SFRA Awards 2000
Presented July 1, 2000
Cleveland, Ohio
| Pilgrim Award: | Hal Hall |
| Clareson Award: | Arthur O. Lewis |
| Pioneer Award: | Wendy Pearson |
| Graduate Student Paper Award: | Shelley Rodrigo Blanchard |
Pilgrim Award Presentation Speech
Joe Sanders for the Pilgrim Award Committee
The Pilgrim Award frequently has honored people who have produced original, striking critical opinions. It also has recognized the vital work of people who have made the existing body of information and opinions accessible for SF scholars. Without awareness of what others already have discovered, each of us would begin new projects in ignorant solitude. But tracking down scattered essays and reviews in fantastic literature is extremely difficult. This year's Pilgrim has long been one of the most important bibliographers of science fiction.
He was born in 1941 in Waco, Texas, to a central Texas blackland farmer and a schoolteacher. After majoring in biology at the University of Texas and receiving a Master of Library Science degree from North Texas State, he entered the library profession. Since 1970, he's been a librarian at Texas A&M University.
In 1971, he began publishing the annual Science Fiction Book Review Index. Several of these annuals, plus additional information, were gathered into a hardcover volume published by Gale Research. Two more hardcover culminations have been published, along with annuals for the 1985-1990 period-a total of almost 68,000 citations to reviews of more than 30,000 books.
A second major project of this year's Pilgrim winner has been to index the secondary literature, books and magazines, devoted to fantastic literature. The work began in 1967 on 3 × 5 index cards. A preliminary index appeared in microfiche in 1980, was expanded in the last book review index, and expanded again into the two-volume Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Index, 1878-1985, published in 1987, which cited about 19,000 books, articles, interviews, and other material. With this much information, the project obviously has become impractical to continue on index cards or in expensive hardcover omnibus volumes. Fortunately, the Pilgrim Award winner has been named to the Texas A&M Library Irene B. Hoadley Professorship for 2000-2001, an award that provides funding and support for his project to move the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Index to the internet in a searchable form and to update the index through material published through the year 2000. The database currently contains almost 50,000 items. Particularly valuable is the indexing of hundreds of fanzines published since the 1940s, which rarely have been indexed by anyone else.
He has annotated the magazines of and about science fiction for several editions of the standard guide, Magazines for Libraries, and contributed the chapters on magazines and on private and library collections to the 1987 edition of Neil Barron's Anatomy of Wonder. An SFRA member since 1970, he has served on the editorial board of Extrapolation since 1975, coedited (with Bev Friend) the SFRA Newsletter, 1974-5, and served as book review editor from August 1974 through December 1976.
These are a few of the highlights of the career of this year's Pilgrim, who has produced a body of work for which all serious SF scholars will long be in his debt. In addition, the awards committee noted how this year's Pilgrim has not pursued his major projects in splendid solitude. Instead, he goes out of his way to share information. Anyone who has participated in the SFRA listserve has seen inquiries by people who desperately need a story's title, more examples of fiction using a particular theme, clues to what's been said about some writer. Shortly after such a query, one frequently finds a concise, authoritative reply by this year's winner of the Science Fiction Research Association's Pilgrim Award: Hal Hall.
The Pilgrim Award Committee comprised Joe Sanders, chair; Neil Barron; and Elizabeth Davidson.
Pilgrim Award Acceptance Speech
Thoughts Random and Miscellaneous, from the Eye of an Indexer
Hal W. Hall
The first order of business today is a heartfelt thank you to SFRA and to the awards committee. Standing in the shadow of the giants in the field who have preceded me in accepting the Pilgrim Award is indeed a humbling experience.
I cannot stand at this podium before this organization accepting this award without paying tribute to Tom Clareson. Tom was friend, mentor, and supporter during the early years of my bibliographic efforts. Without his encouragement and advice, my indexing work might have died in infancy. Tom was not my only supporter and cheerleader. Rob Reginald, P. Schuyler Miller, Neil Barron, Jim Gunn, Dave Samuelson and a number of others in our field offered advice and encouragement that sustained my efforts through times bright and dark. To all of them, I extend another thank you.
