Hating the 70's may not be code for hating feminism, but hating 70's SF... well, I guess it could be hating the intrusion of modernist and postmodernist stylistic techniques into the transparent prose of the Golden Age... but other than that?

Maybe I'm just biased, because I love 70's SF and I think feminism was its heart.

I did a quick flip through the Hugo and Nebula nominations for the 70s (as a proxy for the rest of the field) and was a little surprised to find out how much of it I did know. I guess I'd mentally shifted all of it to either the 60s or the 80s. (Side note: there were eighteen novels on the 1975 final Nebula ballot. And the rest of the categories are similarly well-stocked. What the hell happened in 1973-1974? Did they change the eligibility window, or was it something to do with the oil crisis?)

For that matter, I was surprised how much of it had nothing to do with feminism, like all the Niven and Clarke and Zelazny I read in the 80s. I'd be interested to know exactly what Sterling had in mind, but I suspect he was writing under whatever mysterious influence it was that causes people to remember The Mote in God’s Eye and forget Dhalgren.

And, to tell the truth, the late 70s lists do get less interesting.

(Correction: I flipped through the Nebula nominees and the Hugo winners. Nobody seems to have posted the 70s Hugo nominees yet.)

All the nominees and winners are linked here:

http://www.infoshop.org/sf/index.php/Hugo_Award
http://www.infoshop.org/sf/index.php/Nebula_Award

I'm not sure Zelazny has *nothing* to do with feminism -- he might be at least reacting to it -- but yeah, it's interesting how little feminist fiction is on the ballots in the late seventies. And after the amazing 1975 Hugo and Nebula novel ballots there is something of a drop in quality (among the books I know) until '79 or '80 -- excepting Triton and Titan (great feminist books both!) and perhaps Dreamsnake (I haven't read it).

Still, just because they didn't make it onto the ballots, didn't mean they weren't there. The Female Man, The Adventures of Alyx, Patternmaster, Kindred, Tales of Neveryon, Flight from Neveryon, Woman on the Edge of Time... all 1975-1979.

But it's interesting also that Le Guin, at least, had a bit of a lull in the late seventies -- Eye of the Heron (I havent read it yet) and Malafrena seem minor. Her great works were mostly leading up to The Dispossessed in 1974, or after 1985. I think she had to get Always Coming Home out of her system.

Related question: why were the great works of late 70s feminist SF (except the two written by men) not on the ballots, while the earlier works (from Left Hand of Darkness, 1969, to The Dispossessed) were?

Excellent question. Let me admit now that I haven't read any of them except the Nevèrÿon books. (In my defense, it's not that I've sought out their lesser contemporaries at their expense, it's that their lesser contemporaries were still all over the bookstore shelves in the 80s.) Those I rather suspect of just being too damn weird (don't get me wrong — I love them, but I wasn't able to fall in love with them until after being exposed to post-structuralism and Umberto Eco) and, other than Neveryóna, not really novels.

Okay, here's my Theory of the Hugo Awards: The common denominator of SF fandom is me, at the age of twelve.

In order to win the Hugo for Best Novel, according to this theory, a novel has to stand a reasonable chance of appealing to Twelve-Year-Old David. I'm looking over the list, and (not counting the ones I haven't read) I think it's true of every Hugo or Retro-Hugo novel winner from 1946 onward. It's certainly true of all the ones Twelve-Year-Old Me had read. But I think he would have been pretty at sea with Russ or Delany.

(I’ll try to come up with a Theory of the Nebula Awards later.)

P.S. My Theory predicts that this year's novel Hugo will go to either The Algebraist or Iron Sunrise. (Though I haven’t read River of Gods at all and have barely started Jonathan Strange &c.)

In my experience, when most people say "the '70s", they're talking about roughly, say, 1975 through 1983. Similarly, "the '60s" (as a cultural phenomenon) lasted from, say, 1965 (first news story to use the term "Hippie") through about 1972 (when Terry Carr proclaimed the end of the New Wave).

"The '50s," on the other hand, started in 1950 with McCarthy's known-Communists list, if not a couple years earlier, and lasted through at least the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado. So I guess the years 1960 through 1964 are proto-'60s? Rise of the Beatles, Stranger in a Strange Land (but also Glory Road!), etc.

