The slides for today outline the shift to “hard” SF over the 1940s, pushed forward in John Campbell’s Astounding Stories. Partisans of hard SF distinguished it from fantasy and “soft” SF, claiming more internally coherent treatments of science. Jennifer Ng, a present-day writer of SF, has condemned Campbell and Astounding for “setting a tone for SF that haunts this genre to the present day—stale, sterile, male, white, exalting the ambitions of imperialists, colonialists, settlers, and industrialists.” Do you see evidence for or against Ng’s claim in Heinlein’s “The Roads Must Roll” or Lester Del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy”? How does one of these stories depict manhood, womanhood, race, nationalism, or the role of corporations in an imagined future? Don’t address all of these categories, but write a paragraph or two about one of them that draws on specific language or actions in Heinlein’s or Del Rey’s work.
8 thoughts on “Astounding Stories and “Hard” SF–Group 1”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I think the fact that Dave has become so sick of Helen that he walks through the door with “a frown a yard wide on his face” is a good example of how this story is perpetuating the stereotypes of old SF that Ng condemns. “He’s sick of me… And there’s nothing wrong with me. It’s not my fault anyway (that Dave does not like her anymore).” Dave only gets tired of robots when his women mecha-maids start to become more conscious and life-like. This is saying a lot about the way society viewed women at the time. He is only infatuated and interested in them when they literally robotically answer his every command. Or, at the end of the story, when they consciously decide to answer his every command as a “wife” instead of a “servant.”
Another aspect of Helen O ‘Loy that I think exemplifies Ng’s concern that this type of SF was “stale, sterile, male, and white” is when the main character and Dave first open up Helen to work on her wiring. I feel like the choice of words the author uses, “mechanical glands… complex little bundles of radio tubes… heterodyned wires” and “auxiliary memory coils,” are all very complicated sounding simply of being complicated. It is almost like the literary form of the 1930’s male hubris attempting to sound intelligent but just ending up sounding, well, “sterile, male and white,” for lack of better words. Also, when first opening Helen, the narrator recounts “instead of sleeping that night, we pored over schematic diagrams of her structures, tracing the thoughts through mazes of her wiring, severing the leaders, implanting the heterones…” I think it is pretty evident how scientifically manly the author wishes to portray his main character’s violation of their female robot house maid.
A part of this story I do find interesting though, besides its aspects that I think confirm Ng’s statements, are its concern with the idea of being more-than-human. It feels almost similar to Bladerunner in this way. When first reading it I almost imagined that the way they were feeding memories and emotions into her was the same way replicants were created. A part of the story that deals with the “more-than-human” theme is when the narrator says he “felt like an inhuman brute” when talking to Helen. I think her ability to feel so much human emotion (specifically love) in such a short time makes her more-than-human in a way replicants might be as well. And, it seems that the narrator feels the same way after saying that. Even more evidence of her transcendent humanity is her ability to outlive Dave, the very person who created her.
“Helen O’Loy” depicts womanhood similarly to how it was depicted in both Weinbaum’s stories and in the “Leave it to Roll-Oh” commercial. The pinnacle of womanhood in these examples is a weak minded woman who exists only to serve men. In both “Leave it to Roll-Oh” and “Helen O’Loy,” housewives are shown as the ideal of womanhood; women (or robots more accurately) who exist to cook, clean and serve the men in their lives. It’s telling that Dave and Phil choose to build a female robot to complete menial housework when they clearly had the capacity to build something much more innovative and exciting. Moreover, it’s interesting that they chose to gender the household robot at all. It could have been a genderless, faceless roomba-like machine, but instead they made it a woman and gave it womanly features and womanly duties. The mere fact that Dave is so keen on creating a female household servant is odd and perpetuates the image of strong white men asserting their dominance over both women and machine that runs through the science fiction genre. This idea is further supported by Dave’s failed first robot, Lena, who he abandons when she loses her temper. A perfect woman is to be docile and submissive, so outbursts from his robot housewife obviously could not be tolerated. I like that Clara pulled out the quote “restore her to normalcy,” in her above comment on Dave’s first failed robot. This line did not initially stand out to me, but I now agree with Clara that Dave’s suggestion that a woman speaking her mind is somehow abnormal, is another example of how the science fiction genre at the time perpetuated a grossly sexist and simplified idea of womanhood.
