Title
Fear of a Stupid Planet Sexuality, SF, and Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons"
Abbreviated Journal Title
Extrapolation
Keywords
Literature
Abstract
This essay traces the interpretive history of C. M. Kornbluth's 1951 story "The Marching Morons" by focusing on the question of readerly sympathy for either the story's elite or its idiotic masses. I connect the question of interpretation of the story's relationship to fan culture by comparing it to Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream (1972) and A. E. Van Vogt's Slan (1940). I then use recent queer theory to develop a reading of the story that is sympathetic to the elite by constructing them as a sexual minority; in doing so, I compare "The Marching Morons" to Kornbluth's non-sf pulp novel Half (1953), which describes an intersex character's life and eventual change in gender identification from male to female.
Journal Title
Extrapolation
Volume
55
Issue/Number
1
Publication Date
1-1-2014
Document Type
Article
Language
English
First Page
51
Last Page
74
WOS Identifier
ISSN
0014-5483
Recommended Citation
"Fear of a Stupid Planet Sexuality, SF, and Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons"" (2014). Faculty Bibliography 2010s. 5126.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/facultybib2010/5126
Comments
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