Technological and Gender Progress in Ray Bradbury’s Postwar Speculative Fiction Lisa Michelle Paper University of Florida April 2016 Paper 1 Technological and Gender Progress in Ray Bradbury’s Postwar Speculative Fiction “I often use the metaphor of Perseus and the head of Medusa when I speak of science ​ fiction. Instead of looking into the face of truth, you look over your shoulder into the bronze surface of a reflecting shield. Then you reach back with your sword and cut off the head of Medusa. Science fiction pretends to look into the future but it’s really looking at a reflection of what is already in front of us” (Weller). These were the words of the American author Ray Bradbury in an interview from The Paris Review recorded in the 1970s. Bradbury’s insights ​ ​ brilliantly illuminate the art of exploring through science and speculative fiction larger issues in society.1 Science fiction has been described as the “literature of cognitive estrangement” by scholar and critic Darko Suvin. Suvin goes on to argue that science fiction is a genre “whose ​ necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment” (Suvin). Cognitive estrangement is thus the ability, as Bradbury puts it, ​ ​ to “attack the recent past” and reveal “the present” by pretending you’re “writing about the future” (“About”). Bradbury used cognitive estrangement as a tool to address many larger social ​ 1 For the purpose of this thesis and the specific works analyzed, Ray Bradbury’s postwar fiction is both speculative ​ and science fiction. Speculative fiction is any fiction that speculates on the result of changing an elemental part of our world, such as changes in history, laws, or technology. Speculative fiction is widely regarded as a more modern literary classification. Science fiction can be a subgenre of speculative fiction. Science fiction is a more limited category, but would have been the common classification of Bradbury’s stories at the dates of publication. For this reason, I consider Bradbury’s works to fit into both categories. However, I find speculative fiction to be a more accurate, comprehensive, and modern way of generally defining his writing. In addition to the speculative science fiction examined in this paper, Bradbury wrote a great deal of speculative fantasy and horror stories throughout his writing career. In light of this I consider Bradbury a speculative writer. For a comprehensive look at the differences between speculative and science fiction, see Annie Neugebauer’s article “What Is Speculative Fiction?” (Neugebauer). Paper 2 issues plaguing postwar America in his own writing, including, notably, issues of gender in the face of a rapidly developing, tech­savvy nation. Bradbury’s portrayals of human and gender relations in his own work encapsulate many of America’s challenges in the aftermath of World War II. His use of the fantastic makes the ​ ​ exploration of these issues entertaining, interesting, and even humorous. Often set in far­off fantastic places, such as distant planets filled with violence and foreboding atmospheres, many of his depictions of human life are oddly familiar to his readers. Moreover, no matter how alien, ​ they present domestic situations strikingly similar to those of suburban life in the 1950s: alien housewives busily doing chores, automaton families cheerily going about their daytime duties, 2,3,4 and husbands travelling to work by rocketship. ​ In this way, these households become ​ ​ representative of American domesticity in general. Joe Patrouch further argues in his essay, “Symbolic Settings in Science Fiction: H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison,” that the settings for The Martian Chronicles, scientifically inaccurate even according to the knowledge of ​ ​ the era in which it was written, are really figures for the “rural, small town Midwest of Bradbury’s childhood” (41). 2 See “February 1999: Ylla” pp. 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, and “August 1999: The Earth Men” pp. 22­24 in The ​ ​ Martian Chronicles for excellent examples of alien housewives doing domestic chores in Bradbury’s works. Listed ​ chores include cooking, cleaning, gardening, and appliance operation for household duties. While domestic duties and housewives appear in many of Bradbury’s stories, these particular examples involve Martian housewives and beautifully encapsulate some of the issues discussed in this paper. Each of these stories are examined in more detail in sections two and three. 