From LISTSERV@listserv.uic.edu Fri Jan 26 13:40:25 2001 Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 14:58:52 -0600 From: "L-Soft list server at UIC (1.8d)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF LOG0006B" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 07:22:45 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: Heinlein & portrayals of females In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20000607204720.01160900@pop.enteract.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 7 Jun 2000, Neil Rest wrote: > My Fair Lady, of course, from George Bernard Sahw's Pygmalion. There's a > story that Shaw [consummate contrarian] was once arguing at a party that > men are more intelligent than women. He turned to his wife for > confirmation, and she is supposed to have replied, "Of course, dear. I > married you and you married me." > From Richard Sheridan's SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL - Lady Teazle, a former country girl, demands "Don't you want your wife to be known for her fashion and good taste?" Sir Peter, none too swift on the uptake, reminds her of her origins with "You had no taste when you married me, Madam!"> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 14:02:27 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Cindy Smith Subject: Re: Christianity and Asimov: Smith Todd, I know Asimov was an atheist but I don't think he is an atheist anymore now that he's dead and alive in the next world. It kind of reminds me of a scene in the Stephen King novel _The Stand_ in which the deaf mute writes on a pad to Mother Abigail, "I don't believe in God," to which Mother Abigail laughs and says, "That's all right because God believes in you." I think Asimov was an enormously talented individual who brought joy to millions of people with his wonderful stories, especially robot stories. The Three Laws of Robotics, Asimov admitted, are based on the Ten Commandments. Ayn Rand was also an atheist but I still admire her philosophy. As Captain Kirk, in the original series, once remarked about Kahn Noonian Singh, it's possible to hate someone and admire him at the same time. Cindy Smith Spawn of a Jewish Carpenter GO AGAINST THE FLOW! \\ _\\\_ _///_ // A Real Live Catholic in Georgia cms@dragon.com >IXOYE=('> <`)= _<< "Delay not your conversion cms@romancatholic.org// /// \\\ \\ to the LORD, Put it not off cms@5sc.net from day to day" Ecclus/Sira 5:8 -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 12:30:24 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: Christianity and Asimov: Smith In-Reply-To: <009EB5A3.CEA06B00.1@dragon.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Cindy Smith wrote: > > I know Asimov was an atheist but I don't think he is an atheist anymore > now that he's dead and alive in the next world. It kind of reminds me > of a scene in the Stephen King novel _The Stand_ in which the deaf mute > writes on a pad to Mother Abigail, "I don't believe in God," to which > Mother Abigail laughs and says, "That's all right because God believes in you." There's a line from HAIR meant to be funny but actually a profound truth: "And I believe in God, and I believe that God, believes in Claude, that's me." > I think Asimov was an enormously talented individual who brought joy to > millions of people with his wonderful stories, especially robot stories. > The Three Laws of Robotics, Asimov admitted, are based on the Ten Commandments. No kidding! > Ayn Rand was also an atheist but I still admire her philosophy. As Captain > Kirk, in the original series, once remarked about Kahn Noonian Singh, it's > possible to hate someone and admire him at the same time. > Kirk would admire any man of action who was good at it.> Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 13:45:16 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: Christianity and Asimov: Smith MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Well, Cindy, may you find what you seek in another life after this one. Asimov once defined himself, for the brilliant and at that time devoutly Jewish writer Avram Davidson, as being a Jewish atheist, "meaning that I have to fight the misinformation passed on to me by Jewish tradition." (That's a paraphrase from memory.) As Asimov is dead now and forever in his faith and mine, he nonetheless had a great respect for the literature of Judaism and Christianity, among other religious systems, and the Robotics laws (actually codified by John Campbell) are based on a number of ethical systems, some of which predate the Ten Commandments delivered by Moses. (I've always been impressed when people such as Elise Boulding, who really should know better, make claims that all law actually comes out of the Bible, as if Hammurabi had any knowledge of the Pentateuch. Don't much care for most of King nor any of Rand that I've read, although Rand certainly was among the nastiest of Xian-baiters of the past century. -----Original Message----- From: Cindy Smith [mailto:cms@DRAGON.COM] I know Asimov was an atheist but I don't think he is an atheist anymore now that he's dead and alive in the next world. It kind of reminds me of a scene in the Stephen King novel _The Stand_ in which the deaf mute writes on a pad to Mother Abigail, "I don't believe in God," to which Mother Abigail laughs and says, "That's all right because God believes in you." I think Asimov was an enormously talented individual who brought joy to millions of people with his wonderful stories, especially robot stories. The Three Laws of Robotics, Asimov admitted, are based on the Ten Commandments. Ayn Rand was also an atheist but I still admire her philosophy. As Captain Kirk, in the original series, once remarked about Kahn Noonian Singh, it's possible to hate someone and admire him at the same time. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 13:04:40 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pat Subject: Re: Christianity and Asimov: Smith In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Todd Mason wrote: > Don't much care for most of King nor any of Rand that I've read, although > Rand certainly was among the nastiest of Xian-baiters of the past century. You haven't met some of the more rabid pagans! We have as much trouble with Christian-bashing as fundies have with heathen-bashing. Me, I can't TOLERATE intolerance! > Patricia (Pat) Mathews mathews@unm.edu -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 16:26:42 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pike Publishing Subject: Re: Christianity and Asimov: Smith MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii --- "Nina M. Osier" wrote: > And I'm interested in how others who read "Podkayne" > long ago feel now about > the novel's unambiguous message that women exist to > rear children, and > shouldn't give anything else priority in their > lives. Having a young female > protagonist doesn't make a book feminist...this > one's a good example of that > fact. Maybe it's been too long since I read that book, but that is not what I remember about it. Regardless, it was *not* Heinlein's general attitude, as witness the rest of his books. I do agree with your last sentence. Michael Morrison http://www.pikepublishing.org __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints! http://photos.yahoo.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 16:28:53 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pike Publishing Subject: Re: Women, science, and young adult fiction MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Asimov did write somewhere that the Bible, or at least some of the Bible stories, qualified as very early examples of science fiction, but I'll bet Cindy doesn't agree. Michael Morrison http://www.pikepublishing.org --- Cindy Smith wrote: > _Podkayne of Mars_ is one of my favorite books, and > the protagonist is a > young girl named Podkayne who was named after a > Martian saint. Another > good read is the _Foundation Trilogy_ by Isaac > Asimov; in one of the books > of the series, there's a young female protagonist > whose name escapes me > (I need to reread the series!) who's very bright and > precocious. > In the Bible, there are numerous stories of strong > female characters such > as the Book of Judith who saves her people from > extermination. There's > also the Book of Esther. There are numerous strong > female characters in > the Book of Genesis. > > Well, good luck with your search! > > > Cindy Smith Spawn of > a Jewish Carpenter > GO AGAINST THE FLOW! \\ _\\\_ _///_ // A Real > Live Catholic in Georgia > cms@dragon.com >IXOYE=('> <`)= _<< "Delay > not your conversion > cms@romancatholic.org// /// \\\ \\ to the > LORD, Put it not off > cms@5sc.net from > day to day" Ecclus/Sira 5:8 > > -------------------------------------------------- > This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for > discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To > unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to > LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the > message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > > Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there > are problems. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints! http://photos.yahoo.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 16:41:38 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pike Publishing Subject: Re: Sexism and Heinlein: Osier MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii --- "Nina M. Osier" wrote: > ...But I started thinking, thinking hard. > > Which isn't what poor old Heinlein wanted me to do, > but it's the effect he had! Regardless of the truth of anything else you said, the above is not correct. Heinlein, and probably most science fiction writers, *do* want their readers to think. Sure, as with everybody else, they may well want us all to agree with them, but most of them, or at least many of them, write controversy and often write on topics and ideas with which they disagree. I think specificially now of a Poul Anderson story in which the protagonist, one learns in the last paragraph, is homosexual. All along one might tend to side with the protagonist in his plight, getting chased by a lynch mob just for making a pass at one of the luncheon servers. Then when the reader finds out the server was also male -- well, now what are we to think? But we are definitely meant to think. And that is just the one example that springs to my mind. Heinlein constantly presented way-out-of-the-mainstream ideas to urge readers to think. Constantly. Michael Morrison http://www.pikepublishing.org __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints! http://photos.yahoo.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 20:55:49 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Cindy Smith Subject: Re: Women, science, and young adult fiction >From: MX%"FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU" "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" 9-JUN-2000 20:22:56.06 >To: MX%"FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU" >Subj: Re: [*FSFFU*] Women, science, and young adult fiction >From: Pike Publishing >Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Women, science, and young adult fiction >To: FEMINISTSF@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU >Asimov did write somewhere that the Bible, or at least >some of the Bible stories, qualified as very early >examples of science fiction, but I'll bet Cindy >doesn't agree. On the contrary, I have argued this very point on many occasions. Many of the stories in the Bible are not intended to be taken as literally true but are rather stories of fiction designed to teach a moral point. The Book of Tobit is a work of fantasy that some consider to be the first novel or short story. The Book of Esther is another work of fiction designed to teach a moral point. Another example is the Book of Judith. Numerous Elijah/Elisha tales in the Books of Kings are fantasy fiction. As a Catholic, I believe that many stories in the Bible are designed to be understood as fiction, particularly fiction with morals, just as are the parables of Jesus. The first eleven chapters of Genesis, according to my New American Bible for Catholics, is myth. What I call fiction up above may also be construed as myth. YMMV. >Michael Morrison >http://www.pikepublishing.org --- Cindy Smith wrote: > _Podkayne of Mars_ is one of my favorite books, and > the protagonist is a > young girl named Podkayne who was named after a > Martian saint. Another > good read is the _Foundation Trilogy_ by Isaac > Asimov; in one of the books > of the series, there's a young female protagonist > whose name escapes me > (I need to reread the series!) who's very bright and > precocious. > In the Bible, there are numerous stories of strong > female characters such > as the Book of Judith who saves her people from > extermination. There's > also the Book of Esther. There are numerous strong > female characters in > the Book of Genesis. > > Well, good luck with your search! > > > Cindy Smith Spawn of > a Jewish Carpenter > GO AGAINST THE FLOW! \\ _\\\_ _///_ // A Real > Live Catholic in Georgia > cms@dragon.com >IXOYE=('> <`)= _<< "Delay > not your conversion > cms@romancatholic.org// /// \\\ \\ to the > LORD, Put it not off > cms@5sc.net from > day to day" Ecclus/Sira 5:8 > > -------------------------------------------------- > This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for > discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To > unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to > LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the > message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > > Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there > are problems. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints! http://photos.yahoo.