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My Lady Greensleeves
This guard smelled trouble and it could be counted on to come-for a nose for trouble was one of the many talents bred here! A classic novella about the future of law enforcement by Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Frederik Pohl
- GenresScience Fiction
Unknown Binding
First published February 1, 1957
About the author
Frederik Pohl
1,233 books1,100 followersFrederik George Pohl, Jr. was an American science fiction writer, editor and fan, with a career spanning over seventy years. From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy magazine and its sister magazine IF winning the Hugo for IF three years in a row. His writing also won him three Hugos and multiple Nebula Awards. He became a Nebula Grand Master in 1993.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 10, 2022
“‘Everybody is somebody else‘s outgroup […]’”
And all the world’s a clink.
Frederic Pohl’s short story My Lady Greensleeves is set in a prison which is faced with a prisoners’ revolt but this is just the vehicle of the story. Quite obviously, Pohl’s real intention is to make people think about racial segregation – the story was first published in 1957 – but the society Pohl describes here is not segregated according to ethnicity. Instead, the author envisions a world that adheres to the principal that only professional specialization can guarantee progress and prosperity, and that is why people’s status depends on their vocational group. Therefore, inside the prison – but also outside – people belong to groups with names like “greasers”(e.g. mechanics), “wipes” (e.g. workers), “figs” or “figgers” (mainly clerks) or “pros” (the academic classes) – interestingly, these names are redolent of or sometimes even identical with racial slurs some of which can still be heard today –, and everyday life is based on a strict segregation of these groups.
The analogies used by Pohl are sometimes rather clumsy, but at other times really clever. For instance, the fact that we never really leave the prison walls could make us think of ourselves as prisoners of our own society’s discourses. The author keeps his story rather ambiguous, and although he seems to condemn this system of social inequality, its proponents get the final word in this story. One of the most ironic aspects in this tale is the eponymous hero, a daughter coming from what most people would be inclined to call “a good family”, who has turned social activist and finds herself imprisoned because of her protest, but who is suddenly appalled when she finds that the representatives of the classes she champions for do not feel themselves indebted to her nobility. She does not even understand the slang that is typically used by her protégés, which makes her even more of an object of their distrust, incomprehension and derision.
All in all, however, the story addresses so many aspects of the problem it deals with that you might sometimes feel awkward about it. Nevertheless, it is this ambiguity that made me stop once in a while to indulge in some thoughts of my own.
And all the world’s a clink.
Frederic Pohl’s short story My Lady Greensleeves is set in a prison which is faced with a prisoners’ revolt but this is just the vehicle of the story. Quite obviously, Pohl’s real intention is to make people think about racial segregation – the story was first published in 1957 – but the society Pohl describes here is not segregated according to ethnicity. Instead, the author envisions a world that adheres to the principal that only professional specialization can guarantee progress and prosperity, and that is why people’s status depends on their vocational group. Therefore, inside the prison – but also outside – people belong to groups with names like “greasers”(e.g. mechanics), “wipes” (e.g. workers), “figs” or “figgers” (mainly clerks) or “pros” (the academic classes) – interestingly, these names are redolent of or sometimes even identical with racial slurs some of which can still be heard today –, and everyday life is based on a strict segregation of these groups.
The analogies used by Pohl are sometimes rather clumsy, but at other times really clever. For instance, the fact that we never really leave the prison walls could make us think of ourselves as prisoners of our own society’s discourses. The author keeps his story rather ambiguous, and although he seems to condemn this system of social inequality, its proponents get the final word in this story. One of the most ironic aspects in this tale is the eponymous hero, a daughter coming from what most people would be inclined to call “a good family”, who has turned social activist and finds herself imprisoned because of her protest, but who is suddenly appalled when she finds that the representatives of the classes she champions for do not feel themselves indebted to her nobility. She does not even understand the slang that is typically used by her protégés, which makes her even more of an object of their distrust, incomprehension and derision.
All in all, however, the story addresses so many aspects of the problem it deals with that you might sometimes feel awkward about it. Nevertheless, it is this ambiguity that made me stop once in a while to indulge in some thoughts of my own.
May 8, 2018
'Specialization is the goal of civilization.'
Every dystopia needs an angle. In this one the world's population are segregated by job classification, with racism by role rather than by race. A prison riot threatens to upset the established order.
Jews don't exist in this world, black or white makes no difference, 'greasers' are not Mexicans but mechanics. To even ask out a woman from another classification is considered a rape.
Pohl was a great sci-fi writer who evolved from the pulpy days of the 1930s-40s to the more literary advancements of the 1970s. I've read his Nebula Award winning novel Man Plus and really liked it.
This short story from a 1957 edition of Galaxy magazine (which he would go on to edit during its glory years) is heavy-handed with clunky dialogue and a questionable premise. It was never clear to me why a few prisoners escaping would be considered such a threat to the fabric of this society.
Not so much Brave New World as Brave New Job.
Every dystopia needs an angle. In this one the world's population are segregated by job classification, with racism by role rather than by race. A prison riot threatens to upset the established order.
Jews don't exist in this world, black or white makes no difference, 'greasers' are not Mexicans but mechanics. To even ask out a woman from another classification is considered a rape.
Pohl was a great sci-fi writer who evolved from the pulpy days of the 1930s-40s to the more literary advancements of the 1970s. I've read his Nebula Award winning novel Man Plus and really liked it.
This short story from a 1957 edition of Galaxy magazine (which he would go on to edit during its glory years) is heavy-handed with clunky dialogue and a questionable premise. It was never clear to me why a few prisoners escaping would be considered such a threat to the fabric of this society.
Not so much Brave New World as Brave New Job.
February 3, 2020
This story is barely science fiction except that it deals with an imaginary society where people have categories and they are held in those categories. The story is obviously about race relations in the 1950’s. Other than that, the story reminded me of some black and white movie from the1930’s concerning a riot in the “big house.”
May 6, 2025
A very interesting book about segregation, classism, and the future of the police force. Quite thought provoking. Seeing the different viewpoints of those within the Jug and those without. A short story that gives just enough detail about the world it's set in without wasting pages going too deep in it. This is just a slice of these lives, but it's a very interesting slice.
December 31, 2023
A late Golden Age flop. I know that's sacrilege when talking Pohl, and thirty pages in I had no idea where the story was going or what it was about. Wonderfully, it never got better.
Someday I might pick it up again. Someday. Maybe.
Nah...probably not.
Someday I might pick it up again. Someday. Maybe.
Nah...probably not.
December 10, 2020
Fairly slight allegorical story.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews