Business Girls and Beset Men in Pulp Science Fiction and Science Fiction Fandom 1 Eric Drown Introduction In July 1931 New York City science fiction fan Arnold Wolf wrote to the edi- tors of Amazing Stories pleading for “some good stories on atomic energy, biology, and the disappearance of women from the earth” (331). To Twenty-First Century ears, Wolf’s list of themes is idiosyncratic, jarringly incongruous, and merely misogynist. But considered in context, it’s a near paradigmatic example of the way the earliest American science fiction fans thought through changing conditions of existence in a rapidly modernizing so- ciety using science fiction motifs. Wolf’s desire to read stories about a utopian consumer future fueled by a cheap, clean, and plentiful form of power makes perfect sense in the year unemployment figures first reached double-digits during the Great Depression. 2 His interest in biology also makes sense in con- text. Endocrinologist John Jacob Abel’s well-publicized research into the functions of glands prompted respectable and not-so-respectable scientists and doctors, as well as science fiction writers and readers, to believe that youth might be regenerated, intelligence enhanced, and life extended beyond expecta- tion by manipulating glandular secretions. 3 During a time when wage earners’ life chances were significantly determined by macroeconomic changes beyond their control, the fantasy of becoming vigorously and perpetually young, as well as super-smart, was more than just psychological compensation; it pre- served the notion that individual effort could shape the future. To a science enthusiast like Arnold Wolf, as well as to progressive so- cial engineers, mastery of the secrets of nature meant that men need not be satisfied with their natural or societal endowment, and that evolutionary and economic perfection were both conceivable and achievable. But modern science did more than ensure progress in the 1930s. As the histories of the eugenics movements and nuclear weaponry remind us, it also inspired more problematic efforts to remake society. 4 Not surprisingly then, in 1932, Wonder Stories answered Wolf’s call with a mean darkly “progressive” little short story by Thomas Gardner. “The Last Woman” was premised on the notion that biologists’ as-yet-unrealized ability to remake human bodies would make it plausible to consider eliminating women altogether. Gardner’s tale features an FEMSPEC VII:1  2006 5