Birth and Rebirth in Space

Vonarburg, Elisabeth. "Birth and Rebirth in Space." Foundation #51 (Spring 1991): 5-29.

Spaceship as phallus and womb, and the motif of birth in space: esp. male use of technology in the quest for rebirth without women. Men may be mere cogs in machines, but men still belong "to that machine, vicariously partaking in its power"; women, however, don't belong to the machine, so space travel and birth in space are used by women authors differently from men. Misses 2001 but EV handles D. Sernine's "The Dreaming Metal," A. Coppel's "Mother," S. Verreault's "Eon," F. Pelletier's "The Migrant," R. Abernathy's "Axolotl"—all listed under Fiction—plus James Triptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), "A Momentary Taste of Being" and Ursula K. Le Guin's "Nine Lives," with brief discussion of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover Landfall and Joanna Russ's We Who Are About To.