Before the Golden Age

The third and final volume of Isaac Asimov's autobiographical anthology of short stories from the 1930s covers 1935-1938. And as with the other volumes it's a bit hit & miss. Some of the misses have aged poorly, some I suspect I'd never've enjoyed even if I were a young lad in the 1930s.

I've been re-reading this with an eye to diversity - partly, I confess, because it's easier to see here than it is in fiction from my own era. The original impetus is that there's a fair amount of conversation around SFF fandom in the last few years about this sort of issue - like this post in Elizabeth Bear's livejournal which addresses the idea that somehow if you have a protagonist or primary character who isn't able-bodied/white/Western/straight/cis-male then you need to justify it otherwise you're just "being PC". Rather than, you know, writing a story about a person who's as much of a person as any other person. And as I say, it's easier in general to pay attention to in these stories because I'm not steeped in the culture of the 1930s like I am in my own (and the only difference between me & the "default" is that I'm female so it's easy to have a blind spot). Sort of practising the thought patterns for future use.

So I'd been looking for women or lack thereof in these stories. And the racism jumped out at me, and would've done if I was looking or not - that's something where we've really come a long way since the 30s. But I haven't really mentioned the other sorts of categories where people get elided into non-existence or caricatured. People with disabilities & transpeople are mostly Sir Not Appearing in this Universe - although there's some pretty poor portrayals of mental illness (like the madman in "Minus Planet"). And really I'm not sure I can say much more than that about it.

Click the link below for my full review.