Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. 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. Preview.
Definition
Feminist science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction (SF for short) that focuses on theories that include feminist themes, for example gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics and reproduction. Feminist science fiction spans a wider range than science fiction itself, covering fantasy, utopia and dystopia, horror (such as Anne Rice's vampire stories). Marleen S. Barr says that what is described as feminist 'SF' is not really 'SF' at all, because it is not concerned with 'hard science' but with women's drive for power. Hard science fiction is of course a subset of science fiction. She thought we needed to use a term like feminist fabulation.
Fantasy literature is de facto a privileged genre for tackling feminist themes. Because it allows to reflect on the future, on the possibilities of humanity and science, this literature allows all progressive and innovative ideas to coexist. So, to qualify as feminist science fiction, the stories must carry a political message, that of challenging the male/female paradigm in society. With this in mind, in the early 1990s the American feminist fanzine Aurora SF published a list of ten levels of feminism to measure the political content of a text. This graduation of the political message ranges from simple questioning of patriarchal society, to egalitarian discourse between the sexes, to systematic criticism of men, to the establishment of feminist and lesbian utopia.
In her book In the chinks of the world machine: feminism and science fiction, Scottish author Sarah LeFanu distinguishes between feminist SF and women's SF insofar as the latter, while having a certain influence on the development of science fiction in general by rejecting sexism and featuring female heroes, does not make feminist demands.
Feminist science fiction (SF) distinguishes between female SF authors and feminist SF authors. Both female and feminist SF authors are historically significant to the feminist SF subgenre, as female writers have increased women's visibility and perspectives in SF literary traditions, while the feminist writers have foregrounded political themes and tropes in their works. Because distinctions between female and feminist can be blurry, whether a work is considered feminist can be debatable, but there are generally agreed-upon canonical texts, which help define the subgenre.
History
Early modern times As early as the English Restoration, female authors were using themes of SF and imagined futures to explore women's issues, roles, and place in society. This can be seen as early as 1666 in Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World, in which she describes a utopian kingdom ruled by an empress. This foundational work has garnered attention from some feminist critics, such as Dale Spender, who considered this a forerunner of the science fiction genre, more generally. Another early female writer of science fiction was Mary Shelley. Her novel Frankenstein (1818) dealt with the asexual creation of new life, and has been considered by some a reimagining of the Adam and Eve story.Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein should be considered the first true science fiction story, because unlike in previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, the central character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results. See The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy by Brian Aldiss (1995), page 78.
Her book is a critique of Darwinist ideas and also of the use of science without ethical reflection, as well as of the seventeenth-century view that science was endowed with a certain virility aimed at penetrating the secrets of nature, presented as other, feminine and objectified.Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein should be considered the first true science fiction story, because unlike in previous stories with fantastical éléments resembling those of later science fiction, the central character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results. See The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy by Brian Aldiss (1995), page 78. The book paved the way for future explorations of the cyborg theme by feminist science fiction and had a lasting influence.
In France, feminist writer Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert's The Voyages of Lord Seaton to the Seven Planets, published in 1758, is considered one of the first science fiction novels. Refusing to overlook the contribution made by women to science and culture for the sole benefit of men, Marie-Anne Robert wrote an initiatory tale designed to develop women's critical faculties, and ultimately work towards their emancipation.
First-wave feminism (suffrage)
Women writers involved in the utopian literature movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could be considered the first feminist SF authors. Their texts, emerging during the first-wave feminist movement, often addressed issues of sexism through imagining different worlds that challenged gender expectations. In 1881, Mizora: A Prophecy described a women-only world with technological innovations such as parthenogenesis, videophones, and artificial meat.Jean Pfaelzer, The Utopian Novel in America 1886–1896: The Politics of Form, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984; pp. 146-50.
