After all, the research that went into Partners in Wonder is considerable Davin does provide a comprehensive bibliography of women writers who published in sf magazines from 1926 through 1965. I was willing to suspend my judgment, however, and accept Davin’s premise that there is-or at least was-a kind of standard narrative of women in sf before the 1960s that claims (or claimed) that they either did not exist or had to hide their gender identities. As a relative newcomer to sf criticism, my reading has included work by Lucie Armitt, Brian Attebery, Marleen Barr, Jane Donawerth, Justine Larbalestier, Sara Lefanu, Joanna Russ, and Pamela Sargent, just to name some of the feminist scholars who have explored the work of women in sf prior to 1960. Nevertheless, the premise of Eric Leif Davin’s volume is that he is dispelling the “mythistory” (ix and throughout) that there were no women in sf before the Women’s Liberation Movement.
The fact that there were women writing sf prior to the 1960s is not news.
Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965.
