| "That Only a Mother" | |
|---|---|
| by Judith Merril | |
| Country |  USA |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction |
| Publication type | Astounding Science Fiction |
| Media type | Print (Magazine) |
| Publication date | 1948 |
"That Only a Mother" is a science fiction short story by American writer Judith Merril, originally published in June 1948 in Astounding Science Fiction . [1]
The story is set five years in the future in 1953. World War III has been going on for several years. Unlike in many other depictions, it is seen as a prolonged war, which does not destroy all civilization at once - but extensive use of nuclear bombs causes radiation poisoning and has led to a rash of mutated babies (it is implied that only a small fraction of pregnancies result in the birth of normal children).
The first part of the story is told in the form of letters from the pregnant Margaret to her husband Hank, a "technical lieutenant," on assignment. In these letters we learn of Margaret's fears of giving birth to a mutant, disturbing tales of infanticide by the fathers of deformed babies, her successful labor, and the rapid development of the newborn. The daughter, named Henrietta, is extremely precocious, speaking in complete sentences by the time she first meets her father at the age of ten months. Margaret dotes on her and thinks she is wonderful, though there are hints of something disturbing about the girl, including the story's title (referring to the phrase "a face that only a mother could love"), and an offhand comment that the nurses in the hospital were not sure whether the child was a boy or a girl.
When Hank returns home, he discovers that his daughter has no arms or legs, and that his wife is in such strong denial that she does not realize she has given birth to a mutant.
"That Only a Mother" falls into a category of mid-century science-fiction writing often referred to as the "housewife heroine" story, works that deal explicitly with domestic themes and the experiences of women. Stories of this type were often controversial because while some editors praised their literary qualities, others viewed them as dull domestic tales. Nevertheless, "That Only a Mother" went on to become one of the most anthologized science-fiction stories of the twentieth century. [2]
"That Only a Mother" was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the best science fiction short stories before the creation of the Nebula Awards. As such, it was published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, 1929-1964 .
Jonathan Strahan has emphasized how uncommon it was at the time for science fiction to provide a woman's perspective, but nonetheless calls the story dated, saying that the passage of decades has changed it from "a chilling and timely piece of science fiction" to "an important but not particularly moving historical footnote." [1]
Anne Inez McCaffrey was an American-Irish writer known for the Dragonriders of Pern science fiction series. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction and the first to win a Nebula Award. Her 1978 novel The White Dragon became one of the first science-fiction books to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Judith Josephine Grossman, who took the pen-name Judith Merril around 1945, was an American and then Canadian science fiction writer, editor and political activist, and one of the first women to be widely influential in those roles.
Kij Johnson is an American writer of fantasy. She is a faculty member at the University of Kansas.
Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, founded in 1968, is an American magazine published monthly in Oakland, California. It is the news organ and trade journal for the English-language science fiction and fantasy fields. It also publishes comprehensive listings of all new books published in the genres. The magazine also presents the annual Locus Awards. Locus Online was launched in April 1997, as a semi-autonomous web version of Locus Magazine.
Ellen Klages is an American science, science fiction and historical fiction writer who lives in San Francisco. Her novelette "Basement Magic" won the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Novelette. She had previously been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, and Campbell awards. Her first (non-genre) novel, The Green Glass Sea, was published by Viking Children's Books in 2006. It won the 2007 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Portable Childhoods, a collection of her short fiction published by Tachyon Publications, was named a 2008 World Fantasy Award Finalist. White Sands, Red Menace, the sequel to The Green Glass Sea, was published in Fall 2008. In 2010 her short story "Singing on a Star" was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. In 2018 her novella Passing Strange was nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature.
Margaret Brundage, born Margaret Hedda Johnson, was an American illustrator and painter who is remembered chiefly for having illustrated the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Working in pastels on illustration board, she created most of the covers for Weird Tales between 1933 and 1938.