I recently indexed an article titled "Why I Do What I Do." Since most of you view indexing and bibliography with a jaundiced eye, I borrowed that idea. When I wrote a piece for Extrapolation in 1973, I quoted the following: "It takes an inspired idiot to be an indexer." In 1967, when I started indexing, I didn't know that quote-it is probably a good thing.
So: why do I do what I do? Because a student came to a reference desk in the piney woods of East Texas in 1967 to read a book review on any Asimov book, and we could not find one. Because P. Schuyler Miller said "A book review index is a good idea!" Because I had not found that quote! In the fall of 1968, I did a prototype book review index, printed 20 copies, and did a cold mailing to big names in science fiction. Several replied, among them Miller. That item was Science Fiction Book Review Index No. 0; I know of two surviving copies! Thus began Science Fiction Book Review Index, which survived through 21 annual volumes and three cumulations, but which is no longer active.
About 1979, I started indexing history and criticism seriously. By 1980, I had about 4000 items in my card file. (Remember index cards?) About that time, I did an analysis of the other subject access tools-Clareson's and Tymn's-and found that I had about 1200 more items that those sources, so I pressed on. At that time, I also publicly estimated I had less than 50% of the directly applicable material indexed. Neil Barron challenged that assertion-until the index hit the 40,000 mark, and he quit arguing.
The indexes have evolved from typewriters, to punched cards, to computer-output microfiche, to database programs. Along with the databases came a truly magical program written by Bill Contento that created a book, complete with running headers and page numbers.
Now, as some of you have seen, I am moving the index to a searchable version on the World Wide Web, titled Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database (http://library.tamu.edu/cushing/sffrd/). The scope is broad, but focuses primarily on science fiction and fantasy. There are significant entries on utopian literature, on horror literature, and on gothic literature, but those areas are not pursued with the vigor of science fiction and fantasy.
It is not a completely satisfactory move: The long evolution from typed cards to an online database involved many compromises. Some stylistic niceties could not transfer: italics and boldface to set off titles. Diacritics are not standardized. The style of entry changed over 25 years. What seemed a good idea in 1970 proved to be a choice that needed correcting: form of name entry and capitalization, especially.
The index now contains over 51,000 items, and still is only 50% complete. It can be searched in several different ways: author, title, imprint (or source), and subject. The search screens were designed to give the user enough options to allow a variety of searches (or a simplified quick search). Like all databases, the user can put in the time to learn the unique characteristics and functionalities of the tool to increase the success of their searches. It should be as near as your desktop, or at least your local library.
I might note that I had decided to stop indexing when it became apparent that a printed index was no longer a viable publishing option. I could not resist the opportunity to apply for the Hoadley Professorship at the Texas A&M University Library, to move the index to the Web. The options of the Web give the index a new lease on life, perhaps. Growth can occur-I have over 3000 items I can add. If the community of scholars chooses to suggest new items with the online forms provided, I have no doubt thousands more can be added.
Improvements-especially in the subject terms-can now be made in ways not previously possible. As scholars use the database, it is my hope they will suggest additional subject terms for items, suggests changes, and identify needed corrections.
For the future, I am looking at the possibility of moving my Book Review Indexes to the Web in searchable form. In capsule form, that is the history of the development of these bibliographies.
I have watched SFRA grow and develop for most of its history, and I have heard and read the ideas and dreams of its members. Perhaps an instant replay of some of those dreams might be informative as SFRA moves into a new millennium. In some alternate history of SFRA, perhaps these dreams have already been fulfilled.
Let's drift back in time to 1975, and consider the words of Damon Knight, in his Pilgrim Award acceptance speech:
The quality of the essays I have read varies widely, but one thing that strikes me forcibly about them as a body of work, and that is their choice of subject seems haphazard at best; I see no evidence that the academic critics are relating their work to any historical schema. In a young discipline, this is not surprising, but I would like to propose to you that the time has come for the academic critics of science fiction to organize their inquiry.
Knight went on to suggest both a schema and lines of inquiry. Contemporary scholars and editors might do well to read the rest of his comments, and perhaps adopt them.
