Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom Never told you. From how Supports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline. And Caroline. I feel like we are
Speaker 1: a little late on this this year because it is
Speaker 1: hot outside. It's been hot outside for a while for sure.
Speaker 1: Beach trips have been happening, and kids are out of
Speaker 1: school in some places, in some places in the world, yes,
Speaker 1: children are not in school, and we're only just now
Speaker 1: doing our annual Summer Reading podcast. I think it's fine.
Speaker 1: I think we have a ton of really fast reading listeners. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean our listeners are reading year round, really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would hope so. And also, we have talked so
Speaker 1: much about sci fi, and we had that episode with
Speaker 1: the fabulous Sarah Mark of Bitch Magazine and Papaganda earlier
Speaker 1: in the year, and so we people have already people,
Speaker 1: I mean sminty people specifically, have already been excited about
Speaker 1: the science fiction and visionary fiction topic. And we got
Speaker 1: so many of our recommendations from you guys, So you're
Speaker 1: already out there reading all of this wonderful science fiction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and spoiler alert everyone. The theme of this year's Summer
Speaker 1: Reading episode is science fiction. Oh yeah, okay, but we've
Speaker 1: been spoiling it since that that talk with Sarah Mark. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not that we ever really try to keep it
Speaker 1: a secret. No, I'd just like to say, spoiler alert sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: spoiler alert. There's a podcast coming up. Spoiler alert. People
Speaker 1: write books about the future to teach us about the present.
Speaker 1: That's right. Well, before we get into our history and
Speaker 1: analysis of women writing science fiction and also how gender
Speaker 1: is portrayed and played with in scientific realms, I wanted
Speaker 1: to call out some of the themes of those listener
Speaker 1: letters that we got when we started talking about science
Speaker 1: fiction and visionary fiction in April, and one of the
Speaker 1: main names that we heard from Steffone never told you listeners,
Speaker 1: both in their letters and on Facebook was James Tiptree Junior,
Speaker 1: wondering why we didn't mention her in our visionary Fiction podcast.
Speaker 1: But don't worry, we're going to talk about Tiptree Junior today. Um.
Speaker 1: Someone also suggested not only science fiction writing, but also
Speaker 1: sci fi comics such as Oh Human Star and The
Speaker 1: New World Anthology. And then Caroline Uh listener Emma sent
Speaker 1: us a quote from Ray Bradbury Yes that I thought
Speaker 1: was a good frame for our conversation. Are you ready
Speaker 1: hit me up? Okay, here we go, quote brad Bear,
Speaker 1: science fiction is a great way to pretend you're writing
Speaker 1: about the future, when in reality you're attacking the recent,
Speaker 1: past and present. Yeah, because even in our just conversations
Speaker 1: about recent events in the sci fi world, there are
Speaker 1: deeper conversations and issues related to gender, race representation and
Speaker 1: how all of that works in in our world, both
Speaker 1: past and present, as Bradbury outed, Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: sort of that concept is why a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there say, you know, it's interesting that we can't
Speaker 1: seem to move past things like heterosexual relationships or gender
Speaker 1: binaries and science fiction that we're not thinking bigger because
Speaker 1: if we are talking about the future, the very distant future,
Speaker 1: or even just different planets are different galaxy, these universes,
Speaker 1: are we really just still sticking with like white men
Speaker 1: and white women getting married and having babies. We can't
Speaker 1: really think of any other construction of a relationship. In Caroline,
Speaker 1: the heteronormativity of Martian society must be dismantled. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that that that quote from Bradberry is
Speaker 1: is so perfect and it really does sum up a
Speaker 1: lot of what's so fantastic about science fiction because in
Speaker 1: visionary fiction, because yeah, it not only lets you sort
Speaker 1: of envision a different, possibly better future, maybe a dystopian
Speaker 1: future or a utopian future, who knows, but it does
Speaker 1: also let you reflect a lot on what's going on
Speaker 1: around you. And it helps, I think, especially if you
Speaker 1: get people started really young reading science fiction and fantasy.
Speaker 1: It lets people build up their imaginations enough to question
Speaker 1: what's going on around them. Yeah, and speaking of what's
Speaker 1: going on around us, when that episode with Sarah Merk
Speaker 1: in which we talked about visionary fiction came out, a
Speaker 1: lot of people thought that we had specially timed it
Speaker 1: to happen when not only the Hugo Awards We're going down,
Speaker 1: but more specifically all of the sad and Rabid puppy
Speaker 1: controversy surrounding this year's Hugo Awards. Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: people just went sad rabid puppies. No, there was not
Speaker 1: some Humane Society jail break it Awards that Sarah McLaughlin
Speaker 1: Humane Society Dog shelter commercial was not playing on Loop. No,
Speaker 1: it was not. Kristen had to give you a little
Speaker 1: bit of an idea of what was going on. Basically,
Speaker 1: the Hugo Awards are one of the most prestigious awards
Speaker 1: ceremonies in science fiction um and the dick was somewhat
Speaker 1: stacked against women and people of color. You could argue
Speaker 1: the year at this year's awards. Yeah. So it was
Speaker 1: created in nineteen fifty three and it has been happening
Speaker 1: annually since nineteen fifty five, so they're well established. And
Speaker 1: the way it works is that these Hugo Awards are
Speaker 1: voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention
Speaker 1: or World Con, and World Con members can nominate up
Speaker 1: to five people slash works from the previous year in
Speaker 1: seventeen different categories. And the way you become a World
Speaker 1: Con member is being the low Low prize of forty dollars,
Speaker 1: and then from there, based on those results, you get
Speaker 1: five finalists each of those seventeen categories which are being announced,
Speaker 1: and then a final ballot sent to the members who
Speaker 1: then rank all the nominees. So, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: this is not a difficult system to game, right exactly,
Speaker 1: And over the years, more and more women and people
Speaker 1: of color have been nominated. That's great, They've always been there.
Speaker 1: It's just that people are starting to finally pay them
Speaker 1: more attention and give them the nominations that they deserve.
Speaker 1: For instance, way back in nineteen sixty eight, and McCaffrey
Speaker 1: became the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction,
Speaker 1: and she won in the category of Best Novella for
Speaker 1: Where Search, which also won her her first Nebula, making
Speaker 1: her also the first woman to win a Nebula Award,
Speaker 1: which is similar to the Hugos. It's another sci fi
Speaker 1: literary award. Correct, and as The New Republic pointed out
Speaker 1: looking at the whole Hugo Award drama from nineteen fiction
Speaker 1: nominations at the Hugo Awards went to women twenty two
Speaker 1: percent of the time, so not quite a quarter. But
Speaker 1: you know, the recent gains by women and people of
Speaker 1: color makes sense, right, It only should make sense that
Speaker 1: as we go along, more women people of color are recognized.
