Clare Winger Harris
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Clare Winger Harris (January 18, 1891 – October 26, 1968) was an early
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
writer whose
short stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...
were published during the 1920s. She is credited as the first woman to publish stories under her own name in
science fiction magazine A science fiction magazine is a publication that offers primarily science fiction, either in a hard-copy periodical format or on the Internet. Science fiction magazines traditionally featured speculative fiction in short story, novelette, nov ...
s. Her stories often dealt with characters on the "borders of humanity" such as
cyborgs A cyborg ()—a portmanteau of ''cybernetic'' and ''organism''—is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.
. Harris began publishing magazine stories in 1926, and soon became well liked by readers. She sold a total of eleven stories, which were collected in 1947 as ''Away From the Here and Now''. Her gender was a surprise to
Hugo Gernsback Hugo Gernsback (; born Hugo Gernsbacher, August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967) was a Luxembourgish–American editor and magazine publisher, whose publications including the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as publ ...
, the editor who eventually bought most of her work, as she was the first American woman to publish in science fiction magazines under her own name. Her stories, which often feature strong female characters, have been occasionally reprinted and have received some positive critical response, including a recognition of her pioneering role as a woman writer in a male-dominated field.


Life

Clare Winger was born on January 18, 1891, in
Freeport, Illinois Freeport is the county seat and largest city of Stephenson County, Illinois, United States. The population was 23,973 at the 2020 census, and the mayor of Freeport is Jodi Miller, elected in 2017. Freeport is known for hosting the second Linc ...
and later attended
Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...
in
Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...
. Her father, Frank Stover Winger, was an electrical engineer who also had an interest in science-fiction writing; in 1917, he published a novel called ''The Wizard of the Island; or, The Vindication of Prof. Waldinger''. Her mother, May Stover, was the daughter of D.C. Stover, founder of the
Stover Manufacturing and Engine Company The Stover Manufacturing and Engine Company was created by D.C. Stover in 1881.American Gasoline Engines Since 1872, MBI Publishing, 1999, pp. 489-96. An established inventor, he progressed through a profitable windmill business to, in 1895, the ...
. (Frank was also related to the Stover family on his mother's side, hence his middle name.) Unusually for the era, after their children were born and raised, Frank and May divorced. In 1912, Clare married Frank Clyde Harris. Her husband was an
architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
and
engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
who served in
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and was chief engineer with the Loudon Machinery Company in Iowa and one of the organizers of the American Monorail Company of
Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
.James Harris-Mary Cherry Family
PART 3, POSTERITY CHAPTER VI, Isaiah M. Harris-Wilkerson-Murrell Descendants, accessed April 2, 2007.
Harris gave birth to three sons (Clyde Winger, born 1915; Donald Stover, born 1916; and Lynn Thackrey, born 1918). She and her family lived in Iowa in 1925 according to a state census; sometime before 1930, the family moved to
Lakewood, Ohio Lakewood is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, on the southern shore of Lake Erie. Established in 1889, it is one of Cleveland's historical streetcar suburbs and part of the Greater Cleveland, Greater Clevelan ...
. Her career as a writer spanned the years 1923 to 1933, during her tenures in both these locations. Harris ceased writing stories after 1933. She was still living in Lakewood in 1935, and according to an interview with her grandson, she and Frank "stayed together until their kids were fully grown." Clare and Frank's youngest son turned 18 in 1936, and by 1940, U.S. census records show Clare W. Harris as divorced and living in
Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...
, where she lived the rest of her life. She privately published a collection of her stories in 1947, but otherwise little is known of the final decades of her life. She died on October 26, 1968, in Pasadena.


