Feminist Science Fiction
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Feminist Science Fiction
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue. Definition Feminist science fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction (SF for short) that focuses on theories that include feminist themes, for example gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics and reproduction. Feminist science fiction spans a wider range than science fiction itself, covering fantasy, utopia and dystopia, horror (such as Anne Rice's vampire stories). Marleen S. Barr ...
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Science Fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space exploration, time travel, Parallel universes in fiction, parallel universes, and extraterrestrials in fiction, extraterrestrial life. The genre often explores human responses to the consequences of projected or imagined scientific advances. Science fiction is related to fantasy (together abbreviated wikt:SF&F, SF&F), Horror fiction, horror, and superhero fiction, and it contains many #Subgenres, subgenres. The genre's precise Definitions of science fiction, definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Major subgenres include hard science fiction, ''hard'' science fiction, which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction, ''soft'' science fiction, which focuses on social sciences. Other no ...
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Anne Rice
Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; October 4, 1941 – December 11, 2021) was an American author of Gothic fiction, erotic literature, and Bible fiction. She is best known for writing ''The Vampire Chronicles''. She later adapted the first volume in the series into a commercially successful eponymous film, '' Interview with the Vampire'' (1994). Born in New Orleans, Rice spent much of her early life in the city before moving to Texas, and later to San Francisco. She was raised in an observant Catholic family but became an agnostic as a young adult. She began her professional writing career with the publication of '' Interview with the Vampire'' (1976), while living in California, and began writing sequels to the novel in the 1980s. In the mid-2000s, following a publicized return to Catholicism, she published the novels '' Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt'' and '' Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana'', fictionalized accounts of certain incidents in the life of Jesus. Sev ...
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Feminist Literary Criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to analyze and describe the ways in which literature portrays the narrative of male domination by exploring the economic, social, political, and psychological forces embedded within literature. This way of thinking and criticizing works can be said to have changed the way literary texts are viewed and studied, as well as changing and expanding the canon of what is commonly taught. Traditionally, feminist literary criticism has sought to examine old texts within literary canon through a new lens. Specific goals of feminist criticism include both the development and discovery of female tradition of writing, and rediscovering of old texts, while also interpreting symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male poin ...
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The Blazing World
''The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World'', better known as ''The Blazing World'', is a 1666 work of prose fiction by the English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. Feminist critic Dale Spender calls it a forerunner of science fiction. It can also be read as a piece of utopian fiction.Khanna, Lee Cullen. "The Subject of Utopia: Margaret Cavendish and Her Blazing-World." ''Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: World of Difference.'' Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1994. 15–34. In the novel, a woman from the Kingdom of ESFI (a combined version of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland) is kidnapped by a spurned lover. The angry gods blow the boat transporting them to the North Pole, where its crew dies. The woman is the lone survivor, and she finds a portal into a parallel world. It is inhabited by human–animal hybrids who mistake her for a goddess and choose her as their new empress. She creates a new religion and decides to writ ...
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Margaret Cavendish
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (; 1623 er exact birth date is unknown– 16 December 1673) was an English philosopher, poet, scientist, fiction writer, and playwright. She was a prolific writer, publishing over 12 original texts under her name at a time when women were largely removed from publishing. Although many would credit author Mary Shelley as the inventor of science fiction, Margaret Cavendish can also be counted as an essential pioneer. Her book '' The Blazing World'' is one of the first to fall into the science fiction genre. Additionally, as a well-connected natural philosopher, Cavendish engaged with some of the most influential minds of her time, including René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Henry More. Background Born Margaret Lucas to Sir Thomas Lucas (1573–1625) and Elizabeth Leighton (died 1647), she was the youngest child of the family. She had four sisters and three brothers, the royalists Sir John Lucas, Sir Thomas Lucas and Sir Ch ...
