Women, Science and Fiction Revisited is an analysis of selected science fiction novels and short stories written by women over the past hundred years from the point of view of their engagement with how science writes the world. Beginning with Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1918) and ending with N K Jemisin's The City We Became (2020), Debra Benita Shaw explores the re-imagination of gender and race that characterises women's literary crafting of new worlds. Along the way, she introduces new readings of classics like Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, examining the original novels in the context of their adaptation to new media formats in the twenty-first century. What this reveals is a consistent preoccupation with how scientific ideas can be employed to challenge existing social structures and argue for change.
Author(s): Debra Benita Shaw
Series: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine
Edition: 2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 182
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: The Nearly Silent Listener
References
Chapter 2: Herland: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Literature of the Beehive
Male Efflorescence
The Literature of the Beehive
Newbolt Man Meets His Match
Romance and the Scientific Imagination
Addendum
References
Chapter 3: Swastika Night: Katharine Burdekin and the Psychology of Scapegoating
Thinking About Women
Woman Envy and the Fascist Identity
Wounded Masculinity
To Die for Him
Addendum
References
Chapter 4: ‘No Woman Born’: C. L. Moore’s Dancing Cyborg
Cybernetics and the Automatic Housewife
Monsters and Cyborgs in the Wor(l)ds of the Father
Cyborg Choreography
References
Chapter 5: The Left Hand of Darkness: Ursula Le Guin and the Haploid Heart
Anthropologies of Gender
Myths of Difference
Establishing the Human Norm
The Place Inside the Blizzard
References
Chapter 6: The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood and the Politics of Choice
The Making of the Unwoman
Under His Eye
Men Explain Things
Adaptation and Popular Feminism
References
Chapter 7: The Power: Naomi Alderman and Archaeologies of Gender
Archaeology and Fictions of Gender
Overturning the World
The Power and the Prophet
What There Is
References
Chapter 8: The City We Became: N. K. Jemisin and Posthuman Urbanism
Urban Fantastic
The Call of Lovecraft
Degenerate Art
Parasitic Urbanism
References
Index
