"Jean Marie Stine - Future Eves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stine Jean Marie)

The Goddess of Planet Delight тАУ Betsy Curtis
Cocktails at Eight тАУ Beth Elliott
The Last Day тАУ Helen Clarkson




INTRODUCTION

"Eve."
It's a name freighted with negative associations: Temptation. Sin. Deception. The fall
of man. For some three or four thousand years, this venerable lady's name has been
blackened in every way imaginable.
But, when the story is examined, a diametrically opposite picture emerges. For, old
Eve did pretty well by humankind. To her, if the tale be accurate, we owe:
Knowledge. Science. Progress. Long life. Physical comforts. Perhaps even freedom
from tyranny (if this be the step-child of knowledge and progress).
Clearly, Mother Eve must have been a remarkable and courageous woman.
Nor did the gifts end with Eve's generation. Today's Eves, equally remarkable and
courageous women, have given us: Anti-fungal antibiotics. Egalitarian relationship
models. Eyeglasses. Consciousness of social justice. And, of course, much, much
more.
But what of Future EvesтАУon Earth and among the Stars? What gifts will they
bestow? Group consciousness? Immortality? Universal cheap power? A perfected
economic and social system? Faster-than-light star drives?
There is no way to know, of course. But who is more qualified to give an educated
guess than the women who write science fiction? It is into their stories we must peer
if we wish a glimpse of the gifts future Eves may hold out to us. As futurists and
feminists, they are in the best position to imagine the parts women may play and the
contributions they may make in the world of tomorrow.
This anthology showcases nine classic tales by female science fiction writers,
penned between 1926 (the publication of the first science fiction magazine) and 1960
(the dawn of modern SF), each featuring its own, unique future Eve. Although it is
generally assumed that no тАУ or few тАУ women were writing science fiction during this
period, research reveals a strikingly different picture. Recently a review was
conducted of every issue of every SF magazine published from the debut first
science fiction magazine in 1926 (Amazing Stories) and the modern age in SF
magazine publishing in 1959 (when Imagination, the last pulp-influenced periodical
went broke and the more literary, purse-sized magazines typical today became
dominant). An unsuspected one hundred women contributed stories to their pages
during those three and a half decades. Some researchers estimate the true number
may well be twice that, as doubtless many women тАУ believing, perhaps rightly, that
their work would find readier acceptance тАУ concealed their gender behind
androgynous names, the anonymity of initials or beneath male pseudonyms.
Whatever names they may have chosen to write under, these pioneering women were
so far ahead of most other women тАУ and men тАУ of their time that that they rightly
deserve to be considered future Eves themselves. Take the cases of the nine writers
represented here: Leslie F. Stone was so far ahead of her time that nothing like her
novelette, "The Conquest of Gola" (1931), an encounter with Earth males told from
the point-of-view of an alien matriarch, would be attempted again in science fiction