The slides for today talk about the rise of SF in pulp magazines beginning in the late 1920s and through the 1930s. Judging from the contents of Weinbaum’s stories and the material in the slides, who do you think read these magazines? What would be the likely demographic categories? Men? Women? Old? Young? Black? White? Affluent? Working-class? Feel free to consider other categories. In a paragraph or two, explain how one bit of specific evidence—a moment or language in Weinbaum’s stories or a detail from a particular cover posted in the slides—guides your thinking.
6 thoughts on “Who’s Reading the Pulps? (Group 1)”
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From my readings of the short stories, I would say they are intended for an audience that consists of mainly affluent males. The sentence that generally made me believe this was in Parasite Planet when the author says, “He was, in fact, trading with the natives for the spore-pods of the Venusian plant xixtchil, from which terrestrial chemists would extract trihydroxyl-tertiary-tolunitrile-beta-anthraquinone, the xixtline or triple-T-B-A that was so effective in rejuvenation treatments.” Something about the mixture of the themes of business, nerdy fantastic terminology and faux chemistry classifications just screamed male and affluent. Male because I feel that the prose and themes of the stories generally concern themselves with the hyper-logical and almost clichely overly scientific “nature” that seems to be associated with masculinity especially at the time of these stories’ writing. I say affluent as well because I feel like much of this type of literature is concerned with topics that only a wealthily educated person is likely to be fantasizing about. For example, I don’t feel a working class person would care about delving into a fictional novel that fantasizes about long contrived names for made up chemicals and the intricate differences between the environment of Venus compared to that of Earth. But thinking in another direction, maybe it could be a working class demographic that this type of sci-fi is going for. I say this because I feel the work culture of the time period this was written emphasized the ability for a working class man to make his way up to the capitalist ruling class. This is related because, as the short stories center around an affluent fantasization of concepts related to higher-education, a working class person might feel incentive to climb the social/financial ladder when reading them.
It’s likely that young, working class, white men read these pulp magazines. I believe the primary readers would have been young because, as the slides mention, these kinds of magazines were regarded as low-brow literature. Pulps also had bright, eye-catching covers which often depicted scenes that didn’t even take place in the story. This style of cover art likely drew in young, impressionable readers. Moreover, the perceived juvenility of pulps probably deterred older readers and especially older readers who were also above the working class. I say that these magazines were likely for working class, everyday Americans because they were relatively cheap and thus more accessible to a larger consumer base. However, the low cost of the magazines does not necessarily mean that only working class people read them. I’m just meaning that they were less cost prohibitive than other published works.
These stories likely appealed to white people because the stories were full of white characters, and celebrated elements of history that greatly benefited white people and white people alone. In “A Martian’s Odyssey” the astronauts all hail from different nations including the United States, France and Germany, but the commonality is that all of these are predominantly white nations. “Parasite Planet” also focuses on predominantly white nations, paying special attention to British and American colonization. This focus on colonization is not a critique of the nations’ histories so much as a celebration of the way that colonization helped white people declare supremacy and grow their influence. It seems unlikely that a non-white audience would be receptive to this message. However, in the 1940s it seems likely that working-class white men especially would enjoy reading about white power and conquest. It’s especially interesting to me that these fantastical stories which took place far outside of national borders still carried such a heavy message of white supremacy over nation states.
Finally, I believe that these magazines were likely consumed by men because the Weinbaum stories we read and the covers from the slideshow seem to reflect stereotypical ideas of masculinity. For example, in “Parasite Planet,” Patricia is the damsel in distress while Ham is the hero who swoops in to save the day. Patricia’s character hardly has any emotional development, and is described to be essentially worthless save for her good looks. She is shown to be in need of a strong man to tame her and put her in her prescribed gender role. Meanwhile, Ham is shown to be smart, strong and masculine, in a way that many young male readers might admire. I found the beginning of part III in “Parasite Planet” to be particularly representative of this damsel in distress/male hero archetype where Ham decides “He couldn’t permit the girl to attempt that journey alone,” so he follows behind her to offer protection. It’s clear that Pat is fine without his aid, and yet Ham decides she needs the help of a strong man. The cover of “Weird Tales” shown in the slides with its depiction of a muscular man fighting off a giant serpent to save a dainty, and scantily clad woman gives off a similar message. This heteronormative and traditional view of men and women that Weinbaum pushes in his stories may have appealed to both sexes in the 1940s, but it still seems that these particular stories may have been most attractive to young men who aspired to be like the heroic male characters. Reading pulps like Weinbaum’s “Parasite Planet” and “A Martian Odyssey,” allowed young, working-class, white men to escape whatever was going on in their lives and enter a fantasy world that made them feel important, masculine and grown up.