3 See “The Rocket Man” in The Martian Chronicles, pp. 97­111. ​ ​ ​ 4 There are a number of automaton families in Bradbury’s works, including the story “April 2026: The Long Years” ​ in The Martian Chronicles, where Mr. Hathaway builds a robot family to keep him company and replace the loss of ​ ​ his wife and children during his solitary years as one of the last men on Mars. As a team of explorers return to the planet and are invited to his home, they begin to realize in horror and shock that none of his family members have aged and that they are actually robots. See pp. 207­220. Paper 3 One difference between these fictional and realistic domestic settings is the presence of 5 strong tensions between genders, often culminating in terrifying and even fatal spousal violence. Or is this, really, a difference? If Bradbury means to “reflect” the present in his estranging science fictional landscapes, then the presence of domestic violence and gender tensions may indeed not be so far­fetched a depiction after all. In my thesis, I will explore the cultural contexts of gender relations in the post­World War II period, with a main focus on the years 1945­1959, through Bradbury’s fictional depictions of galactic suburbia and domestic gender tensions. I do so in order to think further about how and why Bradbury introduces reflections of gender tensions and violence into his outwardly happy­seeming fictional domestic homes. In the course of my study, I examine stories from his two collections, The Illustrated Man and The Martian Chronicles, published originally ​ ​ ​ ​ in 1945 and 1948. In a time of rapidly changing technologies, emerging social institutions, and increasingly mutable gender roles and power dynamics, science fiction offered an opportune vehicle through which to explore utopian future technologies and new frontiers, while simultaneously reflecting back current dystopian gender relations. Bradbury used cognitive estrangement to demonstrate the insufficient nature of traditional gender roles in his own time, and the dangers of technological evolution outpacing change in gender relations. These issues were prominent in the wake of World War II, at a time when male and female anxieties about their gender roles were, 5 For a particularly violent example of spousal violence and the destruction of the family unit, see Bradbury’s “The ​ October Game”. In this horror story, the husband’s increasing emotional abuse of his wife culminates in the ​ ​ murdering of their daughter and then handing the pieces to the wife in the basement during a Halloween party as part of a ‘game’: an example of unchecked abuse once more leading to disastrous consequences. See “November 2005: The Off Season” for another particularly good example of spousal control and the culmination in greater consequences − a murdering of a fleet of native Martians − in The Martian Chronicles if interested in gender ​ ​ tensions in Bradbury’s works as well. There are many other examples, but these are each exemplary ones. Paper 4 in the U.S. at least, at an all­time high. In my first section, I explore postwar gender anxieties in a ​ historical, cultural, and literary context. In the latter half of this section, I specifically focus on postwar gender portrayals in science fiction. I incorporate Bradbury’s own views on gender as expressed in several interviews on the subject. I next examine Bradbury’s portrayals of postwar gender relations through science fiction. In this second section, I focus on the stories “Marionettes, Inc.,” “Ylla: February 1999,” and “The Rocket Man.” Gender tension, power struggles, and violence in domestic marriages are prominent themes in these stories. In section three, I analyze the theme of angry and monstrous housewives in Bradbury’s works. The two examples I use to illustrate these concepts are “The Concrete Mixer” and “The Earth Men.” In my final section, I look at a unique example of a functional relationship in Bradbury’s story “The Last Night of the World.” I posit that the couple is depicted in this light due to the shared housework and the modernized gender roles highlighted in the story. I conclude this thesis with a closer look at Bradbury’s own relationship with his wife and family. I also underscore the overall relevancy of this topic when it comes to understanding the gender relations of the postwar and present periods. Exploring Post­World War II Gender Anxieties through Science Fiction During the Great Depression, a movement known as “New Deal” feminism emerged in the U.S., when immigrant women flocked in great numbers to the workforce in order to contribute to family incomes (Halberstam 588). World War II further changed how women were viewed in the workforce, as practically overnight, industrial jobs which had generally been viewed as “masculine,” such as the operation of heavy machinery, became a “patriotic Paper 5 necessity,” and women were welcomed to the forefronts of the American workforce (Halberstam 588). However following the War, the return of thousands of men from the battle front, coupled with a rise in affluence of many American families, made it unnecessary for there to be two workers in each household. As a result, women were fired by the hundreds of thousands from the auto and aircraft industries in the first postwar months.