For perspective on "women's sci-fi" I should probably get hold of A Woman's Liberation: A Choice of Futures by and About Women, an anthology of short fiction edited by Connie Willis and Sheila Williams. I've already read at least one of the stories in it, but I'm sure the editors have written a preface or introducion that sums up the subgenre as they see it.
I don't pretend to be at all literate in the world of "feminist sci-fi." My image of it is A Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I know Sue (Lange) has been called "the new Johanna Russ" and that J.R. is considered to be feminist sci-fi, but I haven't read anything by her. Feminist Science Fiction, Fantasy and Utopia seems a somewhat ponderous site, but I'm sure it's very instructive on the subject.
I read some user reviews of A Woman's Liberation on Amazon.com expressing disappointment, because the title was misleading. The title story is by Connie Willis, and apparently didn't live up to some people's expectations.
Anyway, when I talk about "women's sci-fi" I don't mean feminist sci-fi, exactly. I mean "by and about women" as in the subtitle of the anthology, but I think I mean a little bit more than that. I mean sci-fi presented through the medium of women's experience, however each individual author defines that. By the way, I don't want to exclude men, necessarily. When Stephen King writes about characters like Dolores Claiborne and Liz Garfield in "Low Men in Yellow Coats" in Hearts in Atlantis, both of whom are, I believe, based on his mother, Ruth Pillsbury King, he's doing it, in my opinion. (Except Dolores Claiborne isn't science fiction, though I'd say "Low Men" is.)
I recently read the article "Toward a Working Definition of Steampunk" in the current issue of Apex Digest, and that made me think there should be a cool name for the subgenre I'm talking about.
3 comments:
I am not a big fan of sub-genres. By their nature, it seems to encourage people to exclude things as something they don't read. And I don't believe there is a "woman's" point of view. There is definitely one woman's point of view if she's the writer. But I've read sci-fi and fantasy by women that ranged from the sublime (Connie Willis)to stuff I would classify more as poorly written sado-masochistic porn. There are stories about women. (I think Stephen King focus quite a lot on female protaginists. I don't know if I'd toss the word femminist in the mix. You could spend a lifetime debating what that means.
A female protagonist is one meaning of "a woman's point of view," as in point-of-view character. Of course, she may not be a human female! (I'm on my 2nd water-breathing female protagonist.)
I'm identifying certain stories that achieve something I'm going after, and I'm wanting to call that something. I don't call it feminist, though I did use the word to describe "Babysitting." (Feminist justice.) For some reason I doubt Christine would get behind that, though. She might just say "justice." It's just that the narrator was such a sexist pig and his fate was so fitting. Anyway, I mostly mentioned feminist sci-fi because I know it's a category people talk about, which will inevitably be part of the discussion I'm trying to start about "women's sci-fi."
I definitely don't mean "any sci-fi written by a woman." I'm happy to say we're way past the "isn't it cool that there are some women writing sci-fi" stage!
As to the definition of "feminist/feminism" I won't go there, but I don't think it's that hard to define.
When I started writing "Being" I wasn't sure whether the Tsendians, each of whom have 8 selves/minds, had gender. So it might not have been a female protagonist. I ended up deciding that they do have gender and that my central character was a female. Her gender had no real bearing on the story, though. So I don't consider "Being" to be one of "those" stories.
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