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. Cindy Smith Spawn of a Jewish Carpenter GO AGAINST THE FLOW! \\ _\\\_ _///_ // A Real Live Catholic in Georgia cms@dragon.com >IXOYE=('> <`)= _<< "Delay not your conversion cms@romancatholic.org// /// \\\ \\ to the LORD, Put it not off cms@5sc.net from day to day" Ecclus/Sira 5:8 -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 22:15:43 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Women, science, and young adult fiction Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 04:28 PM 9/06/00 -0700, you wrote: >Asimov did write somewhere that the Bible, or at least >some of the Bible stories, qualified as very early >examples of science fiction, Hmmm...Only in the sense of Bible stories' tendency to 'inspire' later works, I would say; after all, it's become commonplace in just about genre of fiction to evoke Christian/Catholic imagery and theme. And of course the concept of a 'Messiah' is ever-popular in SF. Other than that, I would have to disagree; nothing that occurs in the Bible has any possible scientific basis, so it's disqualified from being SF on those grounds. It'd be more like Fantasy, where the rules of the genre allow things to occur without scientific explanation. Sant. >Michael Morrison >http://www.pikepublishing.org > >--- Cindy Smith wrote: >> _Podkayne of Mars_ is one of my favorite books, and >> the protagonist is a >> young girl named Podkayne who was named after a >> Martian saint. Another >> good read is the _Foundation Trilogy_ by Isaac >> Asimov; in one of the books >> of the series, there's a young female protagonist >> whose name escapes me >> (I need to reread the series!) who's very bright and >> precocious. >> In the Bible, there are numerous stories of strong >> female characters such >> as the Book of Judith who saves her people from >> extermination. There's >> also the Book of Esther. There are numerous strong >> female characters in >> the Book of Genesis. >> >> Well, good luck with your search! >> >> >> Cindy Smith Spawn of >> a Jewish Carpenter >> GO AGAINST THE FLOW! \\ _\\\_ _///_ // A Real >> Live Catholic in Georgia >> cms@dragon.com >IXOYE=('> <`)= _<< "Delay >> not your conversion >> cms@romancatholic.org// /// \\\ \\ to the >> LORD, Put it not off >> cms@5sc.net from >> day to day" Ecclus/Sira 5:8 >> >> -------------------------------------------------- >> This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for >> discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To >> unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to >> LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the >> message say: >> unsubscribe FEMINISTSF >> >> Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there >> are problems. > > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints! >http://photos.yahoo.com > >-------------------------------------------------- >This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for >discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To >unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to >LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > >Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. > > -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 22:17:35 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Sexism and Heinlein: Osier Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I think specificially now of a Poul Anderson story in >which the protagonist, one learns in the last >paragraph, is homosexual. >All along one might tend to side with the protagonist >in his plight, getting chased by a lynch mob just for >making a pass at one of the luncheon servers. Then >when the reader finds out the server was also male -- >well, now what are we to think? Uh...Well, wouldn't we _still_ side with him? Sorry, I'm a bit confused over what exactly you're trying to say by using this example. I mean, yes, it is quite an interesting twist to the tale (somewhat reminds me of Iain Banks' 'final-page kicker' in "The Wasp Factory"), and explains why the mob overreacted so badly earlier in the story...but I hope you aren't suggesting that, now that we know the character is gay, we should also condemn him? Sant. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 22:24:19 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Heinlein & portrayals of females Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > To quote a musical comedy that highlighted the attitudes of >Heinlein's generation "Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every >way. What's the matter with kids, today?" > (From Bye, Bye, Birdie.)> Too right! Though, in light of Heinlein's fetish already discussed here, a better theme song for the guy might perhaps be Madonna's early 90s number, "Spank Me" ;) Sant. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 20:47:43 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: Re: Poul Anderson & Harlan Ellison In-Reply-To: <200006100317.WAB41586@piglet.cc.uic.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just read that story, actually -- catching up on my "classics" as one friend called it: Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967). The story is Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" and yes, indeed, it is apparently supposed to be a shocker that the protagonist & his lover are homosexuals. My take on the story was that it was a dangerous vision thusly: a demonstration that one man's utopia is another man's nightmare garden of the perverse. The trick is that the reader doesn't realize his* allegiances are to the perverse until the end. *yes btw i'm deliberately assuming that the author assumed a male readership, and using male pronouns deliberately. overall, re: DANGEROUS VISIONS, I was pretty annoyed by Ellison's constant heterosexual defensiveness in his introductions (frequent references to "faggots" or "pathetic homosexuals", as opposed to his own manliness, I guess) *and* by Ellison's whininess & bitchiness about his ex-wives. The anthology was pretty good though, despite a number of stories which are rather dated. On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Santanico wrote: > >I think specificially now of a Poul Anderson story in > >which the protagonist, one learns in the last > >paragraph, is homosexual. > >All along one might tend to side with the protagonist > >in his plight, getting chased by a lynch mob just for > >making a pass at one of the luncheon servers. Then > >when the reader finds out the server was also male -- > >well, now what are we to think? > > > > Uh...Well, wouldn't we _still_ side with him? Sorry, I'm a bit confused over > what exactly you're trying to say by using this example. I mean, yes, it is > quite an interesting twist to the tale (somewhat reminds me of Iain Banks' > 'final-page kicker' in "The Wasp Factory"), and explains why the mob > overreacted so badly earlier in the story...but I hope you aren't suggesting > that, now that we know the character is gay, we should also condemn him? > > Sant. > > -------------------------------------------------- > This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for > discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To > unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to > LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > > Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. > Laura Quilter lauraq@exploratorium.edu ph: 415.353.0465 / 415.561.0343 Learning Center Facilities Manager Exploratorium, San Francisco -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 23:03:54 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Poul Anderson & Harlan Ellison Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Just read that story, actually -- catching up on my "classics" as one >friend called it: Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967). The story is >Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" and yes, indeed, it is apparently supposed to be >a shocker that the protagonist & his lover are homosexuals. My take on >the story was that it was a dangerous vision thusly: a demonstration that >one man's utopia is another man's nightmare garden of the perverse. The >trick is that the reader doesn't realize his* allegiances are to the >perverse until the end. Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, perhaps, and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect (considering this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view for 1967), is it just supposed to be a "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" style "Gasp! My God! He was EVIL all along!!" style final shocker? >*yes btw i'm deliberately assuming that the author assumed a male >readership, and using male pronouns deliberately. Sadly, you're right. Most 60s SF was unmistakeably geared towards males; even today, it's still widely assumed that genre fiction is a "guy thing" (I mean, am I the only one who gets annoyed whenever a newspaper or magazine states that Star Trek and Star Wars' viewerships consist of "males aged 18-40", or some such nonsense?). >overall, re: DANGEROUS VISIONS, I was pretty annoyed by Ellison's constant >heterosexual defensiveness in his introductions (frequent references to >"faggots" or "pathetic homosexuals", as opposed to his own manliness, I >guess) *and* by Ellison's whininess & bitchiness about his ex-wives. Pretty noxious, I agree...but then, Ellison famously doesn't like _anyone_. Have you heard of the organisation from a few years back known as Victims Of Ellison? To the best of my recollection, it was a sort of support-group deal that consisted entirely of people whom Ellison had chewed out over the years (it was later renamed "Survivors Of Ellison", since many members felt that "Victims" was too wimpy). I wonder if it's still around? Sant. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 01:42:51 -0700 Reply-To: dianeseverson@ivillage.com Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Diane Severson Organization: iVillage Free Email (http://fe-mail.ivillage.com:80) Subject: Re: Heinlein & portrayals of females Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I know what you mean Laura. My first encounter with Heinlein was with STRANGER and I was annoyed. I managed to finish it but I wish I hadn't because the ending was the worst part of it. However, I was aware that Heinlein was an important author in the genre and I should really give him another try. I enjoyed the Lazarus LOng books I've read. Diane --- Diane Severson Moerfelder Landstr. 108 60598 Frankfurt am Main (49)69-613371 (49)69-624595 (+Fax and answering machine) -- Join the most exciting community of women on the web! iVillage.com's FREE membership gets you private email, your own home page, special discounts and sweepstakes, and dozens of problem-solving tools. http://www.ivillage.com/frame/join_email.html -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 10:47:42 EDT Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Juno Gregory Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF Digest - 8 Jun 2000 to 9 Jun 2000 (#2000-60) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Have you heard of the organisation from a few years back known as Victims Of Ellison? To the best of my recollection, it was a sort of support-group deal that consisted entirely of people whom Ellison had chewed out over the years (it was later renamed "Survivors Of Ellison", since many members felt that "Victims" was too wimpy). I wonder if it's still around? Oh mi. How interesting. I'd love to look these people up. Anyone know them? "Juno Gregory" -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 10:43:17 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF Digest - 8 Jun 2000 to 9 Jun 2000 (#2000-60) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Oh mi. How interesting. I'd love to look these people up. Anyone know them? Ah - made a mistake in my first post. The name-change was actually _to_ Victims Of Ellison, from _Enemies_ Of Ellison (since it was pointed out to them that "Enemies" might be construed as having violent intentions toward the author in question). My bad. Anyway, as to your question: I'm afraid I don't know how to contact them, and they don't seem to have any website that I can locate. However, one websearch I ran for them turned up this very funny little item, "A Handy Guide To Attending Harlan Ellison Appearances For The Complete Idiot", over at: http://www.darkcarnival.com/DCOLarchive/hellis.4.htm Sant. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 16:43:43 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re [FSFFU] Poul Anderson, homosexuality, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_004E_01BFD2FB.09DD8540" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_004E_01BFD2FB.09DD8540 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, = perhaps, >and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect = (considering >this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view = for >1967) Wasn't this something that was increasingly being put forward during the = 60s in sf (as ideas generally were getting liberalised - see mainstream = fiction, films, etc)? Not only the so-called 'New Wave', but e.g. T = Sturgeon published the novel _Venus Plus X_ which critiques = heterosexuality from the viewpoint of a hermaphroditic humanoid race as = early as 1960, and there was also a short story by him - called I think = _The World Well Lost_ - from about the same period - 2 spacers and an = alien couple only gradually revealed as a same-sex pair escaping = persecution. Whether this also went alongside any liberalisation of male = writers' attitudes towards women (except towards making them more = sexually active with men) I don't know - nothing immediately springs to = my mind as evidencing this. Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah ------=_NextPart_000_004E_01BFD2FB.09DD8540 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic = reader,=20 perhaps,

