It's hard for this blog to compete with the lure of writing my latest novella, which I hope to find a publisher for--a real publisher, meaning one that sells stories to people on paper. For all Blogger's ease and charm, I have doubts about whether these bits (stored on a disk array in some windowless room) will survive me. With luck, I could live another fifty years. How many datafiles from the 1950's are still readable? Then consider the number of books from the 1950's are still treasured and enjoyed.

A case in point is the paperback copy of _Only Yesterday, An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties_ my father gave me during college. Though the book was written in 1931, my copy appears to date from 1946. I learned a lot from it, especially the chapters on the Florida real estate boom and the stock market crash of 1929. I re-read them over and over during the dot-com boom of 2000. I'm glad people paid the 25-cent cover price so that Frederick Allen's entertaining history of the 1920's would be preserved for my benefit. Giving things away for free encourages people to take them for granted, which is seldom a good thing.

I keep promising to write about Heinlein and Feminism and hesitating because it's tricky to infer the intent behind his writing. Let's start with the story in question.

The heroine in _Podkayne of Mars_ (a story approaching the 50-year mark) is Podkayne, a 15 year-old girl. She starts out with the "a woman can do anything a man can" attitude that progressive parents still teach to their daughters today. Her mother is a master engineer who builds spaceports and other large projects, and Podkayne's ambition is to captain a spaceship.

Even in Podkayne's far-future society, however, women are handicapped in these fields, and for this reason she used to regret not being a boy. She admits that her friend Dexter's chances of captaining a spaceship are "a hundred times better" than her own, partly because he's male. She talks of her mother "beating men at their own game" and worries that doing so left her ignorant of more feminine strategies. Her uncle belongs to a men's-only club which gives him special privileges wherever he goes on Mars.

Heinlein bombards Podkayne with trivial experiences that weaken her resolve. Her brother mocks her ambition. On her way to Venus, she discovers that spaceships don't smell good. The ship's captain is male and has too many worry lines for his age. He's called "the old man," and she can't bear to think that she might someday be "the old woman." Simultaneously, she finds joy in caring for babies, learning how to wear make-up, and basking in male attention. She observes that her body is "designed for having babies."

The crux of the novel is on page 114 of my edition, where Podkayne lists the alternatives available to her. She could marry a man who shares her ambitions. She could study pediatrics and work in the nursery of a starship. Or she could "buck for pilot training and make it ... and wind up as a female pilot nobody wants to hire." The story ends long before she has to choose, but it's clear where she's headed.

I understand there are two endings to the story. The one I know has Podkayne's uncle sending an angry monologue to her mother: "Building bridges and space stations and gadgets is all very well ... but a woman has more important work to do."

Heinlein dedicated _Podkayne of Mars_ "to Gale and Astrid." According to the article "Heinlein’s Dedications" by Jane Davitt & Tim Morgan, which appears on the nitrosyncretic.com website, "Gale" refers to a daughter of a man in the class before Heinlein’s at the Naval Academy and "Astrid" refers to Astrid Anderson Bear who (judging from her appearance last summer) must've been quite young at the time. This confirms my suspicion that Heinlein wrote the book for young girls.

On the surface, this appears to be an extremely anti-Feminist novel, aimed at discouraging girls from pursuing careers in male-dominated fields. Scanning his list of published stories, I note that few of them focus on a female protagonist -- aside from Podkayne, the notable exception is Friday in the 1982 novel of that name.

Even so, I'm reluctant to label Heinlein as an anti-Feminist author. His female characters show enormous initiative, intelligence, and ability, even as they operate in universes that seem governed by men. Perhaps he was a pessimistic feminist who believed that the world wasn't going to change and we shouldn't deceive our daughters about the obstacles they would encounter when they grew up. Whatever his thinking was, I feel sad for Podkayne and anyone discouraged by his book.

Almost simultaneous with _Podkayne_, his men's story _Glory Road_ appeared. Even as Heinlein envisioned Star (the hero's sidekick in _Glory Road_) slaying monsters in hand-to-hand combat and governing the affairs of multiple universes, he kept harping on how crucial the differences between men and women are. Star fits an enormous number of female sterotypes: clothes horse, capricious, promiscuous, etc. Heinlein gave Star an overabundance of power and ability, but surprisingly little dignity.

Even as Heinlein wrote _Podkayne_, Russia was preparing to send up its first female cosmonaut. When he died in 1988, Sandra O'Connor was serving on the supreme court, Sally Ride had flown in space, Geraldine Ferraro had run for Vice President. I wonder if his attitudes changed over time.

_Friday_ is a later work, and I think he gave its (female) protagonist a lot of dignity. Yet despite all the complex female characters in the story, they came across to me as exceptions in a male-dominated world. It's hard to say why. Part of it may be that all the truly minor characters seem to fit 1980's gender stereotypes. And I recall that Heinlein even took the trouble to make fun of unisex bathrooms, as if to say, "here is where Feminism will take you."

While, I haven't read all of Heinlein's work, I'm convinced that while he could envision a woman in almost any role, his universes remained male playgrounds, right up to the end.

'Nuff said for now.