The Week Ending September 24

Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: NASA’s Lost Female Astronauts

by Brandon Keim

Imagine if the first person on the moon had proclaimed, “That’s one small step for woman, one giant leap for mankind.”

It could have happened. In the late 1950s, the United States government contemplated training women as astronauts, and newly released medical test results show that they were just as cool and tough as the men who went to the moon.

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Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666)

by skullsinthestars

It is somewhat fascinating to note that certain genres of fiction have their beginnings much earlier than generally appreciated.  Two years ago, I blogged about Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s unusual 1871 novel, The Coming Race, a utopian novel that counts as one of the earliest science fiction stories ever written.  In researching that post, however, I came across a proto-science fiction tale that is much older: The Blazing World, by Margaret Cavendish:

As one can see from the title page, this work is much older than The Coming Race — it was first published in 1666!  Though there wasn’t even much “science” in that era, The Blazing World is arguably one of the earliest science fiction novels ever written.

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SPACE PATROL WOMEN'S DAY MAGAZINE SPOT 1953

Though this isn't specifically women IN space, it is a way to bring Space Age into a child's life through a Woman's creativity and helpful hint from Women's Day Magazine.

Commander Buzz Corey (Ed Kemmer) tells young SPACE PATROL viewers about the tehn-current issue of Women's Day magazine, which contains an article on how to built space helmets for kids. At the end of teh spot is an announcement about the schedukled appearances of the Ralston Ralston, a forty foot replica of Commander Corey's Terra IV battle cruiser. 

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ROCKETSHIP X-M

A woman in space? A pretty, intelligent woman of the 1950s? Ohhhhhh, my!

Space scientists Dr. Ralph Fleming and Dr. Karl Eckstrom conceive the first manned spaceflight, "Rocketship eXpedition Moon". Eckstrom crews the ship with his brilliant protegé Dr. Lisa Van Horn, Astronomer Harry Chamberlain, and engineer Major William Corrigan under pilot Captain Floyd Graham. But as often happens in early 1950s sci-fi adventures, their mission goes awry, and they crash-land on Mars. Instead of a barren rock, however, the crew finds a war-ravaged world inhabited by hostile cavemen and radiation-riddled creatures.

Dr. Lisa Van Horn (Doctor of Chemistry) is treated like a child by Dr. Karl Eckstrom (Doctor of Physics) throughout the film and then she is constantly putting up with a crew member coming up next to her and making sexual remarks. What is a smart single woman of the 1950s to do? Why, smile and say "Yes, Doctor!"

WATCH THIS MOVIE IN ITS ENTIREITY HERE ON APRON TV

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: Science, Science Fiction, or Autobiography?

Mary Shelley's personal life was quite tragic and many modern critics, especially feminist ones, discuss Frankenstein in terms of the recurring themes of procreation and death. This paper will examine these issues more fully by applying Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development to Shelley's life. Most particularly we will examine how Shelley's lack of maternal and paternal care led her to conceive of her Creature. The audience will be encouraged to look beyond the exterior of the Creature and decide exactly who is the monster in this classic novel. Understanding identity issues is also critical to understanding Mary's life and fiction. Her husband's untimely death had adverse effects on Mary's identity and she tried, with varying degrees of success, to establish her own career beyond merely being Percy's literary executor. Indeed many people in her own time were convinced that Percy B. Shelly had actually written Frankenstein.

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The Martin Anderson column: women in sci-fi

Martin Anderson

THE 1950s
Interrupted by a bit of a scuffle in Europe, Sci-Fi Woman returned in the early 1950s as more window-dressing, in boisterous romps such as George Pal’s War Of The Worlds and It Came From Outer Space, but sadly also in much finer work such as Forbidden Planet, where Ann Francis was called on to do little but choose a lover from the noble, crew-cut men of Leslie Nielson’s ship and change her dress every two minutes. They also managed to sneak a nude pool scene in too; in space, women were still passengers. 

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However, let’s not wring our hankies excessively – in most cases the men of 1950s sci-fi were equally transparent ciphers, very often pipe-smoking scientists with male-model looks, effortlessly picking up and appropriating career-women (i.e.Night Of The Demon and This Island Earth). Often the female character was the daughter of a misunderstood scientist (Forbidden Planet)or already attached to the inevitable leading man (Village Of The Damned). 

Women in Science: Then and Now By Vivian Gornick

"Strongly felt, vigorously written."-The Women's Review of Books

"Gornick's portraits demonstrate the driving force behind science."-The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Opens the discussion about women's diverse problems and ambitions in science."-The New York Times Book Review

"Women in science stir the contemporary imagination. In their hyphenated identity is captured the pain and excitement of a culture struggling to mature."-The Washington Post

In this newly revised twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed writer and journalist Vivian Gornick interviews famous and lesser-known scientists, compares their experiences then and now, and shows that, although not much has changed in the world of science, what is different is women's expectations that they can and will succeed.

Everything from the disparaging comments by Harvard's then-president to government reports and media coverage has focused on the ways in which women supposedly can't do science. Gornick's original interviews show how deep and severe discrimination against women was back then in all scientific fields. Her new interviews, with some of the same women she spoke to twenty-five years ago, provide a fresh description of the hard times and great successes these women have experienced.

This book is around $6 and can be PURCHASED HERE-->