Through a Different Lens (Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction) (Book Review‪)‬

Through a Different Lens. Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon, eds. Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2008. 285 + xii pp. $85.00 hb. I would like to begin this review by way of a reference to Carol Gilligan's book, In a Different Voice (1982). Although Gilligan has, in some quarters, been taken to task for both her methodology and her conclusions, those conclusions have, nevertheless, had a profound and lasting impact on feminism, feminist theory, and feminist psychology. She argues that, sometimes, when the observer (of any kind of phenomenon) is a woman, the truth can be different than if the observer had been a man. Gilligan asks a set of questions about the practices and conclusions by life cycle theorists and discovers an observational bias. By asking different kinds of questions, by framing the inquiry within a different methodology, by looking through a different analytical lens, Gilligan sees things differently. By way of her corrective lens, Gilligan critiques the patriarchal practices and biases of certain psychologists and posits a methodology that would produce a different set of conclusions.