{"id":51,"date":"2008-03-02T00:00:37","date_gmt":"2008-03-02T05:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/?p=51"},"modified":"2022-12-05T18:22:24","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T23:22:24","slug":"the-women-of-space-westerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spacewesterns.com\/articles\/the-women-of-space-westerns\/","title":{"rendered":"The Women of Space Westerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

N<\/strong><\/span>o, I don\u2019t mean Summer Glau, Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, and Jewel Staite; as fabulous and talented as these ladies are. And I don\u2019t mean the extra-terrestrial school marm, the interplanetary dance-hall girl, or even the green-skinned alien hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold; as important as though character-types are to the Space Western genre. I mean: the women writers who were early innovators in Science Fiction<\/em>. Yes, it\u2019s true. Women write Science Fiction. Women have written Science Fiction since day one (whether you mean Mary Shelley or Gertrude Barrows Bennett AKA Francis Stevens).<\/p>\n

These women wrote Science Fiction even before bras were being burnt. These women wrote Science Fiction even before Rosie the Riveter fastened her first rivet. And these women weren\u2019t just pioneering women<\/em> in Science Fiction, they were pioneers of Science Fiction in their own right. Their works weren\u2019t just judged to be good, their works weren\u2019t just award-winning, but also, in the grand scheme of Science Fiction, their works were highly influential and historically important.<\/p>\n

I can forgive them for adopting masculine pen-names (and thus obscuring the fact that women wrote Science Fiction). The simple subterfuge of using a masculine pen-name kept these women from being dismissed out of hand. By doing so they were able to write in a fashion where their work was judged on its merits, and not based on the writer\u2019s gender. They were able to escape the absurd notion that Clare Winger Harris suffered under: In 1927 she was used as an example by Hugo Gernsback for the ridiculous assertion that she \u201cis the exception that proves the rule<\/em>\u201d that women aren\u2019t suited to write Science Fiction.<\/p>\n

These women wrote Science Fiction, and more importantly (to us), they wrote stories set in outer-space using Western genre themes. By \u201cthese women,\u201d I mean C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and Andre Norton.<\/p>\n

Mr. C.L. Moore (1911-1987)<\/h2>\n

In 1936 \u201cMr. C.L. Moore\u201d received a letter from Mr. Henry Kuttner, who was passing along photos at Mr. H.P. Lovecraft\u2019s request. This correspondence became a friendship that would begin a long-time collaboration between Moore and Kuttner. The collaborations produced stories that were often published under various pseudonyms, with \u201cLewis Padgett\u201d being the pseudonym most often used.<\/p>\n

Kuttner and Moore eventually met in person at a friend\u2019s house in California and later married in 1940. They helped usher in the \u201cGolden Age of Science Fiction\u201d as part of the stable of writers working for Astounding Science Fiction<\/em> magazine under John W. Campbell. Classics published under the Lewis Padgett name were: \u201cThe Twonky\u201d (which was adapted for a film of the same name), \u201cMimsy Were the Borogroves\u201d (from which the movie The Last Mimsy <\/em>was adapted), and the Gallegher<\/em> series of stories.<\/p>\n

C.L. Moore was a writer of some note even before meeting Kuttner, with her first short story \u201cShambleau\u201d being published in Weird Tales<\/em> in November of 1933. It was the first of her Northwest Smith<\/em> stories and it helped C.L. Moore break into a traditionally male-dominated industry, not just to acceptance but to applause and critical acclaim. C.L. Moore continued to write stories which appeared in Weird Tales<\/em> featuring Northwest Smith \u2014 and later Jirel of Joiry, the first female sword and sorcery protagonist \u2014 the bulk of which were written and published before her marriage to Henry Kuttner.<\/p>\n

Even after her marriage and collaborations with Kuttner, C.L. Moore continued to publish a steady stream of her own work, many of which can be found collected in Judgement Night<\/em> (1952) and The Best of C.L. Moore<\/em> (1975). In 1950 an excellent example of a Space Western entitled \u201cParadise Street\u201d appeared in Astounding<\/em>. More than a simple tale of a frontiersman fighting the encroachment of civilization, it is injected with allusions to plausible folk-tales of the outer-space frontier. The Cock-eyed Giant of Mars, and the story\u2019s namesake: Paradise Street, a metaphor for space travel.<\/p>\n

Moore and Kuttner continued writing, separately and in collaborations, until Kuttner\u2019s death in 1958. At that time she began working in television in earnest, writing scripts for such series as Sugarfoot<\/em>, Maverick<\/em>, The Twilight Zone<\/em>, and 77 Sunset Strip<\/em>. She ceased writing altogether when she re-married in 1963.<\/p>\n

Northwest Smith<\/h3>\n

In a move prescient of the Bat Durston Galaxy Magazine<\/em> ads, and one that places Northwest Smith firmly in our hearts as a Space Cowboy, Moore originally created Northwest Smith as a Western character. When rewriting the stories as Science Fiction, she decided that she liked the absurdity of a character named \u201cNorthwest\u201d in space, where compass points are meaningless, and kept the name.<\/p>\n

Described as a dark-haired man with \u201cspace bronzed\u201d skin and pale eyes, Northwest Smith is an interplanetary ne\u2019er-do-well who lives by a variety of criminal means, including smuggling. He is also described as wearing brown spacer\u2019s leathers and carrying a raygun at his side (like an old west gunfighter). Despite being a cynical anti-hero he has a solid sense of justice and often does the right thing in spite of himself. Along with his alien sidekick, Yarol the Venusian, he chased adventure though-out the solar system in his small and unspectacular but surprisingly fast ship dubbed The Maid<\/em>. As such, he can be seen as the prototype for such characters as Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds.<\/p>\n