The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction is the first large-scale reference work of its kind, critically assessing the relations of gender and genre in science fiction (SF) especially―but not exclusively―as explored in speculative art by women and LGBTQ+ artists across the world.

This global volume builds upon the traditions of interdisciplinary inquiry by connecting established topics in gender studies and science fiction studies with emergent ideas from researchers in different media. Taken together, they challenge conventional generic boundaries; provide new ways of approaching familiar texts; recover lost artists and introduce new ones; connect the revival of old, hate-based politics with the increasing visibility of imagined futures for all; and show how SF stories about new kinds of gender relations inspire new models of artistic, technoscientific, and political practice. Their chapters are grouped into five conversations―about the history of gender and genre, theoretical frameworks, subjectivities, medias and transmedialities, and transtemporalities―that are central to discussions of gender and SF in the current moment. A range of both emerging and established names in media, literature, and cultural studies engage with a huge diversity of topics including eco-criticism, animal studies, cyborg and posthumanist theory, masculinity, critical race studies, Indigenous futurisms, Black girlhood, and gaming.

This is an essential resource for students and scholars studying gender, sexuality, and/or science fiction.

Lisa Yaszek is Regents’ Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech, US, and past president of the Science Fiction Research Association; her recent books include Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century (2020) and The Future Is Female! series (2018–present).

Sonja Fritzsche is Professor of German Studies and Associate Dean at Michigan State University, US, and focuses on Eastern European science fiction and the amplification of global science fiction studies.

Keren Omry is Senior Lecturer of contemporary US fiction at the University of Haifa, Israel, where she researches and teaches on Alternate Histories, Science Fiction, and African-American literature.

Wendy Gay Pearson is Chair of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Western Ontario in Canada whose research focuses on queer and trans science fiction; with Veronica Holinger and Joan Gordon, she is co-editor of Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction (2008).