REDISCOVERY - SCIENCE FICTION BY WOMEN (1958-1963) review by KeLP
My penny's-worth on this book, before I get into the details, has two parts. Half-penny one, it is obvious that 50 years after the Feminist Revolution, the feminists are still whining over nothings. The second half-penny is that Sci-Fi by women, as with Sci-fi by men, is uneven and varied in talent. No difference. All is normal.
I read the Foreword and Introduction before I read the stories, but I deliberately refrained from reading the individual intros until after I finished the book, just to not be prejudiced. Dr. Laura Brodian Freas Beraha, while accepting the "discrimination" meme, ended her Foreword with a better viewpoint: "What you are going to read is really good science fiction, plain and simple."
Gideon Marcus, on the other hand, was full-throttle feminist in her Introduction; evil males kept poor females from getting published, it was a conspiracy, because no self-respecting male in the 50s and 60s would be caught dead reading something written by a woman. That is a calumny that the feminists have put out since their founding, and is so demonstrably wrong . . . but that's for another day and time.
The individual intros were revealing. John W. Campbell Jr., who has been condemned by history as a rigid conservative, "happily" published women authors. Guess he didn't get the memo from his readers that he shouldn't do so. And Kit Reed said she never faced discrimination. Ditto for her, where's her justifiable outrage at her treatment, she must be a traitor to her sex.
There has been no societal or organized discrimination. Individuals have prejudices and bigotry, sure, but ask this: how many editors, upon discovering the pseudonym is for a female author, demanded no more manuscripts from that person? Show me widespread refusals on that basis. You won't find them, because while a prejudiced editor might not read a story he knew was by a woman, he obviously had no qualms publishing it if he didn't know what the sex was, or he'd have asked those with only initials, just in case.
Let's lay that shibboleth to rest.
To the stories themselves:
"Unhuman Sacrifice" by Katherine MacLean was excellent. The characters were well done and differentiated, the plot absorbing, and I appreciated the little twist at the end. All in all, sci-fi at its best. I'd rate it second best story, but only by a smidgeon.
The next two stories shared the same flaw: too much pseudo-future jargon. Written from a first-person perspective, the protagonist shovels out undefined words and phrases that the reader has to unpack and try to understand. It slows the reading and frustrates more than it lends an air of modernity. So "A Matter of Proportion" by Anne Walker and "The White Pony" by Jane Rice both fail on that count. And the underlying story just wasn't strong enough to make it worthwhile.
"Wish upon a Star" by Judith Merril had an interesting take on interstellar travel, but it was not particularly well done. Having names so multi-cultural was very artificial and detracted from what the story was about. I felt it was chosen more for the feminist take on leadership than the merit of the story.
Rosel George Brown has two stories in the anthology. "Step IV" posits an Amazonian world where men are used in gladiatorial battles and as servants, because as every feminist knows, without men there would be no violence. It wasn't a bad read, but the trope might be why it is included.
"Of All Possible Worlds" was in my top 5, not sure which number. The concept is unique (no connection to Star Trek, sorry Cora Buhlert), and the characters and the alien life very well done.
"Satisfaction Guaranteed" by Joy Leche was my favorite story. Stylistically, it echoed Lloyd Biggle Jr., my favorite sci-fi author. The plot was good, the characters well done, and the third-person perspective, which lends itself to more dialogue and better non-protagonist development, made it a great read. And a bit of humor mixed in. Biggle couldn't have done better.
Then we get "The Deer Park" by Maria Russell, another let-down. I couldn't accept the concept, it seemed too contrived, too unrealistic. The feminist angle the intro author found I could not see at all. Not a story I'd have selected.
Kit Reed's "To Lift a Ship" was well-done. The only drawback for me was to accept that the ship was powered by ESP or something. But once having suspended disbelief on that, the story was quite good. The characters were well developed in the few short pages and the ending satisfactory. A top 5.
"The Putnam Tradition" by Sonya Hess Dorman was another very weak story. The characters were not likable, the storyline hard to understand, and the denouement not much. I didn't like it.
And "The Pleiades" by Otis Kidwell Burger was also a poor story. I get the plot, and the writing was fair, but the characters were not compelling. I thought of Kafka's "The Hunger Artist", also set in a circus-type atmosphere, and in some ways it is similar in theme. The story had its moments, but not that good overall.
The poem by Doris Pitkin Buck, "No Trading Voyage", was, unfortunately, free verse. As a pastiche of ideas, fine. As a poem, not so, not even if put into paragraphs as a prose-poem does it really work. It is, as Robert Graves says in "The Devil's Advice to Storytellers", ". . . all casual bits and scraps . . . Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again." A fragment, not a complete work.
"Cornie on the Walls" by Sydney van Scyoc was similar, both in theme and execution, to "The Deer Park". I'd rate it slightly better, but not much. Perhaps the theme is what pulls these stories down, more than the writing.
The last story was "Unwillingly to School" by Pauline Ashwell, another top 5 for me. Here the style was odd, but I quickly understood it in the first-person context; it was not jargon, but diction, a pattern of the protagonist, and easier to grasp. A touch of humor helped and the plot did not require much suspension of disbelief.
Not a bad anthology. Five out of fourteen is a high rate for me, usually I find one or two I consider worthy. And the fact that I could read all of them, none turned me off so much I rejected it, is also notable. Yes, not bad.
