الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Despite its apparent male bias, Science Fiction offers a freedom to
women writers, in terms of style as well as content, that is not
available in mainstream fiction. Unlike mainstream fiction, science
fiction allows for settings which are not limited to history or
reality. The fluidity of form that science fiction allows is most
remarkable: the set length of the novel does not dominate. Writers
can let themselves experiment, writing and rewriting in short story,
novella or novel form. The conventions of science fiction; time
travel, alternate worlds, telepathy, allow for new settings, new
social structures, and perhaps new life forms, without necessitating
a scientific explanation of how these all came about. This is why
writers of the mainstream perspective were encouraged to call
science fiction ‘speculative fiction’.
Feminist science fiction serves as an important medium for
feminist thought, particularly as a bridge between theory and
practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the
ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which
women’s contributions, especially to science, are recognized and
valued, worlds where the harmony with the natural world is
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maintained, worlds void of class distinction and worlds that move
beyond gender.
Feminist science fiction poses questions about social and
political issues such as how society constructs gender roles, the
role reproduction plays in defining gender and the unequal political
and personal power of men and women. 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 imbalances do not exist, or ‘dystopias’ to explore worlds in
which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for
feminist work to continue.
With the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness, Le
Guin’s excursions into the controversial field of redefining gender
began. The Left Hand of Darkness depicts an image of a society
free from the constraints of sex, war and technological
exploitation. It is a powerful tale of human contact with the alien.
Genly Ai is a black male, an envoy from Earth who forges a
relationship with Estraven, a native of the planet Gethen. The
dualistic imagery Le Guin employs works well against the
backDROP of a winter world. Le Guin’s concern with dualism is an
interesting case in point regarding women and science fiction. She
constructs her narrative upon the binary opposites fostered by
patriarchy; man/woman, superior/inferior, active/passive,
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black/white, left/ right, etc. to criticize as well as describe reality
and the present world. The Left Hand takes an imaginative leap out
of the constraints imposed by the dualistic structure of patriarchy
and open up a world in which such constraints are no longer
relevant. A world in which the complex relationship between the
wider world of politics and the passion and desires of the human
heart are explored with subtlety and wit. The Left Hand also, offers
insights into the connection between feminist beliefs and their
expression in utopian fiction. On Gethen there are meant to be no
men. The human inhabitants are androgynies, with an oestrus cycle
that brings them regularly into Kemmer, when they can take on
either female or male sexual characteristics. The novel is at least
partly about the social and political consequences of this. The
world of Gethen is one which is thus free from sexual difference,
sexual repression and sexual desire. It is also a world free from war
or any kind of exploitation; especially that of land. The hero
journeys through and around a landscape that is beautiful and
fascinating. Even when he journeys across the frightening icecap,
it becomes part of his search for balance and integration.
Like The Left Hand, The Dispossessed is constructed around
a set of binary opposites: socialism/capitalism, scarcity/wealth, and
individual/society. The work is subtitled ‘An Ambiguous Utopia’
and one of the major themes of the work is the ambiguity of this
utopia. Anarres is not presented as a perfect society. Bureaucracy,
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stagnation and power structures have problematized the revolution,
as Shevek understands through the course of the novel. Le Guin
paints a very stark picture of the environmental constraints on
society. Hardship caused by lack of resources is a prominent issue,
reflected in the title of the novel. Anarres citizen are dispossessed
not just by political choice, but by the lack of resources to possess.
Here, Le Guin draws a contrast with the natural wealth of Urras,
and the competitive behaviors this foster.
Undoubtedly, Anarres is not a perfect society and Le Guin
shows that no such thing is possible. The novel is one of opposites:
a social commentary that presents communal cooperation as the
truest human ideal, yet focuses on the inevitable separateness of
the creative individual within such a structure. Through these
dichotomies Le Guin examines the tension between human
aspiration and human nature, between what can be dreamed and
what can be achieved. Le Guin reveals two complex societies that
are not what they initially appear, and her willingness both to
praise and criticize them is what makes this novel work. It is like
other feminist works of the period which assume that the
patriarchy is unnatural and that it fails to create environments
conducive to the maximization of female potentialities.
The positive values stressed in both stories can reveal to us
what, in the author’s eyes, is wrong with our own society. Thus if
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the stories are family/communal in feeling, we may pretty safely
guess that the author sees our society as isolating people from one
another, especially women from men. If the novels stress a feeling
of harmony and connection with the natural world, the author may
be telling us that in reality she feels a lack of such connection. The
dislike of urban environments reflects women’s experience of such
places since most cities can be places where women and powerless
men are threatened. The stories’ classlessness obviously comments
on the insecurity, competitiveness, and poverty of a class society.
Their relative peacefulness and lack of war is an obvious
indictment to the ethnic and racial rivalries within our societies.
The utopias’ sex permissiveness and joyfulness is a poignant
comment on the condition of sexuality for women: unfriendly,
coercive, simply absent, or, at best reactive . The physical mobility
emphasized in these books is a direct comment on the physical and
psychological threats that bar women from physical mobility in the
real world. The emphasis on freedom in work reflects the
restrictions that bar women from vast areas of work and
experience.
Likewise, women’s dystopias highlight the denial of women’s
personal independence and their capacity to make moral decisions
and act on them. They show women trapped by their sex and by
their femaleness. Dystopian visions are in a sense pessimistic:
depicting a creation myth in a future world of darkness and
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violence, where women are reduced to their biological function
and become only breeding machines. The dystopian tradition
draws on and extrapolates from contemporary political forces and
in particular the expression of class and gender hierarchies. Yet,
we have seen female characters taking steps out of darkness and
violence, towards finding a place for themselves. Alldera of Walk
to the End of the World is one of these. This element of
hopefulness rests on a strong belief, among feminists, in the power
and efficacy of women’s capabilities, for Walk is fired by a
political vision coming from the heart of women’s liberation
movement, one that is transformed by the power of Charnas’
imagination into a rich and complex fiction, a power which uses
exaggeration to make women’s lack of power visible and
discussable.
The connection between feminism and science fiction is
especially close and prosperous. For science fiction is able not only
to display actually existing gender relations, but also to offer
speculative representations of alternative models of political and
social organization: and not by inversions or cancellations of
actuality, but by properly utopian or dystopian imaginings that are
didactic and critical in character. The language of science fiction,
the possibilities in fantastic imagined futures and alternative
scenarios of the present, help break down the boundaries and
restrictions of everyday realities. The ideas presented in science
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fiction help create the possibility of another space. In speculating
about alternatives, they reflect on how it is possible to create a
culture of tolerance.