Lyda Morehouse, a Minnesota science fiction author who writes as Tate Halloway, has referred to Arnason as "one of the often-unsung grand dames of feminist science fiction."
Congratulations to Eleanor Arnason
Congratulations to Eleanor Arnason, who will be celebrated for 50 years as an award-winning science fiction writer at next weekend’s Mythcon 53 in Minneapolis. This national convention of the Mythopoetic Society returns to Minnesota after 31 years, joining with the local Diversicon 31 convention and Rivendell Discussion Group, an affiliate of Mythcon. The schedule includes panels, readings, book discussions, scholarly papers and addresses focusing on fantasy/science fiction and the genre’s influence and place in our lives. The other special guest will be Brian Attebery, scholar of fantasy literature.
“This is huge,” Arnason said of the Mythcon honor during a conversation from the apartment in St. Paul’s Lowertown she shares with her life partner, Patrick Arden Wood. “I’ve known Mythcon and been active in it for decades. These are nice people. I enjoy spending time with them.”
At 82, Arnason is still writing and blogging, although she’s taking it more slowly after a half-century of writing novels and short stories that include gender, feminism, art, anthropology, culture change and conflict. Lyda Morehouse, a Minnesota science fiction author who writes as Tate Halloway, has referred to Arnason as “one of the often-unsung grand dames of feminist science fiction.”
Arnason’s first published story, “A Clear Day in the Motor City” (New Worlds magazine, 1973), was inspired by her time in Detroit’s inner city. Since then she has written stand-alone novels, including “A Woman of the Iron People” (1991), about first contact between peoples from a future Earth and an intelligent, furred race of people who live on an unnamed planet. That book won her the inaugural James Tiptree Jr. Award (now the Otherwise Award), a literary prize for science fiction/fantasy that expands or explores one’s understanding of gender.
Her collections include “Mammoths of the Great Plains,” an alternate history in which woolly mammoths co-exist with Native Americans, and more than 32 short stories including the Hwarhath Stories (1993-2012) and Lydia Duluth stories (1999-2002). “Ring of Swords,” part of the Hwarhath series, won a Minnesota Book Award.
As a child Arnason lived in various places abroad and in the U.S., including St. Paul. Her father, art historian H. Harvard Arnason, was director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a social worker who spent her childhood in a missionary community in western China. From 1949 to 1960, Arnason’s family lived in Idea House #2, a futuristic dwelling built next to the Walker. She went east to earn a degree in art history from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and did graduate work at the University of Minnesota.
“When I left in 1960 to go to college there were a handful of local science fiction writers like Clifford Simak, who worked at the Minneapolis Star and Tribune and wrote (fiction) on the side, and Gordon Dickson,” she recalls. “By the time I returned in 1974 the Minnesota Science Fiction Society began doing conferences, and it was terrific. I lived in Minneapolis and they gave me a sense of community. Science fiction people are very conference- and convention-oriented.”
She was joined by other “godparents” of the local sci-fi community including Emma Bull and Will Shetterly, Steve Brust, Pamela Dean, Patricia Wrede and Ruth Berman. A big boost to the popularity of the genre was the 1974 opening in Minneapolis of Uncle Hugo’s, now the oldest independent science fiction bookstore in America.
Like other women science fiction authors, Arnason was at first writing in a field mostly dominated by men. That changed in 1966 with the arrival of “Star Trek” on TV and the second wave of feminism. “Women came into science fiction in a flood in the 1960s,” Arnason says. “Two things had changed in science fiction in that period. One was “Star Trek” and the women fans of the show. And the second wave of feminism generated science fiction written by women.”
Science fiction is ever-evolving so we asked Arnason for her thoughts on climate fiction, the newest genre (or sub-genre). “People need to be thinking about climate change,” she says. “I was thinking today about how you write in a period that is kind of bleak. You can write very dark fiction; climate fiction is not very cheerful. I don’t do that. The question is how to write something positive that is somehow relevant.”
Arnason’s advice to people who read unsettling sci-fi is to remember that it is fiction. “Just because something is in science fiction, it may come true or it may not,” she said. For instance, “Soylent Green,” the film based on Harry Harrison’s 1966 novel “Make Room! Make Room!,” pictured a grim, overpopulated world where humans have used up all the natural resources and only the rich are comfortable. “Overpopulation is still a problem,” Arnason acknowledges, “but it is not the catastrophic problem we thought it would be.”
These days Arnason is writing more light-hearted stories like “Mr. Catt,” published in the March/April 2023 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It’s about a 6 foot-tall white cat with green eyes who walks on his hind legs. This gentleman feline tells his housekeeper as he is having tea that he wants a dragon. His search takes him to the worst part of the city, where he and his dragon have adventures. “I will probably read a sequel to this story at the conference,” Arnason said. “These funny stories are a pleasure to write. The one I am going to read is about a dragon and a yeti. Both very nice.”
Arnason’s most pressing job now is collecting her short stories into book form. Although her novels are available, her stories are harder to find because so many were printed in magazines. After a long career writing science fiction, one of Arnason’s current concerns is that women writers of her generation are going to be erased. She wrote on her blog: “I have felt the last few years — maybe the last decade — that second-wave feminism is being written out of SF history, along with a lot of older women writers, including me.” She expanded that thought in our interview: “Mostly I have felt OK, but every once in a while I feel erased. There’s no question that in science fiction characters are young or middle-aged. What you don’t get is a realistic portrait of old age. We’re watching this right now with issues around President Biden. People don’t necessarily stop functioning as we age. I very much like the tradition in Native American culture of respecting elders, feeling that age and wisdom are useful.”
It might surprise Arnason’s fans to learn that besides writing her other passion is accounting. “I think even in the future we will want to know accounting. We will still need it even if it’s done by computers,” she said, laughing a little at her enthusiasm for numbers.
Arnason hints that next weekend’s Mythcon might be the last she will attend. “I’ve reached an age where I don’t know how much I want to do,” she says. “‘Once I have the (story) collections out of the way, I can work on writing whatever I feel like.”
If you go
What: Mythcon 53 Mythopoeic Society convention
When: Aug. 2-5
Where: Double Tree by Hilton Hotel Mpls-Park Place, 1500 Park Place Blvd.
Admission: $110 for nonmembers, discount for students.
Information/registration: mythcon.org
Follow Arnason at: eleanorarnason.com/blog
author Mary Ann Grossmann