Speaker 1: But a lot of angry World Con members have worked
Speaker 1: hard to reverse the trend. I mean, essentially, there is
Speaker 1: this faction of primarily disgruntled white men who think that
Speaker 1: this more recent recognition of works not only featuring uh
Speaker 1: themes related to diversity and representation and gender, but also
Speaker 1: written by a more diverse authors is all part of
Speaker 1: a liberal campaign to you know, just just force this
Speaker 1: kind of diversity onto the genre and also onto the readership. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Jeet Here, writing for The New Republic, says that the
Speaker 1: trend has upset right wing fans who say they've been
Speaker 1: marginalized by affirmative action gone mad, and so they basically
Speaker 1: organized this nomination campaign to undo any of the games
Speaker 1: in diversity among authors, creating what Here said was an
Speaker 1: unprecedented party line slate, which has led to the stacking
Speaker 1: of this year's Hugo ballot largely with white men once again,
Speaker 1: and so this year in men made up more than
Speaker 1: eighty percent of fiction nominees, and pretty much everything surrounding
Speaker 1: these conservative factions does start to get really ridiculous, starting
Speaker 1: with the fact that they call themselves either the sad
Speaker 1: Puppies or the rabbit puppies, depending on their level of
Speaker 1: conservative extremism, and a lot of them seem to really
Speaker 1: yearn for a frankly imaginary, a political and non socially
Speaker 1: conscious sci fi past, which has really never been the
Speaker 1: case with sci fi. And it's worth noting too that
Speaker 1: when we say, oh, these are a bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: often angry white men were not just being flip feminists
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, these are guys who are running
Speaker 1: things called the Patriarchy Press and who explicitly right about
Speaker 1: how both women and people of color are inferior in
Speaker 1: a lot of horrifying and bigoted ways and that they
Speaker 1: should not get to vote for the Hugo Awards. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, for instance, the leader of the Rabid Puppies
Speaker 1: said that women shouldn't get to vote and has called
Speaker 1: African Americans quote half savages. These are the types of
Speaker 1: people that we're dealing with. And if you want a
Speaker 1: more in depth look at this whole nonsense, um, I'll
Speaker 1: include a link to and on the media podcast about
Speaker 1: this on our podcast posts on Stuff I've Never Told
Speaker 1: You dot com. But unfortunately their efforts paid off. They
Speaker 1: they managed to really game the system, like you said, Kristen,
Speaker 1: and just under three quarters of the nominees were puppy approved. Well.
Speaker 1: I wonder though, if it is all that unfortunate because
Speaker 1: there was so much backlash, and I think sometimes that
Speaker 1: this backlash had as the you know, opposite effect of
Speaker 1: raising conversations that people like sad puppies and rabbit puppies
Speaker 1: would rather us not have, but only highlights how out
Speaker 1: of touch they are. Yeah, exactly, um. And you know
Speaker 1: it does seem silly when you're talking about a bunch
Speaker 1: of emotional puppies. Um. In terms of science fiction. But
Speaker 1: here points out that quote the ruck is makes a
Speaker 1: lot more sense in the context of science fictions historical
Speaker 1: lack of diversity, because while yes, science fiction and fantasy
Speaker 1: have always toyed with alternate realities and presented alternate possibilities
Speaker 1: for for living life, whether it's our planet or some
Speaker 1: other planet, it has, like a lot of other things,
Speaker 1: historically been sort of run by or the gatekeepers have
Speaker 1: been historically white guys. Yeah, I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: white guys who tend to have very strong political leanings
Speaker 1: one way or another. Um. But one person who really
Speaker 1: stands out from the crowd is an influential sci fi editor,
Speaker 1: John W. Campbell, who in the nineteenes sixties ran the
Speaker 1: leading genre magazine, Analog, and he was well respected obviously
Speaker 1: within the sci fi community, and was also a raging
Speaker 1: racist who published editorials in favor of slavery and pre
Speaker 1: industrial societies, who also endorsed George Wallace for president and
Speaker 1: didn't want black authors or black characters featured two prominently
Speaker 1: in his magazine UM Case in Point sci fi Prodigy.
Speaker 1: He's often called the first African American sci fi writer.
Speaker 1: Samuel R. Delaney was turned down by Campbell to have
Speaker 1: his novel Nova serialized in analog because Campbell said, you know,
Speaker 1: I really don't think our readers would enjoy or connect
Speaker 1: with black main character. Oh, you know, and not to
Speaker 1: mention to the fact that Delaney was black. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's I'm sure there was really nothing going in his
Speaker 1: favorite at that point, even though I mean he had
Speaker 1: already started winning awards, he already had a Hugo under
Speaker 1: his belt for his work. Well, and I wish we
Speaker 1: could say that we still don't see that in the
Speaker 1: publishing industry, whether it's in magazines or books. UM. And
Speaker 1: you know Octavia E. Butler, who obviously well we'll talk
Speaker 1: about more in just a second. Um, she saw all
Speaker 1: sorts of weird things happened with her books. You know,
Speaker 1: she's an African American woman, Uh, and most of her
Speaker 1: protagonists are other African American or black women, depending on
Speaker 1: what universe you're in. I guess right, Um, but she
Speaker 1: often saw her covers featuring white people. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: that kind of whitewashing, that attempt to whitewash a lot
Speaker 1: of science fiction stuff. Well, and and in a piece
Speaker 1: for the New York Review of Science Fiction, Delaney wrote
Speaker 1: about racism and sci fi and actually talked about how
Speaker 1: he where's the label all of first African American science
Speaker 1: fiction writer with caution because there has been a lot
Speaker 1: of a rature of writers of color coming along before him.
Speaker 1: Writing what I mean? He termed it more proto science fiction,
Speaker 1: but still along a lot of the same themes, but
Speaker 1: due to the way white society has worked, they have
Speaker 1: not received much recognition at all. They're not in the
Speaker 1: canon right exactly. And then you have the whole issue
Speaker 1: of of women needing to hide their identities behind pen names.
Speaker 1: This is nothing new, and this certainly is not limited
Speaker 1: to science fiction. But you have people like James Tiptree Jr.
Speaker 1: Who Kristen mentioned earlier a k a. Alice Sheldon Bradley.
Speaker 1: This woman sounds fascinating beyond just her sci fi writing.
