The opening line of Ursula K. LeGuin's “America Sf & the Other” sums up the tone of the
article perfectly: “One of the great early socialists said that the status of
women in a society is a pretty reliable index of the degree of civilization of
that society. If this is true, then the very low status of women in SF should
make us ponder about whether SF is civilized at all”.
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| Meet-the-author Q&A session; Bookworks bookstore, Albuquerque, NM Photo taken by Hajor, 15.Jul.2004. Source: Wikimedia Commons |
Much of LeGuin’s article makes an argument on behalf of all Others, as
she acknowledges that there are many types of Others, such as sexual, racial,
class, and cultural. She goes on to insist that the patriarchal SF
establishment is the tip of the iceberg, not only in literature, but in
society, leading to a greater ill: women are portrayed (and not just in SF) as LeGuin
describes them, “squeaking dolls subject to instant rape by monsters”.
Real people, as in neighbors, teachers, the poor, and the like are rarely
ever present in SF (or at least they weren't present in LeGuin’s generation of
SF). People of LeGuin’s SF are simply masses, described as ‘they’, never as the
individuals that they are. Thus, the reader is indoctrinated, becoming
desensitized to the needs of the un-described and faceless ‘they’ that are constantly
harmed in SF stories.
Another point LeGuin makes about the masses in SF is this: “The people,
in SF, are not people. They are masses, existing for one purpose: to be led by
their superiors.” Imperialism is a turn the article takes for the better, going
on to compare Galactic Empires with Roman Empires. Early pulp SF always made
sure to conquer the alien invaders and to never portray them in a sympathetic
light. The problem with that, in LeGuin’s view, is that SF has not really
strayed from that old pulp notion that ‘the only good alien is a dead alien’,
creating the sense that anything unknown =something not good (kill it, kill
it!).
What’s worse is the creation of the godlike aliens of SF, that come to
Earth with wisdom to better our sorry species. It may seem better to revere a
being rather than kill it, but either way, LeGuin suggests that these two
ideals only serve to distance human consciousness from one another. Or, to put
it more eloquently, LeGuin states that with the distance from the other entity,
either through hate or reverence, “You have made it into a thing, to which the
only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally
impoverished your own reality. You have, in fact,
alienated yourself.”
The article ends with LeGuin surmising on the state of a male-led SF community,
and her call to readers and writers of SF alike to end their longing for a
return to Victorian standards, and instead to remember that “53% of the
Brotherhood of Man is the Sisterhood of Woman”.
is a former Virginian confederate officer. Penniless after the end of the Civil War, Carter is not without courage, honor, and a friend: James Powell. When Powell is taken by a band of Native Americans, Carter follows and finds his friend dead. He later takes refuge in a cave and is almost overtaken by the same band of Native Americans. Though, some noise or presence scares them off (maybe a foreign spacecraft; Burroughs never says) and when Carter next awakes, he is on the planet Mars. 