>and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as = I=20 suspect (considering
>this would have probably been WAAAAY too = progressive=20 a point of view for
>1967)
 
Wasn't this something that was increasingly being put forward = during the=20 60s in sf (as ideas generally were getting liberalised - see mainstream = fiction,=20 films, etc)? Not only the so-called 'New Wave', but e.g. T Sturgeon = published=20 the novel _Venus Plus X_ which critiques heterosexuality from the = viewpoint of a=20 hermaphroditic humanoid race as early as 1960, and there was also a = short story=20 by him - called I think _The World Well Lost_ - from about the same = period - 2=20 spacers and an alien couple only gradually revealed as a same-sex pair = escaping=20 persecution. Whether this also went alongside any liberalisation of male = writers' attitudes towards women (except towards making them more = sexually=20 active with men) I don't know - nothing immediately springs to my mind = as=20 evidencing this.
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
websit= e http://homepages.primex.= co.uk/~lesleyah
------=_NextPart_000_004E_01BFD2FB.09DD8540-- -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 12:03:52 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: Re: Poul Anderson & Harlan Ellison In-Reply-To: <200006100403.XAA28220@piglet.cc.uic.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 11:03 PM 6/9/00 -0500, you wrote: > >Just read that story, actually -- catching up on my "classics" as one > >friend called it: Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967). The story is > >Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" and yes, indeed, it is apparently supposed to be > >a shocker that the protagonist & his lover are homosexuals. My take on > >the story was that it was a dangerous vision thusly: a demonstration that > >one man's utopia is another man's nightmare garden of the perverse. The > >trick is that the reader doesn't realize his* allegiances are to the > >perverse until the end. > >Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, perhaps, >and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect (considering >this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view for >1967), is it just supposed to be a "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" style >"Gasp! My God! He was EVIL all along!!" style final shocker? some combination of the two is my guess. a baby-jane shocker which thrusts the reader towards, say, ethical relativism, rather than homophilia. "boy, there can be all kinds of repulsive alternative worlds out there that think they're okay too - how interesting" > >*yes btw i'm deliberately assuming that the author assumed a male > >readership, and using male pronouns deliberately. > >Sadly, you're right. Most 60s SF was unmistakeably geared towards males; >even today, it's still widely assumed that genre fiction is a "guy thing" (I >mean, am I the only one who gets annoyed whenever a newspaper or magazine >states that Star Trek and Star Wars' viewerships consist of "males aged >18-40", or some such nonsense?). > > >overall, re: DANGEROUS VISIONS, I was pretty annoyed by Ellison's constant > >heterosexual defensiveness in his introductions (frequent references to > >"faggots" or "pathetic homosexuals", as opposed to his own manliness, I > >guess) *and* by Ellison's whininess & bitchiness about his ex-wives. > >Pretty noxious, I agree...but then, Ellison famously doesn't like _anyone_. >Have you heard of the organisation from a few years back known as Victims Of >Ellison? To the best of my recollection, it was a sort of support-group deal >that consisted entirely of people whom Ellison had chewed out over the years >(it was later renamed "Survivors Of Ellison", since many members felt that >"Victims" was too wimpy). I wonder if it's still around? > >Sant. > >-------------------------------------------------- >This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for >discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To >unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to >LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > >Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. Laura Quilter lquilter@exploratorium.edu -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 12:18:40 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: Re: Re [FSFFU] Poul Anderson, homosexuality, etc In-Reply-To: <005101bfd2f2$ab806420$c32f70c3@oemcomputer> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed At 04:43 PM 6/10/00 +0100, you wrote: > >Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, perhaps, > > >and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect (considering > >this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view for > >1967) > >Wasn't this something that was increasingly being put forward during the >60s in sf (as ideas generally were getting liberalised - see mainstream >fiction, films, etc)? Not only the so-called 'New Wave', but e.g. T >Sturgeon published the novel _Venus Plus X_ which critiques >heterosexuality from the viewpoint of a hermaphroditic humanoid race as >early as 1960, and there was also a short story by him - called I think >_The World Well Lost_ - from about the same period - 2 spacers and an >alien couple only gradually revealed as a same-sex pair escaping >persecution. Whether this also went alongside any liberalisation of male >writers' attitudes towards women (except towards making them more sexually >active with men) I don't know - nothing immediately springs to my mind as >evidencing this. sturgeon i think was truly more experimental & open than poul anderson. poul anderson -- it is my impression -- used homosexuality because it seemed to him to be repulsive & horrible, and therefore a fit candidate to carry forth the notion that alternative worlds could really be alternative. sturgeon on the other hand truly seems to have been interested in looking at gender & sexuality as social categories. we -- in the year 2000 -- may find him sometimes dated but i think he was truly interested in these questions. thus, i categorize sturgeon as a feminist -- because he was interested in those questions, and because he seems to have believed in the equality of women -- but i don't categorize anderson, or for that matter heinlein, as feminist. hmm, this is interesting to me, i'll carry it a little further. sturgeon is (was?) a feminist. poul anderson doesn't seem to me to be especially concerned with questions of women's equality, or with the roles that gender & sexuality play in our society -- so i don't consider anderson to be a feminist. but i wouldn't call him anti-feminist, or misogynist -- probably just an unexamined sexist in the 60s, and probably he's examined it somewhat since then & does a better job in later writings of portraying women or thinking about sex. heinlein, actually, by these definitions ... i might consider a feminist. no, i don't agree with a lot of his ideas about women -- but there are lots of feminists with whom i disagree, too. but heinlein definitely seems to have believed -- at least in his later writings -- that women could be just as energetic, just as qualified a leader, just as intelligent -- as men. and he was interested (well, somewhat) in exploring questions of gender & sexuality. mostly from a rather 60s-sex-liberationist perspective. (this is also about as far as sturgeon's "if all men were brothers would you want your sister to marry one?" got.) in other words, sex is good, let's do it. while this was liberatory to women as well as to men, the impact on women in a sexist society has been somewhat different than the impact on men. but the important fact is that the questions were of interest to heinlein. yes, i think many of his ideas about women are rather biologically determinist. needless to say however there are a lot of WOMEN who call themselves feminists (and i would not quarrel with that designation) who have various & sundry deterministic views about gender & sexuality. "being gay is not a choice" ... "women are naturally more peaceful" ... "women are naturally better communicators" ... "women are natural healers" ... etc. ad infinitum, ad nauseum ... hard to indict heinlein as anti-feminist for saying the same things that other feminists say. >Lesley Hall >lesleyah@primex.co.uk >website >http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah Laura Quilter lquilter@exploratorium.edu -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 12:52:06 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: Re: Re [FSFFU] Poul Anderson, homosexuality, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------55E47DA651D7FFB6191B2B32" --------------55E47DA651D7FFB6191B2B32 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For what it's worth, "Chip" Delany refers to Sturgeon as homosexual in an article on his artistry. If ever having sex with people of the same biological gender so classifies you, the label may be accurate. I suspect a more precise term might be "omnisexual." Ted was interested in experiencing varieties of sexual behavior, individual and group, and argued more than once that anyone who limits him/herself to only one way of doing things (including sex) as being at least...repressed. Several of his stories involve sexual "variation" (including the "scientific" vampire story, Some of Your Blood). By the way, in Venus Plus X, the hermaphrodites were artificially created, making the "utopian" society not one of choice. The utopian story is interwoven (not too skillfully) with a lot of "talk" among waspy males in our society about sexual possibilities. I would certainly classify Sturgeon as a feminist as well, since he was always searching for potential in women as well as men, in real life as well as fiction. Laura Quilter wrote: > At 04:43 PM 6/10/00 +0100, you wrote: > > >Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, perhaps, > > > > >and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect (considering > > >this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view for > > >1967) > > > >Wasn't this something that was increasingly being put forward during the > >60s in sf (as ideas generally were getting liberalised - see mainstream > >fiction, films, etc)? Not only the so-called 'New Wave', but e.g. T > >Sturgeon published the novel _Venus Plus X_ which critiques > >heterosexuality from the viewpoint of a hermaphroditic humanoid race as > >early as 1960, and there was also a short story by him - called I think > >_The World Well Lost_ - from about the same period - 2 spacers and an > >alien couple only gradually revealed as a same-sex pair escaping > >persecution. Whether this also went alongside any liberalisation of male > >writers' attitudes towards women (except towards making them more sexually > >active with men) I don't know - nothing immediately springs to my mind as > >evidencing this. > > sturgeon i think was truly more experimental & open than poul > anderson. poul anderson -- it is my impression -- used homosexuality > because it seemed to him to be repulsive & horrible, and therefore a fit > candidate to carry forth the notion that alternative worlds could really be > alternative. sturgeon on the other hand truly seems to have been > interested in looking at gender & sexuality as social categories. we -- in > the year 2000 -- may find him sometimes dated but i think he was truly > interested in these questions. thus, i categorize sturgeon as a feminist > -- because he was interested in those questions, and because he seems to > have believed in the equality of women -- but i don't categorize anderson, > or for that matter heinlein, as feminist. > > hmm, this is interesting to me, i'll carry it a little further. sturgeon > is (was?) a feminist. poul anderson doesn't seem to me to be especially > concerned with questions of women's equality, or with the roles that gender > & sexuality play in our society -- so i don't consider anderson to be a > feminist. but i wouldn't call him anti-feminist, or misogynist -- probably > just an unexamined sexist in the 60s, and probably he's examined it > somewhat since then & does a better job in later writings of portraying > women or thinking about sex. > > heinlein, actually, by these definitions ... i might consider a > feminist. no, i don't agree with a lot of his ideas about women -- but > there are lots of feminists with whom i disagree, too. but heinlein > definitely seems to have believed -- at least in his later writings -- that > women could be just as energetic, just as qualified a leader, just as > intelligent -- as men. and he was interested (well, somewhat) in exploring > questions of gender & sexuality. mostly from a rather > 60s-sex-liberationist perspective. (this is also about as far as > sturgeon's "if all men were brothers would you want your sister to marry > one?" got.) in other words, sex is good, let's do it. while this was > liberatory to women as well as to men, the impact on women in a sexist > society has been somewhat different than the impact on men. but the > important fact is that the questions were of interest to heinlein. > yes, i think many of his ideas about women are rather biologically > determinist. needless to say however there are a lot of WOMEN who call > themselves feminists (and i would not quarrel with that designation) who > have various & sundry deterministic views about gender & sexuality. "being > gay is not a choice" ... "women are naturally more peaceful" ... "women are > naturally better communicators" ... "women are natural healers" ... etc. ad > infinitum, ad nauseum ... hard to indict heinlein as anti-feminist for > saying the same things that other feminists say. > > >Lesley Hall > >lesleyah@primex.co.uk > >website > >http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah > > Laura Quilter > lquilter@exploratorium.edu > > -------------------------------------------------- > This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for > discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To > unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to > LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > > Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. --------------55E47DA651D7FFB6191B2B32 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For what it's worth, "Chip" Delany refers to Sturgeon as homosexual in an article on his artistry.  If ever having sex with people of the same biological gender so classifies you, the label may be accurate.  I suspect a more precise term might be "omnisexual."  Ted was interested in experiencing varieties of sexual behavior, individual and group, and argued more than once that anyone who limits him/herself to only one way of doing things (including sex) as being at least...repressed.  Several of his stories involve sexual "variation" (including the "scientific" vampire story, Some of Your Blood).