Anyway, my point is that two different people can talk about 1970s sf and/or fandom and be talking about rather different periods. I suspect that Sterling was talking primarily about the late '70s and early '80s, the period immediately preceding Neuromancer, whereas I suspect Jeanne was talking primarily about the early '70s (with, of course, some major works in the late '70s, such as those Ben mentioned).

Btw, the Locus Index to SF Awards also lists all the nominees as well as the winners. Click the "04" link on the Hugos line, then click any year in the left-hand sidebar.

Of the fourteen Hugo-winning novels from 1966 through 1979, I've read ten and liked eight, and the other four are highly regarded and I've been meaning to read them for years; I don't see a particular drop in quality in the late '70s. I haven't looked at the Nebs for those years 'cause I really ought to be reading subs.

As for the feminist books Ben mentions from the late '70s, good question. I've read the two Russ books and the Piercy, and definitely recommend them, but I suspect David's right that they didn't appeal as much to the audience who were voting in the Hugos and Nebulas. On the other hand, if the '70s saw an upswing in feminist fandom and female pro writers, then why weren't they voting in the Hugos and Nebulas? Or were they (as suggested by Jeanne's comment about her fanzine getting Hugo noms), and there just weren't enough of them to outweigh the rest of fandom and prodom? Awards that are voted on may be less likely to embrace the cutting edge.... Dunno.

...I realize I'm conflating feminist sf and the New Wave in my head, and that's not entirely valid; a lot of the New Wave grew out of Aldiss, Ballard, Harrison, Moorcock, et alia -- the British New Wave -- whereas I tend to think of it as featuring Le Guin, Delany, Russ, and Tiptree. But I really ought to stop here and go do some reading, so I'll put this on hold for now.

Side note, since I'm off to a meeting: Historians like to talk about the "long 19th century" (1789-1917) and the "short 20th century" (1917-1991).

David - i've also heard similar phrases applied to, eg, the 11th century.

In the USA, at least, the 80s begin decisively in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan. I think the decades as US cultural eras go something like this:

End of world war I, 1918 -> Twenties
Black Thursday, 1929 -> Thirties
Pearl Harbor, 1942 -> Forties
Election of Eisenhower, 1952 -> Fifties
Beatles on Ed Sullivan Show, 1964 -> Sixties
ERA sent to states, 1972? -> Seventies
Election of Ronald Reagan, 1980 -> Eighties
Fall of Berlin Wall, 1989 -> Nineties
9/11/2001 -> Oughts

I'm not sure if ERA is the moment that begins the seventies, but it was some time between 1972 and 1973. Maybe it was the release of Dark Side of the Moon? Or maybe it was as late as 1975, if you think of the seventies as being when disco replaced sit-ins as the focus of youth activity...?

I think the British New Wave owes more to feminism than is usually appreciated, both because those guys were in dialogue with the American New Wave -- they'd all certainly read The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)-- and because they were influenced by the counterculture of the time.

They aren't necessarily feminists -- some, like Harrison, sometimes read like muscular, Hemingwayesque anti-feminists -- but mostly they share the same departure from the standard SFnal plot-worldview of "man ecounters world, analyzes it by reason, subjects it to his will, defeats rivals who are more foolish or emotional, thus produces personal triumph and the good society; or fails in same" and that, whether they intend it as such or not, is a feminist move. (And one presaged by such dissenters from 50s SF as Merril, Sturgeon, and Bester)

And a lot of their "masculine" works read as deconstructions of masculinity; take Elric, for example; it's supposed to be a weird adventure romp in the tradition of Burroughs and Fritz Lieber, but it's suffered a sea change into a parable of addictive self-destruction, with this weak, obsessive, self-hating, driven antihero. Not to mention Ballard!

Ben, I believe the "weak, obsessive, self-hating, driven antihero" parts of Elric were deliberate; he was supposed to a direct response to REH's Conan (the late 80's resurrection of the character strictly done by Moorcock for the purposes of paying the bills).

Definitely deliberate! Maybe not deliberately feminist. Or maybe so.

Whether he would have used the term "feminist" or not, and whatever he thought of the "women's movement", at this historical vantage I think Moorcock's revulsion for the ideal of heroism represented by Conan's brawny, violent masculinity is part of what we can refer under "feminism as the heart of 70s science fiction"

Benjamin - I don't know about cultural history, but the notion of the election of Reagan as a watershed moment politically and/or economically is a myth. American politics had been trending more conservative for several years at that point; most of the things that Reagan supposedly wrought - re-energizing the cold war, the defense buildup, a more conservative approach to the environment, use of monetarism in macroeconomic policy, etc - were actually continuations and intensifications of policies set up under Carter.

