by Gideon Marcus
Graduation day is rapidly approaching. Around the world, high school seniors are about to don cap and gown and emerge from their academic cocoons. They will be transformed creatures, highly improved in comparison to their state upon entering school. They'll go on to be the next Picasso, Wright, Salk, or Meitner. Such are our hopes, anyway.
Science fiction is in the midst of a similar transition. Gestated in the womb of Mary Shelley's mind, SF was born in the late 19th Century, Mssrs. Verne and Wells serving as midwives. In the 20s, it entered grammar school under the tutelage of Hugo Gernsback, editor of Amazing Stories. At the time, SF was an undistinguished pupil, little different from its fellows at Pulp Elementary. But in 1937, SF entered Astounding Middle School, which had a most extraordinary principal, John W. Campbell, aided by a student council led by Heinlein, Asimov, and Leinster. It was a Boys' School, of course, though a few females snuck or fought their way in. This was the period in which SF began to shine, displaying a characteristic intelligence, innovation, and devotion to scientific principles.
The genre entered Galaxy High School in 1950 after taking a few preparatory classes at F&SF School for the Gifted. Galaxy High was (and to a limited degree still is) a co-ed school, and it was here that SF fully flowered, displaying hitherto unseen nuance, breadth, and passion. Its vista spread beyond the solar system to the stars. Having mastered the subjects of math, physics, and engineering in Middle School, it now turned to the subtler arts: psychology and sociology. It achieved high marks in English such that some of its compositions were included in literary anthologies alongside the works of other, older genres.
After 12 years of High School, SF is approaching its own time of graduation. Where will it head from here? There is some indication that the genre will head to New Wave University, possibly at its British campus, where it can major in philosophy and advanced writing techniques. Or it may elect to go to the twin Goldsmith Universities. The opportunities there include exciting placement in the worlds of both science and fantasy. Plus, that's where the women are…
(Accurate depiction of the SF genre — note the demographic ratio)
But there are also signs that SF may not be ready to graduate at all. Its output isn't what it used to be, and in many cases, it seems to be just going through the motions. Lately, the genre has been visiting its old stomping grounds, Astounding Elementary (recently renamed to Analog School for the Psychically Inclined). Each time, the result is a regression in the quality of its work.
Just take a look at SF's latest exam results, the June 1963 Analog. Outwardly, it reflects the work of a mature student. After all, it's a full 8.5" by 11" in dimensions and printed on slick paper. But note the content — if you were on a college (or army) recruiting board, would you take this as a sign of promise?
The Big Fuel Feud (Part 1 of 2), by Harry B. Porter
There is a war being waged inside the United States (or perhaps it is merely a spirited competition) between the factions that favor liquid-fueled rockets and those that like the solid-fueled kind. In other words, does your propellant splash or crumble? There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods, and they are of differing importance depending on whether your application is putting people in space or blowing up people in Russia. The author lays out, comprehensively and legibly (if a bit disorganizedly, particularly at the end) the history and current state of the art in solid fuels.
I found it interesting, but then, it's also my pigeon. Three stars.
The Trouble with Telstar, by John Berryman
Some science fiction takes place in the far future against an as yet dimly conceivable tableau of advanced technologies and galactic locales. Other SF is taken right out of tomorrow's headlines. This is, perhaps, the easier to write. On the other hand, it is also the most readily accessible.
Berryman, who normally writes competent psi-related stuff for Analog, turns in this competent (if annoyingly male-chauvinist) straight engineering piece on in situ satellite repair. In it, the nationalized space telcom has discovered a fatal flaw in its new Telstar line of communications satellites. Unfortunately, six of the constellation of eighteen have already been launched, and the problem cannot be duplicated precisely on the ground. A technician advances the idea of diagnosing and repairing the issue in space, arguing that it's cheaper and quicker than starting all over on the ground. Not only is the proposal accepted, but (to his dismay) the technician is drafted for the job.