Knight's hypothesis that scholarship clusters around a few modern authors (and topics, now), remains valid, at least from my perspective as an indexer, as does his observation about the quality of papers. These are concerns that we, as academic scholars, need to hear, and they remain with us. In a recent listserve message, one scholar noted "there's too much sloppy criticism" and that too many scholars give papers "without any concept that there's a large body of criticism in existence."
In Matrix No. 123, Andrew Butler made a similar point, citing the poor knowledge of their own field of study so many scholars exhibited, frequently not even knowing the three key scholarly journals. Butler went on to note, "We need to map SF rather than take random samples." Note the similarity to Damon Knight's proposal.
E. F. Bleiler, in his Pilgrim Award acceptance speech, noted an area that needs work when he wrote:
I am referring to the use of the disciplines of history of science and history of ideas in understanding science fiction. In the older work particularly, to recapture what the author consciously thought he or she was doing-no matter where the analyst goes from this starting point-it is often desirable to consider context, for much science-fiction is a rather trivial superstructure to the science of its day. It has long astonished me that so little work has been done in this field.
I would submit to you that this association has roles in scholarship that go beyond the current efforts, and that Knight, Butler, and Bleiler have given you hints at what those roles might be.
Perhaps the most significant need in the bibliography of science fiction is that of a motif or theme index. In the May 1960 issue of Extrapolation, S. J. Sackett noted that "a ‘Motif Index to Science Fiction' would be a valuable aid to future scholars." Tom Clareson echoed that suggestion many times, and Marshall Tymn was working on the design of a format for such an index just prior to his accident. The need for such access continues to be underscored by current electronic listserves, which feature frequent requests for assistance in identifying items featuring particular themes or motifs. That the online request may not be the best way to find all the resources is underscored by Gary Westfahl's 1993 SFRAReview piece, "Science Fiction: The Unknown Genre."
One person is prototyping a motif index. E. F. Bleiler has worked on the pre-1960 science fiction and includes a theme or motif index as one element of his work. In his various books, he has classified some 20,000 books and stories into 30,000 entries by theme or motif. Bleiler cautions users that this is "not intended to be a systematic classification of fantastic motifs." It is the only significant theme access to early science fiction, and it proves the case that a theme or motif index is a realistic possibility.
Both the SFRA and the IAFA have published volumes of papers from their conferences. Such publishing is a great service to scholarship. The technical capability to move scholarship in a new direction, that of publishing conference papers directly on the Web, is now well established. In the world today, there is little reason to publish twenty conference papers in a hardcover volume, perhaps in an edition of less than 500 copies. The publication of these papers on a Web site, in a manner similar to the High Energy Physics papers at Los Alamos, would make them available to the world of scholars in a far more effective way. SFRA could open a new era of scholarly discourse, not only of the papers themselves but also of a linked interactive dialogue of scholars centered on each paper. And yes, I do know the arguments about copyright, tenure, and the inflexibility of tenure review committees, and the joy of holding a journal issue in your hands.
In this same vein, Rob Reginald notes: "While other genres and literatures have produced dozens of festschriften to honor their esteemed senior colleagues, we have thus far issued none." (Since then, I believe, we have two items that might qualify.)
Reginald also proposed the idea of an Annual Review of Science Fiction-not a yearbook, but an anthology of essays by members on major topics of interest, similar to those produced by Annual Reviews Inc. and others. The Locus annual summaries of publishing, magazines, and motion pictures, and their annual Locus Poll are examples of what could be done. From my Web-oriented perspective, the SFRA Website is the perfect venue for such an annual review concept, perhaps with the appropriate academic apparatus for review and acceptance.
Development of Web-based, inclusive single-author bibliographies and study guides, combining the quality and completeness of the Borgo Press model with the teaching assistance pieces running in the SFRAReview (and the editors deserve great credit for that series!) would be a valuable tool for any scholar and teacher.
Perhaps it is time for SFRA to take the lead in some of these concepts, "to go where no association has gone before" and create new models of publishing and scholarship. Who better than a science fiction association to lead the way?
It has been a great meeting. Thank you!
Works Cited
Knight, Damon. "Pilgrim Award Acceptance Speech." In press.
Butler, Andrew. "Casting the Net: Andrew M. Butler Ponders the Domain of Academic SF." Matrix (BSFA) 123 (January/February 1997): 10.
