Women, Science and Fiction Revisited

Debra Benita Shaw is a Reader in Cultural Theory at the University of East London, UK. She is the author of Technoculture: The Key Concepts (2008) and Posthuman Urbanism: Mapping Bodies in Contemporary City Space (2018). She is also co-editor (with Maggie Humm) of Radical Space: Exploring Politics and Practice (2016). She has published extensively in the fields of science fiction, gender politics and urban studies.

“Debra Benita Shaw’s Women, Science and Fiction Revisited (2023) presents a thought-provoking reassessment of women’s impact on speculative literature across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. … Shaw’s work is a powerful testament to the enduring relevance of feminist perspectives in reshaping and reimagining speculative fiction for these peculiar times. It is well worth the read.” (E Mariah Spencer, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 51, November, 2024)“In Women, Science and Fiction Revisited, Debra Benita Shaw provides a contemporary feminist analysis of women writers of science fiction, in which she explores how these writers re-imagine the role of women through this literary genre. …  Women, Science and Fiction Revisited, is an illuminating new approach to reading such fiction and the realisation that fiction which explores the impact of science on women is 'as vital as ever,' … .” (Caroline Summerfield, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, September 21, 2023)

• 1. Introduction: The Nearly Silent Listener.- 2. Herland: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Literature of the Beehive.- 3. Swastika Night: Katharine Burdekin and the Psychology of Scapegoating.- 4. ‘No Woman Born’: C. L. Moore’s Dancing Cyborg.- 5. The Left Hand of Darkness: Ursula Le Guin and the Haploid Heart.- 6. The Handmaid’s Tale: Margaret Atwood and the Politics of Choice.- 7. The Power: Naomi Alderman and Archaeologies of Gender.- 8. The City We Became: N. K. Jemisin and Posthuman Urbanism.