No, No! Not Another Project! (Part 1)

[faustus]

'SF has not been much fun of late. All forms of pop culture go through doldrums; they catch cold when society sneezes. If SF in the late Seventies was confused, self-involved, and stale, it was scarcely a cause for wonder'


And yet, and yet - I've been thinking about seventies sf for a number of years now, and I've written articles on three neglected figures of the period: Coney, Cowper and Compton. I've always felt that there was a book in it somewhere but whether anyone is interested enough to read it remains to be seen.

But I'm being drawn to the decade again, and I'm looking at this large block of marble, prepared to make the first chip. I'm sure there's a statue there somewhere, but where?

I'm thinking that the seventies was the period when sf first truly escaped from being the property of white, bourgeois boys - after civil rights, after women's rights, after gay rights, Something Changed. Sf became a venue for new political visions. The New Wave(s) had refreshed its voice, but now it had something to talk about. After all, it could hardly be about going to the moon.

The last thing I want to write about is the death of sf. ('It may not be the worst thing that ever happened to sf that it died.') But certainly the dinosaurs of First Sf were sorry relics who had been out evolved. And with four or five blockbuster films (Star Wars, Star Trek, Close Encounters, Alien) there was sf around, even if it wasn't the kind we were looking for or (and this is just me thinking aloud here) some of it was all too much like the First SF we told ourselves we'd outgrown. Sf writers weren't competing for our beer money any more, but for the money we spent on lunchboxes.

What would a history of seventies sf look like, if these are indeed the parts of the statue in the marble? I don't want to just write about exceptions. The mainstream stuff needs examining too. ('Obviously the stuff I'm interested in is the radical subversive marginal stuff, because I'm a radical subversive margin.' And so forth. Special cases don't make a history, they make a special pleading.)

Is this sf as a postcolonial literature before the neo cons/roms returned in the 1980s?

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I think it is quite reasonable to argue that the reason SF looks dead is because the keepers of the flame are looking in the wrong direction--ie at white bourgeois boys--but that actually it was alive and kicking sand in the faces of the Keepers of the Canon,

I'm still shocked at how many men seem prepared to dismiss the feminist writers of the 1970s without actually having read them.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

It might well be sensible to look the other way if someone is kicking sand in your face, of course.

The feminist (eu/ou/u/dys)topia seems to be more of an American/Canadian thing. I was looking for British women sf writers of the seventies when I was preparing for those Eastercon panels in ... when ever it was. Angela Carter seems to be the long and the short of it; Saxton I think had a gap in the seventies, after The Group Feast, Jones didn't start until the late 1970s. I haven't read any Emma Tennant, but that's perhaps a little too off genre. Have I missed anyone? Were British women writers able to write sf within the mainstream (like say Weldon was to - again I don't know her seventies work), or were they (for some reason) content in other genres?

Not essential to have female British writers for what I have in mind, but it would be interesting to speculate why I've not heard of many.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

We'd have to trawl through Interzone -- do you know Aidan Paul Canavan at Liverpool? A man with a desire to be helpful.

But you might also ask rozk.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

But Interzone is, what, 1982 onwards?

I trawled through New Worlds and the only names there I couldn't identify as non-British or people already known, appear to be one-off or at least not in the SFE (so perhaps only short story writers). I don't recall there were more than a couple of these - and since Joyce Churchill was one I think they may well have been pseudonyms anyway.

I need to emphasise, if only to remind myself, that if the project gets off the ground it won't just be UK writers, but I'm wondering why North American writers used the form and apparently not British ones.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Possibly a bit too early but there are only about three women in the Out of this World anthologies.Amabel Williams Ellis, Katherine MacLean and I can't remember the other one.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Amabel Williams-Ellis and Kathleen James (ie Joyce Carstairs Hutchinson) in #9 (the latter a reprint from New Worlds, 1961

W-E has a story in Tales from the Galaxies ed. Amabel Williams-Ellis & Michael Pearson (Pan Piccolo, 1973). I wonder if these are anthologies aimed at children, given that Piccolo was for children. Ah, yes, the collection of the Out of this World anthologies is described as YA. MacLean is American.


Oh yes, there was an Anna Ostroka in New Worlds ten, and again it looks like a single story writer - memory has it as a sort of Doctor Who rewrite, but my brother ripped it out the copy we had. I think I later bought a second copy, but as to where that is... (There's some chap called Ryman in there, too)

Quick skim through the Carnell/Bulmer anthologies:

New Writings in SF # 26 & 29 Cherry Wilder (NZ)
#27 Vera Johnson (?)
# 28 Angela Rogers (?)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

The BL has the whole of Out of This World but you have to explain patiently to them that there are more than six volumes.

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. What fun.

Doris Lessing?

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I remembered her last night just before I fell asleep. Not born in Britain, but claimable. But as far as I can see the Canopus in Argos books are post-79; there are Briefing for a Descent into Hell and The Memoirs of A Survivor. There's a big catch-up to play there. Thanks for reminding me, I clearly need to seek these two out.