Bleiler, E. F. "Pilgrim Award Acceptance Speech." In press.
Sackett, S. J. "Motif Index to Science Fiction." Extrapolation 1 (May 1960): 38.
Westfahl, Gary. "Science Fiction: The Unknown Genre," SFRAReview 203 (January/February 1993): 27-29.
Bleiler, Everett F. The Checklist of Science Fiction and Supernatural Fiction. Glen Rock, N.J.: Firebell Books, 1978.
---. Guide to Supernatural Fiction. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1983.
---. Science Fiction: The Early Years. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990.
---. Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998.
Clareson Award Presentation Speech - Muriel Becker
Good evening, SFRA members and guests here in the year 2000 at the SFRA banquet.
I'm chairperson of the committee comprising Carol Stevens, Edra Bogle, and me, Muriel Becker. I'm here to present the Thomas D. Clareson Award for distinguished service.
This award was established in 1995 to memorialize Tom Clareson. For those of you who did not know Tom, Tom's dedication to SF never wavered: he affirmed the value of science fiction and served the science fiction community throughout his life. In addition to all his scholarly work, in 1958, he was the chairperson of the first Seminar on Science Fiction of the Modern Language Association. He was the first president of SFRA in 1971. He was the editor of Extrapolation: A Science-Fiction Newsletter of the Conference on Science-Fiction from its inception in December 1959 through 1989.
One would think it would be difficult to find an award recipient who would meet the qualifications of the award: "outstanding service activities [and] promotion of SF teaching and study, editing, reviewing, editorial writing, publishing, organizing meetings, mentoring, leadership in SF/fantasy organizations," and so forth. It hasn't been.
Without question, Tom would have applauded our choice for the year 2000 especially at this particular SFRA conference-the title of which is "The Many Dimensions of Science Fiction."
This year's honoree, a member of First Fandom, has, like Tom, served science fiction throughout his adult life. In a letter to me, the person receiving the award wrote: "When I retired I determined to bring my curriculum vitae up to date so the University would have a complete record of my somewhat scattered and-from their point of view-dubious activities."
In December 1960 and May 1961, respectively, two such "dubious activities" were no doubt his review of Kingsley Amis's New Maps in Hell and his preliminary notes and checklist on the antiutopian novel that appeared in Extrapolation-despite the journal's association with MLA.
Today, it's no longer a dubious activity that a professor emeritus of English and an associate dean emeritus should review White Mars, Or, The Mind Set Free, a 21st Century Utopia by Brian Aldiss and Roger Penrose that many of you must have read of in the most recent SFRAReview (March/April 2000).
That's forty years, folks!
In that time, there have been uncountable book reviews; local and national presentations to professional, academic, and literary groups-to students, faculty, alumni, and engineering societies as well as academic tracks at Chicon, Constellation, and Paracon; the hosting-organizing of the SFRA conference I still consider the best I ever attended (it was my first); service as president of SFRA (1977-1978); and indefatigable committee work for SFRA and the Society for Utopian Studies. Indeed, SUS recognized his distinguished service to them in 1998 and, earlier, in 1984, had named their award for the best paper presented at annual meeting of the Society by a nontenured person after him.
The recipient of the Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service 2000 is a scholar of impeccable reputation, a mentor to more than can be named, a vocal and enthusiastic spokesperson for science fiction and utopian studies, and distinguished in his service to SFRA.
It gives me great honor to present to you Arthur O. Lewis.
The Clareson Award Committee comprised Murian Becker, chair; Carol Stevens; and Edra Bogle.
Clareson Award Accentance Speech - Arthur O. Lewis
The last time I tried to attend an SFRA conference was at Eau Claire in 1996; we were halfway there when we received word that a flash flood had swamped our basement, and we turned around immediately. After that, we stopped taking trips that require more than day's driving; this is the first one to meet that standard, so I am very happy to be here. It is good to see so many old friends again and to make new ones. For example, sometimes in the last few days I have been greeted by old friends. Because it sometimes takes time for me to connect always remembered faces with remembered names, I have not always been sure who they were till later. I do apologize for that, and I am pretty well caught up now.