By the way, in Venus Plus X, the hermaphrodites were artificially created, making the "utopian" society not one of choice.  The utopian story is interwoven (not too skillfully) with a lot of "talk" among waspy males in our society about sexual possibilities.  I would certainly classify Sturgeon as a feminist as well, since he was always searching for potential in women as well as men, in real life as well as fiction.

Laura Quilter wrote:

At 04:43 PM 6/10/00 +0100, you wrote:
> >Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, perhaps,
>
> >and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect (considering
> >this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view for
> >1967)
>
>Wasn't this something that was increasingly being put forward during the
>60s in sf (as ideas generally were getting liberalised - see mainstream
>fiction, films, etc)? Not only the so-called 'New Wave', but e.g. T
>Sturgeon published the novel _Venus Plus X_ which critiques
>heterosexuality from the viewpoint of a hermaphroditic humanoid race as
>early as 1960, and there was also a short story by him - called I think
>_The World Well Lost_ - from about the same period - 2 spacers and an
>alien couple only gradually revealed as a same-sex pair escaping
>persecution. Whether this also went alongside any liberalisation of male
>writers' attitudes towards women (except towards making them more sexually
>active with men) I don't know - nothing immediately springs to my mind as
>evidencing this.

sturgeon i think was truly more experimental & open than poul
anderson.  poul anderson -- it is my impression -- used homosexuality
because it seemed to him to be repulsive & horrible, and therefore a fit
candidate to carry forth the notion that alternative worlds could really be
alternative.  sturgeon on the other hand truly seems to have been
interested in looking at gender & sexuality as social categories.  we -- in
the year 2000 -- may find him sometimes dated but i think he was truly
interested in these questions.  thus, i categorize sturgeon as a feminist
-- because he was interested in those questions, and because he seems to
have believed in the equality of women -- but i don't  categorize anderson,
or for that matter heinlein, as feminist.

hmm, this is interesting to me, i'll carry it a little further.  sturgeon
is (was?) a feminist.  poul anderson doesn't seem to me to be especially
concerned with questions of women's equality, or with the roles that gender
& sexuality play in our society -- so i don't consider anderson to be a
feminist.  but i wouldn't call him anti-feminist, or misogynist -- probably
just an unexamined sexist in the 60s, and probably he's examined it
somewhat since then & does a better job in later writings of portraying
women or thinking about sex.

heinlein, actually, by these definitions ... i might consider a
feminist.  no, i don't agree with a lot of his ideas about women -- but
there are lots of feminists with whom i disagree, too.  but heinlein
definitely seems to have believed -- at least in his later writings -- that
women could be just as energetic, just as qualified a leader, just as
intelligent -- as men.  and he was interested (well, somewhat) in exploring
questions of gender & sexuality.  mostly from a rather
60s-sex-liberationist perspective.  (this is also about as far as
sturgeon's "if all men were brothers would you want your sister to marry
one?" got.)  in other words, sex is good, let's do it.  while this was
liberatory to women as well as to men, the impact on women in a sexist
society has been somewhat different than the impact on men.  but the
important fact is that the questions were of interest to heinlein.
         yes, i think many of his ideas about women are rather biologically
determinist.  needless to say however there are a lot of WOMEN who call
themselves feminists (and i would not quarrel with that designation) who
have various & sundry deterministic views about gender & sexuality.  "being
gay is not a choice" ... "women are naturally more peaceful" ... "women are
naturally better communicators" ... "women are natural healers" ... etc. ad
infinitum, ad nauseum ...  hard to indict heinlein as anti-feminist for
saying the same things that other feminists say.

>Lesley Hall
><mailto:lesleyah@primex.co.uk>lesleyah@primex.co.uk
>website
><http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah>http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah

Laura Quilter
lquilter@exploratorium.edu

--------------------------------------------------
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                         unsubscribe FEMINISTSF

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--------------55E47DA651D7FFB6191B2B32-- -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 13:02:57 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pike Publishing Subject: Re: Sexism and Heinlein: Osier MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii --- Santanico wrote: ((quoting >>Michael Morrison>> at first)) > >I think specificially now of a Poul Anderson story > >in which the protagonist, one learns in the last > >paragraph, is homosexual. > >All along one might tend to side with the > protagonist > >in his plight, getting chased by a lynch mob just > for > >making a pass at one of the luncheon servers. Then > >when the reader finds out the server was also male > -- > >well, now what are we to think? > > > > Uh...Well, wouldn't we _still_ side with him? Sorry, > I'm a bit confused over > what exactly you're trying to say by using this > example. I mean, yes, it is > quite an interesting twist to the tale (somewhat > reminds me of Iain Banks' > 'final-page kicker' in "The Wasp Factory"), and > explains why the mob > overreacted so badly earlier in the story...but I > hope you aren't suggesting > that, now that we know the character is gay, we > should also condemn him? > No, Sant, I didn't say or even imply that. Please read the entire context. Thanks. Michael Morrison __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints! http://photos.yahoo.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 13:09:17 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Pike Publishing Subject: Re: Poul Anderson & Harlan Ellison MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Thank you, Laura, for not only understanding my point but for having apparently the same attitude toward the obnoxious Harlan Ellison that I have. I cannot think of anyone writing in that genre who seems to be so angry, so bitter, so full of hatred ... I read one of his stories that now makes more sense, in light of what you write (below): His protagonist (I don't think Ellison ever had heroes) slugs a woman on her breasts ... well, it was just so ugly I have avoided Ellison works ever since. But anyone who ever meets him in person, please do ask him about Chinese Jews. Michael Morrison --- Laura Quilter wrote: > Just read that story, actually -- catching up on my > "classics" as one > friend called it: Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS > (1967). The story is > Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" and yes, indeed, it is > apparently supposed to be > a shocker that the protagonist & his lover are > homosexuals. My take on > the story was that it was a dangerous vision thusly: > a demonstration that > one man's utopia is another man's nightmare garden > of the perverse. The > trick is that the reader doesn't realize his* > allegiances are to the > perverse until the end. > > *yes btw i'm deliberately assuming that the author > assumed a male > readership, and using male pronouns deliberately. > > overall, re: DANGEROUS VISIONS, I was pretty annoyed > by Ellison's constant > heterosexual defensiveness in his introductions > (frequent references to > "faggots" or "pathetic homosexuals", as opposed to > his own manliness, I > guess) *and* by Ellison's whininess & bitchiness > about his ex-wives. The > anthology was pretty good though, despite a number > of stories which are > rather dated. > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints! http://photos.yahoo.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 15:14:36 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: [FSFFU] Anderson, homosexuality, etc: Quilter et alles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Actually, "The World Well Lost" (which may have been the first sf magazine story to deal with homosexuality fairly directly, albeit in a "what a surprise ending!" manner...in UNIVERSE, then edited by Bea Mahaffey, one of the several women magazine editors we've had on the pro level, and published by Ray Palmer, who will probably be remembered for unleashing the Shaver Mystery and publicizing flying saucers more assiduously than anyone else--his money-maker magazine was FATE) was '53 or '54. Sturgeon, though, is certainly a feminist by my lights as well. A story as awkwardly but more or less accurately titled as "The Girl [sic] Had Guts" is evidence of this, and even such stories as the rudely joking "Affair with a Green Monkey" or the brutal "A Way of Thinking" demonstrate this. Sturgeon, alas, has been dead for almost 15 years. Poul Anderson, as Heinlein was apparently twice, has been blessed with a life-companion of strong opinions, personality, and talent; perhaps even more blessed, as Karen Anderson has remained married to Poul for quite a long time, and as far as I know contentedly. They've collaborated frequently, and she's published a body of work solo. Afaik, she is as hostile to the feminist movement (and for as little reason?) as Marion Zimmer Bradley was, though not to the nuts extent that, say, Raylyn Moore seemed to be. Heinlein for me was fake-feminist for the same reasons he was fake-libertarian; he was honestly trying to shake his upbringing and think as clearly as possible about humanity, but remained the kind of guy who could honestly believe that certain classes of folk were inherently better or more deserving of power than others. Yes, it's the anarchist in me, but I don't and have never bought this. In his case, military men of intelligence, preferably of opinions like his own if not necessarily ethnic and other background deserve the top-kick gigs. Satanico--I'm going to have to go back to Ellison's intros; I don't remember him being as heterosexist (though way too often sexist) as you suggest in DV. A lot of the "Dangerous" visions were pretty mild, even then. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 21:10:03 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Re [FSFFU] Poul Anderson, homosexuality, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0095_01BFD320.3E7914C0" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0095_01BFD320.3E7914C0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >By the way, in Venus Plus X, the hermaphrodites were artificially = >created, making the "utopian" society not one of choice.=20 This I did remember, but was trying not to give away a revelation which = occurs near the end of the story...=20 Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah ------=_NextPart_000_0095_01BFD320.3E7914C0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>By the way, in Venus Plus X, the hermaphrodites were=20 artificially >created, making the "utopian" society not one = of=20 choice. 
 