Speaker 1: She was a one time CIA agent who earned a
Speaker 1: PhD in psychology, and she created the pseudonym to distance
Speaker 1: herself from her previous writing that was specifically about women
Speaker 1: and girl hood. She later came out and said that
Speaker 1: she was ashamed of taking the quote unquote easy path
Speaker 1: into this male dominated field by changing her name. I
Speaker 1: would definitely want Trip Tree Junior at all Lady Dinner Party. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: there's also C. J. Cherry, and that's Cherry with an
Speaker 1: H at the end um whose real name is Caroline
Speaker 1: Janice Cherry no age, and Cherry added the age just
Speaker 1: made me laugh so that she wouldn't sound like a
Speaker 1: romance novelist. Yeah, I love it. I don't know how
Speaker 1: the H at the end really does anything other than
Speaker 1: make it look like a typo kind of um, but
Speaker 1: but you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. Well,
Speaker 1: you also have author Vernon Lee, whose real name is
Speaker 1: Violet Pege, and Paul ash who was actually Pauline Ashwell,
Speaker 1: fourteen year old Pauline Ashwell. I think it's important to
Speaker 1: note so even though women in sci fi haven't always
Speaker 1: been readily apparent, sometimes due to masculine pseudonyms or going
Speaker 1: just by their initials, they absolutely have been present from
Speaker 1: the beginning. I mean, asking where women in sci fi
Speaker 1: are isn't a new question, but their visibility has ebbed
Speaker 1: and flow, because if you look at the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: as we'll go into more depth on, that was a
Speaker 1: big decade for them, but then there was sort of
Speaker 1: a down swing in the nineteen eighties and nineties. And
Speaker 1: now though, despite all this sad puppy nonsense, there seems
Speaker 1: to be another upswing happening for women in sci fi
Speaker 1: and more visibility, especially if you take fantasy into account. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so, so come with us on this journey back
Speaker 1: to some of the pioneers, because of course we have
Speaker 1: to give you a historical perspective, and it doesn't start
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. It starts in the seventeenth century
Speaker 1: with Lady Margaret Cavendish, who also I would love to
Speaker 1: have at a dinner party, Chris sin. Yeah, this woman
Speaker 1: sounds fantastic, and and not just because she is cited
Speaker 1: as one of the first women to write science fiction
Speaker 1: or one of the first people honestly to write science fiction. Um,
Speaker 1: but I just love her introduction to her book The
Speaker 1: Blazing World. So okay, first let's introduce you to her.
Speaker 1: She was England's first recognized female natural philosopher a k
Speaker 1: A scientist, And she was the first woman to visit
Speaker 1: the Royal Society and she must have made a great
Speaker 1: impression because afterwards they banned women until so so there
Speaker 1: you go, Maggie. Who knows what she did, although she
Speaker 1: was heavily criticized in her time for her sailor's mouth,
Speaker 1: her unusual fashion sense, and her flirtatious behavior. So really
Speaker 1: nothing has changed in society when we look at women.
Speaker 1: Do you know much about her unusual fashion sense? Now?
Speaker 1: I don't, but we'll need to look into that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have so many questions because how unusual can a
Speaker 1: ladies fashion that's really good? And if she was trying
Speaker 1: to get away with yeah, getting away with bifurcated garments, who,
Speaker 1: I don't know. That might be why the Royal Society
Speaker 1: banned women from from attendance. They're like, whoa woman just
Speaker 1: walked in with some bifurcated garments. On guys, we got
Speaker 1: a batton down. The hatch manhood is not safe in here.
Speaker 1: Next thing, you know, they'll be wanting to vote. I know. Well.
Speaker 1: So she was a prolific writer. She published twenty three books,
Speaker 1: including poetry plays, scientific observations, and literary critiques, and in
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty six she wrote the satirical utopian vision work
Speaker 1: The Blazing World. And so you can find this online,
Speaker 1: we'll have a link to it. Um. The introduction is
Speaker 1: so great because it's specifically pointed at noble ladies, she says,
Speaker 1: And if noble ladies you should chance to take pleasure
Speaker 1: in reading these fancies, I should account myself a happy creator.
Speaker 1: If not, I must be content to live a melancholy
Speaker 1: life in my own world. I just love it. I
Speaker 1: love that she automatically calls out her fellow ladies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's calling to her ladies. And then she's given herself
Speaker 1: some props. So she she writes, quote, I'm not covetous,
Speaker 1: but as ambitious as ever of my sex was is
Speaker 1: or can be. To to your horn, Maggie. Which is
Speaker 1: the cause that though I cannot be Henry the five
Speaker 1: or Charles the Second, yet I will endeavor to be
Speaker 1: Margaret the first. And though I have neither power, time,
Speaker 1: nor occasion to be a great conqueror like Alexander or Caesar,
Speaker 1: Yet rather than not be a mistress of the world,
Speaker 1: since fortune and the fates would give me none. I
Speaker 1: have made one of my own. All of that to say,
Speaker 1: Margaret's like, listen, I know I'm not like a keen
Speaker 1: or whatever. I'm not a dude, but I'm making a
Speaker 1: throne for myself and most I can create this universe myself,
Speaker 1: and it's mine, and I've said it in motion and
Speaker 1: I love it. In her epilogue, she says, by this
Speaker 1: poetical description, you may perceive that my ambition is not
Speaker 1: only to be empress, but authoress of a whole world.
Speaker 1: And I mean that sums up science fiction writing right.
Speaker 1: Not only to be an authoress of the whole world,
Speaker 1: but you know, or to be as awesome as Margaret Cavendish,
Speaker 1: but to really be able to use your imagination to
Speaker 1: create the world that you would like to see. Even
Speaker 1: though you aren't a man in sixteen sixty six and
Speaker 1: you can't rule the world or be an Alexander the Great,
Speaker 1: you can be a conqueror of your own kind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And can we just take a moment to call out
Speaker 1: all of the amazing uh feminizing of words she puts
Speaker 1: in there, Because Margaret is a creator ress, she is
Speaker 1: an empress, an authoress and a mistress of the world.
Speaker 1: So I mean there's really no holding Margaret Cavendish back
Speaker 1: loved ladies. She loves ladies. Being a lady. Yeah, being
Speaker 1: a ladies, great feathers, natural philosophizing a k a. Being science.
Speaker 1: I know it's wonderful. Um. Well, then if we hop
Speaker 1: forward to the nineteenth century, we come to the woman
Speaker 1: whom many call the first science fiction author, Mary Shelley,
Speaker 1: because of course she wrote Frankenstein. Frankenstein. Yeah, she's definitely
Speaker 1: a science fiction pioneer, and and reading about her authorship
Speaker 1: made me want to go back and read the eighteen
Speaker 1: eighteen version of Frankenstein. Um, because I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirty one version was heavily edited. She heavily
Speaker 1: edited thanks to a lot of outside pressure from people
Speaker 1: who were like, this is too weird, Mary, we need
Speaker 1: to scale this back. We know your mother was Mary
Speaker 1: Wolfston Craft, and she penned a vindicate of the rights
Speaker 1: of women, and she's a big old feminist and whatever,
Speaker 1: even though we don't use that word yet, but we
Speaker 1: need you to scale this monster book back. Well, her
Speaker 1: entire biography. Yeah, talking about Wolston Craft is so fascinating
Speaker 1: considering you know, her her parents, even though Wolston Kraft
Speaker 1: died what only days after Mary Shelley was born, and
Speaker 1: then she went on to marry Percy Shelley, and for
Speaker 1: a long time her legacy, partially by her family, was
Speaker 1: sanitized in a way because, um, she was too progressive.
Speaker 1: She was seen as kind of sexually wanton. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: she and her husband had an open marriage or they
Speaker 1: didn't get married for I can't remember what it is.
