Arguably, any examination of “feminist science fiction” should begin with the noun being modified (“science fiction”) and then move on to the adjective modifying it (“feminist”)—a task easier said than done. To be sure, both of those terms have complicated histories and subtle applications. The history of definitions of both these terms is replete with (sometimes) vehement and “rancorous” (Attebery 1) arguments. Further, any attempt at a definition will only ever be partial and contingent, at best. While recognizing that these terms are both complicated and fluid, what I hope to provide here is a contingent, working definition of them both. I make no categorical claims, but, rather, offer a historically contextualized definition that I will then use throughout the remainder of the book. Furthermore, I acknowledge that my working definitions are both partial and loaded, that is, they are constructed in such a way as to further the arguments of this book even while striving to remain consistent with other accepted definitions.

As Brian Attebery writes in Decoding Gender (2002), one way to think about science fiction is as a set of codes and practices for both writing and reading texts. “Science fiction” is a set of conventions, styles, and themes that shape the choices a writer makes in constructing the text.¹ The writer can choose to conform to traditions and conventions, or to deform those same traditions and conventions. At the same time, the reader who reads science fiction understands the codes of the practice of science fiction, and will utilize the knowledge of these practices to make sense of the text.² Similarly, Attebery takes gender as a set of codes in which the practitioner performs and the observer reads. As such, both science fiction and gender are culturally determined, both in constant flux and redefinition, and both open to interpretation or “decoding.” For Attebery, then, both gender and science fiction are “sign systems” (2). Gender assigns “social and psychological meaning to sexual difference,” and science fiction is a “system for generating and interpreting narratives that reflect insights derived from, technological offshoots of, and attitudes toward science” (2).

One element of the set of codes and practices that define science fiction is the thing that separates SF from other forms of fiction, and from other forms of genre fiction. Darko Suvin, whose Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) served as a touchstone for a generation of science fiction scholars, argues that it is the “cognitive estrangement” produced by the “new” or “novel” element of the text that characterizes or distinguishes science fiction. Indeed, Attebery agrees that science fiction’s contribution to the code of narrative is a sense of “strangeness” (4). Suvin applies a structuralist framework of literary analysis to science fiction,³ borrowing from other literary critics (Shlovsky, Brecht) when zhe calls science fiction the literature of “cognitive estrangement.”⁴ According to zher model, the reader compares the fictive world of science fiction against the familiar, “zero world” of zher own everyday lived reality, and the alienation produced in the gap between the two worlds produces a cognitive function.

Furthermore, Suvin suggests that the science-fictional world consists of four elements or aspects, into any one of which the new element, which zhe calls a “novum,” can be introduced: the actant(s) (which is primarily to say, the characters), the Social Order (social, cultural, and political structures of the fictive world), the Topography (which could take the form of setting or of technological innovations), and Natural Laws. According to Suvin, those fictions that introduce a novum into the actant(s) tend to raise the question of “what it means to be human”—which might well take the form of ontological questions. Those fictions which introduce a novum into the Social Order tend to take the form of either a utopia or a dystopia, and they tend to emphasize an understanding of the relationship between the Self and Society.⁵ In other words, Suvin suggests that narratives that focus on the actant tend to raise ontological questions, while those that focus on the Social Order tend to raise epistemological questions. In Chapters Three, Four, Five, and Six, I will argue that (some forms of) feminist science fiction raise epistemological concerns in both of these types of estrangement.

