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Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction focused on theories that include feminist themes including but not limited to gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, and reproduction. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.
Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions are recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender.
Joanna Russ was an American writer, academic and radical feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire, and the story "When It Changed".
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin herself said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".
Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, better known by her pen names Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, is an American writer. She has written five series set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which started in 1995 with the publication of Assassin's Apprentice and ended with Assassin's Fate in 2017. Her books have sold over a million copies. In 2021, she won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, presented for outstanding service to the fantasy field.
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, and H. P. Lovecraft. Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the labels of New Weird and Slipstream, which continues into the 21st century.
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" is a science fiction novella by American writer James Tiptree, Jr., a pen name used by American writer Alice Sheldon. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1974.
LGBT themes in speculative fiction include lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) themes in science fiction, fantasy, horror fiction and related genres. Such elements may include an LGBT character as the protagonist or a major character, or explorations of sexuality or gender that deviate from the heteronormative.
Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults.
Monique Wittig was a French author, philosopher and feminist theorist who wrote about overcoming socially enforced gender roles and who coined the phrase "heterosexual contract". She published her first novel, L'Opoponax, in 1964. Her second novel, Les Guérillères (1969), was a landmark in lesbian feminism.
The Pioneer Award is given by the Science Fiction Research Association to the writer or writers of the best critical essay-length work of the year.
Ali Smith CBE FRSL is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".
Science Fiction Studies (SFS) is an academic journal founded in 1973 by R. D. Mullen. The journal is published three times per year at DePauw University. As the name implies, the journal publishes articles and book reviews on science fiction, but also occasionally on fantasy and horror when the topic also covers some aspect of science fiction as well. Known as one of the major academic publications of its type, Science Fiction Studies is considered the most "theoretical" of the academic journals that publish on science fiction.
Katharine Burdekin was a British novelist who wrote speculative fiction concerned with social and spiritual matters. She was the younger sister of Rowena Cade, creator of the Minack Theatre in Cornwall. Several of her novels could be categorised as feminist utopian/dystopian fiction. She also wrote under the name Kay Burdekin and under the pseudonym Murray Constantine. Daphne Patai unraveled "Murray Constantine's" true identity while doing research on utopian and dystopian fiction in the mid-1980s.
The Two of Them is a feminist science fiction novel by Joanna Russ. It was first published in 1978 in the United States by Berkley Books and in Great Britain by The Women's Press in 1986. It was last reissued in 2005 by the Wesleyan University Press with a foreword by Sarah LeFanu.
Lisa Gracia Tuttle is an American-born science fiction, fantasy, and horror author. She has published more than a dozen novels, seven short story collections, and several non-fiction titles, including a reference book on feminism, Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986). She has also edited several anthologies and reviewed books for various publications. She has been living in the United Kingdom since 1981.
Lesbian literature is a subgenre of literature addressing lesbian themes. It includes poetry, plays, fiction addressing lesbian characters, and non-fiction about lesbian-interest topics.
Science fiction studies is the common name for the academic discipline that studies and researches the history, culture, and works of science fiction and, more broadly, speculative fiction.
The role of women in speculative fiction has changed a great deal since the early to mid-20th century. There are several aspects to women's roles, including their participation as authors of speculative fiction and their role in science fiction fandom. Regarding authorship, in 1948, 10–15% of science fiction writers were female. Women's role in speculative fiction has grown since then, and in 1999, women comprised 36% of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's professional members. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley has been called the first science fiction novel, although women wrote utopian novels even before that, with Margaret Cavendish publishing the first in the seventeenth century. Early published fantasy was written by and for any gender. However, speculative fiction, with science fiction in particular, has traditionally been viewed as a male-oriented genre.
We Who Are About To... is a feminist science fiction novel by Joanna Russ. It first appeared in magazine form in the January 1976 and February 1976 issues of Galaxy Science Fiction and was first published in book form by Dell Publishing in July 1977.
"The Matter of Seggri" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. It was first published in 1994 in the third issue of Crank!, a science fiction – fantasy anthology, and has since been printed in number of other publications. In 2002, it was published in Le Guin's collection of short stories The Birthday of the World: and Other Stories. "The Matter of Seggri" won the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 1994 for exploring "gender-bending" and has been nominated for other honors including the Nebula Award.
References
- 1 2 3 Clute, John (13 April 2020). "LeFanu, Sarah". In Nicholls, Peter; Clute, John; Sleight, Graham (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Gollancz. Retrieved 3 January 2021.
- 1 2 Hollinger, Veronica (July 1989). "Review: Feminist Science Fiction: Construction and Deconstruction". Science Fiction Studies. 16 (2): 223–227.
- ↑ Cranny-Francis, Anne (1990). "Reviewed Work(s): Feminism and Science Fiction by Sarah Lefanu". Utopian Studies. 1 (1): 143–146.
- ↑ Lee, Hermione (14 June 2003). "'Chattery, chittery... lean as a rake'". The Guardian . Retrieved 9 January 2021.
- ↑ Montefiore, Jan. "Oh, what an unlovely war!". The Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 9 January 2021.
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