Speaker 1: I think they had an open marriage and they were
Speaker 1: just open to love us. Yeah, I mean, well, Percy
Speaker 1: came along when Mary was still pretty young. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think he was still married and separated from his wife,
Speaker 1: got with Mary. His first wife ended up drowning herself
Speaker 1: with heart from heartbreak. Talking about drama rama, I know, Well,
Speaker 1: they didn't have the internet, so you've got to do
Speaker 1: something real Housewives of Wolston grows right. Well, So moving
Speaker 1: way forward into the nineteen sixties. Alright, So so you
Speaker 1: gotta keep in mind, like nineteen fifties and sixties were
Speaker 1: getting into the space race. We're getting into the space age.
Speaker 1: Cosmonauts and astronauts, laser guns, laser guns, um and so
Speaker 1: it only makes sense that all of a sudden we
Speaker 1: see this huge spike in science fiction, which of course
Speaker 1: brings along with it ladies sci fi and fantasy writers
Speaker 1: like Madeline Lingle, who wrote A Wrinkle in Time in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, and she shares some stuff in common
Speaker 1: with uh one of our other favorites, Judy Bloom, because
Speaker 1: A Wrinkle in Time is on the American Library Association's
Speaker 1: list of the one most frequently challenged books of nine
Speaker 1: thanks to all of the fantastic references in there. Two
Speaker 1: Witches in Crystal Balls h the claim that it challenges
Speaker 1: religious beliefs and the that it lists Jesus among other
Speaker 1: great artists, philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders instead of kind
Speaker 1: of breaking him out on his own deal basically. And
Speaker 1: then also in the sixties, you have Angela Carter, who
Speaker 1: was influenced by the market assad whom she said was
Speaker 1: one of the first writers to view women as more
Speaker 1: than baby factories. Yeah. She she didn't mind the whole
Speaker 1: aspect of of bondage or sadism that would put other
Speaker 1: people off. She just said, all right, well, at least
Speaker 1: women are active these stories. Yeah, and she would straight
Speaker 1: a little more horror than straight science fiction. For instance,
Speaker 1: her collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, is one
Speaker 1: of her most beloved and in case your interest still
Speaker 1: isn't piqued, Vulture describes her as the feminist horror author
Speaker 1: you need to read immediately, well, not immediately once you
Speaker 1: finished listening to this podcast, Yeah, don't turn it off yet.
Speaker 1: And then that leads us up. Now that we've blossed
Speaker 1: over a ton of time on our timeline here, that
Speaker 1: leads us up now to the nineteen seventies, which Kristen mentioned,
Speaker 1: of course at the top of the podcast was a
Speaker 1: huge era for science fiction and women in science fiction
Speaker 1: in particular. A lot of this information is coming from
Speaker 1: a November article in the Atlantic, and they cited author
Speaker 1: Anne A. Leckey, who herself is quite famous these days.
Speaker 1: She says, the seventies was a decade that was crammed
Speaker 1: with prominent women's science fiction writers, and a lot of
Speaker 1: women made their debut in that decade or really came
Speaker 1: to prominence. Well, so there's one writer who was definitely
Speaker 1: leading the pack who we did mention in our Visionary
Speaker 1: Fiction episode with Sarah Mark, and that is Ursula kay
Speaker 1: La Gwin yeah. I mean, technically she's still in the sixties,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen sixty nine leading into the seventies. I
Speaker 1: don't think that I need to explain how decades were
Speaker 1: to our podcast audience. La Gwin publishes the critically acclaimed
Speaker 1: The Left Hand of Darkness, which was her first major
Speaker 1: sci fi book, followed by The Dispossessed and Always Coming
Speaker 1: Home and The Left Hand of Darkness, so really put
Speaker 1: her on the map. It won her both a Hugo
Speaker 1: and a Nebula Award, and she describes it as a
Speaker 1: thought experiment featuring sexless aliens who can reproduce with anybody
Speaker 1: and the only take on sexual characteristics once a month
Speaker 1: in order to breed, so they don't have any biological
Speaker 1: sex or gender and hence no sexual prejudice. So it's
Speaker 1: considered highly feminist text. That's right, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people today look back and criticize it as still being
Speaker 1: too safe because they say the main character is a
Speaker 1: heterosexual male. He's he never has sex with any of
Speaker 1: the other characters in the book, um human or sexless
Speaker 1: alien or otherwise, And yes, well this is sort of
Speaker 1: a sexless, genderless species. Everyone in the book is referred
Speaker 1: to as he. But Lagwin did later say that she
Speaker 1: regretted not picking she or some made up pronoun for everybody,
Speaker 1: but you know, at least to give Legun in nine
Speaker 1: some some do critics, I mean, but critics of the time, though,
Speaker 1: weren't so concerned about her gendered pronoun, but the fact
Speaker 1: that they thought realistic fiction was the only type that
Speaker 1: could be literary. And that's something that Lagun has stood
Speaker 1: out for in terms of bridging the divide between sci
Speaker 1: fi and more literary fiction. And I think that's an
Speaker 1: obstacle that a lot of science fiction and fantasy and
Speaker 1: other other writers of that ILK run up against is
Speaker 1: not being taken seriously in the literary community. Apparently, you know,
Speaker 1: they say, oh, well, the only thing you can write
Speaker 1: to be taken seriously is like a book about family
Speaker 1: or you know, some type of drama like that. But
Speaker 1: a book about aliens or or taking place on another
Speaker 1: planet that that can at least teach us a little
Speaker 1: bit about ourselves while we're reading it. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that's a worthwhile pursuit too, And I think just
Speaker 1: interesting side note, both Langwin and Angela Carter were inspired
Speaker 1: by Virginia Wolf, who herself was obviously a massively important
Speaker 1: literary figure. Another great thing about Langwin, though, is she
Speaker 1: is not shy about writing about characters of color. She says,
Speaker 1: if you look at my books, you'll find that most
Speaker 1: of my central characters aren't white. You don't see it
Speaker 1: on the cover because they refuse to put people of
Speaker 1: color on book jackets. But I've always done that deliberately
Speaker 1: because most people in the world aren't white. Why in
Speaker 1: the future would we assume they are in The nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies were also a really important decade for Octavia E. Butler,
Speaker 1: who would later become the first science fiction writer to
Speaker 1: win a MacArthur Genius Grant, and in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: her first story Crossover was published in The Clarion and Bology,
Speaker 1: and that was then followed up by her first novel,
Speaker 1: pattern Master, published in nineteen seventies six, and for a
Speaker 1: little bit of a throwback, she briefly studied under Samuel
Speaker 1: Delaney that African American science fiction author Slash Prodigy we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier and um pattern Mastering, though, kicked off
Speaker 1: the first of her five volume Patternist series and then
Speaker 1: closing out the decade in nineteen seventy one. Her publication
Speaker 1: of Kindred, according to her website, allowed her to support
Speaker 1: herself fully on her writing full time, which what a
Speaker 1: dream to achieve. Absolutely, and I mean the seventies was
Speaker 1: a great time for women. As Lucky pointed out, if
Speaker 1: you look at the women nominated for Hugos in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, they include La Gwin, Vonda McIntyre and McCaffrey,
Speaker 1: Kate Wilhelm, Joan Vinge, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. And then
Speaker 1: there are a couple of lady sci fi writers who
Speaker 1: are definitely working in that second wave feminist theme of
Speaker 1: the time into their work. You've got James Tittree Jr.