Trouble is set in or around 1966 and features the real-world Saturn rocket and Air Force "Dyna-Soar" spaceplane. The details of the repair trip are incredibly authentic, down to the manufacture of specialized tools for disassembly of the Telstars in orbit, and the depiction of the tech's several spacewalks. I found myself utterly riveted by this snapshot of the near future, convinced of its reality. Four stars.
Hermit, by J. T. McIntosh
A lone male officer at a remote military outpost has orders to destroy any incoming human vessel. But when a lifeboat appears with one beautiful young woman aboard, he must decide between following his instructions or following his heart.
This is a setup that, when done well, can be quite compelling. My favorite example is Hallunication Orbit, in which the solitary caretaker of a far-off observatory must determine whether his visitors are real or not. Interestingly, that fine example was written more than a decade ago by none other than…J.T. McIntosh!
Hermit compares poorly with McIntosh's earlier tale. Not only is it clear from the beginning that the "castaway" is a spy, but the sentry's actions are illogical, treasonous, and only explained by exposition in the last few paragraphs. Two stars, and an admonition — don't plagiarize, especially from your own work!
Territory, by Poul Anderson
The trouble with do-gooding is that it's a contract with no consideration. If the people you're helping don't understand your motivations, they don't appreciate the help. At least, that's Anderson's assertion in Territory, in which human scientists were trying to avert an impending Ice Age are slaughtered by the aliens they were trying to help.
The project is salvaged by Nicholas van Rijn, a recurring Anderson character whose key traits include girth, malaprops, obnoxiousness, and the pursuit of profit. He determines that the aliens won't take assistance, but they will jump into a mutually lucrative trade deal that accomplishes the same goal. Win-win-win.
Well, wins for the characters — not for the reader. Van Rijn is barely tolerable at his best, and when Anderson has the sole surviving scientist, a young woman, fall for the lout, it took great restraint to not throw the issue into a nearby toilet. Two stars.
Ham Sandwich, by James H. Schmitz
Last up is an inconsequential story that is nowhere more at home than in the pages of Analog. An oily character, specializing in the desires of the rich, offers True Insight to those who can afford it. Such Insight is marked by the cultivation and demonstration of psychic powers, which can be greatly aided through the purchase of certain tools, available for just $1200 a-piece.
One reads the story waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when it does, it is with a dull thud. The flim-flammer is brought in on bunko charges — turns out he really is con artist. But he's then let free to continue his scheme in another city because, it turns out, he is effective at discovering latent psychic talents, who can then be recruited by the government.
It's just not very good. Two stars.
Pencils down everyone. It's time to grade the last test results before graduation day. Oh my… This month's Analog scored a dismal 2.6 stars. That's as bad as June's Galaxy (our High School is failing our pupil, too, it seems). But let's not judge out of hand, shall we? Amazing clocked in at 2.8, New Worlds at 2.9. Mediocre, but not entirely damning. Fantastic scored 3.2 stars, and F&SF garnered an impressive 3.5 star grade.
In the end, I wouldn't say this is a set of failing marks. Rather, they indicate that the genre has spent more than enough time in school and must strike out on its own to new vistas to reach the next level. Let us allow SF to graduate
We might also consider replacing the Principal at Analog — his methods are highly outdated, and we don't want to unduly burden any new pupils, now do we?
There weren’t many women in Astounding in the ‘40s but they didn’t appear “in drag of one sort or another”. Amelia Reynolds Long, Judith Merril, Wilmar H. Shiras, Katherine MacLean, Leigh Brackett are just five I can think of off the top of my head that Campbell published under their own names in that period (and if you add in Unknown there was Mona Farnsworth, Marian O’Hearn and Jane Rice). If you look at other forties SF magazines there are more names (Miriam Allen deFord, etc.)
I thought this myth had been put to rest by Eric Lief Davin (in “Partners in Wonder”), which states only two women used male pseudonyms in the SF field pre 1950, “Francis Stevens” and C. L. Moore (presumably as Lewis Padgett).
PS You mention “Heinlein, Asimov and Leinster”. Most would substitute van Vogt for the latter.
Hello, Paul. Thank you for your note!