This I did remember, but was trying not to give away a  = revelation=20 which occurs near the end of the story... 
Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
websit= e http://homepages.primex.= co.uk/~lesleyah
 
------=_NextPart_000_0095_01BFD320.3E7914C0-- -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 21:19:10 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: Re [FSFFU] Poul Anderson, homosexuality, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >anderson. poul anderson -- it is my impression -- used homosexuality >because it seemed to him to be repulsive & horrible, and therefore a fit >candidate to carry forth the notion that alternative worlds could really be >alternative. Maybe: but I find it interesting that Anderson positioned his Eutopian society as 'Hellenic': and there was a LONG tradition by the 1960s of justifying homosexuality by saying, look at the Ancient Greeks, Socrates, Alexander, etc: and Anderson seems to be setting up a situation (an alternative time line) where that view of love had never been superseded by the Judaeo-Christian tradition. To me this suggests an interesting complexity in his thought - cf Mary Renault in The Charioteer comparing the Ancient Greek view of homosexuality to what it had become in the repressive and hostile atmosphere of 1940s Britain. >one?" got.) in other words, sex is good, let's do it. while this was >liberatory to women as well as to men, the impact on women in a sexist >society has been somewhat different than the impact on men. Yes: a lot of that 60s male sexual liberation rhetoric was about sex is good, let's do it, without thinking about women's legitimate concerns about pregnancy etc, let alone women's specific sexual response cycle (i.e. that straight penetrative sex wasn't necessarily the most rewarding experience for them, cf Sherry Hite). There's a wonderful article on the early British soft-porn glossy mags by Marcus Collins, in _History Workshop_ (1999), in which he demonstrates that their apparently positive view of female sexuality got a whole lot more misogynistic when second wave feminism spoke up and indicated that women weren't just compliant dolly-birds, and that this was still a very male-focussed view of sex Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 15:22:58 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Harlan Ellison: After Satanico MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hey, Satanico, Ellison does like Joanna Russ, Kate Wilhelm, and not a few other of our icons here. Even if his introduction to "When It Changed" in A, DV is an intentionally provocative joke (I hope). And, sorry, I see I've attributed to you the references to Ellisonian "fag"bashing, when you were quoting. Ellison and the instigators of EOE/VOE both have at least some bad behavior to account for. >Pretty noxious, I agree...but then, Ellison famously doesn't like _anyone_. >Have you heard of the organisation from a few years back known as Victims Of >Ellison? To the best of my recollection, it was a sort of support-group deal >that consisted entirely of people whom Ellison had chewed out over the years >(it was later renamed "Survivors Of Ellison", since many members felt that >"Victims" was too wimpy). I wonder if it's still around? > >Sant. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 21:26:04 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Lesley Hall Subject: Re: [FSFFU] Sturgeon, Anderson, homosexuality, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Actually, "The World Well Lost" (which may have been the first sf magazine >story to deal with homosexuality fairly directly, albeit in a "what a >surprise ending!" manner...in UNIVERSE, then edited by Bea Mahaffey, one of >the several women magazine editors we've had on the pro level, and published >by Ray Palmer, who will probably be remembered for unleashing the Shaver >Mystery and publicizing flying saucers more assiduously than anyone >else--his money-maker magazine was FATE) was '53 or '54. I hadn't realised it was THAT early - but there were a no of mainstream novels around then presenting a relatively sympathetic view of homosexuality (or at least, an anti-active-homophobic point of view) - and the Mattachine (?sp) Society was set up, as I recollect, around 1949. My impression of Sturgeon is that he was very interested in 'outsider' figures, and not in the usual stock sf trope way in which they finally get accepted into 'the system'. And I recall (though I haven't read any of his work recently), some strong female characters: wasn't there one in _More than Human_ who used her telekinetic powers to avoid men getting sexually interested in her (claiming 'it's all a matter of hydraulics'?) Lesley Hall lesleyah@primex.co.uk website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 21:26:36 +0100 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: peter allan Subject: Re: Christianity and Asimov: Smith In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: application/x-pkcs7-mime; name="smime.p7m" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAaCAJIAEggqZQ29u dGVudC1UeXBlOiB0ZXh0L3BsYWluOw0KCWNoYXJzZXQ9Imlzby04ODU5LTEiDQpDb250ZW50LVRy YW5zZmVyLUVuY29kaW5nOiA3Yml0DQoNClVuc3Vic2NyaWJlIEZFTUlOSVNUU0YNCg0KIC0tLS0t T3JpZ2luYWwgTWVzc2FnZS0tLS0tDQpGcm9tOiAJRm9yIGRpc2N1c3Npb24gb2YgZmVtaW5pc3Qg 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DzAYBgkqhkiG9w0BCQMxCwYJKoZIhvcNAQcBMBwGCSqGSIb3DQEJBTEPFw0wMDA2MTAxOTMxMTda MCMGCSqGSIb3DQEJBDEWBBReh5tUKWMG+FksefXv5AteNxDACTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BCQ8xJjAkMA0G CCqGSIb3DQMCAgEoMAcGBSsOAwIaMAoGCCqGSIb3DQIFMHsGCSsGAQQBgjcQBDFuMGwwXTELMAkG A1UEBhMCQkUxGTAXBgNVBAoTEEdsb2JhbFNpZ24gbnYtc2ExEzARBgNVBAsTCkNsYXNzIDEgQ0Ex HjAcBgNVBAMTFUdsb2JhbFNpZ24gQ2xhc3MgMSBDQQILAQAAAAAA36Il1qgwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEB BQAEQDNFfioXuR7wTuub+MfTMziQmesenKQO7PnGFWS4F558vcQJZMEMA3iIzWsTn4RG4+nv0GM3 NZCq/Eoo3si7BGoAAAAAAAA= -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 15:38:37 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Women's sf of an occasionally pandering sort MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Up through the '60s, at least, there was an undercurrent of stereotypically feminine sf, much of it written by folks ranging from Judith Merril through Evelyn E. Smith to Sydney Van Scyoc; often apparently because it was thought there was an audience segment that would respond to this (thus it was intentionally slanted toward that audience, particularly, for example, for F&SF and GALAXY magazines in the 1950s). And there are those who feel that Vonda McIntyre's DREAMSNAKE are entirely too close to that tradition, albeit given a more feminist sensibility. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 15:52:18 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: Women's sf of an occasionally pandering sort--sligh t correction MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sorry; can a chest cold ruin one's syntax? "Works such as VM's DREAMSNAKE are..." I haven't decided if I agree, particularly since I haven't read the shorter work it was spun out from for decades, and have yet to read the novel form; there were other works of the same period that got the same rap. -----Original Message----- From: Todd Mason Up through the '60s, at least, there was an undercurrent of stereotypically feminine sf, much of it written by folks ranging from Judith Merril through Evelyn E. Smith to Sydney Van Scyoc; often apparently because it was thought there was an audience segment that would respond to this (thus it was intentionally slanted toward that audience, particularly, for example, for F&SF and GALAXY magazines in the 1950s). And there are those who feel that Vonda McIntyre's DREAMSNAKE are entirely too close to that tradition, albeit given a more feminist sensibility. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 16:26:10 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Re: Women's sf of an occasionally pandering sort--clari fication MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" This, btw, is not to say that all the work by these writers falls into the class I refer to here, wherein the authors were commissioned to write what the editors thought of as properly-feminine sf. Judith Merril's "Dead Center," along with Theodore Sturgeon's "The Man Who Lost the Sea" the only F&SF stories to be reprinted in BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES in the 1950s, is Not in that mode, for example. (Daniel Keyes's "Flowers for Algernon" may have been, in the 1960 volume, the last F&SF story so honored, or any from any explicitly speculative fiction magazine since, unless we count OMNI, which I've always thought of as more pop-science/fringe-science with fiction added. Remarkably stupid snobbery is the only explanation I can conceive.) -----Original Message----- From: Todd Mason Up through the '60s, at least, there was an undercurrent of stereotypically feminine sf, much of it written by folks ranging from Judith Merril through Evelyn E. Smith to Sydney Van Scyoc; often apparently because it was thought there was an audience segment that would respond to this (thus it was intentionally slanted toward that audience, particularly, for example, for F&SF and GALAXY magazines in the 1950s). And there are those who feel that such works as Vonda McIntyre's DREAMSNAKE are entirely too close to that tradition, albeit given a more feminist sensibility. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 16:00:10 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: Re: [FSFFU] Sturgeon, Anderson, homosexuality, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lesley Hall wrote: > My impression of Sturgeon is that he was very interested in 'outsider' > figures, and not in the usual stock sf trope way in which they finally get > accepted into 'the system'. Agreed. His outsiders often stayed outside. > And I recall (though I haven't read any of his work recently), some strong > female characters: wasn't there one in _More than Human_ who used her > telekinetic powers to avoid men getting sexually interested in her (claiming > 'it's all a matter of hydraulics'?) Janey, who has that power, becomes the driving (ego) force in the "gestalt" around which the novel (fixup) is structured. > > Lesley Hall > lesleyah@primex.co.uk > website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah > > -------------------------------------------------- > This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for > discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To > unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to > LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > > Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 16:03:06 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dave Samuelson Subject: Re: Re [FSFFU] Poul Anderson, homosexuality, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------7FA65FE9DC4CCAF5C9387F77" --------------7FA65FE9DC4CCAF5C9387F77 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry. I thought you were just vaguely recalling. Lesley Hall wrote: > >By the way, in Venus Plus X, the hermaphrodites were artificially > >created, making the "utopian" society not one of choice. This I did > remember, but was trying not to give away a revelation which occurs > near the end of the story...Lesley Hall > lesleyah@primex.co.uk > website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah > > > --------------7FA65FE9DC4CCAF5C9387F77 Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sorry.   I thought you were just vaguely recalling.
 