Speaker 1: Who we mentioned earlier, is Alice Bradley Shelton, who pens
Speaker 1: the feminist short story The Women Men Don't See. And
Speaker 1: you have Joanna Russ publishing the feminist sci fi book
Speaker 1: The Female Man, which was nominated for a Negula Award,
Speaker 1: and it really explored the social construction of gender roles.
Speaker 1: But today it's considered problematic for a lot of trans women.
Speaker 1: As Cheryl Morgan pointed out over at Auto Straddle back
Speaker 1: in April. She writes that trans women in Russ's book,
Speaker 1: are manufactured to provide compliant wives for the men because
Speaker 1: all of the quote unquote real women in the world
Speaker 1: have long since gone off and found it a lesbian
Speaker 1: separatist state. So I can see that it would be problematic,
Speaker 1: but I just think that plot line is the bubble
Speaker 1: lesbian separatist state is hilarious. Well. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: our podcast on women in farming and how some you know,
Speaker 1: radical lesbian feminists would kind of go off and have
Speaker 1: their own start their own collective farms, sandsmen to live
Speaker 1: completely away from male society. Um. And even today though
Speaker 1: when you look at any listical of the best women's
Speaker 1: sci fi writers, the best sci fi books written by women,
Speaker 1: all those all this kind of women's centric sci fi rankings,
Speaker 1: all of these names continually come up. I mean, the
Speaker 1: seventies clearly gonna kinda lay the foundation for the female
Speaker 1: authored sci fi can and it seems like and um,
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties were not as prolific of a time,
Speaker 1: or at least not as celebrated of a time for
Speaker 1: women in science fiction. But we have Octavia E. Butler
Speaker 1: giving us some bright spots as well when she wins
Speaker 1: a Hugo Award for her short story Speech Sounds, and
Speaker 1: the novelette Blood Child, which also won Nebula and Locust
Speaker 1: Awards and was recognized by the San Francisco Chronicle as
Speaker 1: the best novelette. And that's what Caroline and I have
Speaker 1: been reading over the couple weeks, and it's so good.
Speaker 1: It's so good. Her writing is so and I don't
Speaker 1: say this as a negative. Her writing is so spare,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to read. It really puts the focus
Speaker 1: on her fascinating plot lines. Um, because we picked up
Speaker 1: it's Blood Child and other Stories, which is obviously a
Speaker 1: group of short stories by Octavia Butler, Octavia E. Butler,
Speaker 1: don't drop Eddie. Um. But it's so interesting reading her
Speaker 1: work because all of her stories kind of start out
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, this just seems like a normal
Speaker 1: story in a normal world with regular people, and then
Speaker 1: of course she throws in some fascinating twist and you realize, then,
Speaker 1: what's sort of a great example of this visionary fiction
Speaker 1: Octavia Butler's work is because she does she just throws
Speaker 1: what seems like a regular world with regular people who
Speaker 1: have regular fears and hopes and desires at you, but
Speaker 1: then they have to struggle with something like a crazy
Speaker 1: disease that's been brought about by sort of some drug therapy,
Speaker 1: or about aliens needing to uh kind of stick their
Speaker 1: eggs in you and you have to birth them as
Speaker 1: a male person. In Blood Child, Yeah, And one of
Speaker 1: the things I love about the short story collection we've
Speaker 1: been we've both been reading is that it includes each
Speaker 1: story includes an afterward from Butler, And in discussing Blood Child, Um,
Speaker 1: she was saying that a lot of times she's surprised
Speaker 1: by how people think that the story is about slavery
Speaker 1: or colonization, but her motivation was really wanting to write
Speaker 1: about and explore the concept of a world where men
Speaker 1: could get pregnant and what would that look like. And
Speaker 1: to your point about these being stories that are just
Speaker 1: about people until some kind of strange element is tossed
Speaker 1: in there, I think gets to a lot of misconceptions
Speaker 1: about science fiction that is just laser guns and weird
Speaker 1: goo on strange planets, But it seems like the best
Speaker 1: science fiction out there. It makes us question our own
Speaker 1: lives because a lot of times it does take place
Speaker 1: in perhaps quite ordinary settings, but then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you have knock, knock, knock, the strange creature knocking
Speaker 1: at your door to give you drug eggs, knock you up? Yes,
Speaker 1: then have you know bug sex with you? And of
Speaker 1: course will that is disgusting. Um. A lot of people
Speaker 1: out there would call people like Octavia E. Butler or
Speaker 1: Slick Legwins soft science fiction. A lot of people out
Speaker 1: there would argue that hard science fiction. Um, he's the
Speaker 1: stuff not only with laser guns, but that really delves
Speaker 1: into scientific theory and and ideas about you know, robots
Speaker 1: and machines. Um, but I think that that is not
Speaker 1: necessarily as accessible to the average reader. And I don't
Speaker 1: just mean us ladies here, Chatt and Kristen. I just mean, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the average reader might not be as turned
Speaker 1: on by those heavily scientific or mechanical concept Well, Caroline
Speaker 1: speak for yourself, because plasma ray blueprints, who get me
Speaker 1: going in the evening? Um, but the whole real science
Speaker 1: fiction slash hard sci fi versus quote unquote soft sci fi.
Speaker 1: I guess sounds very comfortable. I know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: very plush. Is so reminiscent though of conversations we've had
Speaker 1: about gender and gaming and music and music criticism, where
Speaker 1: there's this particular type of thing that is considered the
Speaker 1: real craft and art that is usually um held away
Speaker 1: from from women. It's usually something propped up to say,
Speaker 1: to keep other people at bay, essentially. And that's not
Speaker 1: to say that whoever, men or women or whoever won't
Speaker 1: understand or appreciate quote unquote hard science fiction. But I
Speaker 1: don't think that the existence of that type of sci
Speaker 1: fi should negate or or lessen the importance and enjoyment
Speaker 1: that people can get out of other stories. Well, in
Speaker 1: this idea of insider versus outsider status of hard sci
Speaker 1: fi versus sci fi and fantasy could tie into Octavia E.
Speaker 1: Butler's personal experiences that have fueled her sci fi explorations
Speaker 1: in her writing. Yeah, her background definitely informs her writing.
Speaker 1: In told the Los Angeles Times, I'm black, I'm solitary.
Speaker 1: I've always been an outsider because growing up, she was dyslexic,
Speaker 1: she was tall for her age, she was super shy,
Speaker 1: but she was also a big reader, and she really
Speaker 1: took a lot of refuge like like a lot of
Speaker 1: people do in books and stories. And in two thousands
Speaker 1: she told the New York Times when I began writing
Speaker 1: science fiction, when I began reading, Heck, I wasn't in
Speaker 1: any of the stuff I read. The only black people
Speaker 1: you found were occasional characters, or characters who were so
Speaker 1: feeble witted that they couldn't manage anything. Anyway, I wrote
Speaker 1: myself in since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing.
