October 11th, 2007
by
Laura Q
The wikipedia article pregnancy in science fiction was almost just deleted. I argued for keeping it, but the article needs significant work. Right now it’s just a list of works that have some kind of pregnancy or fertility or infertility plot or theme. Really, it needs to be an article that talks about how SF is a useful genre for exploring the social, biological, and political consequences of pregnancy, and traces the use of SF works to do so over the years.
And it very much, desperately, needs references to academic literature discussing these themes in the relevant works.
I see some key themes:
* Starting with Frankenstein and tracing male appropriation of reproduction themes and exploration of artificial reproduction technologies (woman on the edge of time & relationship to shulamith firestone; lois mcmaster bujold’s artificial wombs, both on barrayar and ethan of athos); briefly touch on cloning;
* hitting those alien impregnation stories (miscegenation anxiety, maybe?) and definitely Mitchison’s Memoirs of a Spacewoman (a response to the miscegenation anxiety stories?);
* pregnancy horror (Rosemary's Baby and numerous other satan-baby themes), which relates to themes of parasitism and slavery (octavia butler! “alien”);
* use of fertility, infertility, mutation in end-of or decay-of-civilization and the human race stories, plus what-is-humanity (“that only a mother”)
* and politicization of reproduction – minor novels/stories focusing on abortion rights, birth control, etc., and major novels using reproduction as a way to look at social repression (e.g., the handmaid's tale).
Since pregnancy is hardly a major theme in literature, generally, SF is kinda it, and I would hate to see this topic ignored in wikipedia. I’ll try to work on it myself over the next few weeks, but thought I’d try to recruit some fellow SF-experts to work on this article with me. I think it could actually be a really good article, if it were done right!
… discussions should be done in the wikipedia talk page. If you’re new to wikipedia and anxious about it, drop me a line here, by email, or on my wikipedia talk page and i’d be delighted to help ease you in.
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Laura Q at
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Filed under Online, geek sexism | Comments (6)
Don’t forget Octavia Butler and the terror of the next generation.
What about short story/movie Enemy Mine?
to be honest, i know nothing about “enemy mine” except the title & it was by barry somebody. what’s the story?
Jes Battis, Simon Fraser University Prof, recently published an excellent book on Farscape. Investigating Farscape: Uncharted Territories of Sex and Science Fiction contains a chapter that delves into the pregnancies that take place in this television series. He explores them through a lens of contemporary reproductive theory and analysis. Hopefully those who are experts in this area (I am not one) and are interested in Sci Fi will take up your challenge to add something to the wikipedia page.
Missing from the Wikipedia list is Nicola Griffith’s “Ammonite,” in which an all-female society reproduces mostly by parthenogenesis, but in which occassionally there is sexual reproduction between two women.
I don’t know much about the tropes overall, but if more works are needed, Joan D. Vinge’s novella “Mother and Child” is definitely an illustration of the use of fertility and infertility in a decay-of-the-world type story.