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 that draws on specific language or actions in Heinlein’s or Del Rey’s work.
8 thoughts on “Astounding Stories and “Hard” SF–Group 3”
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Seen throughout the three texts that were assigned to us is evidence the complements Ng’s comment that. “Campbell was a fucking fascist.” Through this new “hard” sf, we can see many of the characteristics that Ng comments on which continues to “haunt” sf. To start off, “The Roads Must Roll” highlights and “exalts the ambitions of imperialists, colonialists, industrialists…” This is shown from the beginning of the story when its is clearly stated of the fact that this new road technology controls over the people. Gaines quotes the “speaker” in the story in which he says, “What makes business? The roads! How do they get home to their wives? The roads!” Unlike the “softer” sf that we read such as the “Martian Odyssey”, “The Roads Must Roll” clearly exemplifies a tone of what Campbell mentions in his 1966 “Analog” in which he says, “(hard sf) develops the rigidly consistent logical consequences of these limited postulates.”
“The Cold Equations” also mirrors and matches the tone of the comments that Ng makes. Unlike the basic and simple concept of science fiction and “make believe”, “The Cold Equations” definitely follows the “hard” sf definition given the major topic in the story of sympathy vs common sense. Unlike the “soft” sf of “Martian Odyssey”, we see the struggle that Barton goes through to come to sense of rejecting Marilyn from the spaceship. There is sympathy that is felt for Marilyn, but rationality towards Barton that has no choice but go through with the end of fate of Marilyn in order to save everyone else on the spaceship. “Feminine illiteracy” is implied in this story when Marilyn is ejected into space and to the end of her fate, which complements Ng’s comment of the “hard” sf during this time.
I agree with Erick that we witness class struggles but would differentiate slightly by calling the story specifically anti-communist. Starting in media res with a union meeting quickly identifies the conflict that the workers are fighting for but also associates worker unions with a growing problem of society, communism through the guise of worker rights. The titles “Brother Chairman” and “Brother Harvey” strike clear their belief of equality amongst workers and their high regard to technological prowess and industrial might resemble the Soviet Union spot on at the time. Finally being labelled as radical Fundamentalists, a disgraced ideological alternative to capitalism, the fear of communism is clearly already established by the 1940’s and is being exploited as the ‘villain’ of this story.
It is rather ironic the description of Fundamentalists who: “disclaimed the ‘outworn and futile’ ideas of democracy and human equality and substituted a system in which human beings were evaluated ‘functionally’….that it was right and proper for a man to exercise over his fellows whatever power was inherent in his function.” As the audience we are suppose to laugh at such a silly system. Yet the story is about how a boss uses whatever power he can to deny the needs of his workers to maintain social order. Maybe the fundamentalists aren’t who we think they are?
Also, if you thought these authors couldn’t get any worst, they had their own secret club called Trap Door Spiders. Look it up if you’re interested.
Jennifer Ng is correct in stating that Campbell is a fucking fascist and strikingly so because Campbell’s publications are overt. “The Roads Must Roll” favors the state over the people. Despite the story suggesting that Van Kleeck wanted to rise to power, this does not subtract from the anger of the oppressed people in this world. The technicians and engineers’ division is social and capital and mirror the same idea that Marx pointed out. There is a battle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, but unlike Marx, this story suggests that the proletariat must be held down. Heinlein is clear about this and the ending is ludicrous in its strict enforcement of preventing revolutions over the state of the people oppressed by the Road technology. In this world, the machine matters more and there is a human dependence for which strictly males only have a knowledge of. The song that we are introduced to is creepy and reduces those directly working to keep the roads working as slaves to the oppressive machine.
So while “The Roads Must Roll” establishes undertones of state supremacy, “Helen O’Loy” defines hard sci fi to be masculine. The premise of a mechanic and a doctor building a woman robot to do chores reinforces the ideology of woman as housewife. This premise alone alienates women readers. The story does not get any better as the robot learns to develop emotion which troubles its inventors. This suggests that women are not to have any emotion nor have the ability to think and should/are only capable of providing for the needs of man. While “Helen O’Loy” is good in that it asks us to think about thinking of a robot as a human, its sexist undertones ensure that sci fi stay masculine.
