Science Fiction

Abstract

No genre has been more comprehensively appropriated and innovated by feminist theory than science fiction, despite its early focus on technology and intergalactic gun-fights. Few aspects of feminist thinking have not been echoed, and often predated, by feminist science fiction writers. The speculative, ‘thought experiment’ nature of the genre has fuelled a comprehensive breadth of innovation. Feminist science fiction has elaborated on all the major feminist debates from the 1970s to the 1990s: from the explorations of phallocentric language, to strong action-women agency; from ideal feminine communities, to the phallocentric dystopias; from explorations of the alien ‘other’, to questions of identity with the cyborg. Feminist thinkers such as Shulamith Firestone and Donna Haraway have had a direct influence on certain trends, such as the 1970s utopias and the 1980s cyborg narratives, but the speculative explorations also predate the theory. Feminist science fiction does not have a linear development so much as a simultaneous diversity of exploration. Joanna Russ’ 1975 fragmented selves and cyborg identity (The Female Man) challenges the idea that it is a development of postmodernism and Haraway, just as Butler’s Earthseed utopias of the 1990s rethink the 1970s utopias of Piercy and Charnas.KeywordsScience FictionFairy TaleFeminist CriticBinary OppositionWoman WriterThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.