Similar to Clara and Aria, I would expect white, working-class to middle-class men as the target demographic. To start with cover art, I first noticed the 15 and 25 cent prices for the pulp magazines which reinforces the idea that science fiction did not count as literature a hundred years ago, but were for those with less disposable income. These stories were not geared towards traditional intellectuals but people looking for excitement and action. The cover art emphasizes this idea by displaying heroic men saving a woman and/or fighting off hideous monsters. In this course we can discuss the complex ideas of human relationships to technology and understandings of religion or our specific place in the universe, but the main audience wanted guns, monsters, and heroes. These adventures were for the mass audience.
Furthermore, in Parasite planet the character Ham appeals to working people who believe in hard work and the American dream. The story casts him with wit and strength to overcome his challenges. He is not a wealthy visitor to Venus, but a trader trying to work hard for his fortune. It’s a class story of American exceptionalism and capitalism in a new world. He perseveres through challenge after challenge and risks his own life to save a beautiful woman. The story’s main features feel relatable for the average person because it follows a traditional structure. Fantastical creatures take the place of more ordinary experiences, but nothing terribly unexpected happens. Additionally, Weinbaum stories appeal to the average white men who top the social hierarchy. As Clara and Aria explained, Pat, in Parasite Planet, loses her autonomy to Ham and falls for him even after his rude behavior. On a new planet In A Martian Odyssey, Weinbaum compares the primitive black people of Earth, the “Negritoes”, to the natives of Mars. In these two examples, he uses racist language and reduces women to their role as wives to place white men above other groups of people. This trend reminded me even though the stories take place in the future on distant planets, the dominant world views of the early 20th century are embedded in the text.
Lastly, I thought about the presence of religion in science fiction. I had an English teacher who told us you can’t read English literature without knowing the bible, and I don’t think sci-fi is an exception. In Parasite Planet, the main character is named Hammond or Ham for short which I believe connects him our hero to the disgraced son of Noah from the book of Genesis. In the bible, Ham sees the, “nakedness of his father and told his brethren without,” causing his son Caanan to be cursed. Generally scholars write Ham’s descendants populated Africa which was used as a justification for Slavery. Additionally, his sin justified the expulsion of the Caanites from their land by the Israelites later in the bible. In the story, Ham is a character on the frontiers of the world running away from Earth, similar to Ham leaving behind his house for his actions. By simply using the name Ham, Weinbaum incorporates Judeo-Christian ideas that appeal to Christian white men. I’m curious if the ideas of Christianity further influence our stories. Any other religious interpretations people noticed?
Based off the information in the slides and the stories “A Martian Odyssey” and “Parasite Planet,” it’s evident that the readers of these pulp magazines are likely young white men. Since the genre published in these magazines often didn’t make the cut by “real” book publishers, I think it’s safe to say that older affluent and working class men weren’t reading them. Instead they were probably opting for literature that was more dignified. It also is clear that the main characters on the covers of these magazines are white and the characters within the stories are also white, so it likely wasn’t the preferred mode of entertainment for people of color at the time (who also were likely uneducated and had no leisure time to read magazines). I also think that Clara made a great point; the only other characters in these stories are (presumably) also white like the protagonists, hailing from predominantly white European countries. Weinbuam certainly is writing from a Eurocentric point of view, although he does acknowledge that a future with space travel is likely more international than solely American.
