While perusing Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo’s indispensable resource Uranian Worlds: A Reader’s Guide to Alternative Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy (1983, second ed. 1990), my eyes fell on stories by Lisa Tuttle and Grania Davis.1 I’ve never read the work of Lisa Tuttle and I know little to nothing about Grania Davis beyond “My Head’s in a Different Place, Now” (1972), which I tersely dismissed as “zany and forgettable.” I’m glad I decided to pair the stories. Both tackle the inability of 60s radicalism to create a lasting ideological movement. Both stories come with caveats.
Preliminary Note: In the future, I might cover problematic stories on this theme or others with a strong heterosexual bias. They too reveal how people thought about queer topics through the lens of science-fictional extrapolation at different points in history.
Let’s get to the stories!
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Tom Barber’s cover for Amazing Stories, ed. Ted White (March 1976)
4.25/5 (Very Good)
Lisa Tuttle’s “Stone Circle” first appeared in Amazing Stories, ed. Ted White (March 1976). You can read it online here. It was nominated for the 1977 Nebula Award for Best Short Story.
As the forces of a fascism transform a new-future America, a nameless female narrator (henceforth N) attempts to find meaning in the ashes. This is a world in which N must use her body to acquire the necessities for survival. The story opens with N observing herself, “woman of stone, lying on the floor” as a man above her “smiling, masculine, buckling his belt, congratulating himself” (42). Later a government inspectors enters her apartment with his “payment”–a mysterious piece of uncooked meat in a plastic bag. In another instance, a man attempts to seduce her in his apartment (in exchange for cooking the meat as she has no stove)–they watch television, he falls asleep, she observes, distant, a roach crawl up his chair and across his arm (44).
The sad exploitive ritual of her existence is interrupted after she wanders into an area of the city “untouched by reconstruction” (44). It’s implied riots or draconian attempts to crack down on resistance created ruinous zones across America’s cities. N encounters a young woman, a “moon-faced” revolutionary named Kit, wandering the streets high on Chill (44). The government allows revolutionaries to eek out their harmless self-destroying existence in the ruins. While their ideologies might be transformative and confrontational, the drive for action burns out on drugs. She buys Kit a warm drink with her dwindling supply of food stamps. Something kindles inside of her. Kit imagines a real revolution occurring among the harmless: “we’re so far beyond suspicion” (45). N shakes her head, “Chill freaks are harmless […] There will never be a revolution. It’s been tried before. I don’t believe in that stuff” (45). N falls in love: “I thought her very like a kitten, small and soft, clear-eyed and vulnerable” (45).
Kit moves into N’s apartment and her bed: “I felt something within me, a tightening in my stomach and then a slow throb, like an extra heart” (46). They settle into a domestic routine. But everything changes when Kit comes home excited: “There is an underground! There is a an organization!” (46). N attempts to caution her that the government will soon root out their plans. The personal relationships might last but the grander transformation of society will be crushed by the arbitrary forces of dictatorship. But soon Kit unwittingly pulls N into a conspiracy of which there might not be an escape.
This is a hard story to read and write about: “emotionally uncomfortable” might be the best description I’ve seen.2 N imagines herself a stone statue as protection against the trauma she experiences at the hands of the men who attempt to control her life. Her love of Kit momentarily gives life to the stone. Little’s nightmare reflects, in harrowing strokes, the late-70s viewpoint of a frustrated radical in the era of conservative backlash. “Stone Circle” manifests the disappointment in the perceived failure of the New Left transform American into a more egalitarian, anti-martial, and democratically participatory society.3 The jaded one-time radicals can only look back on the strung out remnants of the movement with dismissive sadness. There is no hope for change. And the hope for more meaningful personal relationships quickly turn to stone.
I am fascinated by the evolution of leftist thought in science fiction. I found “Stone Circle” and (to an even greater degree) Grania Davis’ “New-Way-Groover’s Stew” (1976) discussed below, a worthy foil to Marge Piercy’s underrated Dance the Eagle to Sleep (1970). Piercy charts the rise and fall of an Students for a Democratic Society-style revolutionary group (with an insider’s eye). While the movement fails and the forces of fascism transforms society in its own image, Dance at least suggested that the movement’s ideology had meaning. Tuttle (and Davis) look from a vantage point of complete despair. The corrosive forces of fascism turns everyone against everyone. Dark. Grungy. Beautiful in its telling.
Recommended with caveats. Why this Nebula-nominated short story never appeared in an anthology or Tuttle collection frustrates.
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Stephen Fabian’s cover for Fantastic, Ted White (August 1976)
3.75/5 (Good)
Grania Davis’ “New-Way-Groovers Stew” first appeared in Fantastic, Ted White (August 1976). You can read it online here.
As with Lisa Tuttle’s “Stone Circle” (1976), Grania Davis also crafts a deeply unsettling look–with a bit more interest in its horror implications–backwards at the failure of the New Left. At some indeterminant point in the near future (perhaps), the aging lesbian narrator (henceforth N) reflects back on her life with Jule, a “swishy” gay author (62). After the inevitable failure of the previous relationship, Jule always returns with another “Chuck (or Stud)” and attempts to woo him with his money (62). N always comes to Jule’s parties with the hope of meeting a potential partner. Both sought “something permanent, a real relationship with warmth, love” (62). They tried to be a couple once: “picture a flaccid white worm trying blindly to find its way into a reluctant wound” (63). Lonely, they share each other’s company and perpetually dream of finding someone. And then the hippies come to Haight Ashbury.
A hippie collective called the New-Way-Groovers set up a Free Store in an abandoned laundry. They collect odds and ends of clothing and give them out to whoever comes by. They formed a guerilla theatre group and “persuaded well-known rock bands to give free concerts in the park” (64). They set up free child-care, housing co-ops, and a fund to provide bail for protestors. And everyone comes for the free port of stew. Jule and N offer food and shelters to the newcomers with the hope of meeting someone. And everything takes a sinister turn when Jule falls for a young biracial radical who preaches confronting violence with violence.
It’s rare you find a deeply sympathetic story about queer friendship. Yes, the story is horrifically depressing and a bit cliched in its depiction of N and Jules, but Davis attempts something different. I imagine that most readers will find elements deeply problematic– in particular, the actions of the Black Panther-esque radical. Davis appears sympathetic to elements of the New Left’s vision for a new future but despairs at the disconnect between generations and the evolution of the movement over the late 60s and early 70s. “New-Way-Groovers Stew” suggests older radicals who attempt to interact with the new generations were treated cast off as interlopers. It’s a queasy and uncomfortable story despite its sympathetic main characters, exactly as Davis intended.
Notes
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