It’s also interesting that Helen is clearly very intelligent, with the ability to understand complex information quickly, to feel emotions and even to taste, and yet the big thing that Lester Del Rey dreams up for this robot is to … fall in love with a man. How tired. The idea that a robot who has achieved sentience would have no aspirations beyond marrying her weird creator is so boring, but I suppose this was all by Dave’s design. I’m also wondering if the story struck anybody else as plain old creepy? Two men building their ideal woman and then one of them marrying her and one of them secretly being in love with her the whole time? Of course the part where two men project their terribly sexist view of women into the creation of a robot is creepy, but the fact that two human men fall in love with a machine is far scarier in my opinion.
“The Roads Must Roll” and “Helen O’Loy” only serve to substantiate Jennifer Ng’s claim that Astounding set a “stale, sterile, male, white” tone for Science Fiction. The plot of “The Roads Must Roll” is heavily focused around industrialism and colonialism. It imagines a future in which industrialism is the only economy and the machine controls all with the worker steering the wheel. Daniel does make a good point that the role of the worker is elevated in this story, as they have the power to strike, but I don’t think this is enough to prove Ng wrong. It’s clear that manufacturing, industrialism, and corporations have an elevated position in this futuristic society. They are even semi-militaristic, presumably financed by the government and evidently overseen by it. To me, it isn’t a rather imaginistic take. It does feel stale and sterile, as Ng posits.
Further, most of the characters in the story are men. The few women there are fill rather useless roles; an upset wife, an obedient secretary, a waitress, and a foolish woman who steps off the road. These characters are simply plot points, they have no actual personalities, ambitions, ideas. They serve to be the image of what women should be (at least in an Astounding reader’s mind). They are silent and useless. They aren’t even love interests. Gaines even goes out of his way to avoid seeing his wife. It’s pretty clear what era a story such as this one was written in, and who it was written for.
In The Roads Must Roll, Robert Heinlein provides a glimpse into a future controlled by corporations. The story starts with Brother Van Kleeck, a mid level road engineer, speaking at a road technicians union meeting where they plan to revolt against their leadership. I immediately saw the story as a reflection of the growing rise of communism in the United States and fear that workers would seize power. I first expected technicians to succeed and did not expect the protagonist Mr. Gains, the Chief Engineer of the roads, to out wit Van and stamp out the insurrectionists. The main theme of the story is big brother esque where corporations hold power over everyone. When the dissenters from the technician union call the President, the nation’s leader urges the road engineers to avoid escalating the conflict and using the army for fear the union will blow up the roads. The modern age relies on rapid transport for goods, and people will go hungry and chaos will ensue if the roads collapse. This example points to the fact that real power relies on who controls the roads. Society grew in a way that caused it to rely on technological advancements and forget how the world used to work. This imagined capitalist and industrialist haven glorifies innovation for an efficient world, and the usual order of power has shifted to who controls the most critical innovation. Heinlein puts corporations at the top of the food chain.
Additionally, this understanding of corporations in the future depicts the most valuable trait in men as intelligence. We see the usual sci-fi depiction of physical strength and heroism when Gains wrestles the gun from Van; however, Gains puts himself in a favorable position by using his knowledge of Van’s insecurities to weaken his opponent. Here intelligence is the most important trait in the strongest man. This ties into the fact that innovation and technological development is highly sought after in this imagined society. Those who control the roads control the world.
Similar to what Daniel was thinking, I could not decide if Heinlein was arguing for a world run by capitalism, or if he put himself on the side of the striking workers. I originally thought his story was a critique of industrialists, but after Ng’s comments I am not so sure. Thoughts?
I found evidence against Ng’s claim in Heinlein’s “The Roads Must Roll.” I thought that the story was depicting a dystopian society that is run and managed by industrialists with a primary focus of keeping the roads operating. The author shows that the constant conflit between labor unions and large corporations that was prevalent in the 1900s is still an issue in the future, except that the industrialists have much more power and even access to police and government authority. Therefore, I would argue that this depiction of an authoritarian society where worker rights are lawfully violated is the opposite of exalting the ambitions of industrialists.
