Feminist Ca

Resistance is Useless? \ 59
the impact of feminist critiques on the field. A more immediate context
for the reception of feminist critiques is found in the fanzines and
magazine letter columns of the time, which responded to statements
and fiction by feminist authors and critics. Indeed, the intense nature
of debates around feminism and women in sf is suggested by repeated
statements from fans and authors that, by the late 1970s, the whole issue
was “old-hat.” This is certainly not the impression gained from academic
criticism in book-length studies and journal articles. In the more
rarefied atmosphere of the academy and “sf scholarship,” feminist sf
criticism was by no means a constant, let alone “overdone,” theme.
A wonderful example of the complex responses to feminist critique
within the sf community is provided by the re-publication of Joanna
Russ’s article, “The Image of Women in Science Fiction” (Russ 1974b:
53-7). 28 The first critique of sf’s representation of women consciously
informed by the women’s movement, “Image of Women” was initially
published in a small literary magazine, The Red Clay Reader, in 1970,
but the article did not appear to attract much attention in sf commentary
until its second re-publication in the sf magazine Vertex in 1974.
Subsequent issues of Vertex contained replies to Russ from two prominent
male authors. The first reply was a rebuttal from Poul Anderson,
whose tone of patronizing correction from a kindly, better-informed
patriarch is signaled by his title “Reply to a Lady” (P. Anderson 1974).
Beginning by situating Russ as a knowledgeable figure, “one of the
perhaps half a dozen science fiction critics worth anybody’s attention,”
he proceeded to recast her as a biased female (or worse, “lady”) who
had “let her fervor in a cause run away with her” and “let her political
convictions influence her literary judgment to the detriment
of the latter” (8). 29 Like a number of his contemporaries, Anderson
believes that women simply are not relevant to much sf: “the frequent
absence of women characters has no great significance, perhaps none
28 Joanna Russ, “The Image of Women in Science Fiction,” Red Clay Reader, 1970;
reprinted in Susan Koppelman Cornillon (ed.) Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist
Perspectives, Bowling Green, OH, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972;
reprinted in Vertex, vol. 1, no. 6, Feb. 1974, 53-7. All page numbers cited refer to
this issue. Russ’s article is discussed in Chapter Four.
29 Russ wrote a number of reviews for F&SF in the 1960s and 1970s including reviews
of Anderson’s work, as well as a piece that pointedly confronted those who
believed “politics” had no place in such reviews (November 1979, 107 in Russ,
2007). For more on Russ’ reviews see James (2009).