While the defining characteristics of Suvin’s model focus on science fiction as an object (the science-fiction-ness of it resides in the elements of the text itself), and the defining characteristics of Attebery’s model focus on science fiction as a process (the science-fiction-ness of it resides in the action), I hope to tread a space in between these two approaches—even while drawing from both of them in defining feminist science fiction. I contend that feminist science fiction exists and that certain formal elements of the texts define it as such. However, Veronica Hollinger (1990) notes that the category of “science fiction by women” has gotten too large to be meaningful (“Introduction” 129). Lisa Yaszek (2008) similarly argues that “woman’s SF—like SF as a whole—is too diverse to subsume under a single, categorical definition” (Galactic 15). Further, Hollinger (1990) notes that the category of “feminist science fiction” (singular) has grown too diffuse to even constitute a “unified body or field of study” (“Feminist” 235), and that, consequently, it is “no longer well served by criticism that reads it as a unified undertaking” (“Feminist” 229). Hollinger argues that “feminist science fiction” cannot be approached critically as if its texts share “an ideological foundation” or a “coherent [notion] of feminism” (“Feminist” 229).⁶ Therefore, as in other areas of feminist criticism, one approach, then, is to speak of “feminist science fictions” (plural), as a means to acknowledge the diversity and disparity among ideologies and aims of these various narratives. Speaking of feminist science fictions in the plural also then opens up a critical space to examine certain subsets or variations within the larger plurality. As we will see in this chapter, I intend to carve out a particular approach by a number of feminist writers and the effects that these approaches have for readers. As Attebery notes, “science fiction is a useful tool for investigating habits of thought, including gender” (1), or as Larbalestier claims, these imaginative fictive worlds render some of the aspects of the social operations of gender “visible” (8). As (one form of) feminist science fiction, then, I contend that these narratives are part and parcel of a particular way of understanding reading and “decoding” gender in society.

Although women have participated in science fiction from its inception, the degree to which they participated has been the subject of much debate. They have participated as writers and artists, as readers and fans. However, as in mainstream literature, the presence of and the contributions by women have been overlooked, erased, and forgotten. One aspect, then, of feminist science fiction criticism has been to recover this forgotten past, and one form that this recovery took was anthologies. Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder (1974) heralded in an era of women’s SF. In zher “Introduction,” Sargent wonders “why a literature that prides itself on exploring alternatives or assumptions counter to what we normally believe has not been more concerned about the rôles of women in the future” (xv). Sargent suggests that either science fiction as a genre is not nearly as progressive and imaginative as its practitioners and readers would like to believe, or that social and cultural biases are very deeply ingrained, indeed, and reflected in the fiction.⁷ Furthermore, Sargent places women as the focus of the collection, and demonstrates a lineage and history of women’s science fiction, and that a critical mass of “good science fiction” by women exists, as well (xiii). Sargent’s “Introduction” to the sequel, The New Women of Wonder (1978), further examines the history of women writing science fiction.

After Sargent’s first anthology (whether causally or temporally), a veritable wave of others appeared, including Vonda McIntyre and Susan Janice Anderson’s Aurora: Beyond Equality (1976), Virginia Kidd’s Millennial Women (1978), Alice Laurance’s Cassandra Rising (1978), Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s Amazons! (1979), the New Victoria Collective’s Woman Space (1981), and Jen Green and Sarah LeFanu’s Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind (1981). In Despatches, Green and LeFanu draw from the “images of women in SF” tradition, and argue that “[c]hanges in the representation of women in science fiction have done little more that reflect the legal and social advances made by women in our society” (1).

Another form that feminist science fiction criticism has taken is the question of “women in science fiction.” Much as it did when Virginia Woolf addressed the question of “women in fiction” in A Room of One’s Own, the response to the question of “women in science fiction” took several forms: the question of women who work in the field of science fiction (writers and fans), and the question of women within the works of science fiction (characters). For example, Joanna Russ published a short essay in the Red Clay Reader (1970) entitled “The Image of Women in Science Fiction”; Beverly Friend, a pioneer in feminist science fiction criticism, published “Women and Science Fiction” in Extrapolation in 1972; fan and critic Susan Wood wrote an essay entitled “Women and Science Fiction” in Foundation in 1978, and feminist scholar Mary Badami published “A Feminist Critique of Science Fiction” in Extrapolation in 1978. The journal Science Fiction Studies published special issues on “women in science fiction” in 1980 and 1990, and Extrapolation ran similar special issues in 1982 and 1995. In zher essay, Russ concludes that “[t]here are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women” (39), by which Russ means that the female characters in science fiction merely conform to social and cultural stereotypes of what women should look like. These representations do not push back against or subvert the cultural codes of gender, even when they push against codes of science fiction narrative. Although both Extrapolation and Science Fiction Studies continued to offer critical essays on sex, gender, and sexuality, it was never the primary focus of those journals. In 1997, Batya Weinbaum, along with Robin Reid, initiated the publication of Femspec, a journal solely dedicated to feminist analysis of science fiction (and all forms of speculative works).

