Part I. The Fate of the Poseidonia
“George,” came the sweet, faraway voice, “I loved you, but you were so suspicious and jealous that I accepted the companionship of Martell, hoping to bring you to your senses. I did not know what an agency for evil he had established upon the earth. Forgive me, dear.”
…
Her eyes filled with tears. “Do not mourn for me, George, for I shall take up the thread of life anew among these strange but beautiful surroundings. Mars is indeed lovely, but I will tell you of it later for I cannot talk long now.”
“I only want to say,” she added hastily, “that Terra need fear Mars no more. There is a sufficiency of water now—and I will prevent any—”
Clare Winger Harris, “The Fate of the Poseidonia,” Amazing Stories 2, no. 3 (June 1927).
Harris is credited as the first woman to publish stories under her own name in science fiction magazines. For this reason, she is often read as an early feminist voice in SF. Given this context, how do you interpret Margaret Landon’s role in this story? Do you believe that her speech really happened, or is it a fantasy that George is having in the asylum? Cite evidence from this passage and from the story to support your answer.
Model answer
Either reading can earn full credit if it picks one, supports it with evidence, and admits what the other side has going for it.
For most of the story, Margaret is a prize two men fight over, and we see her only through George, who is jealous. In this speech she finally speaks for herself, and it changes how we see the story. She explains her choice: she went with Martell “hoping to bring you to your senses,” so she was acting, not just being won. She judges George as “so suspicious and jealous,” so the man telling the story is criticized by the woman he says he loves. She does not ask to be rescued, either. She will “take up the thread of life anew” on Mars, and she finds it “lovely.” Most importantly, she promises that “Terra need fear Mars no more,” so if anyone saves Earth, it may be her rather than the male hero. Harris also gives Margaret the last word with George.
The speech most likely really happened. The Poseidonia really disappears with Margaret on it, the oceans really drop, George was right about Martell all along, and Professor Stearns believes him. Besides, if George had imagined the speech, it is hard to see why Margaret would call him “suspicious and jealous,” since a jealous man’s delusion probably would not blame him. Still, the fantasy reading has a case. George is an unreliable narrator who spies through a keyhole, lies his way into Martell’s rooms, and ends up in a hospital for the insane, and many people still doubt him. The speech also gives a rejected lover everything he wants: she loved him, she asks his forgiveness, and she promises to “tell you of it later.” It even cuts off right when she would have to explain how a kidnapped woman will save the Earth.
The two readings point in different directions. If the speech is real, Margaret could be the story’s most powerful earthling. If it is George’s fantasy, then even her “independent” voice is words a man has put in her mouth, which would make the story about how men imagine women. That reading may have a feminist point, too.
Part II. The Conquest of Gola
Both Stone’s “The Conquest of Gola” and Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” imagine societies ruled by women. These stories were published around the time of first-wave feminism, whose primary demand was securing women’s right to vote in democratic societies. Compare and contrast the two stories in this historical context. Consider how the female characters rule (politically, economically, and so on) and how they treat the men within and beyond their societies. Cite specific evidence from both texts. Plot details and character names are specific enough; you do not need to quote directly.
Model answer
Both stories reverse the order of their authors’ worlds: women rule, and men are kept apart. Ladyland’s men live secluded in the mardana, the way women lived in the zenana, and Gola’s men are kept at home as gentle companions with no part in government. If the order can be turned upside down, men’s rule is not natural. In both, women rule by brains, not strength. Ladyland’s women win their war with science from their universities, the sun-heat that drives the enemy away, and Gola’s women are telepathic, so their power is mainly mental. That answers the old argument, which Sultana repeats, that men should rule because their arms are stronger. And in both, men who mock women lose. Ladyland’s officers called the women’s science “a sentimental nightmare,” and the men from Detaxal cannot accept that women govern Gola and are destroyed.
The differences matter just as much. Ladyland goes to war only because the Queen protects refugees, and it simply drives the enemy away and lives in peace afterward. Gola turns away the visitors’ offers of trade, and when they invade, the women eventually kill them all, which makes Gola harsher and closer to a revenge fantasy. Ladyland’s men were secluded as a concession to a war they lost, and they “have ceased to grumble.” Gola’s men are won over by the invaders, and the women’s first move in the counterattack is to pull them back to their chambers by force of mind. Stone admits that a society like this has to keep its men down by force, and Hossain barely shows it. The point of view differs too. Sultana is a visitor from a world like the reader’s, so Ladyland is explained to us, while “The Conquest of Gola” is told by a Golan woman, so the human men are the strange, ugly aliens.
In the context of first-wave feminism, it stands out that neither story imagines a democracy or women voting alongside men. Ladyland has a Queen and Gola has its female rulers; both turn the tables completely. That makes sense for each author. Hossain wrote in British India in 1905, where most people, men or women, could not vote for their government at all, and what she argued for was education, which is what saves Ladyland. Stone wrote in the United States in 1931, after the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) gave women the vote, but she shows that the vote did not end men’s contempt for women’s rule. Both stories suggest that the vote is not, and could not be, enough to solve the problems women face in their worlds.
Part III. September 2005: The Martian
Before their eyes he changed. He was Tom and James and a man named Switchman, another named Butterfield; he was the town mayor and the young girl Judith and the husband William and the wife Clarisse. He was melting wax shaping to their minds. They shouted, they pressed forward, pleading. He screamed, threw out his hands, his face dissolving to each demand. “Tom!” cried LaFarge. “Alice!” another. “William!” They snatched his wrists, whirled him about, until with one last shriek of horror he fell.
He lay on the stones, melted wax cooling, his face all faces, one eye blue, the other golden, hair that was brown, red, yellow, black, one eyebrow thick, one thin, one hand large, one small.
Ray Bradbury, “September 2005: The Martian,” in The Martian Chronicles (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950).
All three stories for today imagine extraterrestrial life. What distinguishes Bradbury’s Martian from the other extraterrestrials we read about today, and from the prototypical “little green men” from Mars? What narrative possibilities does writing this story as speculative fiction open up that realism does not?
Model answer
Bradbury’s Martian is different first because he is not a violent threat. In SF like The War of the Worlds, Martians attack Earth, and Harris’s Martians are invaders too, stealing Earth’s water and carrying off a ship. Stone’s Golans are powerful rulers who defeat the men who invade them. Bradbury’s Martian has no weapons and no plan, and in this scene the humans and their overwhelming desires are the danger. He also has no fixed shape. Martell looks almost human despite his sponginess, and the Golans have round, furry bodies, but this Martian becomes whoever the people around him want, like “melting wax.” If he has “all faces,” he has none. Finally, he is lonely and sympathetic. He wants love, and the story asks us to pity him as much as the humans, or more.
Writing this as speculative fiction lets Bradbury make a metaphor literal. Grieving people really do see their dead loved ones in other people, and a realist story could describe that, but Bradbury makes it happen through Tom’s shapeshifting. It also shows what desire costs the person who is desired. Each person in the crowd sees someone they want, whether a lost son or daughter, a husband, or even a murderer the policeman wants to arrest, and their combined desire kills the Martian. For the grieving, nothing but the lost person is enough, and that is the one thing they know they cannot have. The story also reverses the usual tale of Martian conquest for water or other resources. Earth has come to Mars, the colonists are building something that looks like Earth there, and the native Martian, who now seems rare, is the victim. Finally, it estranges the familiar. Without the title and a few quiet details, we might not even know the story is set on Mars, so the novum, the Martian, estranges us from grief.