I was not intending to propagate any false narratives, merely waxing poetic. As you know, I follow the progress of women in our genre quite keenly. The proliferation of women in SF exploded quite a bit in the last decade. Nevertheless, I will change that line per your note.
As for the Top Three, Van Vogt was actually the first name that came to mind. I just really like Leinster!
I’m not sure that a “few females snuck or fought their way in” is much better but, as they used to say when we were debriefing in my last job, “you are only allowed one push at the wheelbarrow”.
You may wish to read about How Campbell went out of his way to encourage Katherine MacLean (starts half way down page 146):
https://books.google.co.uk/books?redir_esc=y&id=ZoNDebTvUnsC&q=Katherine+Maclean#v=snippet&q=Katherine%20Maclean&f=false
Further amended, thank you. Campbell definitely helped some women find their start in the genre — Pauline Ashwell being a notable example. I did not want to imply that Campbell was a gatekeeper, or at least, not the only gatekeeper.
That said, we cannot ignore the fact that there was and is significant barrier to entry for women in science fiction. Just this month, June 1963, there was a grand total of ONE woman-penned pieces out of forty. And the lady (Juanita Coulson, working with Marion Zimmer Bradley) didn't appear in Analog. In fact, when's the last time a woman did appear in Analog?
I agree that the lack of representation certainly doesn’t look good. However, editors can’t print what they don’t receive—even as of (spoiler) 2016, Sheila Williams reported in Asimov’s SF that only 35% (or something around that) of her submissions came from woman.
I’ve personal experience of this from around 2000-2003—of the submissions I received (and this was despite active solicitation) less than 10% were from women, probably much less.
It's wonderful that Campbell was so supportive of MacLean. It's certainly a heartwarming story. But, are you suggesting that women have kept *themselves* out of the SF mags?
The book you referred to above notes that, in fact, MacLean was told repeatedly that "…neither Campbell nor any other science fiction editor ever would accept a story written by a woman." It also states that she therefore submitted her story as "K. MacLean", convinced that she would be rejected if the editor knew her real name. She was accepted under this pseudonym – in 'drag,' if you will – and only afterward did Campbell discover that she was a woman. His actions then are a credit to him. They were also the bare minimum to be a decent human being.
He DIDN'T reject her story after learning she was female. He DIDN'T tell her to publish under a pseudonym. The fact that the bar is SO low – that we praise someone JUST for not being a horrible sexist jerk – is really damn depressing.
Would Campbell have read MacLean's story with the same eye if he'd known her gender from the start? Hopefully – but there's no way to know, now.
If Campbell truly wanted a more gender-balanced team of writers, though, he could have begun by making the content of his own magazine less explicitly sexist and unwelcoming to women. "Humorous" pieces like Queen Bee don't tell me that my work would be considered equally alongside Randall Garrett's. They tell me that I am nothing more than a walking womb, that independent thoughts or feelings I may have as a human being are unimportant or selfish when placed next to men's desires. This is not the only such story Campbell published, it's just the one that springs most immediately to mind.
The Traveler and his writers have reviewed thousands of stories. The vast majority of the stories were written by men, have male heroes and male POV characters. This is a fact. You can discuss why this is true, you can challenge assertions of conscious or unconscious bias or editorial favoritism, but you cannot deny that, a handful of counter-examples aside, there are far, far more men in the science fiction field, both behind and on the page, than there are women.
And yes, I've heard, "We can't print what we don't receive," a lot. So much so that I wrote an entire article on the topic, discussing what one prominent literary magazine did to solve the discrepancy in their numbers: http://comicsbulletin.com/does-dc-care/. It may be of interest to you, particularly if you have actively solicited women and still only had a 10% submission rate.
People who care about having a gender-balanced magazine/book/team do MORE. When they actively solicit and don't get responses, they ask, "Why?" What is it about the solicitation process that causes fewer women to submit? Do female writers feel that they are held to a different, higher standard? Are they in truth? Whether they are or not, is it something they BELIEVE to be true? Are female writers told, explicitly and implicitly, that their work, their thoughts, their lives are of less value than their male counterparts'? Does the material we publish actively suggest this? Could this have an impact on whether or not they're willing to submit, and if so, how can it be addressed?
