ARTICLE ABSTRACTS
Marleen Barr
"The Females do the Fathering!": James
Tiptree's Male Matriarchs and Adult Human Gametes
Abstract.--Tiptree's first novel, Up the Walls of the World (1978),
and two of her short stories, "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death" (1973) and
"A Momentary Taste of Being" (1975), can be taken as representative of the
particular feminist point of view of her fiction generally and of her manner of
dramatizing it in terms of communal mergers and biological alterations. What especially
merits attention in these regards are the adult human gametes and male matriarchs who
figure in her stories as the outcome of fantastic anatomical changes. Considering these
matters also provides an occasion for demonstrating how feminist SF can be illuminated by
feminist criticism--in this case, through the encounter between Tiptree and Judith
Fetterly. By reversing sex roles (in having "females do the Fathering," for
example) while insisting that equality between men and women is impossible, Tiptree's
fantastic worlds serve to clarify relationships between genders in the real world.
Nachman Ben-Yehuda
Sociological Reflections on the History of Science
Fiction in Israel
Abstract.--The history of SF in Israel has been marked by "booms"
(one in the late '50s and early '60s; another in 1978-81) followed by sharp declines. The
how's and why's of the matter make for an interesting sociological puzzle. It might be
supposed that the fortunes of SF in Israel correlate with periods of military adventurism
or economic prosperity; but the first of these possibilities proves to be untenable, while
the second is only a part-truth. Furthermore, neither of those hypotheses takes cognizance
of the fact that the second, and much more pronounced, of Israel's two SF
"booms" was accompanied by widespread organized fan activity--a fact which in
turn suggests that beyond economics, socio-cultural factors have had a significant role on
the Israeli SF scene. Here our inquiry reveals that SF and fandom, as they together
comprise a subculture, are the twin products of a quest prompted by the disintegration of
the Judeo-Christian world-view, by the secularization of that (Western) outlook (predicted
by Weber). So regarded, SF is one among many subcultures which have arisen out of the
search for a "privatized" belief-system by which the self might
"recentralize" the--i.e., its "personal"--world.
Israel represents a confirmatory instance of that sociological hypothesis. By reason of
its ethos and mythos, the country is resistant to the pluralizing tendency that
subcultures as neo-religious phenomena necessarily carry with them, and hence SF has
largely come there from abroad. This, however, has happened only when economic conditions
have, rather indirectly, created a climate hospitable to its importation. Israel, then,
represents a case which is instructive in its very peculiarity (if not uniqueness): by
focusing on it, we can begin to understand the socio-cultural conditions favorable to SF
at large.
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.
Towards the Last Fairy Tale: On the Fairy-Tale Paradigm
in the Strugatskys' Science Fiction, 1963-72
Abstract--The Strugatsky brothers have modeled much of their SF on the
fairy-tale paradigm, and the phases of their career are clearly articulated by the ways
they adapt and deform their model. In their early works, culminating in Far Rainbow (1963),
they adapt the socialist realist production novel's version of the paradigm to the
technocratic utopianism of the scientific intelligentsia during the period of
de-Stalinization. By "humanizing" the production novel and replacing class
struggle with the adventure of space travel, they express the elation of the Soviet
scientific establishment at the success of the space program. After 1964, with Hard to
be a God, they write more problematic deformations of the fairy-tale paradigm,
centering on the possibility that humanity may lack the utopian desire required by the
fairy tale's cosmos. In the Strugatskys' fiction of the '60s, the paradigmatic elements of
the fairy tale are increasingly inverted, and the happy end seems to recede further and
further from humanity. In The Snail on the Slope (1966-68) and The Ugly Swans
(1967), the happy ending specifically excludes humanity. The process of inversion
culminates in the Strugatskys' dark masterpiece, Roadside Picnic (1972). The
novella is more than a parodic fairy tale; it is an ambivalent or "meta" fairy
tale. Red Schuhart's quest for the Golden Ball leads him through a completely alienated
world, ultimately to make the desperate utopian wish-prayer that is the source of human
ethical value. Although the tale is suspended at the moment of Red's world-redeeming wish,
the happy ending persists as a trace and a possibility in that very wish.
Stephen M. Fjellman
Prescience and Power: God Emperor of Dune and
the Intellectuals
Abstract.--Frank Herbert's God Emperor of Dune functions as a myth
for Western intellectuals in assisting them to understand, both cognitively and
emotionally, contradictions brought about by the disjunction between knowledge and power.
Leto II enjoys both. Yet even with nearly absolute power and the ability to foresee the
future, Leto's actions lead to unintended consequences. Through an understanding of Leto's
use of the double-bind, Herbert leads the reader to a cognitive reprise of the risks of
power. Reminiscent of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor and Orwell's O'Brien, Leto's
explanation of the motives behind his actions and of his loneliness form a kind of
seduction that touches the reader's emotions. Herbert's novel addresses hubris and helps
make the intellectual's frustration bearable.
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