Hi again! I've been away for a week but must add my two'pennorth re
Susan Calvin and sf in general.
I loved Susan Calvin when I was younger and very consciously took
her for a model. Perhaps a bit restricting, but better than copying the
dating/partying roles of my friends.
Re sf and sexism. *Please* be careful when you talk about the
stereotyped women's roles in sf. This is only useful for the period
1945-1965. There are a number of women writers in the early
magazines, and in the early period of sf many of the male writers
(Harl Vincent, David H. Keller to name just two) wrote of truly human
women. One lovely story by Keller (I do not have the title to hand)
tells of a woman flight enginner who marries a poet. When they have
a child he stays at home with the daughter. She spends too much
time at work and eventually there is an accident when father and
daughter acidentally get swept off in an experimental plane.
But note. When the plane is recovered our heroine phones work to
announce, not that she is giving up work to be a better housewife, but
that she intends to take a six month holiday. Her boss regards her
work so highly he doesn't bat an eyelash. This woman is treated no
differently than an over-working man might be today.
They key thing is that sf is of its time. We tend to forget there was a
highly active women's movement in the US through the end of the
nineteenth century and until the 1930s (remember the Katherine
Hepburn film, Woman of the Year?) and although many male writers
tried to sweep it under the carpet, others were a product of it. Hugo
Gernsback,, editor of the first sf magazine, saw science as
something for both sexes, and always drew attention to the few
letters from women. From what I can work out, the male writers of the
1920s and 1930s sf magazines were slightly older than the average
in the 1940s. Many (although obviously not all) were liberal,
progressive and mildly feminist. Their replacement by Palmer's
young turks and preference for pretty thoughtless sf did nothing for
the image of women in sf.
One factor we may like to think about. Sf is a very middle -class
genre. Women's involvement in sf has been about in proportion to
our representation in middle-class professions.
Farah
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