By strange coincidence (see earlier post) I came across this article from the 1997 edition of the first ever issue of The Heinlein Journal. Sf critic Farah Mendlesohn places some comments about Heinlein’s “feminism” in context, and provides insight into the decline of strong female roles in sf during the 1940s and 1950s. One can argue that this falls into a greater social contraction in media with the rise of movie Production Codes, strict editorial guidelines, and crackdown on comic books. Heinlein appears to emerge as the only writer of that era to grant his female characters greater roles, but no doubt there are others out there, too.