Other analyses examined the numbers of women who were fans of science fiction. How many girls and women (often secretly) read their brother’s or father’s copy of Amazing Stories? How many of them wrote in to the letters columns featured in pulp magazines to express their wishes for science fiction stories? Several recent cultural histories have examined the extent of the rôle of women in early science fiction fandom, including Justine Larbalestier’s The Battle of the Sexes (2002) and Helen Merrick’s The Secret Feminist Cabal (2009) (though these two books also do more than that).

Still other analyses examined the ways and extent to which women as writers of science fiction had to emulate the men who were writing. Could they publish under their own names? Did they receive the same kinds of critical and popular attention? On what grounds were their works criticized and analyzed? Were they held to the masculine standard or were the standards altered in response to their work? In what ways did science fiction by women writers conform to or undermine the conventions of science fiction? What themes did they commonly represent?

Regarding the science fiction written by feminist writers, critics and fans tended to dismiss it as either derivative of the work written by men, or else as “suburban” fantasy. Indeed, Joanna Russ (in)famously belittles the work of many women science fiction writers for being too tame, too domestic, too patriarchal (Russ, “Image” 36). However, in Galactic Suburbia (2008), Yaszek uncovers some of the ways in which these writers were really quite subtle in the ways in which they subverted the domestic narrative within science fiction. For one, just as Woolf suggests in A Room of One’s Own, they sometimes brought the narrative into the domestic setting, offering a new subject matter. For example, in “Captive Audience” (1953), Ann Warren Griffith places the setting of the story largely in the kitchen and the supermarket. Innovations in marketing have infiltrated the home since women are the primary consumers, and the story illustrates how these innovations “erode the boundaries between public and private lives in dangerous ways” (Yaszek 93). In other examples, the authors place women in subversive rôles. For example, in Carolyn Ives Gilman’s story “Okanoggan Falls” (2007), Earth (though, more precisely, Wisconsin) has been invaded by a belligerent alien race, the Wattesoon. As the men in the military adopt an aggressive stance, Susan takes the Wattesoon captain into zher home and bonds with the alien captain on a personal level, appealing to the alien’s feelings for zher wife and daughter. While “Okanoggan Falls” is a much later example of “galactic suburbia,” it demonstrates one way in which a feminist writer approaches a belligerent situation in an altogether different understanding of the world and of relations, from intergalactic politics to interpersonal politics.

The 1960s ushered in a new era of feminist science fiction. For one, feminism was now a part of the Zeitgeist. A number of liberal, rights-based movements were front-and-center in the public discussions and actions in the USA. The Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, the American Indian Movement, the Chicano Movement (El Movimiento), and the Young Lords had all pushed individual rights and liberties to the forefront of public consciousness. Even if it was (sometimes) being disparaged, feminism was in the news, on the television, and on people’s minds. This public awareness of feminism and women’s issues assisted in the emergence of a new wave of feminist science fiction.

However, this new wave of feminist science fiction did not emerge wholly formed or ex nihilo, nor did it emerge solely as a response to larger political movements taking place outside of publishing. In addition to the larger social, political, and cultural movements taking shape, the genre of science fiction itself was changing, as well. Because, as noted above, science fiction frequently responds to either technological innovations or social and political alterations, the narratives and themes of science fiction (sometimes) reflect those changes. Just as, for example, science fiction after 1945 frequently represented anxieties about global, nuclear annihilation and anxieties about the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union,⁸ science fiction of the 1960s began to take an inward, self-reflexive turn with the emergence of the New Wave. As Edward James (1994) writes, “the writers of the so-called New Wave were mostly born during or after the [Second World War], and were not only reacting against the SF writers of the past, but playing their part in the general youth revolution of the 1960s which had such profound effects upon Western culture” (167).⁹

As Jenny Wolmark (1994) argues, SF initially emerged as a mode of literature by examining science and technology, and was generally hopeful about the promise of science and technolo...