I would like to begin by acknowledging how honored I am to join the company of previous recipients of this award, Fred Pohl, Jim Gunn, Betty Hull, and Dave Hartwell, and most of all the man in whose honor it is given, Tom Clareson. Even more than this award, something we all have in common is a long association with science fiction and the SFRA.
Science fiction has been a part of my life for a long time. As with so many others, it was a chance encounter in early years that started it. As I remember the occasion-and my age, memory is somewhat untrustworthy-I was babysitting for friends of my parents and picked up a copy of Amazing Stories. The story I remember best was something by Stanton A. Coblenz dealing with an underwater city. That was in 1931, and I later discovered that his The Sunken World had been first published in Amazing Quarterly in 1928. Maybe that was the one and it was an old copy that I found (My parents had some strange friends, but I don't believe that any of them would have hired an eight-year-old babysitter). Anyway, I was hooked, and although I don't remember ever writing one of those fan letters that were so often printed in those early mags, a couple of years ago, in the process of clearing out files before moving to a smaller house, I discovered my old World Science Fiction League membership card and realized I was eligible to join First Fandom-which I did.
I had the usual interruptions in my reading: no time in college, army, and graduate school, but I kept coming back during vacations and slack time. My first collection of magazines was destroyed when my mother's basement was hit by a flash flood while I was away on Uncle Sam's business. My postwar collection of magazines was destroyed in the previously mentioned 1996 flood. Fortunately, the books were upstairs, and I still have them.
In recent years, I have been lurking on several e-mail lists, and I am impressed by the number of letters, not just about interpretations of science fiction works, but about how to teach them. In the midst of this obvious success, I hope we never forget our earlier difficulties in obtaining a hearing for the subject. Collectively, we had to put up with discipline-oriented departmental barons who regarded interest in science fiction as a hobby that must not interfere with the study and teaching of Literature. We could speak to undergraduate organizations on science fiction, we could attend an MLA science fiction seminar if we didn't talk about it too much, we could-as I did for a few years-sponsor a Student Science Fiction Club (in my case, a rambunctious bunch that paid little attention to the student government rules; when they conveniently "forgot" to tell me about publishing several issues of a fanzine, various University bigwigs were upset when I told them what I thought of their medieval rules and relieved me of the job). Sometimes we could sneak in something resembling science fiction into a general education course, but things slowly improved as we grew older and were joined by more enthusiasts. (In 1960, for example, I even managed to offer an English graduate course in Post-World War II American fiction, on writers who had begun to publish only during or after the war. Bad enough from the point of view of the old guard which tended to believe American literature ended with the so-called "Lost Generation," if that recently, but when they discovered that I had also included a science fiction book, they were truly upset. I mentioned that to Fred at the Evanston meeting years later, and he also thought that including The Space Merchants was a bad idea.)
Some of us became administrators, and science fiction courses began to appear, many of them as nondepartmental courses. (At Penn State, department head Mort Leonard and decanal pressure overcame the objections of the departmental barons, and Phil Klass joined the English department. When the barons refused to let him teach a science fiction course, we used an interdisciplinary course out of my office. After a couple of years of this, the huge number of student credit hours generated, than which there is no more significant number in academia, led to its conversion to an English course.)
After SFRA was founded, annual conferences appeared on campuses. To use the Penn State example again: one of my happiest memories is of sitting in my living room with Tom Clareson and Phil Klass planning the 1973 conference. The combination of a science fiction writer like Phil and an associate dean like me worked out well: Phil talked to the writers, I talked to the scholars, and my office and the Institute for Arts and Humanistic Studies footed most of the bill-which, by the way, was larger than one might have expected because Phil insisted on talking, during daytime hours, to writers he wanted to attend-Bob Heinlein in California in particular required much persuasion that, in the end, didn't work. And when the meeting occurred, Tom was there bridging the gap between the two groups, as always with consummate diplomacy. It was at that meeting that he announced his decision to give up the presidency and appointed a committee that I chaired from which came the by-laws, that, somewhat amended, still shape our official behavior.
