singularities 46. Stanislaw Lem: Selected Letters to Michael Kandel (edited, translated and with an introduction by Peter Swirski) 47.
    [Show full text]
  • Discussion About Frederik Pohl
    Science Fiction Book Club Interview with Michael Page (May 2020) Michael Page is the author of a number of books which examine the history and cultural importance of science fiction. He has published analyses on the life and works of Frederik Pohl, James E. Gunn, and edited a collection of stories by Miles J. Breuer a “forgotten” science fiction writer from the Pulp Era. He is a lecturer at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and regularly teaches courses on both science fiction and nineteenth century British literature. He also acts as the faculty advisor for Laurus, UNL's undergraduate literary magazine. Blaine Savini: There is a belief that most writers approach novels from one of two directions...either they write the first sentence and find out what happens as the story is written or they know how it will end and then explain how the ending occurred. Would either of these descriptions describe Mr. Pohl's writing style...why or why not? My sense is that Pohl primarily took the latter tactic. His adage was “four pages a day,” meaning that no matter what he was doing or how he was feeling, he always carved out some time to write those four pages each day. I’ll paraphrase what he says in The Way the Future Was: sometimes the four pages come fast and I’m done in half an hour; sometimes it might take 16 hours to grind them out. This is a different kind of discipline than the discipline of planning work out well in advance. That’s not to say that Pohl didn’t plan, but I think once he got started he’d let the story and the characters go in their own direction as he got going on a project.
    [Show full text]
  • Feminist Science Fiction Ritch Calvin
    Feminist Science Fiction Ritch Calvin The fantastist, whether he uses the ancient archetypes of myth and legend or the younger ones of science and technology, may be talking as seriously as any sociologist – and a good deal more directly – about human life as it is lived, and as it might be lived, and as it ought to be lived. For after all, as great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the im- agination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope. Ursula K. Le Guin, "National Books Award Acceptance Speech" I would like to begin by thanking the editor for the invitation and for the oppor- tunity to be part of the Virtual Science Fiction project. I am truly honored to be included in the company of these great scholars who have defined science fic- tion scholarship over the last years. It is, of course, only too fitting that this pro- ject takes place by means of what would have once been considered in the realm of science fiction. When science fiction writers imagine and/or predict future technologies and future sociological developments, one of the things we have discovered is that they are more often than not too conservative in their predictions. That is to say that the changes they envision often appear sooner than they predict. However, historically, science fiction writers have been particularly behind the curve in terms of sex, gender, race and sexuality. At the risk of committing an act of hubris, I would like to begin rather as Virginia Woolf does at the beginning of her book, A Room of One's Own (1929).
    [Show full text]