we (believe that we) have always lived in the castle

B D McClay asks “when exactly was science fiction [literature] about jacked bros in space“, and concludes that the answer is quite possibly “never”—or at least “not back in the Golden Age, despite claims persistent over decades that it was”. McClay thinks that this metanarrative has a lot to do with the long-standing resentment of sf lit for cinema and TV, which was always seen as cheapening the public perception of a genre whose fans considered it a signifier of their thoughtfulness. She notes also that Golden Age stories certainly displayed a sexism that was very much in keeping with the period, and raises the well-worn examples of Del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy” and Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”, only to point out that the sexism in question is far more nerdy than bro-y. Now, you definitely find a long run of the Campbellian Competent Man trope, of which “The Cold Equations” is an early and formative example, and the influence of Heinlein sustained that trope for a long time. But again,…