Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Velocities in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism

by Raffaella Baccolini, Marleen S. Barr, Deirdre Byrne, Jeanne Cortiel, June Deery

Overview

Almost 20 years after the publication of Future Females: A Critical Anthology, feminist science fiction pioneer Marleen S. Barr, together with a talented crew of the field's established and emerging theorists, reveal new critical insights in Future Females, the Next Generation. This groundbreaking collection includes contributors from across the globe who find effective venues for imagining feminist thought experiments.

A multinational perspective runs through this innovative volume, focusing on the latest dynamic trends in feminist science fiction. These include such issues as race, gender, cyberfeminism, the media, and new writers in the field. Future Females, the Next Generation, which establishes the generational continuity characterizing a vibrant area of feminist literary and cultural inquiry, boldly goes where no feminist science fiction critical anthology has gone before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780847691258
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	03/22/2000
Edition description:	KDenn
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.24(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Marleen S. Barr is the author of many books and articles about feminist science fiction, including Future Females: A Critical Anthology (The Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1981); Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction (University of Iowa Press, 1992) and Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond (University of North Carolina Press, 1993). Barr, whose forthcoming book, Genre Seepage: A New Discourse Practice (University of Iowa Press), is the recipient of the 1997 Science Fiction Research Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in Science Fiction Criticism. She is a visiting professor in the Humanities Department at Montclair State University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Foreword Chapter 2 Introduction, "Everything's Coming Up Roses": Or, Mainstream Feminist Science Fiction, the Uncola Part 3 One: Utopia and Dystopia: A New Genre, Ecotopia, and the 1990s Chapter 4 1 Gender and Genre in the Feminist Critical Dystopias of Katharine Burdekin, Margaret Atwood, and Octavia Butler Chapter 5 2 Revising Paradise: Judy Grahn's Ecotopia Mundane's World Chapter 6 3 The Feminist Dystopia of the 1990s: Record of Failure, Midwife of Hope Chapter 7 4 Post-Phallic Culture: Reality Now Resembles Utopian Feminist Science Fiction Part 8 Two: Alternative Cyberpunk: Marge Piercy, Jeff Noon, and Pat Cadigan Chapter 9 5 The Biopolitics of Cyberspace: Piercy Hacks Gibson Chapter 10 6 A Crossbreed Lonliness: Jeff Noon's Feminist Cyberpunk Chapter 11 7 Real Lives Complicate Matters in Schrödinger's World: Pat Cadigan's Alternative Cyberpunk Vision Part 12 Three: Sex/Gender: Eroticizing Cyborgs and Queering Science Fiction Chapter 13 8 The Erotics of the (Cy)borg: Authority and Gender in the Sociocultural Imaginary Chapter 14 9 Pin-Up and Cyborg: Exaggerated Gender and Artificial Intelligence Chapter 15 10 (Re)reading Queerly: Science Fiction, Feminism, and the Defamiliarization of Gender Part 16 Four: First Contacts: Re-Reading Jaoanna Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin and South Africa, and Eleanor Arnason's Other Chapter 17 11 Determinate Politics of Indeterminacy: Reading Joanna Russ's Recent Work in Light of her Early Fiction Chapter 18 12 Truth and Story: History in Ursula K. Le Guin's Short Fiction and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission Chapter 19 13 Incite/On Site/Insight: Implication of the Other in Eleanor Arnason's Science Fiction Part 20 Five: New Female Heroes: Mexican Women and Chicanas, the Star Trek Scientist, and Tank Girl Chapter 21 14 Mexican Women and Chicanas Enter Future Fiction Chapter 22 15 The Woman Scientist in Star Trek: Voyager Chapter 23 16 Postfeminism and the Female Action-Adventure Hero: Positioning "Tank Girl" Chapter 24 Postscript: A Real Future Female: Dreams, Truth, and Hope Chapter 25 Index Chapter 26 About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

Future Females is THE final word on feminist science fiction and edited superbly by the premiere feminist in the field. The collection is wide-ranging and engaging, and entertains as it educates. It does everything that popular culture and feminist scholarship should do, and is a model for future outstanding work.

Emily Toth

Bears evidence to the innovative impact of feminism on science fiction and of feminist theory on science fiction criticism. The bravura displayed in the choice of subject matter, the range of topics and the wittily adapted terminology owe a great deal to the earlier pioneering efforts in the field, also collected by Barr. This collection points out how much that was formerly merely imagined has become a social reality even as its authors must continue to engage in writing toward utopia. Their essays are an exercise in cultural studies of the future.

Brigitte Scheer-Schäzler

The content is quite valuable. Excellent for feminist and science-fiction collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above.

Choice Reviews

An important critical work in and of itself. The two books called Future Females together mark the beginning and the latest point of the entire feminist enterprise in the serious consideration of science fiction. Barr's most audacious utopian reading is surely that of 'all the president's penises', that is to say, her treatment of the Leader of the Free World, here celebrated as 'the president who makes love not war' and as one who 'is almost synonymous with his nonphallic penis.'.. . The only politically decent defense of Bill Clinton yet attempted. .. Barr offers not political journalism but a theoretical fiction. Extending Woolf's trope we might hope that this same extraterrestrial visitor would find time to pursue not only the dailynewspaper but also the new Future Females; if so, she—or he? or it?—would learn that patriarchy, while not yet overthrown, is under creative attack in more ways that even the far-seeing Woolf herself could possibly have imagined.

Science Fiction Studies - Carl Freedman

The content is quite valuable. Excellent for feminist and science-fiction collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above.

Choice

Bears evidence to the innovative impact of feminism on science fiction and of feminist theory on science fiction criticism. The bravura displayed in the choice of subject matter, the range of topics and the wittily adapted terminology owe a great deal to the earlier pioneering efforts in the field, also collected by Barr. This collection points out how much that was formerly merely imagined has become a social reality even as its authors must continue to engage in writing toward utopia. Their essays are an exercise in cultural studies of the future.

Brigitte Scheer-Schäzler

The content is quite valuable. Excellent for feminist and science-fiction collections serving upper-division undergraduates and above.

CHOICE

An important critical work in and of itself.
The two books called Future Females together mark the beginning and the latest point of the entire feminist enterprise in the serious consideration of science fiction.
Barr's most audacious utopian reading is surely that of 'all the president's penises', that is to say, her treatment of the Leader of the Free World, here celebrated as 'the president who makes love not war' and as one who 'is almost synonymous with his nonphallic penis.'. . . The only politically decent defense of Bill Clinton yet attempted . . . Barr offers not political journalism but a theoretical fiction.
Extending Woolf's trope we might hope that this same extraterrestrial visitor would find time to pursue not only the daily newspaper but also the new Future Females; if so, she—or he? or it?—would learn that patriarchy, while not yet overthrown, is under creative attack in more ways that even the far-seeing Woolf herself could possibly have imagined.

Science Fiction Studies, Vol.27 (2000) - Carl Freedman