The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction PDF
Preview The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction
“Science fiction has been questioning gender norms since before there was science fiction (think Margaret Cavendish, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Perkins Gilman). This lively and comprehensive new volume, edited by leading scholars in the field, surveys science fiction’s powerful techniques for exploring difference and exposing injustice. The essays demonstrate how far both the genre itself and scholarly responses to it have come since the early days of feminist critique. Contributors look at thought-experiments about queer or nonbinary societies and gender systems derived from non-European cultures as well as at the explosion of science fictional thinking in animation, comics, and other media. As new discoveries about the varieties of human experience and new technologies turn absolutes into mere possibilities, books like this serve as tour guides to a new reality.” —Brian Attebery, author of Decoding Gender in Science Fiction and Fantasy: How It Works “The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction is a comprehensive, ambitious, and thought-provoking volume with invaluable research and resources for students and scholars. Bringing together science fiction writers, established scholars, and new voices, this book establishes important links between gender studies and science fiction studies. As this anthology shows, science fiction offers a unique site to explore gender issues including identity, bodies, social issues, race, animal studies, among many other topics. Readers of the Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction will receive a graduate-level course in the relevance of science fiction for gender, and gender for science fiction. The book’s sophisticated analysis is presented in accessible and engaging prose.” —Robin Roberts, author of A New Species: Gender and Science in Science Fiction and Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons “Fritzsche, Omry, Pearson, and Yaszek bring together an array of established and emerging critical voices in science fiction and gender studies to create this comprehensive companion. A wide array of scholarship ranging from theory to history to media studies addresses canonical authors like Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood alongside discussions of Black, Indian, Mexican, Chinese and Japanese authors and creators. The editors’ inclusion of BIPOC and global voices and topics is a deliberate choice to move beyond a white, Western view of feminism and gender studies in science fiction scholarship. Essential reading for anyone interested in representations of gender and identity in science fiction literature, theory, and media.” —Joy Sanchez-Taylor, author of Diverse Futures: Science Fiction and Authors of Color “This unique collection emerges from what Donna Haraway has referred to as ‘situated knowledge,’ that is, knowledge firmly embedded and contextualized in the particularities of histories, cultures, and social formations. Its chapters demonstrate the inextricably intersectional nature of gender and sexuality as these messy and complex categories are embodied in all their differences in speculative fictions from around the world and through equally wide-ranging scholarly considerations. None of the sections here are identified by geography: no privileged works or sites or voices dominate this wide-ranging conversation. Queerness and diversity are the norms, and with skill and panache the editors have put together a collection that comes very near to the realization of their utopian ambitions.” —Veronica Hollinger, Science Fiction Studies THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO GENDER AND SCIENCE FICTION The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction is the first large-scale reference work of its kind, critically assessing the relations of gender and genre in science fiction (SF) especially—but not exclusively—as explored in speculative art by women and LGBTQ+ artists across the world. This global volume builds upon the traditions of interdisciplinary inquiry by connecting established topics in gender studies and science fiction studies with emergent ideas from researchers in different media. Taken together, they challenge conventional generic boundaries; provide new ways of approaching familiar texts; recover lost artists and introduce new ones; connect the revival of old, hate-based politics with the increasing visibility of imagined futures for all; and show how SF stories about new kinds of gender relations inspire new models of artistic, technoscientific, and political practice. Their chapters are grouped into five conversations—about the history of gender and genre, theoretical frameworks, subjectivities, medias and transmedialities, and transtemporalities—that are central to discussions of gender and SF in the current moment. A range of both emerging and established names in media, literature, and