It was closely followed by other feminist utopian works, such as Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett's New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889). In 1892, poet and abolitionist Frances Harper published Iola Leroy, one of the first novels by an African American woman. Set during the antebellum South, it follows the life of a mixed race woman with mostly white ancestry and records the hopes of many African Americans for social equality—of race and gender—during Reconstruction. Unveiling a Parallel (1893) features a male protagonist who takes an "aeroplane" to Mars, visiting two different "Marsian" societies; in both, there is equality between men and women. In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality "has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous."Suzanne Romaine, Communicating Gender, London, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates/Taylor & Francis, 1998; pp. 331-2. Two American Populists, A.O. Grigsby and Mary P. Lowe, published NEQUA or The Problem of the Ages (1900), which explores issues of gender norms and posited structural inequality. This recently rediscovered novel displays familiar feminist SF conventions: a heroine narrator who masquerades as a man, the exploration of sexist mores, and the description of a future hollow earth society (like Mizora) where women are equal.
Sultana's Dream (1905), by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, a Bengali writer and Muslim feminist, engages with the limited role of women in colonial India. Through depicting a gender-reversed purdah in an alternate technologically futuristic world, Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain's book has been described as illustrating the potential for cultural insights through role reversals early on in the subgenre's formation.
In the utopian novel Beatrice the Sixteenth (1909), transgender writer Irene Clyde creates a world where gender is no longer recognized and the story itself is told without the use of gendered nouns. Along these same lines, Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores and critiques the expectations of women and men by creating a single-sex world in Herland (1915), possibly the most well-known of the early feminist SF and utopian novels.
In 1909, the French author Renée Marie Gouraud d'Ablancourt published Vega la magicienne, depicting L'Oiselle, a winged superheroine and the first Francophone superhero series.
Rhoda Broughton is also one of a number of 19th-century women writing in the successful science fiction genre.
Rosa Rosà (Edith von Haynau) wrote the first Italian feminist science fiction with Una donna con tre anime in 1918.
Between the wars During the 1920s and 1930s, many popular pulp science fiction magazines exaggerated views of masculinity and featured portrayals of women that were perceived as sexist.Lisa Tuttle in Clute and Nicholls 1995, p. 1344. These views would be subtly satirized by Stella Gibbons in Cold Comfort Farm (1932) and much later by Margaret Atwood in The Blind Assassin (2000). As early as 1920, however, women writers of this time, such as Clare Winger Harris ("The Runaway World," 1926) and Gertrude Barrows Bennett (Claimed, 1920), published science fiction stories written from female perspectives and occasionally dealt with gender and sexuality-based topics.
John Wyndham, writing under his early pen-name of John Beynon Harris, was a rare pulp writer to include female leads in stories such as "The Venus Adventure" (Wonder Stories, 1932), in which a mixed crew travel to Venus. The story opens in a future in which women are no longer enslaved by pregnancy and childbirth thanks to artificial incubators, which are opposed by a religious minority. Women have used this freedom to enter professions including chemistry. Wyndham's outlook was so rare that in a serialisation of his novel Stowaway to Mars, one magazine editor "corrected" the name of the central character Joan to John. Wyndham then had to write them a new final instalment to replace the conclusion in which Joan fell in love and became pregnant.
The Fate of the Poseidonia, 1927
The first science fiction story published in a magazine by a woman in America was The Fate of the Poseidonia, written by Clare Winger Harris in 1927. The story was published by Hugo Gernsback in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories. The story was published as part of a science fiction competition, in which 300 short stories were proposed. Hugo Gernsback put out a call to his magazine's readership for this competition, inviting them to send in texts describing the cover of Amazing Stories in December 1926. The cover featured an ocean liner floating in space. Using the term 'fans' to describe his male and female readers, blurring the boundary between readership and writing, he allowed women to take part for the first time. The 1920s saw the establishment of what was later to become 'fandom'.
Post World War II The Post-WWII and Cold War eras were a pivotal and often overlooked period in feminist SF history. During this time, female authors utilized the SF genre to assess critically the rapidly changing social, cultural, and technological landscape. Women SF authors during the post-WWII and Cold War time periods directly engage in the exploration of the impacts of science and technology on women and their families, which was a focal point in the public consciousness during the 1950s and 1960s. These female SF authors, often published in SF magazines such as The Avalonian, Astounding, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Galaxy, which were open to new stories and authors that pushed the boundaries of form and content.