Speaker 1: And does that not echo back to what Margaret Cavendish
Speaker 1: said in her epilogue and her introduction to her book. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean Octavia E. Butler was the empress of her
Speaker 1: own world. That's right, well, straying even farther away from
Speaker 1: hard sci fi if we get into the late ninety
Speaker 1: nineties and now more and more publishers are expanding this
Speaker 1: genre into fantasy realms, and they're marketing, actively marketing more
Speaker 1: of these kinds of science fiction and fantasy stories thanks
Speaker 1: to the popular charity of series like Harry Potter, The
Speaker 1: Hunger Games and Divergent, which have proven to these publishers
Speaker 1: and imprints that hey, women's sci fi and fantasy authors
Speaker 1: can ring in the cash, right, yeah, because those are
Speaker 1: all great lady authors, and they've all gone on to
Speaker 1: be incredibly popular and huge money making film series. And
Speaker 1: Julie cris who's the editorial director at Tour UK, which
Speaker 1: is a sci fi, fantasy and horror imprint of Pan McMillan,
Speaker 1: it's pretty optimistic, she told The Guardian. There's been a
Speaker 1: real sea change in the last five or six years.
Speaker 1: Not only are more women buying into and reading fantasy,
Speaker 1: but we're also seeing more female fantasy authors get recognition.
Speaker 1: And I mean shows like Game of Thrones have definitely helped.
Speaker 1: Of course, yes, Game of Thrones was obviously a book
Speaker 1: series by George R. Martin before it was a show.
Speaker 1: But not everybody's read the books. I haven't read the books,
Speaker 1: but Caroline, so many leave. I just like the show
Speaker 1: so much. Um. But yeah, shows like that and and
Speaker 1: how popular it is, it's definitely sucked in a lot
Speaker 1: of audience members who maybe you would have avoided fantasy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there's a whole social media aspect that has
Speaker 1: helped introduce female authors and to new audiences, and on
Speaker 1: top of that to given a platform for visibility and response.
Speaker 1: When things like the Hugo Awards, nonsense goes down like
Speaker 1: that doesn't fly anymore. Sure, and it's the same thing
Speaker 1: that we we touched on in our episodes about comic
Speaker 1: books and women in comics and cartoons, that now it's
Speaker 1: so easy or relatively easy for women to get their
Speaker 1: um comic books or their digital comics out to other
Speaker 1: people online. So we're gonna move away from focusing on
Speaker 1: the sci fi creators and looking at gender within science
Speaker 1: fiction plot lines. Well, it shouldn't be too hard to imagine,
Speaker 1: especially with everything that Kristen and I have already talked
Speaker 1: about so far, that science fiction is really the perfect tool,
Speaker 1: the perfect literary tool with which to play with gender identity,
Speaker 1: because gender can be just a role that a character
Speaker 1: takes on as it's convenient or beneficial. Um. And these
Speaker 1: worlds without sex or gender allow characters in the arc
Speaker 1: of the storyline to transcend the boundaries that we humans
Speaker 1: are so used to dealing with. Yeah, I mean, these
Speaker 1: these are all kind of set up as scientific experiments,
Speaker 1: are in the way that we talk about the studies
Speaker 1: that we cite throughout the podcast, where you can control
Speaker 1: for different variables and see what the outcome is with
Speaker 1: your mind. And one of the masters of tinkering with
Speaker 1: those variables is, of course Octavia E. Butler who plays
Speaker 1: around with the idea of gender in her Zeno Genesis relogy,
Speaker 1: which is about an alien species that basically saves humans
Speaker 1: from themselves and has three genders male, female, and ulloy
Speaker 1: and reproduction involves all three. Yeah, you basically have this, uh,
Speaker 1: this Uloy character who kind of goes between the men
Speaker 1: and the women and you know, takes out the bits
Speaker 1: that are needed to to make a baby and then
Speaker 1: sticks it back into the lady. Um being real scientific
Speaker 1: since this is a science fiction episode, I want to
Speaker 1: be very scientific. Um. But the motivation being that it's
Speaker 1: it equalizes men and women more when nobody is responsible
Speaker 1: for the giving and the taking and the carrying of
Speaker 1: well the woman still carrying the child. But it's kind
Speaker 1: of putting things on a more level playing field. And
Speaker 1: Uloi reminds me of ou mommy. Is it like the mommy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean about umami. I mean, what do we have
Speaker 1: to salty and sweet? Well, then a little better and
Speaker 1: now I'm talking about our our senses. It is lunchtime,
Speaker 1: It's true. Well then over at the Guardian in April,
Speaker 1: Damian Walter helpfully listed out some sci fi authors who
Speaker 1: have really explored gender and sexuality and Walter sites Ian
Speaker 1: in Banks and the Culture series in which members of
Speaker 1: this society that Banks has created who are called the Culture,
Speaker 1: are able to change sex and gender roles at will Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Kim Stanley Robinson in his book twenty twelve, envisions
Speaker 1: a future with fluid non binary gender and so avid
Speaker 1: listeners of of Sminty should recognize the concept of fluid
Speaker 1: gender and that this is not some crazy science fiction
Speaker 1: concept to either have fluid gender or fluid sexuality. And
Speaker 1: in addition to Walter at The Guardian, Jeff summers Over
Speaker 1: at the Barnes and Noble blog in November fourteen also
Speaker 1: listed a bunch of people who toyed with the idea
Speaker 1: of gender and sexuality in sci fi, and of course
Speaker 1: he mentions Lagwin and her Left Hand of Darkness, but
Speaker 1: also talks about Jeff L. Chalker's entire catalog, saying that
Speaker 1: Chalker consistently looks at gender is something that's not a
Speaker 1: fixed binary code of nature and that the focus is
Speaker 1: more on the character's actions, not on gender roles. And
Speaker 1: he also lists Melissa Scott and her book shadow Man,
Speaker 1: which features a universe with five genders and the people
Speaker 1: in this universe end up with five genders because okay,
Speaker 1: by now we have faster than light space travel. Oh
Speaker 1: but wait, to do that, you have to take this drug,
Speaker 1: and this drug causes there to be more than two genders.
Speaker 1: There's five now, um. And she also looks in light
Speaker 1: of this fact that now there's five genders, she looks
Speaker 1: at the one world that's cut off from the rest,
Speaker 1: where binary genders are still strictly enforced. So being able
Speaker 1: to look at what happens when basically you have Earth
Speaker 1: and humans you know which are I don't know that
Speaker 1: in her book it is Earth, but basically Earth um,
Speaker 1: where we so strictly adhere to the binary gender system,
Speaker 1: and then look at it through the eyes of people
Speaker 1: who are like, oh, we're way past that. Parallel universes
Speaker 1: like The Sliding Door starring Gwyneth Paltrow of science fiction.