In addition, women likely weren’t reading them. I’m sure women at the time weren’t spending their days reading science fiction magazines, but likely fulfilling roles as students or housewives. The damsel in distress in a short dress on so many of the covers was likely placed intentionally to attract the young male eye. Further, In “A Martian Odyssey” there aren’t any female characters at all. This is probably the case for many more of the stories published in these magazines, making it even less likely that women might want to read them. As for “Parasite Planet,” Patricia fulfills only one role; to be the damsel in distress that Ham saves time and again and eventually, becomes his wife. Pat does have her moments, and I at least appreciate that for the time, Weinbaum does make her a smart, athletic, and strong-willed character. Still, at the end Ham demands she become his wife and that they marry in a good ol’ American church and even asks “Is that clear?” Just in these last two lines she loses all the strength she once possessed as she answers “Quite clear!” This makes is quite clear that Weinbaum is pushing a heternormative and traditional view of the marriage ideal, even on a fantastical Venus in some distant future. Woman at the time likely weren’t interested in reading a whole lot of stories like this.
I want to add to Aria’s point. Although it is clear that the intended audience was white males, for the reasons Aria so eloquently stated, I’d like the specify the age range. When I first looked at the cover of the pulps, it looked like a comic book cover which made me initially believe the intended audience was tween/teenage boys. But upon reading the stories, I believe the audience was older, somewhere in their twenties to early thirties. As stated in the slides, pulps intended audience was never highbrow society, but that doesn’t mean the audience wasn’t educated and out of their teenage years. Both stories display humor, vocabulary, and intricacies that would have flown over the heads of adolescent boys and young men who were in search of tales loaded with sex and violence. For example, on page 4 of “Parasite Planet” Weinbaum explained how Earth and Venus’ seasons differentiated. He used scientific terms such as “ecliptic” and “libration” to describe the phenomenon which occurred on each planet. These ideas and Weinbaum’s decision to include these intricacies prove that the intended audience wasn’t adolescent and teenage boys seeking adventure and sex; but was instead intended for educated young men who wanted to escape their repetitive lives and live vicariously through characters like Jarvis and Ham Hammond.
Based on material in science fiction pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, the likely demographic category for early science fiction was that of white heterosexual men, especially young men. It attempted to transcend national boundaries using a wide appeal to Eurocentric and American-centric characters, demonstrated in Weinbaum’s “cast” of astronauts in “A Martian’s Odyssey.” Though the men on Mars represent multiple nationalities (French, American, British, and German), it is clear that it centers around only primarily white nations. So while the demographic may have been intended to be worldly, the 1930s definition of worldly extended only to white men around the globe. Early science fiction like that of Weinbaum’s appealed to young men in particular for its showcase of heroic qualities that maturing men could only hope to acquire. “A Martian’s Odyssey” demonstrates a friendship across boundaries between Jarvis and Tweel, a friendship that may have appealed to many young men growing up. It also appealed to the young (and general) heterosexual male gaze with over-sexualization of female characters and dramatization of female “weakness” that continues to lead men to believe that they are a dominant sex. Weinbaum’s “Parasite Planet” reminded me so much of William Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” in fact, that it’s quite difficult to imagine over 340 years had passed between the writing of the two. In both situations a stubborn and non-docile female is portrayed as a she-devil and undesirable for anything but her good looks. Her good looks lead a man to pursue her regardless, and “tame” her until she realizes the error of her ways and submits to him. How can 340 years change nothing about the male gaze? Because popular media has always and will always sexualize the female body and person, reducing her to nothing but submissive behavior and eye-candy.
Though I focused on the sexist overtones of Weinbaum’s work, I also would like to mention how important it is to understand how Eurocentric each of his works I read is (as mentioned earlier). “Parasite Planet” focuses only on British and American colonization, something that can obviously be reflected in literal American and British history. It glorifies colonization and excuses it as growth for the white man and white people, which is what colonization was anyway, a way for white people to declare supremacy. “A Martian’s Odyssey” depicts Black people as below-average intelligence, and mocks them by claiming that even an alien could be smarter than them. Each work does not fail to be problematic in multiple aspects, which needs to be noted as we look at it now. Racism and sexism was built into the foundation of early pulp science fiction, and cannot be overlooked.