Dystopian dreams: on feminist science fiction | Hacker News Reader

Dystopian dreams: on feminist science fiction

theguardian.com

60 pointsMz20 comments

And 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.

That's Egypt today. Egypt is far more hostile to women than it was 30 years ago.

Have you read The Handmaid's Tale, or are you judging its realism based on the columnist synopsis you quoted?

I've read the plot summary on Wikipedia and am judging its realism based on the quote, yes.

3 more days: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/women-of-scifi-and-fantas...

Includes Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower for $1.

You 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.

While 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.

The 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

If you're after some interesting views on relationships, I remember the "Boris's Bar" and "Chimeras" were fun, but there's much more.

Which parts of third-wave feminism aren't useful? I am genuinely curious...

Like Riot Grrrrl feminism? Too much focus on empowerment?

The Handmaid's Tale was made into a movie in 1990. It's an OK movie. The upcoming TV show is apparently a spinoff.

> with the sudden accession to power of a theocracy in the United States

really?

That sentence is quite clearly describing the setting of the book.

> 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.

Man, 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.

Have you tried using a bigger stone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event

Hahahaha. I never actually thought through the practical problems with that one.

This is relevant :D https://youtu.be/71gilEP4aJY

Wow, 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.

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