Lesley Hall wrote:

 >By the way, in Venus Plus X, the hermaphrodites were artificially >created, making the "utopian" society not one of choice. This I did remember, but was trying not to give away a  revelation which occurs near the end of the story...Lesley Hall
lesleyah@primex.co.uk
website http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~lesleyah
 
--------------7FA65FE9DC4CCAF5C9387F77-- -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 18:33:00 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: [Fwd: [SMOFS] Joe Mayhew] (RIP) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Damn. -----Original Message----- From: David W. Schroth [mailto:DavidSchroth@WORLDNET.ATT.NET] Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2000 6:59 PM To: TIMEBINDERS@SFLOVERS.RUTGERS.EDU Subject: [Fwd: [SMOFS] Joe Mayhew] (RIP) Forwarded from SMOFS Samuel Lubell wrote: > > I've arranged for the following to be posted on the WSFA web page > (http://www.wsfa.org). If anyone has information to add, I would > appreciate an email. > > Joe Mayhew > August 1942 - June 2000 > > Joe Mayhew, long-time fan and for many the heart at the center of the > Washington Science Fiction Association, passed away at 9 a.m. on June 10th, > 2000. Joe was an active science fiction fan all of his life. He won the > 1997 Hugo award for cartooning and was also nominated for 1990, 1996, and > 1999. His cartoons have appeared in Asimov's, Analog, Pirate Writings, and > numerous fanzines. As the Library of Congress' Recommending Officer for > Science Fiction, Joe developed the official government definition of what > was science fiction. In his last years, Joe became a professional science > fiction author with stories appearing in Tomorrow, Aberrations and > Aboriginal SF. He also reviewed science fiction books for the Washington > Post, Absolute Magnitude, and TV's Fast Forward. > > Joe chaired the 1987 Disclave and the cancelled 1998 Disclave. He served > as WSFA Secretary and editor of the WSFA Journal several times, most > recently 1995-1996. He was the club's unofficial greeter of new people and > storehouse of information about the club's history, its constitution, > parliamentary procedure, and indeed everything else. > > Joe died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (the hospital's best guess), a > relative of Mad Cow Disease that is considered extremely rare in the U.S. > He is survived by a brother, a sister, and multiple cartoons and carvings. > His funeral is expected to take place next weekend. > > Rest in Peace, Joe. You will be missed. ***** To leave the ScienceFiction-L list, send the message SIGNOFF SCIENCEFICTION-L to the server: listserv@listserv.indiana.edu. Questions to: mlperkin@indiana.edu or shsimko@mail.duke.edu ***** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Click here for savings: beMANY! http://click.egroups.com/1/4557/3/_/423968/_/960679994/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 19:56:01 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Jesse the K Subject: DV, ADV, &c Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Began reading SF in third grade with Heinlein juvies. Andre Nortons and Poul Andersons when I could find them. A charming political-fantasy series featuring very strong and independent sisters and brothers who explored Italy while learning about Garibaldi and also being spies in a Zen sort of consipiracy that John Brunner would have loved (there were even sentient animals). The author and titles unfortunately are lost down the days, but I do remember that the secret signal was to gently, idly touch the bottom of one's chin with the ring finger. I inhaled Dangerous Visions when it was new; the story that made me vibrate like a temple bell was "Aye, and Gomorrah" by Samuel Delany. Not only did it confirm that somewhere gender-bendering was fundamentally possible, nay OK, it promised a bearable alternative to airplane flights. I immediately tracked down all the Delany I could find, reading it again and again and not quite getting it (there's only so much an 11-yr-old girl can understand) but fascinated, not intimidated, by the gulfs it opened for me. Then when Again, Dangerous Visions finally came out ... well: Kate Wilhelm, James Tiptree, Ursula LeGuin and gloriously, "When it changed." So, I've had 36 years of being annoyed at that "males aged 18-40" stereotype. At 11:03 PM -0500 6/9/00, Santanico wrote: >Sadly, you're right. Most 60s SF was unmistakeably geared towards males; >even today, it's still widely assumed that genre fiction is a "guy thing" (I >mean, am I the only one who gets annoyed whenever a newspaper or magazine >states that Star Trek and Star Wars' viewerships consist of "males aged >18-40", or some such nonsense?). -- Jesse the K -- Madison Wisconsin USA -- Cogito ergo spud. I think, therefore, I yam -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 20:21:48 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: new mailing list - glbt mystery Comments: To: feministsf@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII fyi y'all Laura Quilter lauraq@exploratorium.edu ph: 415.353.0465 / 415.561.0343 Learning Center Facilities Manager Exploratorium, San Francisco ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 20:54:08 -0600 From: Ivan Van Laningham To: classicslgb@acpub.duke.edu Subject: Announcement of new mailing list Hi All-- I'd like to announce a new mailing list that may be of interest to some of you. While the list was formed for the purpose of discussing gay/lesbian/bi/transgender mysteries, discussions of the classical influences on mysteries are not out of place, and in fact would be welcome. ---------------------------------------------- BluePlace is a discussion and idea list for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender mysteries. While the DorothyL mailing list was named for Dorothy L. Sayers, an author, and Russ-L was named for the main character of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series, BluePlace is named for the title of Nicola Griffith's novel, _The Blue Place_ (the name is used with her permission). Membership in the list is open to everyone, even straight white males, who is interested in discussing GLBT mysteries. To prevent spam and protect members' privacy, however, requests for subscription must be approved by the listowner. Non-members may not post to the list, members must post under the email address from which they subscribed, and the list of subscribed members is not available even to members of the list. Posts that look like spam will be held for listowner approval instead of being posted automatically; for example, any message with more than ten recipients (including BluePlace) will trigger the approval process. This may delay legitimate postings occasionally, but the price of a spam-free list is eternal vigilance. The list is not moderated, but flaming and other personal attacks will not be tolerated. The internet in general, and a mailing list in particular, is a forum for the free exchange of ideas and opinions, not an arena for gladiatorial combat. There are no forbidden topics, but members should exercise good judgment and sound self control. Posts should contain some mention of GLBT mysteries, but this is not mandatory. Topics that are not of general interest should be moved off-list. Topics that are of general interest include, but are not limited to, announcements of forthcoming books and author signings, notices of GLBT-friendly bookstores and websites, reviews, criticisms, comments, appreciations, Lambda award nominee and winner lists and discussions, discussions of place, character and plot in GLBT mysteries, and most other topics that bear in some way, directly or indirectly, on GLBT mysteries, to include discussions of GLBT culture that may be pertinent to mysteries. Author announcements of books, either already published or forthcoming, are particularly welcome. This is known as BSP, "Blatant Self-Promotion." Advertisements from publishers may or may not be welcome, depending on the nature and quality of the announcement. Members are asked to never post their snail-mail addresses or phone numbers to the list under any circumstances. Due to the nature of the list, hate speech of any sort will not be tolerated; transgressors will be terminated with extreme prejudice, with no recourse. ----------------------- If you would like to join, please visit http://www.pauahtun.org/mailman/listinfo/blueplace There is also a home page for the list, at http://www.pauahtun.org/BluePlace.html Thank you, Ivan (the listowner) ---------------------------------------------- Ivan Van Laningham Axent Technologies, Inc. http://www.pauahtun.org/ http://www.foretec.com/python/workshops/1998-11/proceedings.html Army Signal Corps: Cu Chi, Class of '70 Author: Teach Yourself Python in 24 Hours - =========================================================================== To unsubscribe, please mail 'unsubscribe classicslgb' to 'majordomo@acpub.duke.edu' (without the quotation marks). For help, contact the list-owner John Younger (jyounger@acpub.duke.edu). -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 00:33:37 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Harlan Ellison: After Satanico Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:22 PM 10/06/00 -0500, you wrote: >Hey, Satanico, Ellison does like Joanna Russ, Kate Wilhelm, and not a few >other of our icons here. Even if his introduction to "When It Changed" in A, >DV is an intentionally provocative joke (I hope). Yeah, I know; I was exaggerating. But the number of people Ellison hates certainly do seem to vastly outnumber the ones he likes. I view Ellison sort of the same way I view Roger Ebert: more or less an intelligent guy who, when he's right, is very very right - when he's wrong, he's an idiot. Sant. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 01:11:47 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Sexism and Heinlein: Osier Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >No, Sant, I didn't say or even imply that. >Please read the entire context. >Thanks. Ah. Well, good to know you aren't in favor of this viewpoint, at least, though I suppose I'm going to have to locate the Anderson story to decide whether or not _he_ was. Apologies if I misinterpreted. Sant. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 01:16:58 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Santanico Subject: Re: Poul Anderson & Harlan Ellison Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >some combination of the two is my guess. a baby-jane shocker which thrusts >the reader towards, say, ethical relativism, rather than homophilia. "boy, >there >can be all kinds of repulsive alternative worlds out there that think >they're okay >too - how interesting" Oh, I see. Sort of the way you can read a novel about a 'sympathetic' killer, and, while you can see it from their POV and feel sorry for them in the context of fiction, the acts committed by the character are still shocking, and in r/l you wouldn't get within three thousand miles of the guy. In other words, a freak-show mentality. Sant. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 10:30:21 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Alison Hendon Subject: Re: DV, ADV, &c In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT A charming > political-fantasy series featuring very strong and independent > sisters and brothers who explored Italy while learning about > Garibaldi and also being spies in a Zen sort of consipiracy that John > Brunner would have loved (there were even sentient animals). The > author and titles unfortunately are lost down the days, but I do > remember that the secret signal was to gently, idly touch the bottom > of one's chin with the ring finger. > This was one of a series by John Verney (Friday's Tunnel, February's Road, Seven Sunflower Seeds). The name of the movement was ISMO and I think that was also the name of the book. Alison Alison Hendon ahendon@amanda.dorsai.org "Though my soul may set in darkness, It will rise in perfect light, I have loved the stars too fondly To be fearful of the night...." - Sarah Williams, "The Old Astronomer to His Pupil" -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 19:13:09 -0400 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Dianne Kraft <103234.3341@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Dangerous Visions & Harlan bashing MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii delurking here; I don't think it's easy to imagine how powerful both Ellison's early books (e.g., I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream) and Dangerous Visions were to those of us who were in our teens and early 20's when they came out. Having been an sf fan since the age of 8 (when my father gave me all the Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan and Mars books), Ellison was like a cold crisp wind bringing change and delight to me when I first encountered him (I guess I was about 12 or 13). And Dangerous Visions may seem dated now, but it sure didn't when it came out. But that's been a while, now hasn't it? I need to say one more thing; as a friend, Harlan