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Dystopian dreams: on feminist science fiction
- j_s 10y ago3 more days: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/women-of-scifi-and-fantasy-book-bundle https://www.humblebundle.com/books/women-of-scifi-and-fantas... Includes Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower for $1.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago> with the sudden accession to power of a theocracy in the United States really?
- ceejayoz 10y agoThat sentence is quite clearly describing the setting of the book.
- Vosporos 10y agoWow, I really didn't know about all that and I feel I've been lied to for so much time! Nobody ever told me who wrote Frankenstein, and what the theme was. It's deeply interesting and deeply disturbing, considering what we missed.
- literallycancer 10y agoAnd Atwood had a horrifyingly prescient eye for how a state like Gilead could come to exist: “… after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time … Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The road-blocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn’t be too careful.” Eventually, women’s bank accounts are frozen, taken away from them, women are fired from their jobs. It happens step by step. How do you boil a frog? You turn the heat up slowly. Stories are good at illustrating points in an argument, but not at helping to predict the future. Books need to be fun to read, so realism will give in to the needs of the plot eventually.
- Animats 10y agoThat's Egypt today. Egypt is far more hostile to women than it was 30 years ago.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoHave you read The Handmaid's Tale, or are you judging its realism based on the columnist synopsis you quoted?
- literallycancer 10y agoI've read the plot summary on Wikipedia and am judging its realism based on the quote, yes.
- xkxx 10y ago> How do you boil a frog? You turn the heat up slowly. Obligatory reminder that you won't be able to boil a frog by slowly turning the heat up, it would jump out. It would be nice if people stopped using this common misconception as a metaphor.
- hectorlorenzo 10y agoMan, I agree, I've trying to kill two birds with one stone for the last couple of years to no avail. It just doesn't happen.
- knieveltech 10y agoHave you tried using a bigger stone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event
- gozur88 10y agoHahahaha. I never actually thought through the practical problems with that one.
- luag 10y agoThis is relevant :D https://youtu.be/71gilEP4aJY https://youtu.be/71gilEP4aJY
- wruvjg 10y agoPeople still read the guardian? "My latest novel, The Power, has been described as a dystopian thriller. In it, almost all the women in the world suddenly develop the power to electrocute people at will (they can electrocute women as well as men; also animals and inanimate objects – I based it on what electric eels do). And they use their power, slowly but surely, just as men do in our world today. Some of them are kind and some cruel. Some rape and some just have a jolly good time in bed with willing participants. Nothing happens to men in the novel – I explain carefully to interviewers – that is not happening to a woman in our world today. So is it dystopian? Well. Only if you’re a man." I'll put it on my wishlist. Sounds absolutely enthralling, doesn't at all reek of man-hating bigotry. Feminism is about equality.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoIncreasingly, no - people do not still read The Guardian. Or most other online newspapers. I think the feminist slant is partly ideological, but also partly an attempt to capture the eyeballs of a middle class (read: relatively affluent) audience no one else is pitching for. To me it looks suspiciously like a very calculated kind of feminism. I can't say I'm a fan, and I suspect the niche is too small to keep the paper afloat for much longer.
- bluetonium 10y agoThe market is easily enough to support a mid sized news website, several actually. But it's a saturated market with lots of competition. The amount of reporters willing to write for less if they get to display a feminist slant is multiples more than the amount necessary to satiate the audience who might want to read them
- paulddraper 10y agoIt's good of someone to make us aware of how often women in our world today are being electrocuted.
- Animats 10y agoThe Handmaid's Tale was made into a movie in 1990. It's an OK movie. The upcoming TV show is apparently a spinoff.
- ufmace 10y agoYou know, I don't have much use for modern day third-wave feminism, but I kinda would like to read more hard Sci-Fi written by women. I've noticed that Sci-Fi written by men tends to envision societies where there's lots of casual sex in ways that I suspect women would not appreciate. I wonder what kind of societies women dream up and what the male-female relationships are like in them. At least, when they're not stuck on making some ham-fisted point on current-day gender relations.
- bitwize 10y agoWhile it's not particularly "hard", there is a whole subgenre of "science fiction" romance written mainly by women that involves beautiful women falling for the handsome, rugged, Zapp-Brannigan-esque space captain, plucky female space captains stranded on alien worlds and discovering new avenues of passion with one of the natives, etc. Men cater to male fantasies. Women cater to female fantasies. Quelle surprise.
- viraptor 10y agoThe escape pod and their sibling podcasts have a periodic "Artemis rising" series where they concentrate on non-male authors. There's no agenda as far as the content goes, so there's a good mixture of ideas. http://escape-artists.wikia.com/wiki/Artemis_Rising http://escape-artists.wikia.com/wiki/Artemis_Rising If you're after some interesting views on relationships, I remember the "Boris's Bar" and "Chimeras" were fun, but there's much more.
- rabboRubble 10y agoWhich parts of third-wave feminism aren't useful? I am genuinely curious... Like Riot Grrrrl feminism? Too much focus on empowerment?