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The ‘Screwfly Solution’ Solution: Bi-Sexuality · Gwern.net

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biology, literary criticism, Sci-Fi

Alice Sheldon’s SF short story ‘The Screwfly Solution’ is misread by most readers as an alien attack driving men to insane violence; a closer revisionist read shows that the alien attack affected women as well, into suicidal passivity.

2021-07-26–2021-08-01<br>finished<br>certainty: possible<br>importance: 1<br>backlinks<br>similar<br>bibliography

Problems With Heterosexuality

Swinging With Alice

Counter-Argument: The Screwfly Solution(S)

External Links

Did everyone misread Alice B. Sheldon’s 197749ya SF short story “The Screwfly Solution” (WP)? It seems so. Sheldon’s story has the same problem as Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”: the surface story is so easily read one way that a reader can just run roughshod over the parts that don’t fit, either ignoring them or cramming a square peg into a round hole. In Sheldon’s story, no readers seems to have noticed all the hints that the mind-altering chemicals are affecting the women too—everyone reads it solely as “the men go berserk murdering all women, who are able to put up no resistance”.

When I read “Screwfly”, I thought this was fairly obvious albeit that Dr. Sheldon was perhaps, as with “Love Is The Plan” (WP) or “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats” (and related stories), expecting too much of her reader like familiarity with zoology to the point of understanding the “lordotic” reference1, and was surprised to look at the Wikipedia entry and see none of this covered; checking other reviews, none of them mention this either. As obvious as it might seem, it seems almost all readers miss it (somewhat like missing how Tarkovsky’s Stalker retells Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor”).

Problems With Heterosexuality

So, to dig into it, the male-only reading has several problems:

This is prima facie absurd.

Women are not helpless creatures who bare their throats to be cut, have never in history acted like that.

Certainly, Sheldon herself certainly didn’t believe that. She had an active life as an artist, traveler, Army intelligence officer (rank of Major), earning her doctorate in animal psychology, career as a SF writer under several pseudonyms, bisexual, journalist, etc. Sheldon is typically taken to be a highly-feminist & knowledgeable writer, and not the ignorant borderline misogynist and/or misandrist that the male-only reading implies (with its depiction of women en masse as being incompetent, helpless, and masochistic to the point of suicide). Even in terms of a “victimization Olympics” interpretation, this is extreme.

By any sensible understanding of the world, it would take women years or decades to die out, and they might never do so; it would be perfectly possible for women (being slightly over half the world population) to take over and counter-purge men (whose economies are also collapsing), and make do without men (harvesting semen from raids, raising their children, or taking a few captives who can be shackled to safely service many women). Further, the men are in a losing strategic position: they are unable to replenish their population, as they must murder any women they capture, while the women can begin exponential growth of their population easily, meaning that any war of attrition is an almost guaranteed victory. So the alien strategy is deeply flawed, even without considering evolution.2

The absurdity of it is explicitly highlighted in the story, directly pointing out to the reader how “strange” it is that the women are generally so helpless and even the female protagonist is apathetic to the point of suicide (emphasis added):

I still can’t really realize, I have to stop myself from rushing back. But you saved my life, I know that. The first trip in I got a paper, I saw where they bombed the Apostle Islands refuge. And it had about those 3 women stealing the Air Force plane and bombing Dallas, too. Of course they shot them down, over the Gulf. Isn’t it strange how we do nothing? Just get killed by ones and twos. Or more, now they’ve started on the refuges.… Like hypnotized rabbits. We’re a toothless race. Do you know I never said “we” meaning women before? “We” was always me and Alan, and Amy of course. Being killed selectively encourages group identification.… You see how sane-headed I am. But I still can’t really realize.

[…] The old man gave me the hooks quick and whispered to me, “Boy, them woods’ll be full of hunters next week.” I almost ran out. […] No. I’ll just make a good end, say up on that rock where I can see the stars. After I go back and leave this for you. I’ll wait to see the beautiful color in the trees one last time.

Indeed,...