Women’s Celibacy and the Propagation Imperative in Irish Science Fiction

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting and well written article which illuminates an important and often overlooked area of Irish literature. The discussion of "national marriage" novels and of Mercia, the Astronomer Royal will likely be of particular interest to readers. 

My main comment is that the article feels somewhat unbalanced, with five pages of context before four pages of what is ostensibly the subject matter of Irish science fiction. This contextualization material is obviously well researched, and it is clear that you have an excellent grasp of it, however I do feel that it buries the lede somewhat. 

I suspect that revising the first half of the article to have a stronger focus on Irish material would be beneficial to bringing it into alignment with the stated title and the subject of the special issue (case in point, your opening example from Le Guin, which is effective, could perhaps be more relevant if it came from a text by an Irish author, someone like, say, Eilis Ni Dhuibhne or Sarah David-Goff?). I would also consider condensing sections 2 and 3 to allow more room for expansions of the sections about "national marriage" texts and, especially, about Mercia (this latter section in particular has the potential to be a most valuable contribution to the discussion of Irish science fiction if it is given the room to do so). 

Finally, I found a small typo on p.8, line 349: "ad" where it should be "and" (this is obviously not a big deal, but I thought to mention it). 

Author Response

Thank you for your insightful feedback! I have adjusted the structure of the article, in line with what you suggested, so that the emphasis on Irish literature is present from the beginning. In so doing, I've made mention of several other works by Irish women authors, though without going into huge detail on them. Your point about the Le Guin quite is taken, but I elected not to change it - firstly, because there isn't really a distinct quote in any of the Irish texts surveyed that gets across the same 'estrangement' so pithily; and secondly, "The King was pregnant" enjoys an iconic status in science fiction criticism as /the/ example of how genre complicates normative gender roles. Thank you again for your time and consideration.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Let me begin by saying that I really enjoyed this essay, and I am eager to now read Mercia.

(I will also say that I would have preferred that the above questions offered more that THREE options. It seems to me that there is a LOT of space in between "high" and "average." Please bear that in mind as you (the author) look through the responses.)

Perhaps the author already knows of this resource, but just in case:

https://ltimmelduchamp.com/essays/chronology.html

It's a list of feminist utopias/dystopias/single-sex societies, from 1818-1949 (it includes Mercia).

Although I'm not much of a fan of Suvin's take on SF—the author here is correct that it is much cited. AND, I can see how it works here with the author's claims.

The example of estrangement from Le Guin's novel here works well given the arguments to come.

I would agree that Frankenstein does usher in SF and the question of reproduction. The claim here (page 2), though seems a bit out of the blue. I realize that it's the Introductory section. I realize that the author is still setting up the arguments to come. Even so, it seems a bit incongruous and unsubstantiated at this point.

The author sets out three three main points of the essay. Good. They are clear. However, the first one is "genre-wide negotiation of the politics of compulsory heterosexuality and patriarchal sexual control by key feminist authors."  However, the subheading of the first main section reads: "Heteronormativity and Genre." One can make an argument that those two are connected and quite similar. But I wonder why the difference in terminology. It is, potentially, a bit confusing to shift the terms of analysis. Can those two things be co-ordinated?

In section one, the author makes a brief shift from discussing SF as literature to SF as film. I can see that the author then sets up Latham's comment on Sobchek's claim, but I think that a source working in SF literature could be used to make a similar claim, which Latham's point would still rebut. The histories, and timelines, and modes of SF literature and SF film are so different that I am a bit uncomfortable conflating them here in this way. (And I think it happens again very briefly on page 5.)

I might suggest that Judith Merrill gets CLOSE to what the author is discussing here. Merrill wrote a number of stories in which reproduction is central, where arguments about sexual arrangements are important. In another story, she sets up a whole colonizing mission, hiding that fact that the make-up of the crew is almost entirely female—in order to maximize reproduction. In the story, they knew it would be scandalous. And Merrill knew that, for the audience, it would be scandalous.

It might be worth noting that a number of SF writers, including the already-mentioned Farmer, and Robert Silverberg, and others, made a good deal of money writing erotica and porn. They made more money doing that than they could writing SF. And so you have two points here: the relative lack of overt sexuality in SF, and the fact that purveyors of smut would find ways to incorporate it into SF.

The author then moves to sub-heading two: which I anticipated being about Irish SF (based on the structure set up in the Intro.) It is not. It is on utopia. I think that that second argument needs to be included in the Intro and the set up of the structure of the essay.

I might suggest including Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain's Sultana's Dream in the history of early feminist utopias. It pre-dates Herland. It contains some specific interesting details.

The author describes Ursula K. Le Guin as "a Marxist first." I have seen and read many things describing her as a socialist, but not as a Marxist. I think Le Guin herself would describe herself (and I realize that her own opinion is not necessarily the deciding one) as a Taoist. Perhaps a citation for that claim? Le Guin writes: "I felt totally at home with (pacifist, not violent) anarchism, just as I always had with Taoism (they are related, at least by affinity.) It is the only mode of political thinking that I do feel at home with. It also links up more and more interestingly, these days, with behavioral biology and animal psychology (as Kropotkin knew it would.)"

The author mentions Woman on the Edge of Time only briefly. However, that book really takes up the work of Firestone (mentioned in the following paragraph) and mechanizes all reproduction. Each child is designed. Each child has three biological parents. All three parents breastfeed the child. Etc. And they have sexual relations outside of that parental relationship. In other words, (as Rich suggests) sexual pleasure and reproduction are separated.

The end of this section reads: "We can thus conclude that, science fiction has tended to replicate discourses that support a sexist ideology of mandated marriage and reproduction". . . ." However, I'm not sure that that conclusion CAN be reached, based on what has been presented. To make THAT claim, the author would have to look at a wider range of SF. Perhaps the claim can be made that feminist SF supports that claim. That is what the author has looked at. The author has not looked at "SF" writ large. The larger claim would require drawing from a wider range of texts.

The next subheading (Marriage Plots) works the best and (for me) was the most interesting.

(I noted several typos—though I assume those will be handled by copy editors at a latter stage?)

I also had a question about the phrase "All of this chimes. . . ." (p 8). That phrase stopped me in my tracks. The only way I could make sense of it was to read it as "All of this jibes. . ." (or gibes). I wondered if "chimes" is a regional variation. Or, perhaps I am misreading the sentence altogether. I was just wondering about the intended audience and reception of the term. I have no definitive answer.

Conclusions. Here, the author writes that "heteronormativity and the traditional accoutrements thereof do not belong in a science-fictional future." I mean, I certainly hope that they are not a part of any future, but I'm not convinced here that the essay has made that argument. I see the author making a claim of "backlash." We see that happening now. Any progress or innovation made is met with a push to return to the old ways. So, I think that part of the argument holds.

Again, I want to say that I really enjoyed this essay. I know that I had said a lot of things here that might make it seem like I did not. I really look forward to seeing the finished version of this!!

Author Response

Thank you for your insightful feedback! Many of your suggestions have been addressed by a substantial restructuring recommended by the other reviewer, e.g. the placement of the Irish material and the disproportionate space given to definitions of utopian literature in the opening sections (though your resource on the timeline of single-sex utopias is much appreciated and I will likely make use of it in future). I've left in the opening reference to /Frankenstein/ due to its privileged status as an 'ur-text' in science fiction criticism: this is both for the benefit of a reader unfamiliar with sf and sf criticism, and for 'initiated' readers to whom its absence would look extremely odd (likewise for the Suvin definition). I've removed a lot of material that your feedback made me realise was extraneous, and supplemented it with more specifically Irish material instead. Thank you again for your time and consideration.