Reconstruction 5.4 (Fall 2005)

Beyond Cyborgs? / Ximena Gallardo C.

What should we expect from a special issue on women and science fiction at a time when people compare Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to "the psychotic robot chick in Metropolis"? We might want a forward-looking and hip post-post fem analysis of how "the future is now," but one of the paradoxes of mainstream sf is that, when it comes to Woman, its future visions still mostly project the prejudices of the past.

My answer: Well, no. Not really.

You see, I wanted the contributions to shape the issue and not simply impose my vision of the "current state of feminist sf" on the authors. Induction would not work for Fem-scape because the issue was meant to be a foray into what was actually out there in the minds of scholars that had not yet published their ideas precisely because those ideas did not fit pre-conceived notions of what "women and sf" is "all about."

For these are treacherous times for (science fiction) women.

If you believe what you hear, women's equality exists as a de-facto, rock-solid reality and our world has become a veritable feminist utopia (at least in the first world). Quite the contrary! As you read the serious feminist inquiry that is Fem-scape, a different picture of the current status of women arises; one that, for instance, belies the current trend of Haraway cyborg fetishists that would erroneously take her prospective criticism as descriptive of the current or even future state of the female, and whose post-post feminism is a form of eternally deferred denial.

Thus, Fem-scape was conceived as, and is, an eclectic feminist landscape of the present future that delineates the scope of women's repression in sf, lets us speculate as to why the female of the species still cannot break the shackles of masculine (or masculist) construction, and, in select moments, allows us to escape to the world of the marvelous Alien/Woman.

Or, perhaps we might call it Fem-scape: The Next Generation, for while the concern of all the contributors is to contend with androcentric definitions of Woman, there is a firm interest in tackling these constructions as they appear in television and film; an odd phenomenon, some would say, considering that some of the least radical constructions of women occur in either medium; but, not so odd if we take into account that the great majority of sf consumption is in the form of tv and film (i.e. the Star Trek series, TheMatrix trilogy). Still, in true feminist spirit, the contributors to Fem-scape approach their own obsessions knowingly, critically. We can almost hear them say, "I love these shows, but I am not afraid to write about what is wrong with them."

Perhaps Fem-scape's most appealing expressions come in the blurring of boundaries between reality and fiction. For just as sf is a repressed genre in literary studies (in the parlance of Marleen S. Barr, a victim of "textism"), so is Woman still repressed in sf. So much more urgent, then, that we allow for spaces such as Fem-scape where critics can speak their minds freely.

What you will find in this special issue is a wide range of essays, interviews, and reviews that speak curiously to one another about the same concerns. I perceive them as comprising the following intertwined themes:

• Woman: The Outer Limits--An out-of-this-world interview with mega science fiction critic Marlene S. Barr plus Helen Merrick's interrogation of technoscientific practices through feminist sf equals a complete immersion into the uncanny worldviews of the Alien/Woman!

• Master Matrix--After taking a serious look at female heroes on the big and small screen, Diana Dominguez and Lorna Jowett explore whether an original female hero can originate in patriarchal discourse.

• Framing the Female--Susan A. George and Andrew Gordon prove that whether she's the Monstrous Fem or the New Woman, you can bet it will be the same old story.

• The (Alien) Sex That Is Not OneÅ\Susan J. Wolfe analyzes how Star Trek's Trills worry our perceptions of sex and desire.

To round out the issue, Kim Wells and I solicited book reviews intended to contextualize current trends in gender and science fiction criticism. The reviews on criticism range from Brian Attebery's Decoding Gender in Science Fiction and Justine Larbalestier's The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, both insightful surveys of science-fiction and gender, to two studies of particular sf/fantasy: Lillian Robinson's Wonder Women, an appraisal of female superheroes in the comics, and C. Jason Smith's and my own exploration of Lt. Ripley's role in the Alien film series in Alien Woman. Finally, the wide scope of science-fiction by females is represented by two reviews: one on the most recent edition of Mary E. Bradley Lane's 1881 classic, Mizora, and the other on the latest Octavia Butler book, Fledgling.