My penny's-worth on this book, before I get into the details, has two parts. Half-penny one, it is obvious that 50 years after the Feminist Revolution, the feminists are still whining over nothings. The second half-penny is that Sci-Fi by women, as with Sci-fi by men, is uneven and varied in talent. No difference. All is normal.
I read the Foreword and Introduction before I read the stories, but I deliberately refrained from reading the individual intros until after I finished the book, just to not be prejudiced. Dr. Laura Brodian Freas Beraha, while accepting the "discrimination" meme, ended her Foreword with a better viewpoint: "What you are going to read is really good science fiction, plain and simple."
Gideon Marcus, on the other hand, was full-throttle feminist in her Introduction; evil males kept poor females from getting published, it was a conspiracy, because no self-respecting male in the 50s and 60s would be caught dead reading something written by a woman. That is a calumny that the feminists have put out since their founding, and is so demonstrably wrong . . . but that's for another day and time.
The individual intros were revealing. John W. Campbell Jr., who has been condemned by history as a rigid conservative, "happily" published women authors. Guess he didn't get the memo from his readers that he shouldn't do so. And Kit Reed said she never faced discrimination. Ditto for her, where's her justifiable outrage at her treatment, she must be a traitor to her sex.
There has been no societal or organized discrimination. Individuals have prejudices and bigotry, sure, but ask this: how many editors, upon discovering the pseudonym is for a female author, demanded no more manuscripts from that person? Show me widespread refusals on that basis. You won't find them, because while a prejudiced editor might not read a story he knew was by a woman, he obviously had no qualms publishing it if he didn't know what the sex was, or he'd have asked those with only initials, just in case.
Let's lay that shibboleth to rest.
To the stories themselves:
"Unhuman Sacrifice" by Katherine MacLean was excellent. The characters were well done and differentiated, the plot absorbing, and I appreciated the little twist at the end. All in all, sci-fi at its best. I'd rate it second best story, but only by a smidgeon.
The next two stories shared the same flaw: too much pseudo-future jargon. Written from a first-person perspective, the protagonist shovels out undefined words and phrases that the reader has to unpack and try to understand. It slows the reading and frustrates more than it lends an air of modernity. So "A Matter of Proportion" by Anne Walker and "The White Pony" by Jane Rice both fail on that count. And the underlying story just wasn't strong enough to make it worthwhile.
"Wish upon a Star" by Judith Merril had an interesting take on interstellar travel, but it was not particularly well done. Having names so multi-cultural was very artificial and detracted from what the story was about. I felt it was chosen more for the feminist take on leadership than the merit of the story.
Rosel George Brown has two stories in the anthology. "Step IV" posits an Amazonian world where men are used in gladiatorial battles and as servants, because as every feminist knows, without men there would be no violence. It wasn't a bad read, but the trope might be why it is included.
"Of All Possible Worlds" was in my top 5, not sure which number. The concept is unique (no connection to Star Trek, sorry Cora Buhlert), and the characters and the alien life very well done.
"Satisfaction Guaranteed" by Joy Leche was my favorite story. Stylistically, it echoed Lloyd Biggle Jr., my favorite sci-fi author. The plot was good, the characters well done, and the third-person perspective, which lends itself to more dialogue and better non-protagonist development, made it a great read. And a bit of humor mixed in. Biggle couldn't have done better.
Then we get "The Deer Park" by Maria Russell, another let-down. I couldn't accept the concept, it seemed too contrived, too unrealistic. The feminist angle the intro author found I could not see at all. Not a story I'd have selected.
Kit Reed's "To Lift a Ship" was well-done. The only drawback for me was to accept that the ship was powered by ESP or something. But once having suspended disbelief on that, the story was quite good. The characters were well developed in the few short pages and the ending satisfactory. A top 5.
"The Putnam Tradition" by Sonya Hess Dorman was another very weak story. The characters were not likable, the storyline hard to understand, and the denouement not much. I didn't like it.
And "The Pleiades" by Otis Kidwell Burger was also a poor story. I get the plot, and the writing was fair, but the characters were not compelling. I thought of Kafka's "The Hunger Artist", also set in a circus-type atmosphere, and in some ways it is similar in theme. The story had its moments, but not that good overall.
The poem by Doris Pitkin Buck, "No Trading Voyage", was, unfortunately, free verse. As a pastiche of ideas, fine. As a poem, not so, not even if put into paragraphs as a prose-poem does it really work. It is, as Robert Graves says in "The Devil's Advice to Storytellers", ". . . all casual bits and scraps . . . Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again." A fragment, not a complete work.
"Cornie on the Walls" by Sydney van Scyoc was similar, both in theme and execution, to "The Deer Park". I'd rate it slightly better, but not much. Perhaps the theme is what pulls these stories down, more than the writing.
The last story was "Unwillingly to School" by Pauline Ashwell, another top 5 for me. Here the style was odd, but I quickly understood it in the first-person context; it was not jargon, but diction, a pattern of the protagonist, and easier to grasp. A touch of humor helped and the plot did not require much suspension of disbelief.
Not a bad anthology. Five out of fourteen is a high rate for me, usually I find one or two I consider worthy. And the fact that I could read all of them, none turned me off so much I rejected it, is also notable. Yes, not bad.