Speaker 1: I watched that movie so much growing up. Really, I
Speaker 1: loved it. We ever tempted to get her post break
Speaker 1: up haircut. No, but my best friend did. Yeah, Yeah
Speaker 1: she did. She rocked it. She's got that jawline, though
Speaker 1: I don't have that same jawline. You gotta have that jawline.
Speaker 1: Back to sci fi and Summer's rounds out the list
Speaker 1: two with Anne Lecky, whom we've mentioned earlier, whose debut
Speaker 1: novel Ancillary Justice, gobbled up all sorts of awards, including
Speaker 1: the Hugo and the Nebula. And in Ancillary Justice, the
Speaker 1: main character comes from a genderless society but refers to
Speaker 1: everyone they meet I she, and gender or lack of
Speaker 1: it isn't the focus, though, non gendered beings are normalized,
Speaker 1: which is a really interesting way of of looking at
Speaker 1: it as well, when it's not the focal point, when
Speaker 1: you just sort of normalize it, then see how that
Speaker 1: makes everything else unfold. And Alex Dally McFarland over at
Speaker 1: tour dot com is somebody who's written extensively about gender
Speaker 1: um and binary gender in sci fi, and she's gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of flak for it by a lot of people,
Speaker 1: probably some of the sad puppies who are basically like,
Speaker 1: get your gender paws off of my science fiction um.
Speaker 1: But she writes about how she has issues with both
Speaker 1: Lecky and Lagwyn's use of a gender pronoun pronoun for
Speaker 1: non gendered people because, like we said, uh La Gwyn
Speaker 1: used he for everyone in Left Hand of Darkness and
Speaker 1: Lecky used she for everybody, and McFarland says that non
Speaker 1: gendered people are not a science fictional concept. They are
Speaker 1: real people. Non binary pronouns exist that would better represent them.
Speaker 1: And of course a lot of people spoke up and said, yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely agree with you. Some people said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: those concepts or those words are very human, They're very um.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're only known to certain communities in certain cultures
Speaker 1: here in America or whatever, basically saying well, just come
Speaker 1: up with something new, or maybe don't quibble with it
Speaker 1: because it's science fiction and they can do whatever they want.
Speaker 1: I also wonder if there can be a utility and say,
Speaker 1: with Lucky using she, with using these established pronouns, that
Speaker 1: might help us better grasp the concept even more because
Speaker 1: it feels more relatable and direct. And maybe I'm like
Speaker 1: also looking at things like way to Binary. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if if the point is to really make the reader
Speaker 1: explore life stands gender or non binary gender, then at
Speaker 1: least for me as a reader and how my imagination works,
Speaker 1: having at least like one signpost stuck in the world
Speaker 1: that I walk through every day almost makes it feel
Speaker 1: it makes the imaginary more real. If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And I guess there's also the possibility that if Lecky
Speaker 1: or la Gwin had and I'm not saying that they
Speaker 1: shouldn't have or whatever, but there's also the possibility that
Speaker 1: if they came up with their own pronouns, that you,
Speaker 1: the reader would still imprint your own desire to have
Speaker 1: someone be male. Like if someone's the protagonist, and this
Speaker 1: this being, if it's an alien, for instance, isn't meant
Speaker 1: to be male or female, but it has a pronoun
Speaker 1: that's completely new and alien that you might just assume, Oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's the it's the lead character. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: action and laser gains, and so I'm just gonna put
Speaker 1: he on it. Oh that's well. And that too though,
Speaker 1: I that's a point for using a non gendered pronoun,
Speaker 1: because then it might make you stop and think, wait,
Speaker 1: why am I inherently like masculinizing or feminizing this character?
Speaker 1: What does that say about me? Yeah? And so I
Speaker 1: guess Lucky's use of she it does seem like it's
Speaker 1: kind of a direct answer to Laguin's use of he um,
Speaker 1: But maybe it is that conscious like, Okay, stop, we're
Speaker 1: gonna not use he We're gonna use she for everything
Speaker 1: and it and it sort of does force you to
Speaker 1: think like, oh, well do I always think? He probably
Speaker 1: um well? And Damian Walter is similarly impatient as Alex
Speaker 1: Jalley McFarland is for the queering of science fiction. In
Speaker 1: The Guardian, Walter writes the science fiction needs to reflect
Speaker 1: that the future is queer, saying that beyond even the
Speaker 1: pronoun issue, too many storylines focus on straight narratives. Plus
Speaker 1: you have a lot of conservative sci fi fans attacking
Speaker 1: people like McFarlane for calling for more diversity and better
Speaker 1: representation of actual non gender conforming people. But why would
Speaker 1: this even matter? Why should we even care about science
Speaker 1: fiction and this kind of representation? And Malta rights that
Speaker 1: this tug of war exists because science fiction is quote
Speaker 1: torn between its higher mission to explore the future and
Speaker 1: it's lower function as mass entertainment. Yeah, and and he
Speaker 1: he highlights that reasoning and immediately knocks it down by
Speaker 1: saying the science fiction novels of Ian and Banks were
Speaker 1: bestsellers many times over in part because the future they
Speaker 1: explored was openly queer. He also cites Nicola Griffith's book
Speaker 1: Hilled which features a bisexual protagonist, which was nominated for
Speaker 1: a Nebula Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
Speaker 1: of America. So it's possible. Hello, It's possible to have
Speaker 1: people of different sexual orientation, different sexualities, um, leading a
Speaker 1: story and still have it be incredibly successful. Because I mean,
Speaker 1: if if anywhere is going to do it and really
Speaker 1: be successful with it, it's gonna be science fiction. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're imagining worlds with aliens, can we not imagine by
Speaker 1: sexual people? Yeah, And so for that reason, it's not
Speaker 1: terribly surprising that a lot of people would say that
Speaker 1: we still have a long way to go in terms
Speaker 1: of representing gender nonconforming characters and trans characters in science
Speaker 1: fiction and not always hewing to such traditional heteronormative masculine
Speaker 1: and feminine roles. And we do still also have a
Speaker 1: long way to go in terms of acknowledging women's place
Speaker 1: in sci fi authorship, both now and in the past. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of authors names that seem to
Speaker 1: get excavated every couple of years when there's sort of
Speaker 1: a lady writer trend going on in the media. Um,
Speaker 1: But you know, some people would argue, you know, why
Speaker 1: do we need to fight for or care about the
Speaker 1: inclusion of characters of different sexualities or backgrounds or sexual
Speaker 1: identities or anything like that. And I don't know that
Speaker 1: we necessarily do need to fight for them, but I
Speaker 1: do think it helps to be aware that in terms
Speaker 1: of stories getting to publishers and editors and then actually
Speaker 1: being published, we're probably not seeing the full scope of
Speaker 1: of things getting represented. That there are probably so many
Speaker 1: store great stories out there by great writers who were
Speaker 1: just not saying because maybe publishers are straying away from uh,
Speaker 1: well you wrote about a gay alien or or a
Speaker 1: trans woman leading you know, the revolution of the universe
Speaker 1: or things like that, And so I do I do
Speaker 1: think it is helpful to sort of go forward with
Speaker 1: the knowledge that there's other stuff out there and other
Speaker 1: stories that we're being cheated out of because maybe some
Speaker 1: publishers are just kind of afraid of it. Well, and
Speaker 1: when it comes to gender and science fiction as well,
Speaker 1: I would be not so concerned in terms of the
Speaker 1: publishing end of it, although yes, absolutely a concern. But
Speaker 1: I wonder too if you know, if it's even more
Speaker 1: helpful for science fiction to be kind of moved away
Speaker 1: from this idea that it's just like a dude thing
Speaker 1: for the sake of girl readers who might think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if I really like the science fiction stuff, but I
Speaker 1: should hide it because this is what you know, nerdy
Speaker 1: boys like and not what nerdy or cool girls like,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, that's one thing that we haven't
Speaker 1: talked about either in terms of the gendering of sci
Speaker 1: fi fandom, although I think that that's definitely changing with
Speaker 1: the rise of cons and social media and just sort
Speaker 1: of the mainstream in general of fandom. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think that the recognition of women's sci fi authors and
Speaker 1: the works that they're creating has a positive trickle effect
Speaker 1: hopefully to readership as well. Yeah, and I mean people
Speaker 1: are definitely working on it. Last year, the science fiction
Speaker 1: and fantasy magazine light Speed published a special issue called
Speaker 1: Women Destroy science Fiction, which was immediately followed up by
Speaker 1: Women Destroy Fantasy and Women Destroy Horror. And these issues
Speaker 1: were edited and written entirely by women, and they were
Speaker 1: funded by a whole bunch of people over on Kickstarter.