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Restoration (England)
The Stuart Restoration was the reinstatement in May 1660 of the Stuart monarchy in England, Scotland, and Ireland. It replaced the Commonwealth of England, established in January 1649 after the execution of Charles I, with his son Charles II. The Commonwealth of England had been governed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and then his son Richard Cromwell. The term is also used to describe the reign of Charles II (1660–1685), and sometimes that of his younger brother James II (1685–1688). The Protectorate After Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector from 1658 to 1659, ceded power to the Rump Parliament, Charles Fleetwood and John Lambert then dominated government for a year. On 20 October 1659, George Monck, the governor of Scotland under the Cromwells, marched south with his army from Scotland to oppose Fleetwood and Lambert. Lambert's army began to desert him, and he returned to London almost alone whilst Monck marched to London unopposed. The Pre ...
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Frankenstein
''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a Sapience, sapient Frankenstein's monster, creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment that involved putting it together with different body parts. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18 and staying in Baden-Baden, Bath, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821. Shelley travelled through Europe in 1815, moving along the river Rhine in Germany, and stopping in Gernsheim, away from Frankenstein Castle, where, about a century earlier, Johann Konrad Dippel, an alchemist, had engaged in experiments. She then journeyed to the region of Geneva, Switzerland, where much of the story takes place. Galvanism and occult ideas were topics of convers ...
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Sexism
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to gender roles and stereotypes, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is intrinsically superior to another. Extreme sexism may foster sexual harassment, rape, and other forms of sexual violence. Discrimination in this context is defined as discrimination toward people based on their gender identity or their gender or sex differences. An example of this is workplace inequality. Sexism refers to violation of equal opportunities (Equal opportunity, formal equality) based on gender or refers to violation of equality of outcomes based on gender, also called substantive equality. Sexism may arise from social or cultural customs and norms. Etymology and definitions According to legal scholar Fred R. Shapiro, the term "sexism" was most likely coined on November 18, 1965, by Pauline M. Leet during a "Student-Faculty For ...
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Sarah LeFanu
Sarah Antoinette LeFanu (born 6 August 1953) is a Scottish author and academic. Biography Sarah Antoinette LeFanu was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. She worked as an editor for the Women's Press, and taught classes on feminism and science fiction at the City Lit Centre in London. LeFanu edited the 1985 volume ''Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind'', and in 1988 she published ''In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction'', an analysis of contemporary science-fiction writers, particularly women. Prominent among these were Suzy McKee Charnas, Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and James Tiptree Jr. Reviewing the volume for ''Science Fiction Studies'', Veronica Hollinger wrote that it was "detailed and wide-ranging, frequently incisive, and always entertaining". In her writing, LeFanu argued that science fiction had provided a means for women writers to overcome the patriarchal conventions of conventional fiction, and thereby to speak in their own v ...
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Single-gender World
A relatively common motif in speculative fiction is the existence of single-gender worlds or single-sex societies. These fictional societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and gender-differences in science fiction and fantasy.Attebery 2002, p. 13. Many of these predate a widespread distinction between gender and sex and conflate the two. In the fictional setting, these societies often arise due to elimination of one sex through war or natural disasters and disease.Bartter 2004, "Momutes", Robin Anne Reid, p. 101. The societies may be portrayed as utopian or dystopian, as seen in pulp tales of oppressive matriarchies. Women-only worlds There is a long tradition of female-only places in literature and mythology, starting with the Amazons and continuing into some examples of feminist utopias. In speculative fiction, women-only worlds have been imagined to come about, among other approaches, by the action of disease that wipes out men, a ...
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Patriarchy
Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of authority are primarily held by men. The term ''patriarchy'' is used both in anthropology to describe a family or clan controlled by the father or eldest male or group of males, and in feminist theory to describe a broader social structure in which men as a group dominance hierarchy, dominate society. Sociobiologists compare human gender roles to sexed behavior in other primates and argue that gender inequality originates from genetic and reproductive differences between men and women. Patriarchal ideology explains and rationalizes patriarchy by attributing gender inequality to inherent Gender essentialism, natural differences between men and women, divine commandment, or other fixed structures. Social constructionists sociologists tend to disagree with biological explanations of patriarchy and contend that socialization processes are primarily responsible for establishing gender roles, they further argue that gender roles ...
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