I would tend to lump the early-80s recession together with the late 70s stagflation, and mark the beginnning of "the '80s" from when the recession ended and the national mood turned optimistic again.

I'm also not sure that i'd use the fall of the Berlin Wall as a terminus for the '80s in the US. It's certainly appropriate *for Europe* ... but here, I think the Gulf War had a deeper impact.

The last time I had the conversation about when the various decades began, I wound up with "the seventies" lasting about three years. I know that can't be right, but "the seventies" doesn't seem to me to encompass very many years. I'm looking at it from a wider (US) cultural scope, rather than a spec-fic one, though.
Movies: Do you think of "The Exorcist" as 70s? It's 1973. What about "The Sting"? Also 1973. "Saturday Night Fever" is surely 70s, but that's 1977. "Rocky Horror" is 1975. "The Godfather" is 1972, and doesn't feel very 70s to me. "Close Encounters" was 1977, and if I'm not actually looking at the haircuts and clothes, it doesn't feel very 70s. What about "Blazing Saddles" (1974)? I guess the earliest big movie that I think of as 70s is "The Towering Inferno" from 1974. Maybe "Chinatown" (also 1974). M*A*S*H is very sixties, in 1970. "The French Connection" is very fifties, in 1971. On the other hand, "Alien" is clearly an eighties movie, in 1979. On the other other hand, "The Shining" feels very seventies, and came out in 1980, as did another seventies classic, "Raging Bull". And "Ordinary People", too. So I'm not absolutely convinced that the 70s ended before 1980.
Anyway, I completely agree that "the seventies" means very different things to different people (depending, in part, on whether the person speaking was an adult, a child, or not yet born during the actual years in question).
Oh, and there's no question in my mind that the nineties started on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, 1992, which as I remember dawned clear and brisk and technicolor, with little animated birds singing and all.
Thanks,
-V.

Oh, wow, I used to have this sizable body of examples for how people with different cultural frames of reference will mark the boundaries of different eras. Like, the 60s start with Kennedy's election and end with Nixon's, or the 60s start with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and end with Altamont. There was a point in my life where I had a whole body of examples of this (mostly drawn from music and politics, because those are the areas where writers seem most likely to care about era demarcation, but you can mix references sometimes: the 90s started with Nirvana releasing "Nevermind" and ended with, what, September 11th? The dot-com crash? it can go a couple of different ways) but I can barely remember ANY of it anymore.

sigh.

Moorcock establishes himself as a full-on feminist, I think, in the Cornelius Quartet, where Jerry Cornelius becomes increasingly ineffectual and emasculated over the course of the four books, while Una Persson gradually takes centre-stage. By the end of it, I think, Moorcock has deliberately subverted the stereotypical "secret-agent cum rock-god" Boy's Own power-fantasy, so as to make the female character the real protagonist. I don't doubt that part of Moorcock's idea of the Eternal Champion incorporates a consciously feminist critique of the very nature of the hero.

Saw Steamboy and didn't like the story much, but I found the animation amazing. Have you seen 'Tokyo Godfather'? I haven't managed to find it yet, but I've heard quite good things about it.

P.S. Do you check email still?

Sashiburi. I do, but only regularly check dm at chrononaut and david at discontent. Just saw your message of a month ago. :(

Haven't seen "Tokyo Godfather" myself either, just previews.

I did notice a bunch of similarities between Steamboy and Akira, aside from the outrageously extended series of explosions that make up the finales of each film:

-- A character with a creepy mechanical arm.

-- A high-speed motorcycle chase.

-- A character who repeatedly shouts another character's name while all hell is breaking loose. ("Tetsuo!" in Akira, "Simon!" in Steamboy)

:) I didn't think of it that way, but you're right.

I know the storytelling in Akira-the-comic was a lot more coherent than in Akira-the-movie (at least in the first three or four collections’ worth). I'm not finding any evidence of a Steamboy comic in a quick Google, though.

I don't know whether Steamboy is based on a comic either. I got the feeling that it isn't from my browsing of:

http://www.steamboy.net/production/history/index.shtml

FWIW, it seems like the original plan was a 3-part OVA.