What it's like Reading SF from the 50's

Hussar · Jul 15, 2019

Just a bit of a tweak to the nose.

from http://smbc-comics.com/comic/golden-age

trancejeremy · Jul 15, 2019

Eh, try reading back issues of Galaxy magazine, which was the premiere Sci-Fi mag of the 1950s (available from the Internet Archive), which featured authors like Asimov, Vance, Heinlein, Pohl, Simak, Sheckley, Silverberg, Blish, Sturgeon, etc. I won't say it was immune to that sort of thing, but it was often surprisingly sophisticated

Hussar · Jul 15, 2019

I'm not sure I'd include Heinlein as being "sophisticated". At least as far as gender issues go. Funny thing is, if you click the link, there's a big red button for an additional thought to the comic:

Kinda funny.

Dannyalcatraz · Jul 15, 2019

I have a big collection of early sci-fi, much passed down from my Dad. IME, there’s a decent grain of truth in the comic, enough that I find the barb amusing. But there WERE also many authors who were clearly more progressive than the era in which the lived.

Dioltach · Jul 15, 2019

Early Heinlein is more sophisticated in this respect than some of his later stuff. Tunnel in the Sky for example. A lot of his later stuff feels like "a man's fantasy of emancipated women".

(Or maybe just "a man's fantasy".)

Blue · Jul 16, 2019

In all seriousness, I was just reading a story last night that refered to a female-presenting android as a gynoid. And it looks like that's a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynoid

Dannyalcatraz · Jul 16, 2019

Blue said:
In all seriousness, I was just reading a story last night that refered to a female-presenting android as a gynoid. And it looks like that's a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynoid

Yep. Seen it many times, but it never seemed to stick. Just like “man” became a synonym for humanity, the male-rooted “Android” became the term for human-stimulant artificial life. Nobody seemed to care for a female-rooted version of the term.

Richards · Jul 17, 2019

...except on episodes of "The Bionic Woman," where she was occasionally having to fight the "fembots."

Johnathan

Dannyalcatraz · Jul 17, 2019

Even that term was more an exception than a rule, though.

MarkB · Jul 17, 2019

Dannyalcatraz said:
Yep. Seen it many times, but it never seemed to stick. Just like “man” became a synonym for humanity, the male-rooted “Android” became the term for human-stimulant artificial life. Nobody seemed to care for a female-rooted version of the term.

And I've yet to see an example of the non-binary androgynoid.