Full Description
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.
Contents
1. Introduction: The Nearly Silent Listener.- 2. Herland: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Literature of the Beehive.- 3. Swastika Night: Katharine Burdekin and the Psychology of Scapegoating.- 4. 'No Woman Born': C. L. Moore's Dancing Cyborg.- 5. The Left Hand of Darkness: Ursula Le Guin and the Haploid Heart.- 6. The Handmaid's Tale: Margaret Atwood and the Politics of Choice.- 7. The Power: Naomi Alderman and Archaeologies of Gender.- 8. The City We Became: N. K. Jemisin and Posthuman Urbanism.