can be a pretty wonderful guy, and while it is much more fashionable to bash him and remember the more negative/flashy side, I just want to say that's not all there is. Aren't we all sometimes right and sometimes wrong, and which is which is in the eye of the beholder? Dianne Kraft -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 13:41:20 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: [scifi-romance] SFR Chat announcement Comments: cc: "sciencefiction-l@listserv.indiana.edu" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" -----Original Message----- From: Colleen R. Cahill-Stumbaugh [mailto:cstu@loc.gov] Sent: Monday, June 12, 2000 11:08 AM To: SF-LIT@sun8.loc.gov Subject: Forward: [scifi-romance] SFR Chat announcement (fwd) FYI ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 20:16:38 EDT From: yeep@aol.com Reply-To: scifi-romance-owner@egroups.com To: scifi-romance@egroups.com Subject: [scifi-romance] SFR Chat announcement SFR Chat Please join authors Jennifer Dunne, Catherine Asaro, Tom Purdom and Diane Turnshek to discuss science fiction romance at a chat sponsored by the Sci-Fi Channel and Analog. This is a reschedule of the Valentine's Day chat session that was ruined by the "denial of service" hackers. The new chat will be on scifi.com, Tuesday, June 13, at 9pm Eastern, and requires a Java-enabled browser. It promises to be lots of fun, and maybe a little informative, too. (Your June issue of the SF Romance newsletter will come out after the chat) Jennifer Dunne - Yeep@aol.com - http://members.aol.com/yeep/ -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 14:03:39 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Todd Mason Subject: Crime fiction/feminist relevance: ZANE GREY'S WESTERN August 1953 ; WESTERN ACTION June 1955 Comments: To: "shortmystery@egroups.com" Comments: cc: "jffal@webtv.net" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ZANE GREY'S WESTERN August 1953 "The Pitchfork Boss" by Cliff Farrell "I Rode with the Texas Rangers--Part III: Lawman Till I Die" Ira Aten as told to Harold Preece (autobiography) "The Hard Way" by Elmore Leonard "A Decent Saddle" by Noel M. Loomis "Washout at Ute Crossing" by Harry Sinclair Drago "The Pay is Poor For Heroes" by Ed Montgomery "Trouble Comes North" by John E. Kelly "King of the Camp" by S. Omar Barker (verse) "Winchester Carbine, Model 1892" written and illustrated by Randy Steffan (nonfiction) Don Ward, editor; digest, 160 pp, published by Dell Publishing Co, Inc; 35c; monthly, $3.50/year WESTERN ACTION June 1955 "No Guns Wanted" by E. E. Clement "Particeps Criminis" by Lon Williams "Don't Crowd a Texan" by Warner Austin "The Trading Post: Meet Bear Bruscoe" by Harold Gluck (tall tales) "A Reason for Dying" by A. A. Baker Robert A. W. Lowndes, editor; pulp, 98pp; published by Columbia Publishing Co, Inc; 25c; bimonthly, $1.50/year ZANE GREY'S WESTERN is one of the best-known 1940s-50s western digests, and so well-remembered was it that Leo Margulies later revived the title to go with his MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE and the other titles of his last burst before his death of fiction-magazine empire building (the others were CHARLIE CHAN MYSTERY and WEIRD TALES, the first revival). I've read my first issue through and it's pretty impressive to me; aside from a decent presentation (with remarkably small but legible print) and probably excellent distribution, if this issue's any indication one can see why this incarnation of ZGWM seems to be NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC of western fiction magazines, with so many folk having hung onto them long enough to offer them on Ebay in droves. Perhaps more surpising to me was how solid a read the WESTERN ACTION issue was, as well; Robert Lowndes was a good editor, but I wondered, particularly after the bad W. C. Tuttle story leading off one of his other magazines I have an issue of, if he was devoting much attention to the western titles among his low-budgeted but sometimes ambitious range of sf, crime fiction, and sports magazines. Historian/anthologist Mike Ashley's list of RAWL western stories under pseudonyms includes the name of the "author" of this issue's lead story, so I wonder if "No Guns Wanted" is also Lowndes's work, and if not, then whose. As with Cliff Farrell's leadoff novella "The Pitchfork Boss" in the ZG, one of the most striking things about "No Guns Wanted" is the strength and independence of its leading female character. In the WESTERN ACTION story, she's a young Society of Friends member in a town called Peace inhabited entirely by "Quakers"; in the ZG "book-length novel," she's an Eastern-educated heir to the largest well-established ranch in the area, whose estate is threatened by skullduggery. Both women confound the expectations of the upright protagonists, men who've drifted in from tough circumstances and find themselves trapped at first into helping the communities they met up with, then increasingly making common cause with their new communities, and, unsurprisingly, finding connubial bliss with the young women. Particularly in the Farrell, the interrelationships of the characters seem to me to be described with a maturity one would be hard-pressed to find in most crime and fantastic fiction being published in the magazines of the day, and a matter-of-fact feminism, among other sorts of egalitarianism, not too common among the "elite" literary publications of the time (Cliff Farrell seems to hold women in higher regard than, say, Norman Mailer or Ernest Hemingway, to put it mildly), reflective perhaps of the growing understanding (or mythic redefinition) of the frontier as a place for relative freedom from predefined roles. And perhaps also reflective of a recognition that the audience for westerns was becoming less, or had always been not, exclusively male--the freedom of western-fiction women characters to be strong and independent and not be crushed for that might help account for the durability of the western-romance pulps, after all the less-romantically slanted western magazines had folded. While the consideration of the Friends' philosphy in "No Guns Wanted" is no more profound than it needs to be for the purposes of the story, it's there, and the female lead is, while pulpishly impulsive in falling in love, still quite aware of her abilities both traditionally feminine and not so...in an, again, matter-of-fact way that one wouldn't see in most other kinds of fiction, certainly at midcentury. The most clumsily-written stories in both issues are saved for last. A. A. Baker's "A Reason for Dying" and John E. Kelly's "Trouble Comes North" both deal with would-be sheriffs, the first a Confederate soldier returning to his Oklahoma town, the second a young man coming into his own and ready to prove himself, who are both improbably framed and have to throw in with bandit-gangs to get themselves right again. There are some differences of slapdash detail, and neither story is terrible, but neither is particularly memorable except for bad attempts at capturing accents (characters are quoted as saying "noo" rather than "new," for example...a pretty damned subtle distinction, if there's any at all). I believe James Reasoner, Peter Enfantino, Kent Johnson, and several others on WesternPulps have noted the proximity of the western to the crime story, even when no lawmen are facing down criminals, and leaving aside the intrigues of the tales cited above, the balance of the stories in the two issues are solid evidence for that argument. "Washout at Ute Crossing" is almost a police-procedural, as several parties in their various ways manage to work out the identity of a frame-setting murderer; "Particeps Criminis" is a courtroom story; "The Pay Is Poor for Heroes" manages, a bit more successfully than the other two stories, to achieve a Donald Westlake-style balance between humor and criminous interest. But "Washout" has some excellent mining-town detail, and "PC" has an interesting resolution, which suddenly puts the comedy of the previous events into a suprisingly appropriate grim focus; a murder case, after all. The smartass tone of Elmore Leonard's later crime-fiction bestsellers is absent in his story here (is it present in his early novels, western or otherwise?), in a decent, straightforward recounting of the hassles a young Chicano deputy faces when he runs up against powerful pale-Caucs in his town. Despite a clumsy POV shift for a few paragraphs in the middle of the story, a solidly pro item from Leonard, who probably hadn't been writing long at this point (his name's on the cover, but everyone with word art but S. Omar Barker [a cute poem] gets on the cover of this issue). Western and sf pro Noel Loomis offers another story that, along with some rousingly-described violence, allows that non-pale-Caucasians might be fully human...gee, can we get some retro-shouts of "PC! PC!" going here? Particularly since this is the tale of a drifter who gets on the wrong side of the hulkingest, quickest-tempered hand on a ranch owned by the narrator, who treats his hands with the utmost respect. I had known that Dorothy Johnson and B. Traven, among others, weren't the only ones to deal with human figures a bit more diverse than we saw in the weaker films and television of that time, but it's nice to come across a bit more reality from Loomis, whose work had not crossed my path before, though I've known his name forever. But Warner Austin's "Don't Crowd a Texan," like Noel Loomis's story, is not much of a crime story per se so much as one focusing on the relationship of the people to the land and the daily tasks they face. The timber-industry forester and the enigmatic ranch-hand at the center of their respective stories, and the people they interact with, don't face extraordinary events in the sense of war sweeping over the territory, not even range war, but simply do what they can to make a dollar to survive with their dignity intact. I believe it was James Reasoner who suggested that no particular magazine in the field has been obviously dominant in reputation or influence, the way several could be said to be in other fields, and if the well-financed ZANE GREY can be a bit better on balance than the poorly-financed but well-edited and certainly good WESTERN ACTION, it speaks well of the magazine field. Of course, worse magazines had been issued before and would be in the future (and worse issues of these, I suspect); I wonder if the mostly? entirely? pseudonymous group writing for WESTERN ACTION were of a higher standard than similarly low-budgeted magazines like FAR WEST or the last-years RANCH ROMANCES could draw on later because the good western writers had not yet abandoned the magazines by 1954-1955, despite the folding of ZANE GREY, the quick death of GUNSMOKE magazine, and the disappearance of the other good-paying all-western markets about that time? I here addressed a question to WesternPulps member Dolores Westrich: how did you get an assignment to do a pseudonymous story, or did Lowndes simply decide which story got which byline after it was submitted? (Lowndes was one of the most receptive editors to Carol Emshwiller's early sf work, and she placed some of her early classics with his magazine SCIENCE FICTION; she is now publishing primarily western fiction.) Ex-Ranger Aten's memoirs seem pretty well-honed, perhaps from being retold as often as Gluck's folktales, though the detail about shooting a would-be ambusher through the corner of a clapboard house, rather than waiting to get a direct line of sight on the fellow, only seems sensible, in a way many of our filmmakers have yet to admit. ZGW is essentially ad-free, while WA has a pulp-ad mix that seems a bit heavy on suspicious Geiger counters (for western-desert prospecting, I guess, or attempting to put a good face on '50s radiation-consciousness) through the "Ruptured," loaded-dice, and self-improvement text ads to a public-service ad for the American Cancer Society (more radiation consciousness?). Todd ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stand out. In B2B. In Austin. Work with clients like Dell and pcOrder. Submit your resume to jobs@liaison.com. Visit us at http://click.egroups.com/1/4355/3/_/423968/_/960816589/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 10:35:10 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Re: Re [FSFFU] Poul Anderson, homosexuality, etc In-Reply-To: <005101bfd2f2$ab806420$c32f70c3@oemcomputer> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 04:43 PM 6/10/00 +0100, Lesley Hall wrote: > >Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, >perhaps, > >>and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect (considering >>this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view for >>1967) Wasn't this something that was increasingly being put forward >during the 60s in sf (as ideas generally were getting liberalised - see >mainstream fiction, films, etc)? Not only the so-called 'New Wave', but >e.g. T Sturgeon published the novel _Venus Plus X_ which critiques >heterosexuality from the viewpoint of a hermaphroditic humanoid race as >early as 1960, and there was also a short story by him - called I think >_The World Well Lost_ - from about the same period - 2 spacers and an >alien couple only gradually revealed as a same-sex pair escaping >persecution. Whether this also went alongside any liberalisation of male >writers' attitudes towards women (except towards making them more sexually >active with men) I don't know - nothing immediately springs to my mind as >evidencing this. Sturgeon, being sui generis, was a generation ahead of the rest of us. I urge people to find all the Sturgeon they can. _Venus Plus X_ isn't among his best work, but it's as advanced emotionally as much of his best, and that story about "the lovebirds" is fantastic. Simply by being devastatingly compassionate, he ran through a checklist of boundaries and frontiers. (I still love his _Dangerous Visions_ story, "If All Men Were Brothers" (and hope very much I got the title sight!)) Some people take _More than Human_ as being about multiplicity, for instance. "It Wasn't Syzygy" (??) is way beyond the limited, self-gratifying "gender bending" which is so trendy some places. etc., etc., etc. If he were still alive, I have no doubt he'd have at least one Tiptree Award by now. Neil Rest -- NeilRest@enteract.