Thy Name Is Woman

In 1950s science fiction, few stories dared to flip the script so completely. Eddie Bowren is the first human male to reach Mars, enduring a agonizing physical transformation to survive the journey. But nothing prepares him for what he finds: a thriving Martian civilization built by women who fled Earth and its patriarchal brutality. Here, women have become the architects of power, and some have literally transformed themselves into men to populate this new world. As Bowren navigates this disorienting landscape of shifted identities and reversed hierarchies, he confronts not just the external oddity of a world without traditional masculinity, but the unsettling question of what masculinity even means when it has been the source of everything wrong. Walton's pulp-era gender inversion story crackles with genuine provocation: what happens when the dominated become the dominators? It is a period piece, certainly, with the awkwardness of mid-century gender politics, but its central premise still resonates. For readers curious about the roots of gender-exploratory science fiction, this is a fascinating artifact.