However, I thought that the depiction of womanhood in both Lester Del Ray’s “Helen O’Loy” and in Heinlein’s story supported Ng’s claim that stories in Campbell’s collection set a male-oriented tone for the SF genre. In Helen O’Loy, Helen is described by Phil as “[having]…all the good points of a woman and a mech combined,” with the ‘good points’ of a woman being defined as being a good cook and being good at housework. Del Ray created as a character a sentient robot that has the ability to learn and think for itself, and its sole purpose throughout the story is solely to chase after a man who doesn’t seem to want her attention rather than exploring her free will and exercising her conscience. From the fact that both Phil and Dave seem infatuated with Helen, I think Del Ray inadvertently shows that Helen is his depiction of a ‘perfect’ woman, which is not flattering at all and in fact reinforces patriarchal stereotypes. Similarly, in Heinlein’s story the only women in the story are chief Gaines’s wife and his secretary Dolores, and Gaines throughout the story ignores his wife’s calls and wishes to spend more time and orders Dolores around like a personal servant. The two women serve little function outside of these roles, which again reflects the misogynistic mindset of the author and of society at the time the story was written.
Robert Heinlein’s “The Roads Must Roll” depicts manhood as a responsibility and privilege. The story’s main character Chief Engineer Larry Gaines, epitomizes both of these characteristics throughout the story. These two characteristics are magnified in his encounters with his wife, who is there to represent womanhood. When speaking with his wife, Gaines tone is condescending and sounds as if he is speaking to a toddler rather than his wife. The two of them had arranged plans earlier, but Gaines had to cancel them because “the roads must roll”. He is forced to put his job above his personal life, the responsibility of manhood. Whether or not Gaines would rather be with his wife is beside the point. In this case, he is required to fulfill the task of meeting with the Australian Transport Minister at the expense of his personal life. With the responsibility of manhood also comes the privilege of manhood. Gaines is privileged in that he can have a job outside of the home and hold a high status in society, which his wife cannot obtain. She is forced to stay at home and care for their son, Junior.
Lester Del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy” draws from an unimaginative take on the future beyond the 1940s/50s in which women are expected to be just as subservient and docile as they were expected to be in the author’s regular life. It maintains the classic misogynist assumption that women exist to be seen, not heard, and compliant with the orders of their husband or father figure. “Helen O’Loy” takes it a step farther by creating the “perfect woman”– a woman who cannot make mistakes by incorrectly preparing food for the men she serves or by speaking when a man wants silence. In fact, Helen’s only fault is that she cannot bear children; the most sexist fault one could apply to a female figure, one that reduces her to nothing but a childbearing and sexual design. “Helen O’Loy” explores the white male’s perceived faults with women through what Dave and Phil note as faulty in the robots they create (originally Lena, then the more “improved” female in Helen). Del Rey pushed aside any autonomy a woman has by turning her into a robot, and maintained an ideal of white male supremacy even in a futuristic society that is supposed to be an improvement on the current one. To me, the most striking example of the blatant sexism in “Helen O’Loy” was in the very beginning, when Phil explains why Lena (the first female robot) was not good enough to keep. Dave decides to undo the work he did on Lena the housemaid robot when she loses her temper and snaps at him. He uses the term “restore her to normalcy,” which suggests that a woman losing her temperature is not normal and not okay. Jennifer Ng’s statement about the white male gaze placing the precedent for the genre of science fiction is well-founded from what I’ve seen of what Campbell chose to highlight in his published stories. It makes me wonder if praising Campbell in any way is okay. Regardless of the foundation of the modern sci fi standard, if each trope is founded in sexism, racism, and imperialism, should it be used?
I like your question Clara. Personally, I don’t think so. I think we have an idea in academia where we need to read “classic” texts to be good scholars. However, this trend means we read many racist, sexist, and evil books. Sometimes it is important to read older texts, but we could be more selective in what we choose to read. It is important to take everything with a grain of salt and critique these works.