cultural studies engage with a huge diversity of topics including eco-criticism, animal studies, cyborg and posthumanist theory, masculinity, critical race studies, Indigenous futurisms, Black girlhood, and gaming. This is an essential resource for students and scholars studying gender, sexuality, and/or science fiction. Lisa Yaszek is Regents’ Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech, US, and past president of the Science Fiction Research Association; her recent books include Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century (2020) and The Future Is Female! series (2018–present). Sonja Fritzsche is Professor of German Studies and Associate Dean at Michigan State University, US, and focuses on Eastern European science fiction and the amplification of global science fiction studies. Keren Omry is Senior Lecturer of contemporary US fiction at the University of Haifa, Israel, where she researches and teaches on Alternate Histories, Science Fiction, and African-American literature. Wendy Gay Pearson is Chair of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Western Ontario in Canada whose research focuses on queer and trans science fiction; with Veronica Holinger and Joan Gordon, she is co-editor of Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction (2008). THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO GENDER AND SCIENCE FICTION Edited by Lisa Yaszek, Sonja Fritzsche, Keren Omry, and Wendy Gay Pearson Designed cover image: Derek Newman-Stille, “Surreality” (2022) First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Lisa Yaszek, Sonja Fritzsche, Keren Omry, and Wendy Gay Pearson; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Lisa Yaszek, Sonja Fritzsche, Keren Omry, and Wendy Gay Pearson to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-53701-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-53702-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-08293-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003082934 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS List of Figures xiii List of Contributors xiv Acknowledgments xix PART I What: Gender and Genre 1 1 Introduction: A Brief History of Gender, Science Fiction, and the Science Fiction Anthology 3 Lisa Yaszek 2 Author Roundtable on Gender in Science Fiction 11 Ida Yoshinaga PART II How: Theoretical Approaches 21 3 Introduction 23 Lisa Yaszek 4 Feminism, Violence, and the Anthropocene in The Handmaid’s Tale 26 Jonathan Alexander and Sherryl Vint 5 Beyond Survival: Climate Change and Reproduction in The Handmaid’s Tale, Birthstones, and The Fifth Season 33 Anna Bedford vii Contents 6 Collective Close Reading: Queer SF and the Methodology of the Many 41 Beyond Gender Research Collective 7 Queer SF 49 Ritch Calvin 8 Renovating the System: The Matrix Resurrections and Trans Resistance to Neoliberal Integration 57 Terra Gasque 9 Buffalo Gals and Talking Jellyfish: Feminisms and Animal Studies in Science Fiction 65 Joan Gordon 10 Asexual and Genderless Futures 72 Anna Kurowicka 11 Making the End Times Great Again: Postapocalypses, Preppers, and the Politics of Patriarchy on American Television 79 Carlen Lavigne 12 Decoding Masculinity in 21st-Century Science Fiction by Men: Two Case Studies in Reconceptualizing Patriarchy 87 Sara Martín 13 “I Came for the ‘Pew-Pew Space Battles’; I Stayed for the Autism”: Martha Wells’s Murderbot 95 Robin Anne Reid 14 The Womanist Speculative Archetype in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s “Evidence” 102 R. Nicole Smith 15 Feminist Science Fiction Art 108 Smin Smith PART III Who: Subjectivities 117 16 Introduction 119 Wendy Gay Pearson viii Contents 17 “All Hail the Trans Cyborg”: Autonomous as an Analogy of Trans Becoming 124 Jacob Barry 18 Queer Science Fiction, Queer Relationality, and Utopian Insurgency 131 Peyton Campbell 19 Like “A Bolt out of the Blue”: Stories of Gender Transformation From the German Democratic Republic 138 Carol Anne Costabile-Heming 20 New Pronouns and New Uses: Gender Variance and Language in Contemporary Science Fiction 145 Misha Grifka Wander 21 Not Just Boys and Toys: Gender and Intersectionality in SF for Children 153 Emily Midkiff 22 Speculations Against Gender Discrimination: A Study of Indian SF’s Growing Engagement with Gender Issues 160 Debaditya Mukhopadhyay 23 Feminist-Queer Cyberpunk: Hacking Cyberpunk’s Hetero-Masculinism 167 Graham J. Murphy 24 Trans Without Trans?: Gender Identity and the Relationship Between Transness and Sex Changing in the Works of John Varley 175 Wendy Gay Pearson 25 Unruly Bodies: Corporeality, Technocracy, and Same-Sex Desire in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl 183 Agnieszka Podruczna 26 Good Wives and Mothers in the Universe: Explorations of Traditional Chinese Gender Roles in Chi Hui’s “Nest of Insects” 190 Frederike Schneider-Vielsäcker 27 Goddesses, Broods, and Hominids: Sexual Pleasure and Desire in the Speculative Fictions of Octavia E. Butler and Nalo Hopkinson 197 Sara Wenger ix
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