‘….For kicks, we'll dance for ourselves
Before mirrors studded with golden bulbs.
The oldest among us will recognize that glow—
But the word sun will have been re-assigned
To the Standard Uranium-Neutralizing device
Found in households and nursing homes.
And yes, we'll live to be much older, thanks
To popular consensus. Weightless, unhinged,
Eons from even our own moon, we'll drift
In the haze of space, which will be, once
And for all, scrutable and safe.’
- From ‘Sci-Fi’ by Tracy K Smith
Science Fiction or Sci-Fi allows us to suspend reality to create either a Utopian or Dystopian world. We’re able to see how things should or shouldn’t be, rather than the way they are. Tracy Smith’s poem Sci-Fi is a recent example of reimagining the life of women in an ideal world.
The Sci-Fi genre brings to mind the works of Jules Verne, HG Wells, and more recently, Isaac Asimov. But the irony is that women have been writing Sci-Fi for decades before their male counterparts discovered the genre. Let’s take a look at some pathbreaking women in India and across the world who have created Sci-Fi with a lasting impact.
Margeret Cavendish’s life was upended by the civil wars in England, so she fled to France. While in exile, she married William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, a twist of fate that would shape her literary career. Encouraged by William, Margaret wrote across genres – poems, plays, biographies, romances, and even treatise, but her most celebrated accomplishment is the 1666 Sci-Fi novel – ‘Blazing World’. A lady is kidnapped and taken to the Icy Sea, but while her captors perish in the cold, she survives thanks to the light of her beauty and enters the ‘Blazing World’. This is a parallel Utopian world where there are new species, unconventional laws of nature, and different approaches to religion. Although her work was not taken very seriously then, modern-day scholars certainly consider the text relevant and prophetic of present-day geopolitics.
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley’s collective legacy is often overshadowed by her husband Percy Shelley and her feminist mother Mary Wollstonecroft. But no one can deny her brilliant contribution to the hitherto unexplored Sci-Fi genre with ‘Frankenstein’. It’s hard to believe that the world’s most famous Sci-Fi story began as a lark. Mary, along with her husband Percy and their friends had travelled to Geneva to spend the summer with Lord Byron. On a rainy day with nothing to do, the literary friends sat around inventing ‘ghost stories’ to pass the time. Mary decided to reanimate a corpse in hers, and the result was ‘Frankenstein’. When she returned from her vacation, she started fleshing out the story. Finally, ‘Frankenstein’ or ‘The Modern Prometheus’ was published in 1818, and became a roaring success. Mary was only 19. Although she has since written poems, novels, travelogues, short stories, and biographies, Frankenstein remains her most definitive work.
Begum Rokeya Sakhawat
In 1905, around twelve decades before the Barbie movie was conceived, a short story presented the ideal of a world ruled by women, with men in the submissive role. The author was Begum Rokeya Sakhawat, a 25-year-old Muslim woman from undivided Bengal. Her protagonist is a Muslim woman in purdah (not unlike Rokeya’s own childhood and early adulthood) who is whisked away to Ladyland, a destination where two-hour workdays prevail, where women use solar panels and create flower-paved streets, where there are no wars, and where men live in seclusion in mardanas – much like women’s zenanas. We also read about the ‘flying machine’ that takes her on her journey. This was just months after the Wright brothers had concluded their experiments, so airplanes weren’t a reality. Rokeya wrote for social change, rather than popular success. Sultana’s Dream remained an isolated, albeit iconic story in her repertoire of impassioned essays, poems, and social commentary.
Language was still evolving in the 12th century in Europe, but this didn’t deter the multilingual Marie de France from writing, and eventually becoming a highly acclaimed literary figure. She is recognised as France’s first female poet, and a feminist who advocated for women’s equal status through her work. Among her writings, she is famed for ‘Bisclavret’ or ‘werewolf’, which is considered to be one of the oldest Sci Fi stories still in existence. ‘Bisclavret’ is one of the twelve ‘Lais’ or short-narrative poems on love composed by Marie. It tells the story of a Lord who spends his life trapped as a lupine because his wife betrays him. Although Marie was French, she was also well-versed in Celtic languages and lived in the English court at some point. Although her work was published so long ago, they have been preserved and revived through the ages by those who believe that her early contributions were invaluable.
As one of the first African American women to pioneer the Sci-Fi genre in the 20th century, Octavia Butler grew up in poverty and struggled with dyslexia. But she was happiest in a library surrounded by books. In 1954, Butler saw the movie ‘Devil Girl From Mars’ and had an epiphany – she wanted to write Sci-Fi. At age 13, she submitted a story to a Sci Fi magazine for publication and this only reinforced her belief in her dream. But she had to work a series of jobs ranging from dishwasher to potato chip inspector while trying to get her books published. In 1976, she was finally noticed with ‘Patternmaster’. Several other books followed including the very iconic ‘Kindred’. The book is about a contemporary African American who travels back in time to Maryland, where she has to conform to expected behaviours from coloured people. Through her Sci-Fi narratives, Butler explored themes such as enslavement, environmental degradation, gender inequality, and societal collapse. In 1995, she became the first Sci-Fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.