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At the time I wrote and sold my first few stories, I had not yet had a date with a young woman. I knew nothing about them except what I could guess by surreptitious glances from a distance. Naturally, there were no women in my stories.
(I once received a letter from a woman who denounced me for this lack. Humbly, I wrote back to explain the reason, stating that I was, very literally, an i
But times change!
For one thing, society changed. The breath of liberty brought on by all the talk about it during World War II weakened the censor, who retreated, muttering sourly under his breath. The coming of the pill heralded the liberation of women from unwanted pregnancy, and marked the weakening of the double standard.
For another, people will grow up. Even I didn’t remain i
And yet science fiction lagged a bit, I think. Old habits didn’t change easily. My own stories, for instance, remained free of sex except where it was an integral part of the development and then only to that extent, and still so remain. I have gotten rid of my fear (witness my five volumes of naughty limericks), but not of my sense of decorum.
What, then, really brought on the change and brought science fiction more nearly into the mainstream of contemporary literature?
In my opinion, it was not chiefly social evolution; it was not the daring new writers; not the Russes and LeGuins.
It was the coming of women into the science fiction readership!
If science fiction readers had remained almost entirely masculine-even had the acne cleared up and the youth withered-I think science fiction would have remained male chauvinist in the crudest possible way.
Nowadays, I honestly think that at least a third, and possibly nearly half the science fiction readers are women. When that is so, and when it is recognized that women are at least as articulate as men and (these days) quite ready to denounce male chauvinism and to demand treatment as human beings, it becomes impossible to continue villainy.
Even I have to bow to the breath of decency. In my new novel, Foundation’s Edge, of my seven central characters, four are women-all different, all perfectly able to take care of themselves, and all formidable. (For that matter, I introduced Susan Calvin in 1940, and she strode through a man’s world, asking no quarter, and certainly giving none. I just thought I’d mention that.)
And what brought in the women readers? I suppose there are a large number of reasons, but I have one that I favor. It’s Mr. Spock’s ears.
There is no question in my mind that the first example of decent science fiction that gained a mass following was the television show Star Trek, nearly twenty years ago. For a wonder, it attracted as many women as men. I don’t suppose there is room to doubt that what chiefly served to attract those women was the unflappable Mr. Spock. And for some reason I won’t pretend to guess at, they were intrigued by his ears.
Very few of the “Trekkies” leaked over into print science fiction (or all the magazines would have grown rich), but a minor percentage did and that was enough to feminize the readership of the science fiction magazines. And I think that was all to the good, too.
With so many women thumbing the magazines, women writers were naturally more welcome and their viewpoints greeted with greater reader sympathy-and women editors made more sense, too.
Don’t get me wrong. There were women writers even in the early days of magazine science fiction, and women editors, too. When I was young, some of my favorite stories were by A. R. Long and by Leslie F. Stone. I didn’t know they were women, but they were. In addition, Mary Gnaedinger, Bea Mahaffey, and Cele Goldsmith were excellent editors. I never met Ms. Gnaedinger, but I did meet Bea and Cele and I hereby testify that in addition to lots of brains, character, and personality, they each happened to be beautiful. (Irrelevant, I know, but I thought I would mention it.)
Consequently, when George Scithers left us, I found it delightful that Kathleen Moloney agreed to be the new editor. It never occurred to me for an instant that a woman couldn’t handle the job just because she was a woman and, as a matter of fact, Kathleen took to it with a kind of rabid delight. She introduced interesting changes and stamped her personality on the magazine.
But then, there came along the all-too-frequent villain in such cases, the offer-one-can’t-refuse. It may have been Kathleen’s performance here that aroused interest in other publishing houses and-well, one can’t turn down a chance to advance in one’s chosen profession, so we lost Kathleen.
And yet all is not lost, either. I have on numerous occasions mentioned the charming Shawna McCarthy, who is as sharp as a scalpel, and who is universally liked for the excellent reason that she is universally likable. I like her.
