Betty Curtis: Mistress of the Android Parable

I collect old science fiction magazines. Not as an investment. You can buy them for five or ten bucks on Ebay. I collect them for the great short stories. Sometimes by famous, sometimes by obscure authors. It’s kind of like Forrest Gump’s momma said about life; you never know what you’re going to get. Most of the time the surprise is a good one though.

The August 1951 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction is a good example. Arthur C. Clark’s Superiority was first published in this issue, along with A Peculiar People, Betty Curtis’s android moral tale.

Ms. Curtis is vastly underrated. Her style is more sophisticated than most of the Scifi writers of the time. Characterization is subtle, yet complete. The men are sensitive and the women are strong. Both of which were incongruous in  forties and  fifties science fiction literature. That said, the plot development is just as good or better than most of her male contemporaries. Putting her on  par with the likes of Asimov; considered the master of robot tales.

In many ways Betty Curtis reminds me of Philip K. Dick. The idea of asking, “What is human?” is closely associated with PKD’s work, and Ms. Curtis does a really good job of making the reader feel empathy for the droids in A Peculiar People. This makes the fine line between human and machine even more obscure.

Finding a copy of this magazine might be difficult. However, Betty Curtis was included in some anthologies in the past, and it would be worth the effort to find one with A Peculiar People in the table of contents.

Women in the World of Science Fiction

I was recently going through some of my old SciFi mags and came across Evelyn E. Smith’s name. It got me thinking; which is something I should do more often. Anyway, I realized women don’t get the respect they should in this genre. OK, big duh, I just never thought about it. I guess it’s the inherent man-pig in all of us men. The point is, I’m here to repent and make amends like any reformed male-chauvinist should.

Back to Evelyn E. Smith and her writing. She started her career in the 50’s when female science fiction writers usually worked under a male pseudonym. Ms. Smith took the bold move, at the time, of using her real name. She wrote four science fiction novels. Her first, The Perfect Planet, was about a world where looks are everything. Kind of sounds like the world we live in. Her short stories numbered in the dozens, which include, The last of the Spode and The Martian and The Magician.

Ms. Smith was a prolific writer, and in later life penned The Miss Melville Mystery series of novels. Not surprisingly, the protagonist is a strong willed, intelligent woman that just happens to be an assassin.

Evelyn Smith is just one of many women that have made significant contributions to SciFi.

Dorothy Fontana is another fantastic writer I have previously overlooked. She did a great job on the original Star Trek TV series.

I will update my pages to include these women, and the many other women in the world of science fiction.