After reading through today’s stories, it’s very clear that the overall tone follows Ng’s description. In Heinlein’s “The Roads Must Roll”, the tone from the beginning is much more cold and serious than the spontaneous, adventurous “A Martian Odyssey” from Tuesday. The “sterile” point of view carries over into the bits that would normally be the most emotional, such as when the woman falls onto the road: “She spun around and landed heavily on the moving strip, and was rolled by it, as the strip attempted to impart to her mass, at one blow, a velocity of ninety-five miles per hour—one hundred and thirty-nine feet per second. As she rolled she mowed down some of the cardboard figures as a sickle strikes a stand of grass. Quickly, she was out of sight, her identity, her injuries, and her fate undetermined, and already remote.” This is a very gruesome scene that takes place, and it is described in technical, emotionless, scientific terms. In fact, what I find most compelling is how the cold lack of emotions informs the meaning of manliness in this story. We see Gaines respond to the woman’s injury in a logical, calculated manner though Heinlein shows us that he is deliberately hiding empathy and sorrow. The reader is meant to view Gaines as the hero here who saved the roads, and thus the concept of what a man should be is rooted in hiding emotions and instead making rational decisions. Another instance of this is after Gaines fights Van Kleek and he speaks with his subsidiary officer on the equivalent of FaceTime, hiding his face, “not wishing his watch officer to see how he was shaking”. Though I think it is important to present an internal struggle of a hero’s emotions, I find the presentation of the main man as hiding emotions may be problematic in the long run by teaching young boys that hiding emotions is a means to being a “real man”.
Ng’s claim holds true for Lester Del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy”, as women are rendered useless in the future. Women are not actively present anywhere in the story unless they are a robot. Much like what happens in the future imagines by the Roll-Oh film once the women’s role in the home is usurped from robots, they are rendered useless as while they have become just an object to be desired or in the world of Helen O’Loy an object to desire men. This idea is present in the literature before Helen gets introduced. When Mrs. van Styler’s son falls in love with a servant girl, it’s presenting as a problem that needs to be fixed because his hormones and the hormones of the girl are incorrect. This moment is treated casually and acts as an inconvenience for Paul. I do think it’s present to set the tone of how this society treats emotions and also foreshadows later events since it is mentioned that Mrs. van Styler should have just used robots if she didn’t want her son to fall in love. The casualness of this moment undermines the moral conflict when it comes to turning off Helen’s feelings for Dave. When compared to when Helen falls in love, they cannot fix her since it would mean “killing” her, but I struggle to see as to why they would care in the first place when they could rebuild her. It seems to show that women can easily be replaced in society because as soon as a robot shows emotions it is rendered the same status as a human.
Helen being a female robot shows how women are seen at the time. She is beautiful and her initial purpose is supposed to serve as a housekeeper. This highlights how women are seen by men, pretty and within the home. When Helen first develops feelings it’s treated like an inconvenience and her desire to be a wife is constantly being put down because she cannot fulfill the role of a wife by bearing children. I find the whole concept to be a male fantasy. A beautiful, naive, young woman who has amazing house working skills falls in love with her creator, Dave, and desperately pines for him because he slightly looks like an actor from a television show. Del Ray also addresses that Helen’s desire to be a wife isn’t going to be satisfied by just marrying anyone. We see this due to Paul also falling in love with her, but Helen is loyal and waits for Dave to come around. Dave’s acceptance of Helen comes after he can fulfill his traditional role of a man. He’s returning to the farm is a return to his natural state of being and allows him to better provide for Helen. This also isolating them from outside influence as they can never fulfill society’s expectations even if they pretend to.
How do you think the story would change if the genders were reversed i.e. the inventors were women and the robot was a man?
That’s a good question, I think it would really depend on the role of the robot, would the women inventors expect the male robot to uphold masculine standards of the time, or would the male robot be expected to cook and clean. If the male robot takes over a feminine role I would see the story to be a critique of the role of men in society.
I think that Ng’s opinion is definitely seen many times in throughout these stories. In “Helen O’Loy”, Dave and Phil create a woman robot that is originally meant for household chores such as cooking and cleaning and to be their servant. Basically, she is just there to fulfill their every need. In the 1940s, most women were responsible for work around the house as the men and husbands would work day time jobs. Ng claims that these works of SF were “stale, sterile, male, white, exalting the ambitions of imperialists, etc.” This story definitely demonstrates most of those aspects. For example, Helen and Dave cannot reproduce as Helen is a robot and is not a human, therefore sterile. Phil is jealous that she falls in love with Dave and even reduces her and objectifies Helen saying that men want real flesh. He is demeaning out of his own jealousy. Phil and Dave are both white men with the power in the story as the robot servant is indeed female. Helen is made to be the ideal woman in this era; she can perform all her tasks when told and still be a loving wife. In addition, Dave even struggles to comes to terms with his feelings and begins drinking as the author exemplifies his masculinity. At the end of the story, we see that Phil was in love with Helen the whole time. Finally, this implies that both men were unable to find real life female partners and were stuck with their own creations circling back to sterility. Ng is spot on with her opinions and “Helen O’Loy” is a great starting point for readers to understand where she is coming from.