Shawna served faithfully as right-hand person first to George, and then to Kathleen. In the process, she learned every facet of the editing business and developed (thank goodness) the ambition to hold the top position.
So when Kathleen left, I said, “It has to be Shawna “ and everyone agreed with me, especially Shawna.
And here she is. Readers-female and male-I give you Shawna!
Religion And Science Fiction
In the November, 1983 issue of Asimov’s, the cover story was “The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis “ by that excellent writer, Michael Bishop. It dealt with a sensitive subject-the coming of a savior, or, in effect, the second coming of Christ.
What makes it even more effective as a science fiction story is that the savior is an extraterrestrial, and not a particularly attractive one to our human eyes since she (!) is a giant mantis. This is entirely legitimate, it seems to me, since if there is other life in the universe, especially intelligent life, one would expect that a truly universal God would be as concerned for them as for us, and would totally disregard physical shape since it is only the “soul,” that i
What is more, Bishop decided to make the story more powerful by casting it into a biblical shape, dividing it into chapters and verses and making use of a touch of suitable biblical wording.
The result was a tour de force which we obviously considered quite successful, or we would not have published it. Still we were prepared for the fact that some readers might feel uneasy with, or even offended by, the subject matter and/or style.
One letter was quite angry, indeed. The writer was “strongly displeased” and considered it “a burlesque of the scriptures” and, finding no other value to the story, considered it to have been written and published only for the sake of the burlesque.
This can be argued with, of course, but never entirely settled. If a reader sees in it only burlesque, he or she can scarcely be argued out of it. There will always be differences of opinion, often based upon emotion rather than reason, with regard to the value of any work of art.
But there is something more general here. There is the matter of how science fiction ought to deal with religion, especially our religion. (Few people worry very much about how some other religion is handled, since only our own is the true one.)
No one wants to offend people u
Yes, we know that, and since we do want to win friends and sell magazines, we would not knowingly go out of our way to embarrass and humiliate even non-substantial groups of our readers just for the fun of it.
But we are also editing a serious science fiction magazine that, we earnestly hope, includes stories of literary value, and it is the very essence of literature that it consider the great ideas and concerns of human history. Surely that complex of ideas that goes under the head of “religion” is one of the most central and essential, and it would be rather a shame to have it declared out of bounds. In fact, for a magazine to self-censor itself out of discussing religion would be to bow to those forces that don’t really believe in our constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and press. If we were to do so, we would be, in a very deep sense, un-American.
Besides, if we were to try to avoid this very touchy subject where do we stop? I tend to ignore religion in my own stories altogether, except when I absolutely have to have it. Well, I absolutely had to have it in some of my early Foundation stories and in “Nightfall,” and so I made use of it. And, whenever I bring in a religious motif, that religion is bound to seem vaguely Christian because that is the only religion
I know anything about, even though it is not mine. An unsympathetic reader might think I am “burlesquing” Christianity, but I am not.
Then, too, it is impossible to write science fiction and really ignore religion. What if we find intelligent beings on other worlds. Do they have a religion? Is our God universal, and is he/she/it their God as well? What do we do about it? What do they do about it?
This point is almost never taken up but, since it would certainly arise if such beings were discovered in actual fact, science fiction loses touch with reality in taking the easy way out and pretending religion doesn’t exist.
Or, consider time-travel. I don’t know how many stories have been written about people going back in time to keep Lincoln from being assassinated, but how about people going back in time to keep Jesus from being crucified? Surely that greater feat would occur to someone in actual fact, if time-travel were possible.
Think of the changes that could be rung on such a theme. If Jesus were rescued while on his way to the site of crucifixion, and if the rescue were made by modern technology-a helicopter or something more advanced, while the Roman soldiers were held off by rifle-fire at the very least-would it not seem to the people of the time that supernatural forces were rescuing Jesus? Would it not seem that angels were coming to the aid of a true savior? Would it not establish Christianity as the true religion at once?