FEMINIST SCI-FI UTOPIAS
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FEMINIST SCI-FI UTOPIAS ♀
Feminist Sci-Fi Utopias
As feminists, most of us can easily recite what we oppose: male violence, patriarchy and subjugation along all the axes of oppression. However, we don’t often take the time to consider what kind of world we are fighting for. What would it look like, feel like and taste like to replace the patriarchal imagination with a feminist one?
Second wave feminist science fiction writers have attempted to go beyond what we know and create visions of what we want. Exploring the imaginary feminist utopias as envisioned by Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Joanna Russ and more, challenges us to think creatively about feminist futures.
I have compiled this ever-growing list of second wave feminist sci-fi utopia fiction books. They form the basis on which I model creative worldbuilding feminist workshops (see below).
Reading List
The Demeter Flower
Rochelle Singer
1980 — St. Martin’s Press
The Demeter Flower imagines an entire society created and governed by women who have survived the violent collapse of late-twentieth-century patriarchal society by withdrawing to their own village and guarding their newly-discovered secret of parthenogenesis.
The Female Man
Joanna Russ
1975 — Bantam Books
The novel follows the lives of four women living in parallel universes which differ in time and place. The women visit each other's worlds and are startled by the different views on gender roles and social conventions surrounding women and womanhood.
The End of This Day’s Business
Katharine Burdekin
1989 — The Feminist Press
In a world ruled by women, a mother teaches her son about the past. Risking both their lives, she tells the story of the rise of fascism and the subsequent world transformation as life-loving women took over from death-loving men.
Les Guérillères
Monique Wittig
1969 — Les Editions de Minuit
Depicting the overthrow of the old order by a tribe of warrior women, this epic celebration proclaims the destruction of patriarchal institutions and language and the birth of a new feminist order.
The Wanderground
Sally Miller Gearhart
1978 — Persephone Press
The stories focus on the hill women, a group of women who have fled from the men-ruled cities to the wilderness, where they live in all-women communities in harmony with each other and the natural world. The hill women have psychic powers that they use to communicate with each other and with animals, and to move through the world.
A Weave of Women
E.M. Broner
1978 — Holt, Rinehard and Winston
In a simple stone house set in the Old City in Jerusalem, twelve women and three wayward girls gather. Sharing their stories, the women create new ceremonies for themselves: ceremonies of birth, marriage, and death; of exorcism, excommunication, and exodus.
Mundane’s World
Judy Grahn
1988 — The Crossing Press
Set in a mythic and fabulous pre-historic world, this woman-centered novel of inner and outer journeys culminates in a female rite of passage. This is a timeless, ritualistic story in which all women can recognize themselves and be at home.
Native Tongue
Suzette Haden Elgin
1984 — DAW
Native Tongue follows Nazareth, a talented female linguist in the 22nd century – generations after the repeal of the 19th Amendment. She learns that the women of the Barren Houses are creating a language to help them break free of male dominance.
A Door Into Ocean
Joan Slonczewski
1986 — Arbor House Pub Co
The novel is about Sharers of Shora, a nation of women on a distant moon in the far future who are pacifists, highly advanced in biological sciences, and who reproduce by parthenogenesis--there are no males--and tells of the conflicts that erupt when a neighboring civilization decides to develop their ocean world, and send in an army.
Journey to Zelindar
Diana Rivers
1987 — Lace Publications
Abandoned and left for dead, pampered Sair walks to the ocean to kill herself after a brutal assault. Instead she is rescued by the Hadra, wild riding-women with strange powers, women who ride their horses by consent, speak mind-to-mind with each other and are all lovers of women.
The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You
Dorothy Bryant
1971 — Random House
The kin of Ata live only for the dream. Their work, their art, their love are designed in and by their dreams, and their only aim is to dream higher dreams. Into the world of Ata comes a desperate man who is first subdued and then led on the spiritual journey that, sooner or later, all of us must make.
Parable of the Sower
Octavia E. Butler
1993 — Four Walls Eight Windows
The novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who can feel the pain of others and becomes displaced from her home. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north and learn of a religion she has crafted titled Earthseed. In this religion, the destiny for believers is to inhabit other planets.
Sultana’s Dream
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
1905 — The Indian Ladies Magazine
Written in 1905, Sultana’s Dream depicts a feminist utopia called Ladyland in which women run everything and men are secluded, in a mirror-image of the traditional practice of purdah. The women are aided by science fiction-esque technology which enables labourless farming and flying cars.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
1969 — Ace Books
A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters.
The Fifth Sacred Thing
Starhawk
1993 — Bantam
The year is 2048 and a catastrophe has fractured the United States into several nations. Society has evolved in the direction of a sustainable economy, using wind power, local agriculture, and led by women. But a Christian fundamentalist nation has evolved and plans to wage war against the women’s Ecotopia. This story follows the confrontation of these two societies.
Herland
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1915 — The Forerunner
An all-female society is discovered somewhere in the distant reaches of the earth by three male explorers who are now forced to re-examine their assumptions about women's roles in society. The book is often considered to be the middle volume in her utopian trilogy, preceded by Moving the Mountain (1911). It was not published in book form until 1979.
The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pizan
1405 (1982 — Persea Books)
Written in 1405, this book is a metaphorical place which houses a group of worthy heroines and protects women against attack. Christine de Pizan constructs the city’s walls and towers as the three virtues teach her about the achievements of scholars, warriors and other great women throughout history, such that the book itself becomes the fabled city.
The Gate to Women’s Country
Sheri S. Tepper
1988 — Doubleday
The Gate to Women's Country is set in the future, 300 years after a nuclear war destroyed most of human civilization. The book focuses on a matriarchal nation known as Women's Country. In adjacent garrisons, men live only to wage primitive war and plot insurrection. We follow the story of Stavia who is left with no choice but to take on the responsibility for preventing a tragedy that could destroy humanity completely.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
James Tiptree, Jr.
1996 — Doubleday Direct
A ship of male astronauts, who may be off course for their return trip home, are intercepted by a space vessel controlled by only women. Who's off course now? The novella first appeared in the anthology Aurora: Beyond Equality, edited by Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan J. Anderson, published by Fawcett in May 1976.
Solution Three
Naomi Mitchison
1975 — Dobson Books
A future society in which reproductive control and homosexuality shape a more equitable life for all, eradicating aggression and racism, curbing overpopulation, and providing a dependable food supply. But what is the cost to women of new models of reproducing life, regardless of the intentions behind the goal?
Workshops
I have developed workshop modules for women and girls that aim to encourage participants to envision the sort of world they want to live in, rather than just accept the status quo. Using feminist utopian sci-fi writing to help provoke creative thinking, participants are able to engage in an active form of worldbuilding which can often be a liberating experience for women and girls. Please be in touch if you would like to know more.