The first time I met Tom-and Phil, for that matter-was at the first MLA Seminar on Science Fiction. From the beginning, Tom was determined to continue delving into this new and uncharted and academically suspect area of knowledge. His convictions on the worthiness of science fiction studies inspired or re-inspired many of us who had nearly despaired of ever finding an honorable place for such matters in our own scholarly lives. For years he led us in that quest, urging continued pressure on reluctant administrations, cheering each victory at each campus, demonstrating the viability of science fiction criticism through his own publications, and providing an outlet for others in Extrapolation.
That we are now meeting as an acknowledged scholarly organization is largely Tom Clareson's doing. I am honored to receive this award, and I do so with the deepest respect for the friend in whose memory it is given. I wish we had been smart enough to create it while he was still among us.
Pioneer Award Presentation Speech - Susan Stratton
Deciding on the Pioneer Award for the one critical article in a year that does the most to advance SF criticism is both a pleasure and a challenge for the selection committee. Peter Lowentrout, Shelley Rodrigo Blanchard, and I looked for articles with the qualities we all admire: persuasive reasoning, grace and clarity of style, knowledge of the field of SF, and special insights into the particular subject of study. I'm happy to say there were many articles of that quality. What we also looked for in a Pioneer Award winner is the breadth of scope and innovation that mark a trailblazer, a piece that opens the field of SF criticism for further scholarly work. This will be the SFRA's tenth Pioneer Award. The winners have been illustrious: from Veronica Hollinger, Bruce Franklin, and Istvan Csiscery-Ronay Jr. the first three years to Carl Freedman last year; and the subjects have been wide-ranging: war, both historical and futuristic, outsiders figured in vampires and aliens, cyberpunk and other theoretical frontiers, science fiction cinema, science fiction endings, and the oft-proclaimed end of science fiction.
This year we award an honorable mention to George Slusser for "The Perils of an Experiment: Jules Verne and the American Lone Genius," published in Extrapolation. His article contrasted French and American attitudes toward scientific experimentation as expressed in the two national literatures and connected these attitudes with the different receptions of Verne's novels in the United States and France. Slusser's large canvas displays his command of the sociological and historical context of the literatures of two nations and their implications for science fiction. We admired the breadth and depth of his scholarship and the clarity of his style.
Despite our admiration for George's article and others, and surprisingly, really, we had no difficulty at all in agreeing on the winner of the Pioneer Award for 1999. There was one that stood out for all of us for the depth of its scholarship, the clarity of its argument, its illustrations drawn from a wide range of SF, its clear style enlivened by touches of wit, and, not least, for the fact that it brings a field of theory that took shape only a few years ago into the arena of sf scholarship, opening the way for future work. This year's winner which opens Science Fiction Studies' special issue on science fiction and queer theory, is Wendy Pearson's "Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer."
Queer, Pearson tells us, reveals "the deeply un-natural and constructed nature of our understandings of biological sex, the performative nature of gender roles, and the sociocultural institutions founded upon this ideology." Such revelations may come from either a queer text or a queer reading. She offers four models for queer readings of a range of texts and concludes that "queer sf provides spaces to go beyond simply writing gay men and lesbians into uninterrogated heteronormative visions of both present and future," and queer readings employ strategies for "disinterring the many and peculiar ways through which the dominant twentieth-century Western conception of sexuality underlies, is implicated in, and sometimes collides with sf's attempt to envision alternative ways of being-in-the-world." Wendy's article is bound to give many of us a better sense of how queer theory can yield new insights into sf texts and how sf texts might extend the interrogations of queer theory.
Wendy is in Australia this year and could not be with us tonight, but I hope she'll be able to feel our appreciation for her contribution to SF studies halfway around the world.
The Pioneer Award Committee comprised Susan Stratton, chair; Shelley Rodrigo Blanchard; and Pete Lowentrout.
Pioneer Award Acceptance In Abstentia Speech - Candas Jane Dorsey
Candas Jane Dorsey accepted the Pioneer Award on behalf of Wendy Pearson. In her off-the-cuff remarks, Dorsey complimented the SFRA Pioneer Award committee on its excellent choice. Pearson has the ability to synthesize and to set out cross-country, intellectually speaking, rather than sticking in academic ruts, and this is her greatest strength as a researcher. Dorsey knows that Pearson's surprising and illuminating connections will enrich SF scholarship.
