Comments on: Why must mainstream SF & fantasy replicate old gender forms?

By: Huw

Huw — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:55:48 +0000

I thought Helena Cain was a promising character in BSG (admittedly, her competition wasn’t great), but the writers didn’t seem to know what to do with a strong woman without just making her a total Thatcher clone bitch.

By: Hannah Nicklin

Hannah Nicklin — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:44:13 +0000

Thanks for commenting Aliki, and I shall check out your additional notable exceptions

I know this isn’t a particularly new discussion, indeed the feminist literary criticism of SF and Fantasy has been going on for a long time, but I think it’s as well to keep bringing it up.

By: Aliki

Aliki — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:29:09 +0000

This is something that’s been bothering me for years, it’s good to find it so well put. As a teenaged reader of Golden Age SF I found it particularly galling; these guys could imagine Martian colonies, but in them, guys went to work andf their wives ironed their spacesuits.You would have expected more to have changed. Part of the reason it hasn’t, I think, is that writers draw too much on the trpes of the genre, rather than allowing their imaginations broader range.

I’ll add to your print exceptions the fabulous Gwynneth Jones ( her recent space opera Spirit is a gpood example) and Elizabeth Bear. Lois McMasters Bujold is a more overtly feminist (her heroines struggle within repressive cultures) example, and Sheri S. Tepper.

I saw a cinematic exception recently, though for reasons I won’t go into in case they are spoilers, it might not count: Nine (no, not that one). It’s a post-apolcalyptic animation; flawed, but quite delightful, and the sexual politics made me want to stand up and cheer.