Gender Issues in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, Femspec Issue 6.2

“Hollinger cites several of these works to demonstrate feminist challenges to heterosexual and patriarchal hegemony, feminist techniques of defamiliarization (e.g., re female human nature), and feminist appropriations of standard sf figures, such as aliens and cyborgs, to question traditional notions of dominance and status. In the “Sub-genres and Themes” section, the reader will find a few words from Kathryn Cramer about gender in “hard sf” (189). Ken MacLeod’s note about feminist sf as the “troubling exception to the generally progressive spirit of sf” in his essay on politics (236), and Farah Mendlesohn’s observation in regard to religion that paganism’s influence is most seen in feminist sf (271).”