Editors are in a position of power. Ultimately, if there was only one story out of forty in the entire slew of 1963 science fiction magazines that was written by a woman, it's up to editors to ask "why?", not simply accept it as if it were a natural state of affairs. Not to throw up their hands and shrug, saying, "Well, we didn't get any submissions by women this month! Oh well!"
One last thought: This site is a great example of what you can accomplish when you actively seek out female contributors and work to make an environment that is supportive of female contributions. If you look at the "About the Journey" section above, you'll see that the majority of the writers on this site are women. That didn't happen by accident. It was the result of a choice made by the Traveler to actively seek out and feature female writers in the still highly male-dominated worlds of science fiction and science fiction reviewers.
> People who care about having a gender-
> balanced magazine/book/team do MORE
And some of us don't care at all, and therefore do nothing. If the story is good, we'll read it, no matter what is in the author's underwear.
If I was the editor of an SF magazine, "gender balance" is about the *last* thing I'd worry about as I rooted through the slush pile trying to find something that's not a total waste of a typewriter ribbon.
I also note a severe shortage of female author names in the Western and "hard-boiled detective" genres, and a shortage of male author names in the "true confessions" and "romantic stories" genres.
*shrugs* If you continue doing things the way you've always done them, you're going to get the same results you've always had.
If I were a poor, struggling editor searching for gold in the slush pile, I'd think that realizing that women weren't submitting, and I was therefore missing out on potential nuggets from half the human race, would cause me to re-evaluate the system I was using.
And to your last point: Why do fewer women write Westerns and fewer men write Romances? I'd genuinely like to know why, and I think the answer is important and worth investigating, just as I think it's worth investigating why fewer women submit stories to science fiction magazines than men.
I'll also note that while women write only 10% of SF, they write about 25% of the best SF (my completely subjective observation, but it's held true the last several years when I've compiled by Galactic Stars awards).
If I'm tired of getting garbage in the slush pile, maybe I should be soliciting that 50% of the demographic that consistently turns out better stuff.
(Yes, I recognize the job of editor is a hard one. BELIEVE me. And I also know that it's not necessarily an editor's job to be in the vanguard of the second wave of feminism. But it'd be nice if one of them joined the surge… he/she'd probably reap dividends.)
>>Are you suggesting that women have kept *themselves* out of the SF mags?
In the 40s and 50s there were probably very few women submitting to the SF magazines as they weren't interested in the field (see my comment above about the wildly asymmetric submission rate at Asimov's _fifty years later_). I don't see that as "women keeping themselves out of the SF mags" but "women writing other stuff that interested them more".
>>The book you referred to above notes that, in fact, MacLean was told repeatedly that “…neither Campbell nor any other science fiction editor ever would accept a story written by a woman.”
If memory serves those comments were made by family members, not anyone from the SF field.
>>It also states that she therefore submitted her story as “K. MacLean”, convinced that she would be rejected if the editor knew her real name. He DIDN’T reject her story after learning she was female. He DIDN’T tell her to publish under a pseudonym. The fact that the bar is SO low – that we praise someone JUST for not being a horrible sexist jerk – is really damn depressing.
>> I wasn't praising anyone, I was originally making the point that women didn't (as stated in the first draft article) hide behind male pseudonyms, and then later that they didn't have to "fight" their way in. When presented with a story he wanted the gender of the writer was irrelevant to Campbell.
>>Would Campbell have read MacLean’s story with the same eye if he’d known her gender from the start? Hopefully – but there’s no way to know, now.
Ah, yes there is. Campbell published other women before MacLean in Astounding, and afterwards too. In the early '40s Unknown he published _multiple_ stories by Mona Farnsworth, Marian O'Hearn, Jane Rice, and E. Mayne Hull, and single stories and poems from a handful more. Presumably there were proportionately more women writers in Unknown (like F&SF) as they were more attracted to writing fantasy (which again feeds into my point about submission numbers).
