degree of civilisation of that society.
LeGUIN, a leading science fiction author.
The women's movement has made most of us conscious of ne ee arsoence neon nas either totally ignored women, or presented them as squeaking dolls subject to instant rape by monsters — or, at best, loyal little wives or mistresses accomplished heroes.
Male elitism has run rampant in science fiction. But is it only male elitism?
the *subjection women' in science fiction merely a symptom of a whole wnich is autnonanan, powerworshipping, intensely parochial?
The question involved here is the question of. The Other the being who is different from yourself. This being can be ciTereILTOn YoU HS SCx D! its annual income; or its way of speaking and dressing doing things; or in the colour of its skin; or the number of its CUS anCaUs ONE of the great early socialists said that the status of science fiction literature would make us ponder about whether we are civilised at all, writes URSULA K sexual Alien, and the social Alien, and the cultural Alien, and finally the racial Alien.
Well, how about the social Alien in science fiction? How about in Marxist terms, proletariat?
Where are they in science fiction? -Where are the poor, the people who work hard and go to bed hungry? Are they ever persons in science fiction?
Tney anonymous masses from giant slime-globules from the Chicago sewers, or dying off by the billions рониноп or radianon, Faceless armies being by generals SLdLCSHICH In sword and sorcery they behave like the walk-on parts in a school performance of The and Chocolate Prince.
Now and then there's a busty lass honoured by the attentions of aOnE them In other words, there is the the Captain of the Supreme Terran Command, space-ship crew there's a quaint old cook, Swedish accent, the Wisdom of the Folk.
The people in science fiction -BOI people. masses, existing purpose: to be led by their superiors.
From a social point of view most science fiction literature has been incredibly regressive the and unimaginative.
All those Galactic Empires, taken straight from the British Empire of 1880.
All those planets — with 80 trillion miles between them conceived of as warring nationVast, fleeing exploited, or to be nudged by Denevolent towards LICHL the Burden all over again.
The Rotary Club on Alpha and Centauri, that's the size of it.
What about the cultural and racial Other?
It is the Alien everybody recognises as alien, supposed to special science fiction; it's in the old who pulp science fiction; it's very simply: the only good alien is a dead alien - whether he is an For ln a German dentist. with a Scots or And this representing flourishes:
Niven's Moon' (in They are for that America, faref course, Europeans and It is interesting function is to say Oooh! to be resourceful hero.
CU UHCLU OCE UI person, if yosun self-developWhite Man's human reality. of You have COnCCII thing, relationship. final fading Thames TV's six-part SEdENEY crime and education.
One of the pop' Canada, ( Alderbaranian Mantis-Man, or tradition still witness Larry SLOY *Inconsistent All the Myriad Ways, 1971) which has a happy ending - consisting of the fact including Los Angeles, was not hurt by a solar This La few million Asians were change fried, but that doesn't matter, it just makes the world a little safer for democracy, in fact that the female character in the same sometimes story is quite brainless: her only warning, Oh? and complacently. the clever and If you deny any affinity with For kind of you declare it to be ethical wholly different from yourself — as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation you may hate it, or defy it; but capitalism in either case you have denied its spiritual equality, and its fiction made it into a which the only possible relationship is a power CANO thus you have fatally impoverished your:l then at the bottom the poor, the begin by debunking the racist myths surrounding the rate of jobs, housing, footage best uses of CeRETe interviews with whites is a 'vox immigrants Zealand and animals.
Australia: "It was easy to get own reality. You have, in fact, alienated yourself.
tendency has been remarkably strong in American science fiction. The only social presented Dy most science fiction literature has been towards authoritarianism, the domination of ignorant masses by a powerful elite presented as but often quite Socialism is never considered alternative, and democracy is quite forgotten. Military virtues are taken as nity Wealth assumed to be a righteous goal and a personal virtue.
Competitive free-enterprise economic destiny of the entire Galaxy.
In general, American science of has assumed permanent hierarchy of superlors and intenors, with rich, ambitious, aggressive males at the top, then a great gap, and the in', "no trouble at all', I just walked through' This is set against chilling the detention at Hounslow, black immigrants are talked to through the fence-wire like zoo The dark Satanic mills of uneducated, the faceless masses, and all the women.
I think it's time science fiction writers and their readers! stopped daydreaming about a return to the Oueer Victoria and started thinking about the future would like to see the Baboon Ideal replaced by a little human idealism and some serious consideration of such radical, futuristic concepts as Liberty, Equality and FraterAnd remember that about 53 percent of the Brotherhood of Man SEnE Sisterhood of Woman Books by Ursula K LeGuin: The Dispossessed (95p); The Left Hand of Darkness [60p]; City Illusions [50p]; Nebula Award Stories II [95p]; Plant of Exile [60p].
All available from The Other Bookshop, 328 Upper Street London Add 10% if ordering by mail.
Blake's Lancashire are much same BATOT Asian workers on permanent night-shift working for a little as £47 for a 48-hour week The third programme places StudIol of immigrants firmly -ENE European context. The super-exploitation of million migrant workers, living in barracks or shanty-towns with no demo cratic rights, has formed the backbone of the EEC economies since SEAT mid-fifties.
Programmes five and six home in on the growth racism and the National Front Using the April ANL Carniva Hackney as its starting point, the final half-hour is a heartening celebration anti-racist activity in the East End and elsewhere Flashbacks to Cable Street and interviews Mosley veterans underline the tradition.
Anti-racist journalists on JOcal policy: "How, as a journalist in a multiracial area, can you sit on the fence?' No anxious quaims about press freedom' or 'objectivity' there Young schoolkids — *We're black, •WETC white. dynamite' - describe their CITOrIS against school All in all it's positive, it's euphoric, it's possibly a trifle over-confident but as a series of images, a collection of voices and a cogent, anti-racist argument, you won't see hear anything else like it on TV for a long time "Our People', in six_ parts. begins on ITV tonight 10.30pm.
Socialist Challenge 11 January 1979 page 15
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women in a society is a pretty reliable index of the If this is true, then the very low status of women in