Product Description

This fascinating study is the first to examine the history of gender and science fiction and the first to discuss science fiction pulp magazines' images of women, as well as postmodernism and feminist science fiction. Robin Roberts begins with Shelley's Frankenstein, in which a female alien appears, and continues through H. G. Wells, the 1950s pulp science fiction magazines, Doris Lessing and feminist utopias, and the new generation of science fiction writers, including Joan Vinge, Sheila Finch, Vonda McIntyre, Ursula Le Guin, and Octavia Butler. Roberts explores the legacy of male SF writers, utopia as a feminist response to patriarchy, and science fiction and postmodernism, showing how current writers use deconstructive theory to challenge patriarchal assumptions more forcefully than ever. A New Species includes an entire chapter of Doris Lessing's science fiction in the context of science fiction by women.