Writing career

Harris debuted as a writer in 1923 with a novel, a piece of historical fiction entitled ''Persephone of Eleusis: A Romance of Ancient Greece''. The rest of her work would be very different, as it consisted entirely of short stories in the realm of science fiction. Harris published her first short story, "A Runaway World," in the July 1926 issue of
Weird Tales ''Weird Tales'' is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, prin ...
. In December of that year, she submitted a story for a contest being run by ''
Amazing Stories ''Amazing Stories'' is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances i ...
'' editor Hugo Gernsback. Harris's story, "The Fate of the Poseidonia" (a
space opera Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it features technological and soci ...
about
Martians Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, has appeared as a setting in works of fiction since at least the mid-1600s. It became the most popular celestial object in fiction in the late 1800s as the Moon was evidently lifeless. At the time, the pred ...
who steal earth's water), placed third. She soon became one of Gernsback's most popular writers. Harris eventually published 11 short stories in
pulp magazines Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazine ...
, most of them in ''Amazing Stories'' (although she also published in other places such as ''Science Wonder Quarterly''). She wrote her most acclaimed works during the 1920s; in 1930, she stopped writing to raise and educate her children. Her absence from the pulps was noted—a fan wrote in to ''
Amazing Stories ''Amazing Stories'' is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances i ...
'' in late 1930 to ask, “What happened to Clare Winger Harris? I’ve missed her . . .” However, she did publish one story in 1933—titled "The Vibrometer," it appeared in a mimeographed pamphlet called ''Science Fiction''. The editors,
Jerry Siegel Jerome Siegel ( ; October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996)Roger Stern. ''Superman: Sunday Classics: 1939–1943'' DC Comics/Kitchen Sink Press, Inc./ Sterling Publishing; 2006 was an American comic book writer. He is the co-creator of Superman, in ...
and
Joe Shuster Joseph Shuster (; July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992), professionally known simply as Joe Shuster, was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in ''Action Comics'' #1 (c ...
, were high school students in Cleveland at the time. In 1947, all of Harris's short stories except "The Vibrometer" were collected under the title ''Away from the Here and Now''; a 2019 collection, ''The Artificial Man and Other Stories'', also includes "The Vibrometer." Her stories have also been reprinted in anthologies such as ''Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the 20th Century'' (with a critical essay), ''Sci-Fi Womanthology'', ''Amazing Science Fiction Anthology: The Wonder Years 1926-1935'', and ''Gosh Wow! Sense of Wonder Science Fiction''. Harris also wrote one of the first attempts to classify science fiction when, in the August 1931 issue of ''
Wonder Stories ''Wonder Stories'' was an early American science fiction magazine which was published under several titles from 1929 to 1955. It was founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 after he had lost control of his first science fiction magazine, ''Amazing Stor ...
'', she listed 16 basic
science fiction themes The following is a list of articles about recurring themes in science fiction. Overarching themes * First contact with aliens *Artificial intelligence **Machine rule/Cybernetic revolt/AI takeover *Extraterrestrials in fiction *End of humanity ...
, including "interplanetary space travel," "adventures on other worlds," and "the creation of synthetic life."


Critical view and influence

When Gernsback published Harris's first short story in ''Amazing Stories'', he praised her writing while also expressing amazement that a woman could write good science fiction: "That the third prize winner should prove to be a woman was one of the surprises of the contest, for, as a rule, women do not make good scientifiction writers, because their education and general tendencies on scientific matters are usually limited. But the exception, as usual, proves the rule, the exception in this case being extraordinarily impressive." For many years Harris claimed to have been the first woman science-fiction writer in the United States, although later research proved this to be untrue, as
Gertrude Barrows Bennett Gertrude Barrows Bennett (September 18, 1884February 2, 1948), known by the pseudonym Francis Stevens, was a pioneering author of fantasy and science fiction.''Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965'' by Eric Lei ...
, writing under the pseudonym Francis Stevens, was publishing science fiction stories as early as 1917. Note that the true identity of "Francis Stevens" was not known publicly until 1952, long after the writing careers of both Harris and Bennett were over. More recently, Harris is often credited with the narrower distinction of being the first American woman to publish stories in science fiction magazines under her own name. Nevertheless, this must be qualified as well: as a teenager, Bennett, born Gertrude Mabel Barrows, published one story as G.M. Barrows (i.e., her own name) in a 1904 edition of ''Argosy'' magazine. ''Argosy'', however, was not strictly speaking a science fiction magazine, as it ran stories from a number of genres. Even though Harris published only a handful of stories, almost all of them have been reprinted over the years. Of these, "The Miracle of the Lily" has been reprinted the most and praised by many critics, with
Richard Lupoff Richard Allen Lupoff (February 21, 1935 – October 22, 2020) was an American science-fiction and mystery author, who also wrote humor, satire, nonfiction and reviews. In addition to his two dozen novels and more than 40 short stories, he a ...
saying the story would have "won the
Hugo Award The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier a ...
for best short story, if the award had existed then." Lupoff also wrote that " ile today's reader may find her prose creaky and old-fashioned, the stories positively teem with still-fresh and provocative ideas. "The Fate of the Poseidonia" has also been reprinted a number of times and is credited as an early example of a science fiction story with a heroic female lead character. Other of Harris's stories are also noted for featuring strong female characters, such as Sylvia, the airplane pilot and mechanic in "The Ape Cycle" (1930). Harris also wrote one story utilizing a female point of view (in 1928's "The Fifth Dimension"). Because Harris was the first American woman published in science fiction magazines under her own name, and because of her embrace of female characters and themes, she has been recognized in recent years as a pioneer of women's and
feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
science fiction. Her work was featured at the Pasadena History Museum in 2018, as part of an exhibit titled "Dreaming the Universe: The Intersection of Science, Fiction, & Southern California."


