The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley, as the poet wrote. I’d meant to be writing a wee column about Leigh Brackett sometime this past summer, but I’m having a small bit of trouble when it comes to actually enjoying her Eric John Stark stories. Since I take my role as part of the WOO YAY brigade seriously, I fear Brackett will have to wait until I’ve got my head around to being able to enjoy ’50s pulpishness. (Okay, so The Ginger Star was published in 1974. It feels like the 1950s. That is a far different world, my friends, and I must peer at it like an anthropologist for a while before I figure out how I feel about it.)
But while peering at 1970s space opera, the thought struck me that one of the things we do, when we’re talking about the history of women—as writers and as characters—in science fiction (and fantasy, but science fiction’s pedigree is more easily traced) is... pass over them. A year ago, apart from C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett, I wouldn’t have been able to name a single woman writing SF before the 1960s off the top of my head.
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