Pioneer Award Acceptance - Wendy Pearson
I'd like to begin by saying what an extraordinary and extraordinarily delightful surprise it was to receive the e-mail from the SFRA executive committee telling me that I had just won this year's Pioneer Award for "Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer." I must admit that winning such an award had never occurred to me. As it is, I would very much like to express my gratitude to the SFRA for the award, not only for the personal honor but also for the fact that the awards committee selected this particular article, as it is one in which I invested a great deal of both effort and pleasure and which I hope and believe to be an important contribution to the study of science fiction. It is more than gratifying to have this belief born out so tangibly by this award.
I would also particularly like to thank the editors of Science Fiction Studies, including the late R. D. Mullen, for initiating this project when they asked me to write the lead article for the special queer theory section of the March 1999 issue. Their requirement that what I write be not purely an academic article, but an "essay," led me to think very seriously not only about how I could best "write something about SF and queer theory" but also about the particular form in which that topic could most appropriately be addressed. The result was part academic analysis, part anecdote, part theoretical exposition, and part personal narrative, and it took my academic writing in what felt to me like new directions. More than that, it also provided me with a way to talk about the two topics nearest and dearest to my heart: science fiction and queerness. And last, but not least, I'd like to thank Veronica Hollinger and my colleague and partner, Susan Knabe, for their help in reading and making suggestions on the essay as it progressed through various drafts.
If I have written about science fiction in this particular article through the lens of queer theory, I have done so conscious always of the fact that this is only one way-if for me a particularly trenchant way-of addressing the topic of sexuality in general, and of homosexuality in particular, in science fiction. Other ways of approaching this topic are indeed possible and would, I hope, be welcome. I never had the pleasure of meeting Eric Garber, but his work as an anthologist, a bibliographer, and a critic influenced my reading of science fiction in profound ways. The introduction by Garber and Lyn Paleo to Uranian Worlds, brief as it is, remains to my knowledge the most comprehensive discussion of the history of alternative sexuality in science fiction. The recuperation of the history of homosexuality in science fiction is an important task, although I have to admit that it is not mine. The same could also be said about the discussion of gay and lesbian SF-or perhaps more properly of the study of SF by gay and lesbian writers. This is, it seems to me, a project specific to our time and culture in ways that are different both from the historical approach, which seems almost forced to accept the validity of the homo/hetero binary in order to disentangle a silent (silenced?) history of homosexuality in SF and from my own project of reading science fiction through queer theory. It is my belief that all of these approaches to the topic have something important to tell us both about sexuality and about science fiction.
All of these projects are necessary also, it seems to me, because the history of science fiction criticism, save for a certain focus on lesbian utopias, has had very little to say about the topic of sexuality in SF and even less to say about homosexuality in SF. Indeed, preparing for an ICFA discussion panel on queer theory and SF this past March, I spent some time going through reference books on science fiction to see what they did have to say about the topic of homosexuality. What I learnt-not entirely to my surprise-was that this was not a topic of much concern for SF criticism in the 1980s and 1990s. I was amused to discover that although John Clute's and Peter Nicholl's normally excellent second edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction contains no entry at all for "homosexuality," the page in question does contain entries both for "homunculus" and for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, neither of which strike me as being remotely as significant for the study of science fiction as do issues of alternative or, if you prefer, subaltern sexuality. The Encyclopaedia also does not contain entries for lesbianism, bisexuality, heterosexuality, or an entire range of associated sexual issues. What it does have is a single entry on sexuality, of which somewhat less than one paragraph deals with alternative sexualities. I would suggest that this is merely a reflection of SF criticism's prevalent unwillingness, during a certain historical period, to come to terms with this issue, a reflection both of its somewhat partial history as a "boy's" genre and of a larger academic discomfort with dwelling on topics seen as unsuitable or unseemly. After all, it was less than thirty years ago that the American Association of Anthropologists resolved not to sanction the study of homosexuality across national borders.