Bibliography


Novels

* '' Persephone of Eleusis: A Romance of Ancient Greece'' (1923)


Collections

* ''Away from the Here and Now: Stories in Pseudo-Science'' (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1947) *''The Artificial Man and Other Stories'' (Belt Publishing, February 2019)


Short stories

(Stories included in ''Away from the Here and Now''). * " A Runaway World" (''Weird Tales'', July 1926) * "
The Fate of the Poseidonia ''The'' () is a grammatical Article (grammar), article in English language, English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite ...
" (''Amazing Stories'', June 1927) * " A Certain Soldier" (''Weird Tales'', November 1927) * "
The Fifth Dimension The 5th Dimension is an American popular music vocal group, whose repertoire includes pop, R&B, soul, jazz, light opera, and Broadway. Formed as the Versatiles in late 1965, the group changed its name to "the 5th Dimension" by 1966. Betwee ...
" (''Amazing Stories'', December 1928) * " The Menace From Mars" (''Amazing Stories'', October 1928) * " The Miracle of the Lily" (''Amazing Stories'', April 1928) * " The Artificial Man" (''Science Wonder Quarterly'', Fall 1929) * " A Baby on Neptune" with
Miles J. Breuer Miles John Breuer (January 3, 1889 – October 14, 1945) was an American physician and science fiction writer of Czech origin. Although he had published elsewhere since the early 20th century, he is considered the part of the first generation of ...
, M.D. (''Amazing Stories'', December 1929) * " The Diabolical Drug" (''Amazing Stories'', May 1929) * " The Evolutionary Monstrosity" (''Amazing Stories Quarterly'', Winter 1929) * " The Ape Cycle" (''Science Wonder Quarterly'', Spring 1930) (Included in ''The Artificial Man and Other Stories''). * "The Vibrometer" (''Science Fiction #5'', 1933, edited by
Jerry Siegel Jerome Siegel ( ; October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996)Roger Stern. ''Superman: Sunday Classics: 1939–1943'' DC Comics/Kitchen Sink Press, Inc./ Sterling Publishing; 2006 was an American comic book writer. He is the co-creator of Superman, in ...
)


Essays

*
Letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
(''Amazing Stories'', May 1929): A Very Interesting Letter from One of Our Authors *
Letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
(''
Air Wonder Stories ''Wonder Stories'' was an early American science fiction magazine which was published under several titles from 1929 to 1955. It was founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1929 after he had lost control of his first science fiction magazine, ''Amazing Sto ...
'', September 1929) nly as by Clare W. Harris On why ''Air Wonder Stories'' may not make a good venue for her fiction *
Letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
(Weird Tales, March 1930): Expression of appreciation for the style of
Henry de Vere Stacpoole Henry de Vere Stacpoole (9 April 1863 – 12 April 1951) was an Irish author. His best-known work is the 1908 romance novel '' The Blue Lagoon'', which has been adapted into multiple films. He published using his own name and sometimes the pseud ...
's
The Blue Lagoon (novel) ''The Blue Lagoon'' is a romance novel written by Henry De Vere Stacpoole and was first published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1908. It is the first novel of the ''Blue Lagoon'' trilogy, which also includes ''The Garden of God'' (1923) and ''The Gates ...
*
Letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
(''Wonder Stories'', August 1931): Possible Science Fiction Plots


See also

*
Women in science fiction 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 ...
*
Feminist science fiction Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on theories that include feminist themes including but not limited to gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist ...
*
Women science fiction authors 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 ...


References


Further reading

* Yaszek, Lisa, et al.
Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction
', Wesleyan University Press, 2016, pp. 8–9. ''Google Books''.


External links

* * * *
''Amazing Stories'' archive
at
The Online Books Page The Online Books Page is an index of e-text books available on the Internet. It is edited by John Mark Ockerbloom and is hosted by the library of the University of Pennsylvania. The Online Books Page lists over 2 million books and has several feat ...
* Bibliography a
The FictionMags Index
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Clare Winger 1891 births 1968 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American women writers American science fiction writers American women novelists American women short story writers Smith College alumni Women science fiction and fantasy writers