Indifference is futile

 

The Conquest of Gola – Leslie F. Stone

It will not be surprising to hear, but this story put me in mind of a episode of Star Trek. This STNG episode also involved a female dominated planet in which the men only served as “consorts”. I will do some fan fiction in reference to that episode on a separate blog post for anyone who might be interested!

The Detaxal are men of a foreign planet that want to assimilate their ways into the female dominated planet Gola. The author does not pull any punches in this story and flat out describes the Detaxal men as an ugly, barbaric, and narcissistic race. Even the word Detaxal has a sound of disgust to it!

“The greater part of their race fares forth to conquer, to lay waste, to struggle and fight as the animals do over a morsel of worthless territory”

The men that already exist on Gola are subservient and childlike while the woman are ethereal and efficient. Their only flaw being their hubris and indifference towards the threat of man, referring to it as “childish prattle”.

The author choosing to have the women overcome their male invaders with the power of their minds was an interesting way to end it. It made me wonder if the author chose to do this as a rebuttal to the difficulty women SF writers face in a male dominated genre. Perhaps it was an expression of the frustration she may have felt at the time; her obviously being a very capable SF writer.

” And out men- well, they are still the same ineffectual weaklings, my daughters.”