I go through all this

Little Black Book of Stories

A.S. Byatt

Blood and Wires: Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Okay, so I’ve been trying to write this forever and I keep coming upon obstacles.  Do I prove myself as a geek first?  Do I weave a witty beginning into an intricate and powerful essay that proves my geekosity via my words and proofs?  Why do I even feel the need to prove myself as a geek?  Well, I think that question I can answer.

Being a female geek is tough.  Male geeks are a reclusive and defensive lot.  I’ve sacrificed my femininity in the past to carve a place for myself amongst my geek brothers.  Years of short hair, baggy jeans, slouched posture, lax lingo and modeling my appearance and attitude after male science fiction and fantasy heroes fill my memories.  Acting like a boy was freeing.  A whole world opened up to me simply by acting more masculine.  Well, at least, in my mind and in high school.  I fell into my Science Fiction and Fantasy literature world.  There in those novels, myth and reality became one and symbols wielded true power.  More existed than just humans; there were other races and other worlds to define the theme and mood of a story.  A world where battles were epic and true, science and religion could be joined and, if I wanted, people wouldn’t be defined by gender or color.  They would be defined by actions.  By the time I graduated, I made a firm decision that regardless of anything else that happened, I would write those Sci-Fi and Fantasy so maybe I could change someone’s life for the better.  And maybe, I could reach out to all the other young girls who felt out of place, stuck between male and female. 

If I thought I felt out of place in high school, being a Creative Writing major who focused on genre writing put me in space while everyone else grew strong on the solid ground of serious literature.  My arguments went unheard or laughed off without a second thought.  To my peers, science fiction and fantasy could not be serious literature.  It was pulp and an easy way to spend an hour, but nothing more.  There was no refuge for a wayward would-be genre author.  Until my second semester of freshman year when the spring schedule offered the best class I thought I had ever seen: Science Fiction.  This was it!  My chance to be in a class with like-minded geeks!  One whole semester that I could devote extra time to my favorite type of writing and get credit for my effort sounded like the best idea ever.  Exposure to new Sci-Fi and Fantasy books to boot.  What else could a 19 year old she-geek ask for? 

This is what we call foreshadowing.  Oooo.  Well, not really.  More like a set-up for the clincher, because man, I was never so distraught in my life.  The one thing that class taught me was Science Fiction is gender-biased.  I don’t want to say sexist because there are versions of strong women in a lot of Sci-Fi and Fantasy.  Tolkien’s few female characters were pretty dynamic and strong, though a little too perfect.  Gibson’s Molly could be considered strongish, but she falls flat and remote; she’s a pulp-fiction heroine thrown in the novel simply because women exist in the world and there needs to be something sexy to keep the male readers interested.  The same can be said for the women in Philip K. Dick or Arthur C. Clark novels.  They’re simply devices through which the reader can perceive the main male character.  Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash has pathetic females.  Is it really necessary to have your main female character a 15 year old cyberpunk princess?  That’s not hot, it’s just illegal.  It can’t even fall under taboo.  In the end, the eternal problem of women and girls in Western literature arises: why are we only portrayed as virgins or whores?  If we can’t be sex objects, we have to be too perfect to believe or untouchable mothers and hags.  We have to be young, slight and childlike or hot, exotic and blandly voluptuous.  Let us not forget the strange trend of female androids or cyborgs, which has tremendous possibilities, but winds up falling flat more often than not.  So, despite all of the scientific, technological and political issues tackled, these novels fail to cover one very essential theme: gender relations.  This hasn’t been applied to Sci-Fi and Fantasy.  Most popular Sci-Fi doesn’t know what to do with its female characters; and most popular Fantasy is all fluff about dragons, faeries and pixies.  Or it’s just about sexy elves or vampires and the main character falling in love with said characters.  This is why no one in the “serious literature” world believes that Sci-Fi and Fantasy are viable venues for artistic expression.  How can a literary genre be taken seriously as a progressive genre when the majority of the women are two-dimensional?  Men have the complications, the characterization, the angst and the drama.  The women are only defined by their relationship with the men.  Sci-Fi is written for men and Fantasy is written for what the authors assume women will like: pretty things. 

Yes, there are fantastic Sci-Fi and Fantasy female authors.  It’s proof that Sci-Fi and Fantasy can be progressive genres beyond the science realms.  Serious female authors tend to weave gender issues in with the science.  The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a good example.  But she’s not a primarily Sci-Fi/Fantasy author.  Her book gets classified as such because it takes place in a futuristic diaspora.  Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre is perhaps a more apt example: another futuristic, disasporic landscape combining the Sci-Fi post-apocalyptic aspect with a more Fantasy element of human-animal interaction and healing through non-technological means.  The female characters in these novels are dynamic.  They have faults as well as strengths.  They are products of there imperfect settings.  They’re characters that don’t stand out because they’re “The Sexy Woman/Girl”, but because they’re believable.  This is what makes characters important to the readers. 

It’s time to take Sci-Fi by its nads and twist and then stitch those nads on Fantasy.   I want to make my favorite genres progressive again.  Perhaps we can’t change the minds of the male authors by arguing and ranting.  Perhaps the course of action to take is by being successful, talented authors that change this literature for the better.  This isn’t to disparage the fantastic works that have influenced me; it’s just to push the genre forward.

For one thing always seems to be forgotten: we are a gender of blood and tissue.  We have volume, silence, stage whispers, snorted laughs, gasped sobs and gritted teeth snarls.  Capable of creating life: organic and cybernetic, silicon-based and carbon-based.  Capable of gutting life from someone just to watch it spill to the ground.  We mourn death, mourn birth, mourn poor decisions, regret nothing and force regret upon others.  Build, harvest, reap while bleeding upon the dirt.  Staring up at the stars, out at the stars, back at the stars.  We have arms, legs and minds enough between us all to build complete armadas of ships, design battle strategy and heal the wounded left behind.  Average, ugly, fat, slim, emaciated, curvaceous and just as fantastic and functional without electronic implants.  Open, motherly, healing, sexually voracious, monogamous, sweet, sincere.  Evil, cunning, manipulative, opportunistic, frigid, non-sexual or asexual.  Ama Ata Aidoo, a female non-Sci-Fi/Fantasy author, once said in an interview “my contention as a writer and as feminist is that such women also have a right to be. . .Life is a complete and moving dynamic, including eating and getting eaten”.  In the end, the goal is not to have these aspects chosen because the character is a woman, but because it works for the character, regardless of gender.  The trick is knowing when to use a female character and when not to use a female character.  But first, the women in these stories and novels have to become fully realized.  Therefore, as a female geek, I must scream until my throat runs with blood and tissue, until other worlds hear me and the stars tremble. 

I must take my beating heart, organic or cybernetic, and hold it out for all the worlds to see.

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