Writer Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995) was often described as a writer ahead of her time, as well as one whose work was, in Ramsey Campbell’s words “startlingly original.” Her work is often characterized as ‘weird fiction,’ as that term has evolved, with her characters finding the weird and disturbing in the relatively ordinary. During the course of her career,  she authored eight published novels and over one hundred published short stories, several of which were adapted for television.

Of that body of work, “Roberta” (Galaxy, October 1962) was the last of her published short stories. After this, she turned her full attention to writing novels. This story is not included in any of the collections of her work and can only be read in copies of the original magazine. “Roberta” is a science fiction story set in a future where interstellar travel exists via starliner (details unspecified). There is a man from another planet, seemingly humanoid, as well as two other male human characters in a setting that suggests Earth in the late 1950s. Gender reassignment/alignment surgery for transsexual people is possible and effective, but illegal, for reasons that are also not explained within the scope of this tale. 

The titular Roberta is a trans woman who has had this illegal operation in order to transition. My research suggests that this story is one of the earliest depictions of male-to-female medical transition in science fiction, possibly the earliest. Ursula Le Guin’s ground-breaking Left Hand of Darkness (1969), which includes a main character who transitions from male characteristics to female ones as part of an alien reproductive cycle, is still seven years away.

For historical context, Christine Jorgensen, probably the best known trans woman of her time in the U.S., returned from Europe after gender reassignment surgery in Denmark and was front page news in December of 1952, a decade before “Roberta” appeared in Galaxy and seventeen years before the Stonewall Riots. Trans people had no legal standing or protections in the United States or elsewhere, and gender reassignment/reaffirming surgery was rare and hard to access, perforce limiting it to a tiny minority. But enough of that minority, like Jorgensen in the U.S., would have been visible to St. Clair so that she would, based on this story, have been aware that medical transition was possible and to have read something of the mechanics involved.

As I read “Roberta,” it’s not entirely clear to me how St. Clair wanted her readers to interpret it. Roberta has a very fraught relationship with Robert, her pre-transition self, coming to view him as her nemesis over the course of the story. But he also refers to them as “married” at one point and sometimes behaves more as a confidant than a foe. The story’s conflicts, however, hinge on her efforts to get rid of him, thus fulfilling her dream of being “Roberta,” free of a judgmental and undermining male alter ego.

The scene is set entirely in an apartment that Roberta thinks of as hers; she claims to have no memory of her life before the operation, though she thinks she “used to be happier.” There are two other characters that we get to meet (the receptionist/door person appears only on screen). Rodvorello Diag is the Vegan who financed Roberta’s operation, and Clement Thomas is the human who performed the operation. Diag visits Roberta’s apartment first and gives her a starliner ticket for a (nonoptional) trip to the Vegan homeworld. He announces that he has come to add her to his collection of “imitation things,” that being the deal that Robert reached with him in order to get his financial assistance.

Roberta murders Diag with a sliver gun and stuffs his body in a trunk in her room. She then treats her right hand (the one firing the gun) as if it is separate from the rest of her and can be punished by slapping it. Clement Thomas arrives during this scene and attempts to blackmail her about her operation. Roberta shoots him as well and adds him to the trunk. Robert then appears in the cloud, as she pictures him, near the ceiling, to admonish her.

Since Roberta has no memory of anything before the operation, she doesn’t recognize Diag or Thomas. Instead, she conflates them into aspects of Robert, while recognizing that it is Robert who she really wants to destroy. By the end of the story, she has committed two murders, attempted suicide, and is well on her way to planning more murders because each death makes Robert “go away” for a time. She displays a childlike understanding of the potential consequences for these actions, ignoring Robert’s dire warnings about needing to flee from the apartment and the two bodies in the trunk. It’s also not completely clear that Robert didn’t anticipate something like this happening—he puts an illegal sliver gun in her bag for her to find. Is it intended for self-defense? To prevent herself from being whisked off to Vega? Either or both seem possible.

