Science? Fiction? SF by Anglo-American Women in the Magazines

Abstract

Judith Merril has suggested that science fiction (SF) depends on twentieth-century revolutions in science emphasizing relativity, dynamics, integration, and uncertainty, and its purpose is “to explore, to discover, to learn, by means of projection, extrapolation, analogue, hypothesis” (60). This chapter explores the science deployed by women in the SF magazines from 1926 to 1960, when the short story was the main SF genre. First surveying criticism on women’s engagement with science in the magazines (Donawerth, Shaw, Yaszek, and Sharpe), this chapter looks at twentieth-century scientific discoveries about cytology, prosthetics, communication, reproduction, domestic technology, and environmental science, tying this history to fictions—dire and hopeful—that women made around them in SF magazines. Besides Judith Merril, writers discussed include Clare Winger Harris, Lilith Lorraine, C. L. Moore, Leslie Stone, Margaret St. Clair, Katherine MacLean, Miriam Allen de Ford, Kate Wilhelm, Anne McCaffrey, Zenna Henderson, and Doris Pitkin Buck. As in the fiction of male SF writers, science suffuses women’s SF, and, while the sciences differ, women, like men, warn against the misuses of science, celebrate its advances, and predict later discoveries.