As I got to know my partner’s reading habits, I began to realise there was a massive gap in her reading of science fiction. So I decided to make amends to this with the idea of recommending all the great classics, or the ones that I think still hold up, such as The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester) and Gateway (Frederick Pohl).

I began compiling my list pretty quickly, but as soon as I declared my intentions, she quickly quipped “I don’t want to be reading a bunch of ‘lonely men in space’ books.”

I was nothing short of horrified at her shallow judgement of such great past literature.

But then I had a little think.

And much like the trope of damsel in distress, or women in refrigerator, I did realise there was some truth to her perception of the genre. After all, it had been dominated mainly by heterosexual white men, and even authors like Arthur C. Clarke, who was by all accounts gay, did little for the plight of women in space. Of course, there were women writers all along, like C.L. Moore, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Kate Wilhelm, but by and large SF was written for males and featured male characters with little input from female characters. And the story of James Tiptree Jr., if you don't know, begins with a woman, Alice Sheldon, writing under a male name to avoid attention for being a woman writer.

When I looked at the books that I was recommending, I realised that many of them could be distilled down to a simple 'lonely man in space' blurb. So, here’s my list of great, and maybe not so great, books from the fields of Science-Fiction and Fantasy distilled down to the most simplistic of blurbs.

~//~

The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester)
    • Lonely man in cold space seeks hot revenge.


Star King (Jack Vance)
    • Lonely man in space starts pogrom of revenge on interstellar crime bosses.


Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
    • Lonely boy in space commits genocide.


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)
    • Lonely cop commits android genocide.


Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
    • Lonely fireman commits book-genocide.


Dune (Frank Herbert)
    • Lonely man on desert planet becomes messiah. Later he commits genocide.


Dune: House Atreides (Brian Herbert)
    • Lonely son commits patricide.


Gateway (Frederik Pohl)
    • Lonely man on earth recounts lonely time in space to robot psychologist.


Beyond Apollo (Barry N. Malzberg)
    • Lonely man on earth writes autobiography about being a lonely man in space.


The Voyage of the Space Beagle (A.E. van Vogt)
    • Lonely man at typewriter sues 20th Century Fox for plagiarism.


Harlan Ellison (Harlan Ellison)
    • Lonely man at typewriter sues everyone for plagiarism.


A Time of Changes (Robert Silverberg)
    • Lonely man on planet takes drugs to avoid loneliness.


Solaris (Stanisław Lem)
    • Lonely man on earth visits lonely planet in space to escape lonely memories of dead wife.


The World of Null-A (A.E. van Vogt)
    • Lonely man with big brain tests big brained leaders to prove his big brain is even bigger than their big brains.


Elric of Melniboné (Michael Moorcock)
    • Lonely weak albino emperor discovers lonely talking sword that turns him into lonely strong albino emperor.


Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)
    • Lonely men in space explore lonely cylinder in space.


Steel Beach (John Varley)
    • Lonely and bored man (later woman) on moon colony.


I am Legend (Richard Matheson)
    • Lonely last man on earth invents zombie genre.


The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham)
    • Lonely man runs away from man-eating plants. (I sense some kind of metaphor growing out of this one...)


Neuromancer (William Gibson)
    • Lonely keyboard-warrior hacks computers.


Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
    • Lonely man combines science and psychology to predict the downfall of the first galactic empire.


Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
    • Lonely martian-man returns to earth and freaks even the hippies out.


Way Station (Clifford D. Simak)
    • Lonely man in space station has tea and biscuits with alien visitors.


Hospital Station (James White)
    • Lonely man doctor in space hospital unable to relate to human female seeks solace in alien patients.


More than Human (Theodore Sturgeon)
    • Lonely young man discovers how to not be lonely by talking to other people.


~//~

It is interesting that there is a certain preponderance for men to write about men in a singular sense, especially across the genre of Science Fiction. More so in the pulp category which relies on the male fantasy of conquering aliens, planets, and winning the affections of females. When women wrote in the same setting, they often followed the same rules and guidelines, even with female leads. The rise of the 60s counter-culture and the writings of James Tiptree Jr., Ursula Le Guin, and Joanna Russ, saw a change in how women's roles in SF should be perceived.

But still, the men wrote about men. As it were.
And space is a lonely environment. There aren't exactly a multitude of space party books...

For most who are aware and critical of gender roles, it is relatively common knowledge that men have been taught by a culture of masculinity to be ashamed of their feelings, and as a consequence there is a tendency to recoil into oneself, or take the opposite route and put on a façade of extravagance or extrovert behaviour (often in the form of machismo). There is loneliness in a physical space, as well as loneliness in a crowd, and when men reach out they aren't aligning themselves with the human experience, but the male experience of being lonely. In Science Fiction their dreams of freedom could be realised. In Science Fiction their dreams of connecting with fellow men could be realised.

This sounds belittling of the genre as an exercise in thought. There is a great intellectual pursuit in Science Fiction that can be found in some of the best male writers like Olaf Stapledon, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Stanisław Lem, and Frank Herbert; while others, like Jack Vance, who would garden worlds, populated their planets with love and care. But for what reason was that intellectual pursuit, that love and care, not extended out to the female characters?

It's impossible to believe that male writers can't empathise. Even after the year 2000, I still see reviews of males writing one-dimensional women. Are they still so out of touch with their own feelings?

My partner suggests a way to look at one aspect of male fragility: "There's a difference between being able to express feelings and working with someone to cure loneliness. When these particular men get lonely they try to define the social norm on their own terms and expect others to fit in with that. And if they can't fit in, well it's exclusion and rejection for that person - my way or the highway." I still see these attitudes existing in men of my own generation, which I find disappointing.

Anyway, some of these authors are disappointing too, but the books as ideas and concepts are almost always interesting.