>>If Campbell truly wanted a more gender-balanced team of writers, though, he could have begun by making the content of his own magazine less explicitly sexist and unwelcoming to women.
Campbell couldn't have cared less about gender-balance–it was the early 1960s. You are applying today's standards to a magazine that was being published 50 years ago in a completely different society. You can do that if you wish but it is unlikely to produce any useful insight . A more interesting question might be how did the SF field treat women compared with mainstream society.
>>And yes, I’ve heard, “We can’t print what we don’t receive,” a lot. So much so that I wrote an entire article on the topic, discussing what one prominent literary magazine did to solve the discrepancy in their numbers.
Perhaps you should send it to Shelia Williams, the multiple Hugo award winning _female_ editor of Asimov's, who hasn't achieved that balance yet. And then you can send it via time machine to Dorothy McIlwraith, Mary Gnaedinger, and Cele Goldsmith, all of who spectacularly failed to achieve gender balance as well.
I suspect most of them would tell you that their primary concern is/was to put out a magazine that contained the best material they could find.
"I suspect most of them would tell you that their primary concern is/was to put out a magazine that contained the best material they could find."
Ugh. The fact that Jack Sharkey was published so often speaks volumes as to what wasn't getting published…
"In the 40s and 50s there were probably very few women submitting to the SF magazines as they weren’t interested in the field"
Or something was actively keeping them out.
Right now, females make up about 10% of fandom (at least, from what I can see from pictures). In a half century, I should hope that women are represented in fandom to a much more equal degree. Will we see that parity reflected in submissions? If not, why not?
To strain your analogy even further, perhaps the field is suffering from a bit of senioritis. That might explain Poul Anderson's slump a couple of years ago. And just as with many high school students, there seem to be quite a few authors and readers who aren't handling the transition very well.
I've only just started the mag. Campbell's editorial was almost readable, but then he went somewhere strange with it. Not to mention contradicting himself (English grammar is both overly complex and simple, apparently) and stating outright bunk. He claimed Shakespeare never used the word "yes". That seemed odd, so I went to the library and looked in a Shakespeare concordance. 210 instances of the word. If I roll my eyes any harder, I'll have to go to the ophthalmologist.
The only story I've managed to read so far is "Telstar", which was quite good. My only quibble is that I can't imagine astronauts leaving their capsules without some sort of tether. Still a very good story.
Victoria has pointed out the biggest flaws in "Hermit". I actually thought the whole thing was going to turn out to be some sort of test. I don't if that would have improved the story or not.
I also liked "Territory" better than you did. I've generally like van Rijn stories in the past, though I admit he's something of an acquired taste. This one wasn't quite up to the previous tales and the woman character's gradual change of heart about him really wasn't believable.
"Ham Sandwich" was readable filler. I did spend much of the story wondering if Schmitz had recently had an encounter with Ron Hubbard's goofy little religious con job. The twist there at the end has me thinking that the Twilight Zone has had a less than salutary influence on the field in general. Too many authors seem to be attempting those twist endings that are so popular with Mr. Serling.
"The Trouble With Telstar" was quite convincing, if a little dry. It's the sort of engineering story you find only in Analog, and a pretty good example of that very specialized kind of fiction.
"Hermit," on the other hand, wasn't believable at all. The woman's changes of personality from innocent child to sex kitten, and from terrorist to altruist, were ridiculous. Besides that, the author treats her in a way that makes the women in the other stories seem like feminist icons.
I liked "Territory" better than you did, although I'll admit that a little van Rijn goes a long way. The author wants him to be a lovable rogue, but he comes off more as an obnoxious jerk. I'll agree that the woman's change of attitude toward him is distasteful. There are also big chunks of exposition to swallow. Despite these flaws, however, I thought it was vividly written, with outstanding world building and imaginatively created aliens.
"Ham Sandwich" was obvious and trivial. More like a slice of stale bread than a hearty sandwich.
Really, it is such as great journey.
Awesome work.