Women, Science and Fiction Revisited

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. 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