Speaker 1: And they're not meant to actually destroy science fiction? Are
Speaker 1: these other genres, as plenty of sad puppies have claimed,
Speaker 1: But They're meant to confront the notion that women don't
Speaker 1: write real sci fi, that they write some sort of softer,
Speaker 1: terrible version of it. And you know, it's to confront
Speaker 1: those stereotypes, but also to expand the whole sci fi
Speaker 1: universe in general, to show that there are other voices
Speaker 1: out there and that they're just as quote unquote real
Speaker 1: as any other sci fi authors. And oh, for the
Speaker 1: future a day in my visionary fiction when women won't
Speaker 1: need to prove they can do anything quote unquote real
Speaker 1: in comparison to men, because we just accept people as
Speaker 1: people and having their own unique strength. That gets so old,
Speaker 1: It gets so old the idea, oh, this is written
Speaker 1: entirely by women, this is composed entirely by women. We're
Speaker 1: showing things entirely by women, which I see the point,
Speaker 1: but it gets it does get exhausting because it's like, well, awesome,
Speaker 1: Oh what a notion something can be done entirely by women.
Speaker 1: Let's move on and go read a book on the beach.
Speaker 1: I guess five book? Yeah, like Blood Child, like Left
Speaker 1: Hand of Darkness. So, Caroline, what is your next sci
Speaker 1: fi read going to be? Um? Well, I literally have
Speaker 1: Left Hand of Darkness in my bag literally literally have
Speaker 1: it out there right now in my bag outside the studio,
Speaker 1: and I just have not read it yet. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to get my hands on some Angela Carter,
Speaker 1: I think, because I mean a feminist tour author that
Speaker 1: I have to read right now. I mean, I do
Speaker 1: what I'm told when it comes to headlines, when it
Speaker 1: comes to click baity headlines on the internet. Right So
Speaker 1: that sounds like a fun one for a summer vacation,
Speaker 1: if if it ever happens for me this year. So
Speaker 1: let's live vicariously through our readers. We want to know
Speaker 1: what you're reading this summer. If it is science fiction, fantastic.
Speaker 1: If it's not, you just want to share fantastic as well.
Speaker 1: Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is where
Speaker 1: you can send all of your sci fi recommendations. You
Speaker 1: can also tweet them to us at mom Stuff podcast
Speaker 1: or messages on Facebook. And we've got a couple of
Speaker 1: messages to share with you right now. I have a
Speaker 1: letter here from Helen about our bisexual erasial episode. She says,
Speaker 1: I'm an eighteen year old pan sexual female and I
Speaker 1: do find that bisexual and fluid orientations in general do
Speaker 1: get ignored a lot by straight and gay orientations. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons I identify as pan instead of BUY
Speaker 1: is that when I was trying to figure out my
Speaker 1: identify er, I felt very uncomfortable with the term bisexual.
Speaker 1: This is a lot to do with the negative attitudes
Speaker 1: towards bisexuals that stigmatized and ostracized bisexuality. Pan Sexuality meant
Speaker 1: an escape from the negativity and the sick feeling I
Speaker 1: had associated with bisexuality. A few years on, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to reclaim bisexual as a term for myself because
Speaker 1: I know that the discomfort I felt is a social construct,
Speaker 1: and I want to be more involved in the LGBT
Speaker 1: i q A discussion and culture. The fact that P
Speaker 1: isn't a letter included in that acronym is telling my
Speaker 1: sexuality is way more to me than just who I'm
Speaker 1: attracted to. It's who I'm friends with, the things I
Speaker 1: talk about, the way I dressed, and the media I
Speaker 1: consume and obsess about on Tumblr. It would be great
Speaker 1: if society treated sexuality as such. Well. We have a
Speaker 1: very topical letter here from Menty's superstar fan Hannah she
Speaker 1: Right heloci Squared. Just a quick message about one television
Speaker 1: character who is described as omnisexual and hates the boxes
Speaker 1: we seem to crush people into. Captain Jack Parkness, as
Speaker 1: portrayed by John Barrowman. Jack is a recurring character on
Speaker 1: Doctor Who and the lead on the Doctor Who spin
Speaker 1: off Torchwood. Jack was born and raised in the fifty
Speaker 1: one century and is stranded in the twenty one. He's
Speaker 1: used to a culture in which romantic and sexual options
Speaker 1: go far beyond different sexes or genders and include aliens,
Speaker 1: both humanoid and non humanoid, so he finds our current
Speaker 1: culture stifling. He often scoffs at his employees attempts to
Speaker 1: categorize him and others with a muttered few people in
Speaker 1: your quaint little categories. Jack is not bisexual, but he's heroic, strong, caring,
Speaker 1: and funny alongside his tendency to see beauty and sexual
Speaker 1: allure in everyone terrestrial or extra. He may be easily
Speaker 1: turned on in an unrepentant flirt, but he is a
Speaker 1: genuinely good man and extremely competent. I love the show, Hannah,
Speaker 1: and thanks to everybody who's written into us. Mom Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot Com is our email address
Speaker 1: and for links to all of our social media as
Speaker 1: well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts, including
Speaker 1: this one with links to a Lady Margaret Cavendish's book
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other fun stuff. Head on over
Speaker 1: to stuff Mom Never told You dot com for moralness
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Isn't how Stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com