Kathleen Ann Goonan was an American science fiction writer. Several of her books have been nominated for the Nebula Award. Her debut novel Queen City Jazz was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and her novel In War Times was chosen by the American Library Association as Best Science Fiction Novel for their 2008 reading list. In July 2008, In War Times won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Her novel This Shared Dream was released in July 2011 by Tor Books.
Lucy Sussex is an author working in fantasy and science fiction, children's and teenage writing, non-fiction and true crime. She is also an editor, reviewer, academic and teacher, and currently resides in Melbourne, Australia.
Theodora Goss is a Hungarian-American fiction writer and poet. Her writing has been nominated for major awards, including the Nebula, Locus, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy, and Seiun Awards. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Year's Best volumes.
Karen Haber is an American science fiction and non-fiction author and editor, as well as an art critic and historian. She is the author of nine novels including Star Trek Voyager: Bless the Beasts, and co-author of Science of the X-Men. Other publications include Exploring the Matrix: Visions of the Cyber Present, a collection of essays by leading science fiction writers and artists, and Transitions with Todd Lockwood, a retrospective of the artist's work. In 2001 she edited a Hugo-nominated essay collection celebrating J. R. R. Tolkien, Meditations on Middle-Earth. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and many anthologies. She reviews art books for Locus magazine and profiles artists for various publications including Realms of Fantasy. With her husband, Robert Silverberg, she co-edited Best Science Fiction of 2001, 2002, and the Best Fantasy of 2001 and 2002 for ibooks and later, co-edited the continuation with Jonathan Strahan.
Emily Pohl-Weary is a Canadian novelist, poet, university professor, and magazine editor. She is the granddaughter of science fiction writers and editors Judith Merril and Frederik Pohl.
Virginia Kidd was an American literary agent, writer and editor, who worked in particular in science fiction and related fields. She represented science fiction American authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, R.A. Lafferty, Anne McCaffrey, Judith Merril, and Gene Wolfe. Wolfe modeled Ann Schindler, a character in his 1990 novel Castleview, in large part on Kidd.
Kit Reed, born Lillian Hyde Craig or Lil(l)ian Craig Reed, was an American author of both speculative fiction and literary fiction, as well as psychological thrillers under the pseudonym Kit Craig.
The role of women in speculative fiction has changed a great deal since the early to mid-20th century. There are several aspects to women's roles, including their participation as authors of speculative fiction and their role in science fiction fandom. Regarding authorship, in 1948, 10–15% of science fiction writers were female. Women's role in speculative fiction has grown since then, and in 1999, women comprised 36% of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's professional members. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley has been called the first science fiction novel, although women wrote utopian novels even before that, with Margaret Cavendish publishing the first in the seventeenth century. Early published fantasy was written by and for any gender. However, speculative fiction, with science fiction in particular, has traditionally been viewed as a male-oriented genre.
Aliette de Bodard is a French-American speculative fiction writer.
Hannu Rajaniemi is a Finnish American author of science fiction and fantasy, who writes in both English and Finnish. He lives in Oakland, California, and was a founding director of a commercial research organisation ThinkTank Maths.
Chris Lawson is an Australian writer of speculative fiction.
Rachel Swirsky is an American literary, speculative fiction and fantasy writer, poet, and editor living in Oregon. She was the founding editor of the PodCastle podcast and served as editor from 2008 to 2010. She served as vice president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2013.
Nebula Award Stories 1965 is an anthology of science fiction short works edited by Damon Knight. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1966, with a Science Fiction Book Club edition following in October of the same year. The first British edition was published by Gollancz in 1967. Paperback editions followed from Pocket Books in the U.S. in November 1967, and New English Library in the U.K. in April 1969. The U.K. and paperback editions bore the variant title Nebula Award Stories 1. The book was more recently reissued by Stealth Press in hardcover in February 2001. It has also been published in German.
Lorna Diane Toolis was a Canadian librarian. She was head of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library from 1986 to 2017. She was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association Hall of Fame in 2017.