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 10:40:46 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Re: Poul Anderson & Harlan Ellison In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20000610120144.00ddf110@isaac.exploratorium.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:03 PM 6/10/00 -0700, Laura Quilter replied: >> >Just read that story, actually -- catching up on my "classics" as one >> >friend called it: Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967). The story is >> >Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" and yes, indeed, it is apparently supposed to be >> >a shocker that the protagonist & his lover are homosexuals. My take on >> >the story was that it was a dangerous vision thusly: a demonstration that >> >one man's utopia is another man's nightmare garden of the perverse. The >> >trick is that the reader doesn't realize his* allegiances are to the >> >perverse until the end. >> >>Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, perhaps, >>and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect (considering >>this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view for >>1967), is it just supposed to be a "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" style >>"Gasp! My God! He was EVIL all along!!" style final shocker? > >some combination of the two is my guess. a baby-jane shocker which thrusts >the reader towards, say, ethical relativism, rather than homophilia. "boy, >there >can be all kinds of repulsive alternative worlds out there that think >they're okay >too - how interesting" > This strongly suggests that you don't know Poul very well. (BTW, he's a semi-neighbor over in Orinda. You want to get to know Karen, too!) He's more libertarian than I personally have a lot of use for, but pretty non-agressive about it, and he tends more toward thoughtfully-constructed space opera than Deep Thought, but he's thoroughly humane and ethical. While I don't recall the story, I know his work, and I'm acquainted with him; the twist at the end is undoubtedly intended to make the reader (re-)think, not to jerk the reader's empathy out from under. Neil -- NeilRest@enteract.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 10:47:37 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Re: Re [FSFFU] Poul Anderson, homosexuality, etc In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20000610120440.00de7100@isaac.exploratorium.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:18 PM 6/10/00 -0700, Laura Quilter wrote: > >heinlein, actually, by these definitions ... i might consider a >feminist. no, i don't agree with a lot of his ideas about women -- but >there are lots of feminists with whom i disagree, too. but heinlein >definitely seems to have believed -- at least in his later writings -- that >women could be just as energetic, just as qualified a leader, just as >intelligent -- as men. and he was interested (well, somewhat) in exploring >questions of gender & sexuality. > yes, i think many of his ideas about women are rather biologically >determinist. needless to say however there are a lot of WOMEN who call >themselves feminists (and i would not quarrel with that designation) who >have various & sundry deterministic views about gender & sexuality. Thank you! It sounds like we agree, essentially about Heinlein: He was headed in the right direction when he got as far as he was able to go. For a (Kansas? Missouri?) farm boy from, now, a century ago, he got himself a respectable distance, but things have certianly moved further. Peraonally, I am skeptical of anyone who is so Right that they have not the slightest qualm about being judged by the standrads of a century hence. Neil -- NeilRest@enteract.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 11:01:25 -0500 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Neil Rest Subject: Re: DV, ADV, &c In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:56 PM 6/10/00 -0500, Jesse the K wrote: > > >I inhaled Dangerous Visions when it was new; the story that made me >vibrate like a temple bell was "Aye, and Gomorrah" by Samuel Delany. >Not only did it confirm that somewhere gender-bendering was >fundamentally possible, nay OK, it promised a bearable alternative to >airplane flights. I immediately tracked down all the Delany I could >find, reading it again and again and not quite getting it (there's >only so much an 11-yr-old girl can understand) but fascinated, not >intimidated, by the gulfs it opened for me. > >Then when Again, Dangerous Visions finally came out ... well: Kate >Wilhelm, James Tiptree, Ursula LeGuin and gloriously, "When it >changed." > > >-- >Jesse the K -- Madison Wisconsin USA -- ***************** >Cogito ergo spud. I think, therefore, I yam Just on the off chance that the admonition won't be rhetorical: BY ALL THAT'S HOLY, *P*L*E*A*S*E* GO TO WISCON!! (Next Memorial Day weekend) Neil Rest -- NeilRest@enteract.com -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 22:29:36 -0700 Reply-To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Laura Quilter Subject: Re: Poul Anderson & Harlan Ellison In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.20000613104046.009485f0@pop.enteract.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Neil Rest wrote: > At 12:03 PM 6/10/00 -0700, Laura Quilter > replied: > > >> >Just read that story, actually -- catching up on my "classics" as one > >> >friend called it: Harlan Ellison's DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967). The story is > >> >Poul Anderson's "Eutopia" and yes, indeed, it is apparently supposed to be > >> >a shocker that the protagonist & his lover are homosexuals. My take on > >> >the story was that it was a dangerous vision thusly: a demonstration that > >> >one man's utopia is another man's nightmare garden of the perverse. The > >> >trick is that the reader doesn't realize his* allegiances are to the > >> >perverse until the end. > >> > >>Hmmm. So was this a story intended to indict the homophobic reader, perhaps, > >>and force him to examine his own prejudices? Or, as I suspect (considering > >>this would have probably been WAAAAY too progressive a point of view for > >>1967), is it just supposed to be a "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" style > >>"Gasp! My God! He was EVIL all along!!" style final shocker? > > > >some combination of the two is my guess. a baby-jane shocker which thrusts > >the reader towards, say, ethical relativism, rather than homophilia. "boy, > >there > >can be all kinds of repulsive alternative worlds out there that think > >they're okay > >too - how interesting" > > > > This strongly suggests that you don't know Poul very well. (BTW, he's a > semi-neighbor over in Orinda. You want to get to know Karen, too!) He's > more libertarian than I personally have a lot of use for, but pretty > non-agressive about it, and he tends more toward thoughtfully-constructed > space opera than Deep Thought, but he's thoroughly humane and ethical. > > While I don't recall the story, I know his work, and I'm acquainted with > him; the twist at the end is undoubtedly intended to make the reader > (re-)think, not to jerk the reader's empathy out from under. yes, i got that impression. sorry i wasn't being very clear. i think it *is* made to make the reader re-think, but what? i don't think the idea is exactly to rethink homosexuality - although that may have been a side benefit. i had the impression that the story was geared more towards rethinking & being shocked that there could be such alternative-ness in worlds, and that homosexuality-as-acceptable was therefore a gimmick. poul may be very non-homophobic now, or even then, but i just really felt that it was used to twitch the reader. but because it (homosexuality) was used as a shocker i had the impression, as i said, that the idea wasn't so much "rethink homosexuality" as "see how wacky the universe can be, even things you think are disgusting might be okay to someone else." then again maybe it was merely a literary effect that wasn't very effective on me. laura > > > Neil > > -- > NeilRest@enteract.com > > -------------------------------------------------- > This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for > discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To > unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to > LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: > unsubscribe FEMINISTSF > > Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. > Laura Quilter lauraq@exploratorium.edu ph: 415.353.0465 / 415.561.0343 Learning Center Facilities Manager Exploratorium, San Francisco -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 01:41:26 -0400 Reply-To: Amy Harlib Sender: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" From: Amy Harlib Subject: The Gilda Stories Book Review MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here's my reaction to the book which hardly anybody discussed much to my bewilderment. This review will be published at the SF Site in a couple of weeks or -- Amy Harlib aharlib@worldnet.att.net The Gilda Stories: A Novel by Jewelle Gomez (Firebrand Press, Ithaca, NY, 1991, trade paperback, $12.95, ISBN #: 0-932379-94-X). In The Gilda Stories, Jewelle Gomez presents an unusual first novel, a distinctive 'take' on vampires from an African-American point-of-view. The text of this episodic work is divided into 8 segments depicting the life of the eponymous protagonist from the time she was a runaway slave rescued by and incorporated into a vampire 'family' in Louisiana in 1850 to a troubled but not hopeless future 200 years later when the secret is out and the hidden society of vampires-among-us is revealed to the world. The interval between, the story of Gilda's life, is also the story of African-Americans in the USA---as social/political/technological changes necessitate growth, adaptation, maturation and wisdom. Jewelle Gomez excels in not only describing each phase of Gilda's life in vivid local, geographical, social and economic detail as she moves from one area to another in the course of her now immortal life, she also is exemplary in depicting a form of benevolent vampirism. This involves the non-fatal sharing of blood that happens alongside the sharing of dreams and life-force to the mutual benefit of both individuals involved in the encounter. Yet the author makes it clear, in scenes that add a chilling excitement and drama to the narrative, this power can be abused and used to exploit victims as well. The Gilda Stories positive portrayal of the undead compares favorably to a popular, more mainstream, long-running, multi-volume vampire-as-hero series by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro about the Count St. Germaine with Gilda daring to go beyond the relentless heterosexuality of Yarbro's character to sensitively, tastefully and even poetically get involved in lesbian and bi-sexual blends of vampirism and eroticism. The narrative is also distinguished by the sensitive and positive way relationships of all kinds are portrayed between Gilda and those she cares for, most notably Bird, the Native American immortal who initiated Gilda into the hidden world of the vampires in the first segment of the story. Jewelle Gomez deserves the highest praise for producing this book, beautifully written in gorgeous, poetic, emotionally intense prose that dares to be unique---a lesbian, feminist vampire novel, character-driven yet full of exciting events and thoroughly satisfying as it enlightens about and illuminates for the reader, the lives of people of color in the last 100 years in America and extrapolates into the future. This reviewer doesn't hesitate to recommend this book for adventurous readers of all persuasions willing to try something different and really special. -------------------------------------------------- This is the FEMINISTSF listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF Contact FEMINISTSF-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems.