From: cozzlab@garnet.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Shiras, continued
Date: 8 Apr 92 19:09:18 GMT
Article-I.D.: agate.rvgcuINNlhf
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: garnet.berkeley.edu
Originator: cozzlab@garnet.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Apr8.082612.15862@csusac.csus.edu> potter@csusac.ecs.csus.edu (Carl Kolchak) writes:

"this one's impossible for me to believe.  John W. Campbell, Jr., was 
"notoriously bigoted, opinionated, and bullheaded, but he was definitely
"not sexist!   ....
".... He's quite capable of having suggested that she 
"spell her name as "Wilmar" to get her an unprejudiced reading,  ....

I met Shiras once, and now I am trying to remember if it was she who
told me about the name change (which would sew the matter up) or whether
I heard it elsewhere (which would leave the issue still in doubt).

"I decline to doubt that he *ever* said "couldn't believe that a woman
"had written the thing."   Campbell didn't care *where* a good story 
"came from, as long as it was *good*.  [etc., etc., etc.]

Consider some of Campbell's other quirks, viz., his racial and ethnic
prejudices that we all know about, I'm not sure your point is made.
Campbell manifested the "some-of-my-best-friends-are" syndrome, wherein
he firmly believed that all X are Y, except for those few X whom he
happened to know and considered exceptions to the norm!  E.g., Isaac
Asimov, who as an ethnic Russian Jew fell into several categories
Campbell looked down on--but not on Asimov, because he _knew_ Asimov
and knew he was intelligent and had the makings of a writer in him.
Campbell knew a good number of intelligent women--several of them
wrote for him, one was married to him, others were married to his
friends--but this wouldn't prevent him from thinking that somebody
*whom he didn't know* who had just sent him in a good story *must*
by default be male.

And then after he found out, well, the by-line was established already.

Getting back to Shiras, the thing I do remember her saying is that
she wrote about the Atom Kids as if they were adults in kids' bodies,
coping as best they could with a culture that considered them cute
and not very bright.

If you find the Pennyfarthing edition of _CotA_, you'll find a foreword
by Marion Zimmer Bradley describing how many young fans would say to
Shiras (if they happened to meet her) or to anyone else who would listen,
about how they identified with the Atom Kids,  The character's problems
were the problems, writ large for dramatic effect, of any bright kid
living among average people and feeling alienated because of it.  This
includes not only me, my husband, my kids, but, I will bet, most of
those who read this group.

Which is why the ending of _CotA_ isn't the cop-out several posters
have said it is.  Yes, the Atom Kids have to go back down to the flats
and rejoin the human race.  This is not a bad thing.  Because even if
you were willing to postulate a genuinely new species appearing out
of the human genepool on such short notice [calculate, if you will,
the likelihood of a radiation dose that killed all the parents within
two years, having first produced _dozens_ of F1 kids who all had the
*same* mutation--enhanced intelligence--and no other somatic or genetic
changes]....

....even if you want to assume for the sake of the story that the
Atom Kids are not human, WE ARE.  Yes, you and me and our spouses and
kids and all the other readers of these bandwidths, we are part of the
human race.  We happen to have one trait in common; other than that we
are as diverse as any other segment of humanity, differing by race,
ethnicity, religion, age, sex, sexual practices, and everything else
you can think of.  And we are not entitled to assume, "Well, people
who are as smart as me are human; the rest are just puppies."

End of sermon.


Dorothy J. Heydt
UC Berkeley
Disclaimer: This is the Cozzarelli Lab's account, not mine--but I don't
think anybody else ever reads it.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written