A thought on Le Guin

I don’t know how science fiction gained the reputation of being written by and for men.

Actually…wait…no…I do.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley the “mother” of science fiction is, in the early 1800s, actually about midway in the early history of the science fiction novel.

Between the late 1600s and Margaret Cavendish’ Blazing World to the early 1900s there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of science fiction novels by women.

It was in the 1940s, when science fiction was formalised as a genre, that the early history of SF was largely overwritten by the history of American science fiction.

The “folk history” of SF was that it began with pulp magazines edited by Hugo Gernsback and John W Campbell, with an occaisional nod to HG Wells or Jules Verne.

Campbell especially had an oversize influence on early SF, turning it for a time into a bit of a cult of personality. Editors sometimes have this tendency!

Campbell also gave us Scientology, providing the early publicity for L Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics. Campbell was soon frozen out when Hubbard moved on.

American SF fandom has maintained a relationship with Scientology through the Writers of the Future contest. The Church gives a small prize each year, and gets its reputation laundered in exchange.

It’s also well documented that Campbell was racist, the major reason that Isaac Asimov distanced himself from the editor who kickstarted his career.

And deeply misogynist. Which was famously expressed in the short story The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. As the editor Camobell had Godwin rewrite the story again and again until he got the ending he wanted – the female character blown out of the airlock.

So it was the science fiction community shaped by Campbell that Ursula K Le Guin had to fight against as a young writer.

It’s notable that many of the great women writers of science fiction of the 20th century – Ayn Rand, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and more – were published as mainstream literature.

But Le Guin came through and always valued the SF genre community.

In the 21st century Le Guin’s fame has continued to grow while most of her genre peers have faded, leaving her as by far the most famous SF author of her generation.

The dangerous philosophy of Ursula K Le Guin was the “breakthrough” video essay on the channel and has been methododically working its way towards a million views. Testimony to Le Guin’s reputation.

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