However, times are changing and it has become, particularly in the political arena, harder for us to ignore the centrality of sexuality to the construction of western epistemologies. Not only is the topic of homosexuality now back on the books, as it were-and, some might say, with a vengeance-but its analysis, particularly in the field of queer theory, however we define it, reminds us that sexuality is never disconnected from issues of power and control, of institutionalisation and regulation. Queer theory does for issues of sexuality (in science fiction, as elsewhere) what postcolonial and antiracist theory does for issues of race. Like race, sexuality is not interesting by and for itself (except, perhaps, at the level of erotica); what is essential to both equations is the workings of power. The regulation of sexuality, its inscription as discourse and its particular place within the dominant discourse, ensures that although what people get up to sexually, as individuals, as couples, and as groups, varies almost infinitely, our understanding of those sexual acts and relationships take place within a relatively narrow and often remarkably clear-cut discursive frame.
I don't want to say a great deal more about the topic at this point; if nothing else, it would perhaps become a repetition of what I have already said in the article itself. But I do want to say that it is my fervent hope that this article will not remain a singular example of how science fiction can be analysed through (and perhaps against) the analytical power of queer theory to reveal the often "invisible" discourses of sexual regulation and control. I hope that this new decade, indeed this new millennium, will inspire many other academics, critics, and writers to think seriously and in the ways that best suit their own projects about the ways in which science fiction reveals to us the peculiar and endlessly contested field that is human sexuality.
Thank you!
Graduate Student Paper Award Presentation Speech - Elizabeth Cummins
The newest of our awards-Graduate Student Paper Awards-was approved at the SFRA Annual Business Meeting of the 1998 conference (Phoenix), and I am pleased to have the opportunity to present the first award.
The purpose of the award is to recognize the fine scholarship by graduate students, to encourage graduate student work in science fiction and fantasy literature and film, and to recruit new members for the organization and annual conference. The guidelines for the award, which have been printed in full in the SFRAReview, state that students who wish to have their work considered for the award must present their papers at the annual conference and submit their papers to a member of the Graduate Student Award Committee or of the SFRA Executive Board. Judges for the award will be members of the Committee, appointed by the president of SFRA. For 1999, the members were Susan Stratton, Alcena Rogan, and me, Elizabeth Cummins. The first-place award will be $100 and membership in SFRA for the calendar year immediately following the conference.
I am pleased to announce that the 1999 award goes to Shelly Rodrigo Blanchard, a graduate student at Arizona State University, for her essay "‘Resistance is Futile,' We Are Already Assimilated: Cyborging, Cyborg Societies, Cyborgs and The Matrix." Her essay developed the idea that, to quote from one of the committee members, "Haraway's ‘A Cyborg Manifesto' requires and deserves further articulation and problematizing. Blanchard brings new feminist theory to bear on the problematic of the cyborg; and her goal of ‘concretizing' the cyborg, of bringing it out of the realm of myth and making it work for feminist praxis is an important and interesting project."
We are pleased that Shelley is here at the 2000 conference and is participating by presenting another paper this year.
The Graduate Student Paper Award Committee comprised Elizabeth Cummins (chair); Susan Stratton; and Alcena Rogan.
Graduate Student Paper Award Acceptance Speech - Shelley Rodrigo Blanchard
As a graduate student the annual SFRA conference is one of the most welcoming, least intimidating places to present a work in progress. Not only did I receive fabulous feedback to help move my paper on to its next phase, but I was also treated as a fellow scholar who had important things to contribute to the dialogue. This, dare I say, nurturing environment is what made me adamant about returning to the SFRA annual meeting this year in Cleveland.
I also want to congratulate the association on its confidence in allowing graduate students to seriously participate in the official functioning of the organization. I was deeply honored when asked to serve on the Pioneer Award committee. I will admit to a selfish reason for saying yes, motivation to read what I already should be reading: the field's scholarship.
Finally, I would like to turn the praise back to everyone who was at the SFRA conferences for the past two years. I recognize the organization's strength to openly acknowledge those of us who admittedly work with (those dirty-nasty) "sci-fi" texts. I deeply appreciate the willingness to support research that at first (and maybe all of the time) may seem highly questionable and suspect. But then, I think the association historically understands that suspect position. Without the support of (that highly "suspect") SFRA, I would not have the confidence to continue working on my Ph.D. within a specialty that I thoroughly enjoy and wish to study for the rest of my life.