How is the reader meant to feel about Roberta as a character after all this? It’s hard to say. On the one hand, Diag and Thomas are insulting, hurtful, and aggressive toward her, calling into question whether or not she can ever be a “real” woman from their perspective. Robert is more subtle about it, but he leans down from his perch in the clouds to remind her that her voice and movements are “too aggressive” and that it “spoils the illusion.” He also makes the comment that her hormone injection helps her to be “what she is trying to be,” along with similar comments that undermine her self-confidence. 

So this could be read as justification for Roberta’s actions if you are inclined to read the story that way. Roberta accepts Diag and Thomas as guests in her apartment, where she wants to remain, untroubled and dancing around in her pretty pink dress. And both he and Thomas betray that hospitality. Robert can certainly be seen as betraying her as well, in everything from not warning her about what to expect after the operation to undermining her afterwards. That is, if you accept Roberta’s belief that Robert is an entity separate from her.

One thing that stood out sharply to me, reading this as an out queer cis (not trans) woman in 2026, is Roberta’s total and complete isolation. She does not seem to have a family or a job or friends of any kind, just the receptionist on the intercom when visitors arrive and three male characters who do not have her best interests at heart. The illegality of her status only adds to that profound loneliness: she cannot trust the men who helped her to become herself, nor can she trust her own perceptions of the small world that she inhabits.

But she is still willing to kill to protect herself because she perceives the threats against her as leading to her erasure, in one form or the other. There is no sense of how Robert thought life would go for Roberta after transitioning. Perhaps, living in a “collection” on Vega seemed like a reasonable alternative to living on an Earth where Roberta would be treated like a freak and under constant threat of imprisonment in the bargain.

It’s tempting to project contemporary attitudes back in time and assume that St. Clair, a cis woman who was presumably heterosexual based on her biography, had negative attitudes toward trans women. Her biographical details include a marriage to writer Eric St. Clair that was deliberately childless (not an easy thing to achieve given both the mores of the time and the absence of reliable birth control), embracing Wicca and, occasionally, nudism, as well as a number of unusual jobs. It is safe to say that she was unconventional and might have sympathized with Roberta to some degree as another unconventional woman under threat from forces that want her to be something else.

And yet, there is a comment about Roberta’s Adam’s apple displaying when she looks up, as well as the last line of this  story: ‘“I’ll kill you yet,” Roberta said, between his teeth.’ Up to this point, St. Clair always uses “she” to refer to Roberta so why change here? In fact, Roberta gets no positive reinforcement for her transition throughout this story, relying on her own belief that she is now as she wants herself to be. But Roberta is also clearly unstable and an unreliable narrator. 

My takeaway from all of this is that St. Clair most likely thought that a trans woman could never be a “real” woman, a regrettably common opinion. “Roberta” reads as a story about a mind at war with itself, in which Roberta is unstable and dangerous because she has convinced herself to act as if she has achieved something that is impossible. The weird elements are entirely in Roberta’s head, shaped by her derangement rather than by external or supernatural forces.

That said, “Roberta” is a fascinating historical artifact: a first in a genre with many firsts. I am somewhat surprised to have not seen it cited in sources on the history of queer sf and f, such as Garber and Paleo’s Uranian Worlds. I suspect that is due to the story not being included in the various collections of St. Clair work and consequently not as visible. I think it is certainly worth including going forward as a heretofore unrecognized first in the field.

“Roberta” by Margaret St. Clair may be read for free at the Internet Archive.

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Catherine started writing professionally in 1996 while in law school. She sold the first story she ever wrote and quit law school a week later; she has not looked back since. In addition to writing and editing, Catherine is also the publisher at Queen of Swords Press. Most recently, she is the winner of a 2025 Alice B. Award and a finalist for the 2024 Innovative Voices Award from the Independent Book Publisher’s Association. To find out more about Catherine, please visit her blog, like her Facebook Author Page or follow her on Mastodon.

Copyright 2026 Catherine Lundoff.