Scholarly Articles
REPORT: Worldcon Membership Demographics, 1939-1960
by René Walling Sweeping statements and generalizations are often made about the membership of early World Science Fiction Conventions (WSFC, or Worldcon) such as “only the same people came back every year” or “the attendance was all male.” Yet rarely is more than anecdotal evidence given to support these statements. The goal of this report is to provide some hard data on the membership of early Worldcons so that such statements can be based on more than anecdotal evidence.
Echoes of Philip K. Dick’s schizoid woman in Star Trek: Voyager’s Harry Kim
by Victor Grech Star Trek is a popular cultural phenomenon. One of the spin-offs, the Voyager series, features a naïve and lonely young human officer called Harry Kim who repeatedly falls for warm and affectionate “dark haired girls” or cold and calculating “schizoid women” as famously categorized by N. Katherine Hayles about Philip K. Dick’s oeuvre.
Ambiguous Utopias
by Sheila Finch Utopian or dystopian, the view of the near future adopted by an author owes much to the political and social climate of its time. Two dystopian works by Paolo Bacigalupi, out of the many that have appeared in recent years, illustrate this point:
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